What's the deal with the roof?

We had organised for a plumber friend to put on the roof last week. However, he got busy all of a sudden and couldn't fit us in. So we have asked another friend who did our first roof if he wanted to do it. He is calling back tonight to let us know when he could do it.

The good news with the delay is that it should give us time to arrange to get some Velux skylights ready to go in when the roof goes on, saving us the hassel of doing it later. The bad news is that we are losing money as the tarpaulins are costing us $150 a week to hire.

We are owed $1000 from the neighbour who agreed with us and the council that he would give us money for a skylight because we allowed him to build his garage wall closer to our kitchen window. We will probably get 2 small ones which will fit between all the truss work we have going on the roof. So maybe one over the kitchen island and one over the new dining area. I think hubby also wants one in the stairwell.

I also want two in the new living area up the TV end as it is very dark. We might work these details out tonight and hopefully order them in the next few days.

Not much else happening.

Dave has been painting the rafter tails.

He has to do two coats of the green now before he can put up the lining board eaves. I just finished the last coat of paint on those today.

And also today the water company turned up and started digging out the front. Seems like they are putting in a new fire hydrant and moving it a meter or so further away. Hopefully it will give us room to park two cars in front of our house.

Cheers,

Mother's Day

I was browsing the Aldi catalogue this week and found a great idea for the kids to get me for Mother's Day.

It is a girls tool set. It's pink and it's only $19.99. The only thing missing is a cordless drill.

 

The thing is my hubby is a chippy and has all these tools and many more, but he has them in his ute or at work which is not helpful when I am home and need to fix something. It would be good, as then I can stop bugging him to get a tool for me.

Then today the Master's catalogue arrived in the mail and I saw this.

 Same thing as the Aldi one but $30. Looks the same so hopefully the quality is just as good.

I will have to remember to drop in to Aldi on Wednesday when the sale starts and get one.

Now to search for a pink cordless drill.

Cheers,

Trimming the tails

Today's job was to trim all the rafter tails o the top level to the right length. It was a bit awkward as Dave had to hang out the side of the house and use the saw to trim them to the right length.

He did have a helper though.

 

 

Bad butt shot!

Other than that, still painting the lining boards. But now up to the yellow coat which is so much more satisfying to paint with, than the white.

Kid free night tonight as we are off to a dinner party. Yippee!!
Cheers,

Upstairs rooms taking shape

Yesterday and today we have been doing more work on building the rooms upstairs.

This is where one of the wardrobes will be.

Attatching the bracing

Having fun with the power tools

Bedroom 2

Chillin' in the new kids retreat

 

We've also been bracing the roof and more painting of the lining boards for the eaves.

Cheers,

 

Kids study area

In the upstairs kids retreat space, we want to split half of it into a couch and TV area and the other side into a study zone.

Obviously this makes it look bigger than it actually will look like but this is the layout.






So I imagine along desk under the window. Like a nice slab of timber with some shelves above and two chairs so that boys can have a space to do their homework.

I have pinned some ideas that would be kinda like what I imagine.


 
One of the desks (the one that turns the corner) would even have a nice window above it so would get lots of natural light.

I think they would like it anyway.

Cheers,

A bedroom wall and a clean couch

A slow but productive day in the end. It was the day to tackle the stained couch and armchair. I was told by the carpet cleaner man that I should  not remove the couch cushions because they will shrink when washed and would be impossible to get them back on. The tag on the couch also said the same thing. I got this couch from Freedom as a 21st birthday present so it is 15 years old now and has only been steam cleaned twice in that time. As you can imagine it was filthy.

Ignore the grey spots on the lens again.

Look at those stains. One was just from juice a few days ago.

The armchair is about 6 years old and is from Ikea and has a washable cover. Again I have only removed it to wash it twice in that time.

See how horrid the arms are.

So I removed the cover and sprayed the stains with stain remover and washed them in the machine. I added some drops of tea tree oil. You should have seen the colour of the water. So I took a photo for you all!

The inside of the cushions. I vacuumed these thoroughly and put them in the sunshine.

The water from the washing machine. Mmmmm yummy!

The armchair covers still looked grubby so I put them back in the machine and added bleech to really whiten them up. It worked a treat. Look at them now.

Still have to sew the button back on the back cushions

Farewell dust mites and old stains. And it was easy to get the covers back on, so there silly carpet cleaner man. You ain't getting my money anymore!!



On the extension front, Dave got a wall built upstairs. It is the dividing wall between the boys bedrooms.

Gives us a real sense of the size of the rooms upstairs. It was a bit awkward because of the pitched ceilings. Just took more time to measure and cut everything. Looks cool though :)

Cheers,

Framing the lower roof

What a night it was last night. The wind was blowing strong; so strong that poor hubby only got 2 hours sleep worrying that the tarp was going to blow off. He got up at 1am to check the ropes were still tied down. Then today the rain came and once again we found ourselves out the back with towels and buckets trying to keep the floor dry.

Dave got to work on the framing up of the roof on the west side lower floor. Luckily it was easier than the east side even though the steel beams were out of level and giving some issues.

 Here is the first beam going in.

 

More!

 Yesterday Dave built a long work bench along the north wall of the back area. Here we can lay out the pine lining boards that are getting painted to go under the eaves.

 

Sadly today it was too wet to paint and I spent the day catching up on the inside house work.

Though I did get out some bleach and scrub off some mildew that had started to grow along the bottom plate of the wall. Hopefully the roof will go over this new section soon so we can avoid the mildew aspect.

 

Tomorrow I am continuing me efforts to rid the house of dust mites. My allergies have been really bad, especially my itchy eyes. Today I vacuumed the couch and washed and vacuumed the side cushions and back cushions. They look so much brighter and cleaner now. Tomorrow I am going to remove the covers from the seat cushions and wash them. Hopefully they don't shrink and I can get them back on the cushion because the label says not to wash them. Eek!! They really need doing and it is worth the effort to stop my itchy eyes.

Cheers,

 

A slow patch

Not much to report at the moment. We have Mum staying with us as she had to have surgery in Melbourne and can't go home yet. So we have 4 people sleeping in this tiny room. Mum is on the bottom bunk with the boys top and tailing on the top bunk and of course Heidi in the cot.

 

Meanwhile the outside is drying out now after a break in the weather. Dave has been spending the last two days trying to figure out how to do the roof for the lower level. Finally after going back to his old books from Tafe he figured it out. But then realised he was meant to use hardwood instead of pine for the hips so had to re-do some of it.

So below is the eastern wall roof. We actually will put a skylight in here because we didn't realise how dark that area will be. And that is the main TV/living area.

How funny does this picture look with Dave's head sticking up.

 We also got another delivery of timber today. Some for the roof and some for the internal walls upstairs. Sammy and I carried it all around the back which in itself was difficult, 1) because he is just 5 years old and 2) they were really long pieces and the gap is really tight and hard to turn around in.

  

 Today I also finished painting the lining boards to go under the eaves. However I have 70 meters more to paint that arrived today.

 

Tomorrow is Easter so we cleaned up the best we could to make way for the Easter Bunny to hide the eggs tonight. I have three exited kids that have just gone to bed. Must go hide eggs now though.
Happy Easter everyone!

Cheers,