The main bedroom…a blank canvas

Our main bedroom before.  More of the flowery carpet and peeling wallpaper, a ceiling that hasn’t been touched by a paint brush in decades and layer upon layer of hideous wall paper and a wardrobe that even we can’t make pretty.

After tearing down the wardrobe we discovered some wallpaper that couldn’t be painted on. Normally we would never paint on top of wallpaper, but in this instance the wallpaper seems to be holding the walls together. The walls are very old and not made of plasterboard and scraping off the wallpaper would require us to tear down all the walls and replaster. Not in this budget. The paint is good enough for what will become a rental property and should last at least 5-10 years, so good enough for us. 

So we nailed up some hardwood panels which came from  the back of the wardrobe we tore down (we love recycling stuff!). We were going to paint the wood but soon realised it was a waste of time as the new wardrobe would cover the wood anyway and hopefully noone would ever notice. ..shhhh

At least now we have a nice, clean blank canvas to work with. There’s still plenty to do: sanding floorboards, adding pictures above the bed, bedside tables, bedside lamps, a nice warm rug, curtains and blinds, some more furniture, bedding and pillows.

One month.

We’ve been in the new house for exactly one month today and we absolutely love it. We’re quite surprised at how much we’ve fallen for the house considering how ugly we thought it was when we first saw it. Mieke’s room is almost complete and I’m really proud of it. I think it could be my favourite room makeover ever (and there’s been alot of rooms!). Unfortunately there aren’t many ‘during’ photos as my flash card has corrupted but the ‘before’ photo shows the ugliness we were first greeted with. Difficult to paint ceilings, wood panelling, gorgeous carpet, paint over wallpaper, dark and damp with a funny smell… This photo just doesn’t show how awful the room was.

I love so much about this room: the green wall colour (that probably doesn’t show too well on a computer screen), the lovely bunting so cleverly made by Amber, the fact that after pulling up the carpet we discovered fantastic floorboars that don’t need sanding/oiling. Unlike the last house there was only a couple of hours of staple pulling and not a couple of weeks.  I love Mieke’s little desk that I picked up from the Salvation Army for $20. There’s still a couple of little things to do; a new light shade, some new handles for the waldrobe and a new blind.  One of the greatest things about starting a new house is that we can put into practice all of the things we learnt and avoid making the mistakes we made in the last house. One thing we’ve learnt is to focus on one room at a time, from start to finish. It helps to avoid feeling like we live in a permenant renovation site.Woo hoo onto the next room….

Going to miss that view (and our lovely neighbours)

In all of the excitement of buying a new house and all that goes with it I forgot to take any real after shots. So I’ll put up the photos that I took for the rental agency to use to advertise the house for rent. The photos are FAR from perfect but they did the trick!  Luckily the first people to view the house took it, at the price we wanted. Although if you’ve ever looked to rent in Hobart you’ll understand that a neat, clean house with heating and an indoor toilet is a rare find. As the agent said “some houses you wipe your feet on the way out’

Can’t wait to move to the new place and put into practice all the lessons we’ve learnt from this house. We learnt alot. I don’t like the colour in the kitchen/dining, everyone loves the colour in the lounge, we wouldn’t use that wood oil again…the list is endless. Great experience.

Next project please..

After a year of renovating our house we’re very much ready to move on to the next project. And we will be in 15 sleeps!! Yes we’re just a little excited. Here’s a sneak peek of what we’ll be making pretty. Sorry for the quality of the photos they’re from the online real estate advert. There isn’t a huge amount of work to do on this place, mostly painting and updating. So it should only take us a couple of months…

Mieke’s room

Back in the world of renovating Mieke’s room has finally received some much needed TLC.

The not so interesting before shot

and some after shots

This messy corner has turned into a little activity centre for Mieke. Unfortunately Mieke is far more interested in using chalk to decorate the walls/floor/television/cat/anything that stays still for long enough

We’re always happy to be saying goodbye to the awful old blue carpet but this time it revealed blue floor boards. At first we really liked them but that only lasted a couple of days. They make the room too cold and boyish (even though we haven’t made it all girly).

One room closer to completion, which is a good thing as we’ve found our next house already! Well we’d love to buy it but it depends on a few things, mortgage, what we can sell this place for, if we can get this one finished etc.  Fingers crossed…

Cheap and cheerful

A while ago we were given a digital box for the television and as much as we appreciate it and Mieke loves being able to watch something other than her two Wiggles dvds, television is just not for us. After a one hour show we’re both frustrated and screaming at the adverts. Maybe it would be better if we had more channels, maybe not. We just can sit still so we’ve started making stuff in the evenings (or reading/sleeping/blogging/playing with Mieke/doing photo stuff/cooking/yoga/meditating/doing nothing)

Whenever we tell someone we don’t watch television they give us a look of panic and ask ‘what do you do?’ I sometimes worry that people think we are judging them for watching tv. Definitely not. We would love to be able to relax in front of the tv but it just doesn’t work for us. I have found though that it’s far more relaxing not having people shout at me to buy things I will never need.  And for the ladies especially, confidence grows as you aren’t being constantly bombarded by thousands of impossible to acheive images of women.

So back to the stuff we’ve been making.

We made this piece out of some wrapping paper we liked and a cheap canvas. Pretty straight forward really. We used spray adhesive to stick paper to canvas. As we like to move stuff about in the house alot and get bored of things easily we like to keep our art cheap. This project cost approx $20.

This was a fun project found here. Not your usual alphabet but oh so pretty (and the retro images were free to download)Lastly this Ikea stool was super cheap (I can’t remember exactly how much but definitely less than €10 from Belgium). After priming it we used paint that we already had from painting the walls.

 

Do you have any views on the television issue? or good craft/diy ideas. I find most of my inspiration on Pinterest, which can be kind of addictive!

Just married..well kind of..

We were married on March 20th, which just shows how far behind we are on these blog updates. As per usual though we have been super busy bees. Our goal for our wedding day was to enjoy time with friends and family, nothing big, flash or fancy.It was a simple ceremony on our deck (with the lovely view for a backdrop) with a celebrant and our own wedding vows.

We managed to keep things together quite well considering Mieke had severe gastro and threw up at least every fifteen minutes. We didn’t scrub up too badly considering half an hour before the ceremony we were still at the out of hours doctors with one sick little lady. Poor thing. As per usual she just smiled and kept on playing. She doesn’t want to miss a thing (don’t know where she gets that from…)

Although it was a simple wedding it was really lovely and that was mostly thanks to everyone who came. My parents treated us all to a fantastic meal at The Boathouse in Cornelian Bay. Doug and Anne took great photos for us. Robert bought loads of lovely champagne. Sammy and Scott flew all the way from Queensland to make our day special. Amber and Stuart gave us a fantastic present that made me cry! My mum made the most amazing chocolate mud wedding cake ever.