Our Halloween House

3 more sleeps until Halloween and the kids are excited.

I just hung some decorations on the front so the neighbourhood kids know that we are participating in the trick or treating.

Happy Halloween,
Nat

'Tis the weather for painting

Finally Melbourne has had some nice weather. Windy but warm/hot. This means it is great for slapping on some paint whenever we find the time. This evening I finished the second coat on one of the windows and on Wednesday night I did the other under lamp light after the kids were asleep. While I was doing the windows, Dave was with me doing the first coat on the weatherboards.

I thought it was time for a painting selfie as I just had my hair done last night.

Dave is up there finishing the first coat.

Stop posing. Back to work!

The white before the yellow

So more painting in the weekend ahead and hopefully some more architraves around the windows.

Cheers,
Nat

Gorgeous Girly Nursery

As things are a bit slow here at the moment (just sanding and painting weatherboards and windows) I thought I'd show this beautiful girly nursery of some friends of ours. Their little girl is about 4 weeks old and is very lucky to be able to have this amazing bedroom.

I love this art work painted by their friend and is a canvas hanging from a rod. So not harm fall if it falls.

Thanks for sharing these photos Dean and Alyssa. She is a lucky little girl.

Cheers,
Nat

Fancy pants architraves

The great thing about building your own house, is that you can pretty much do what you want with the finishes. One of the finishes that we see a lot in weatherboard houses is external architraves with gaps down the side like this:

We want to make ours look "finished off" so are filling these gaps with wood strips scribed to match the outline of the weatherboards.

Here is a progress shot of the first one:

 And here is it being cut out with the circular saw:

We also wanted something a little more decorative and in keeping with the characteristics of the old section of the house. See the one in my bedroom here.

So this is what they look like.

Attaching the canopy on the top

We love it.

However, it is still missing the scotia under the bottom sill. It will look a lot beefier once that is on. I selected 110mm wide Tasmania oak timber so should hold up well in the weather and the wide architrave really gives it an expensive and classic look. I love how the top piece overhangs and has that little tapper angle.

This is just the first undercoat, so we have a lots to do still, until it is done. But so far, so good.

Cheers,
Nat

Street trees

Woo hoo! Our new nature strip trees arrived today.

 

 

These are evergreens which is great news. We also have our median strip trees in which are deciduous.

These are tall but are looking a bit shabby at the moment. Hopefully with all the rain and spring warm weather, they will take off soon.

Cheers,
Nat

Roughing in for the air con

On Saturday morning at 10am, the guys arrived from ColdFlow to rough in for the split system air conditioning. That basically means to run all the cables and pipes through the studwork.

This is the downstairs one. Ideally I wanted to put it under the stairs on the back of the bathroom wall but they said it wasn't ideal. Apparently this spot isn't ideal either. They wanted it on the end wall opposite where the fireplace will go but I said no and it will be an eye sore above the TV and in the way of any built in shelves that I want to go there.

See the lovely white cables and pipes

Upstairs, we have three units. Each will go back to back, so each of the boys rooms will have one above their doorway and the retreat one will go above their doors on the other side.

So the next stage of that wont happen until after the plaster is on and they can hang the units.

Cheers,
Nat

A visit to Bunnings

Not sure we will be allowed back in to the new Bunnings in Altona North after little Miss Heidi thought that the glass Santa ball ornaments were bouncy balls and tried to bounce one. Only to discover that glass smashes on impact with a concrete floor. She was in my bad books for the rest of the day.

I did have a chance to look at the potential moulding options for the external windows. One of the benefits of my daily morning runs and walks, is that I get to check out all the options for window trims in the area. I did come up with a favourite and snapped a quick photo before the camera battery died.

It is a simple wide square moulding with an overhang at the top cut on an angle. I showed Dave tonight and he thought it looked good but also will put on a piece on the top for water to run off. I will think of the name of it soon but right now it has slipped my mind.

So there were two options. A primed pine called Pinetrim:

At $17.60 for 2.7m lengths this was the cheapest option.

Else there was the Tas Oak hardwood.

Considerably more expensive. Dave wants to ask at the local Home Hardware where he gets all his other timber to see how much they are. But I do want it to be 110mm wide.

The other thing I was looking at, was cheaper ways to do the timber panelling on the ceilings like this.

Kids back at school

Today it was back to being just me and Heidi at home. I love my two quiet days week when I am not at work. I didn't have to make 3 different snack for 3 different is multiple times a day and I didn't have to break up any fights.

What did happen, is that our plumber came and move a own pipe that was put in the wrong spot (and dropped off the invoice), so that was cool. After I bribed Heidi to have a nap with the promise of pink icecream in a cone when she woke up, I managed to get a coat of paint on the outside of the window for Andrew's bedroom and once the is got home from school, I did another coat. If I can get two coats done tomorrow, it will be ready to put it on the weekend. However I don't think that is the plan.

Dave finished the first coat of yellow on the front wall of the house after work today.

Tomorrow I will be going to check out the new Bunnings in Altona North. I will look at lining boards for the ceilings and architraves for the outdoor windows.

Cheers,
Nat

Ideas for a bulkhead

Yesterday I mentioned about was to handle the bulkhead in the new dining area. I have pinned a few possible ideas in my Pinterest account.

One idea is to put architrave around it like this type of thing.


So we would have most of it as plaster and then add the architrave at the bottom and sides. That would certainly suit the rest of the house.

Or we could try something a little braver like a wooden beam to match the proposed wooden mantle above the fireplace.

Source.  How gorgeous is this kitchen!

Or we could try something a little more period style like this:

 

Then we could always just do it square set plaster but that doesn't appeal to my eye and looks too much like a display home. I'd prefer a more architectural element.

I'd love to here your comments on which you like the best.

Cheers,
Nat

Painting and wall removal

What a stunning day it was in Melbourne on Saturday. 27 degrees and sunny. Perfect weather to do some painting. We managed to off load Heidi to Dave's parents for the afternoon so we could get stuck into the painting of the west upper side. We did two coats of sealer and two coats of Solarguard in our wonderful Haymes Lion's Den yellow. Our green is called Haymes Winter Green and our white is Currier Creme.

First coat of yellow

Andrew helping

Got paint on his favourite hoodie.

Second coat going on

I went up and had a look tonight after it had all dried to see if we need to do a third coat. But we really don't. Look amazing just with those two. Phew!

Today, Dave had his first game of baseball in about 4 or 5 years. I didn't go to watch but instead stayed home with the 3 terror children. Thank goodness today is the last day of school holidays. I got bit bored so I pulled down the wall that had the doors in it. As Heidi was having her sleep, I had to do most of it with an allen key so not to wake her. Boy that was hard work!

But it feels bigger again after removing it.

It seems like we will be keeping  smaller bulkhead where that ceiling drops down and then going back up to the same height as the kitchen ceiling. I am just trying to decide how to design the bulk head. So many options.

Our big open space.

Oh and see our little old dining table has made a reappearance. It was up in the roof space for about 3 years. It is nice to have another option on where to eat meals.

Anyone else do any painting or ripping out walls on the weekend?

Cheers,
Nat