Random Christmas photos at our house!

 It is feeling very festive at This Little Yellow House at the moment and I am loving it!

 

Merry Christmas everyone!
Nat

Kitchen floor work

We had quite a productive weekend with Dave doing lots of work on the kitchen floor and I was doing Christmas decorating with the kids.

So we had leveled and glued down the yellow tongue in the hallway and now it was time to do the same in the kitchen which was obviously a bigger job. But we got there my 7pm Sunday night.

Kitchen floor up again

All the old floorboards have now gone.

Cutting out a notch for the power to the island bench

Putting the yellow tongue strip back into place.

 The kids and I tackled the Christmas stuff. Firstly we put up the tree.

This year I got a Kmart train to go around the base and I also got a new garland and some mini trees from Ezibuy.

 

 

I also have this gold wreath coming hopefully tomorrow to go above the mantle.

 

I have never done a gingerbread house before so I thought this would be the year to try. The kids certainly enjoyed in and have been dying to eat it. I am not sure what the rule is for when to eat it though.

It feels so good to finally have the kitchen floor strong and secure and now we can think about getting the blackbutt down in the next few weeks. Well, after we have done the laundry floor that it.

Cheers,
Nat

Sanding and polishing the Blackbutt floors

Hello there!

Wow I sure have been slack in updating the blog lately.

If you follow me on Facebook you may have seen a before photo of the lounge room emptied ready for the sanding to start on Friday night. But before we could do that, we filled the knot holes with epoxy resin so we didn't get little kids toes stuck in them. Some of the holes were ok but some it just soaked straight through but did smooth them out a bit so not to bad.

The epoxy just leaked straight through this knot hole.

Here is Chris the floor sander at work. He worked Friday and Saturday and still needs to come back next Saturday to do one last sand and coat.

After the first coat it looked like this. However, the final effect will be matt.

While all that was happening out the back, Dave ripped up the hallway floor, levelled it and glued down the yellow tongue ready for floorboards. It feels so solid now, it's great.

The house is nightmare mess at the moment, but things always look worse before they look better so I just have to battle through the dust and clutter.

Cheers,
Nat

Fireside bench seats

We now have a new place to sit.

On Saturday I went out to Ikea to pick up some things to make the fireside bench seat cushion.
For $59 each I got two toddler bed mattresses made from foam. I also bought some white material from Ikea (could be a mistake as they are already getting kiddie finger prints on them so this may change to navy or something more forgiving. Dave bought some chipboard from the hardware shop and I borrowed his staple gun. Here are the bits waiting to be assembled.

 And here is the bench before.

I managed to cut the foam pretty easily with just my sewing scissors.

Then I cut out the fabric and stapled it to the chipboard with the foam in between.

Here it is finished. Much cheaper than the $360 each I was going to pay for an online company to make it for me.

 

Then I went to Kmart and bought a few new cushions.

 Then I saw a Reindeer cushion in Kmart a few days later and added that for a festive look.

It is a great place to sit and the kids love having a little nook to sit in and read (who am I kidding, they are playing on the smart phone).

Here are the details of the products:

Ikea Vyssa Slappna Mattress for junior bed 2 x $59
Ikea Minna white fabric $35
Chipboard $15
Kmart lattice cushion 2 x $10
Kmart dream big cushion 2 x $10
Kmart reindeer cushion 2 x $10

Cheers,
Nat

Moving the kitchen bench

So yesterday after work, Dave's brother helped Dave move the stone bench top off the kitchen island and they put it into Heidi's room.

Then we rotated the bench around so that Dave can pull up the floorboards, dig holes and put in some new stumps.

Dave's brother disconnecting the benchtop with Sammy watching on.

 Benchtop gone.

 We will keep it safe in Heidi's room until it is time to put it back on.

And here is the kitchen with the bench spun around. The whole room feels different like this. I would like to keep it this way and re-do the kitchen. Well a girl can dream.

Cheers,
Nat

It's like camping

You know when you go camping and you are surrounded by bugs and cooking smells mix with the smells of the earth. Well our kitchen feels just like that at the moment. Dave is digging holes under the kitchen floor so every so often mud gets splashed up and dirt is wheelbarrowed across the floor. The kitchen smells of dirt (most of it untouched for many years) so I have been burning scented candles to try to disguise it. Mind you those candles don't do much do they.

So here is what I am talking about.

 Ok so maybe you don't get the sound of a jack hammer when camping. Just an added bonus for us.

Got to love washing mud splatters off the walls.

While he was doing that, I did the first gloss coat on the stair risers in case the floor sander comes this weekend. He suggested doing one coat of gloss then sand then the last coat or two.

We have a plan to get the floors down before Christmas. Let's see how that goes.

Cheers,
Nat

Small Ikea haul

When my Mum was here, we managed to make a trip out to ikea without the kids.

Here is what I got.
These Soare placemats (for $2.99 each for Ikea family members). I got 5 of them.

 

More of these coat hangers for Sam's bedroom.

 This berry smelling candle.

 

A new dish brush.

 

And this cute pink lamp shade for Heidi's room.

So much more I wanted to buy but I didn't want to get in trouble with the hubby. Next time though, he he.

Cheers,

Nat

Halloween and other happenings

So last weekend was an extra long one in Melbourne (well for those who took a day off on Monday and then had Tuesday off for Melbourne Cup) and there was a bit happening. Firstly Mum came over from Tassie for 3 night which was brilliant as she hadn't seen the house (or kids) for quite a while. It is fun showing it off to those genuinely interested,

Halloween found me making spider biscuits with Heidi:

 and decorating the house. I turned the dirt pile into a graveyard.

 We had spooky music coming from the from room like chains rattling, wolves howling and ghostly noises.

 Here are the cherubs all ready to go trick or treating.

 The following day was Sammy's 7th birthday.

He wanted to get a fish tank so we now have some extra members of the family and our first pet since losing Jerry our golden retriever 5 years ago. He got 4 guppies but we will get more soon.

 He is a Star Wars fan so I made him a Star Wars cake.

Not much news on the house front. Still digging holes and painting the staircase. Waiting to hear back from the engineer about a change to the drawing too.

Cheers,
Nat

Back to digging holes and changing plans

This week has felt like a bit of a blast from the past with us finding ourselves digging deep stump holes, piling up mounds of dirt and getting our engineering plans changed.

After looking at the drawings again. we noticed that parts were calling for steel beams. We felt this was unnecessary and our surveyor and engineer agreed and are changing the drawings. Also they have the decking boards running the wrong way and a few other things that we needed to get changed. So hopefully that is amended soon and hopefully at a minimum charge.

In the meantime it is still just a matter of digging.

We also plan to get the floors in the living room sanded and finished soon because the kids are getting horrible splinters in their feet.

I still need to work on the fireplace and seating and painting of the staircase.

To all those interested, Happy Halloween for tomorrow!
Cheers,
Nat