reno life.

Woke up this morning in my kitchen.
Reno Life.
Here is a Reno Update.

It started with painting. I started with two tone walls - yellow on top and blue or green on the bottom - with really ugly wallpaper freizes around the middle, dividing the two colours.Why they had to pick these colours when they re-did the interiors, why they had to pick that wallpaper?? Really ugly 90s patterns. Not even a little bit retro cool. I'm sure there are photos somewhere but here is something I found when I Googles "ugly 90s wallpaper" to give you an idea, but instead of sunflowers there were badly drawn daisies, vines and ducks in a field of daffodils.

luckily I only had a thin strip of wallpaper to deal with...

I started ripping the wallpaper off literally the moment I first walked in. Some pieces came off easily. Maybe like, 20%. The rest was a challenge. In the first room I tackled I could not get the glue off the wall. I tried soaking it constantly with water and detergent, I tried peeling gently, I tried being rough, I tried things like vinegar and tea tree oil and sugar soap. In the end my solution was Citro Clean and steel wool.

we have a love/hate relationship.

It was just spray and scrub. Something about Citro Clean worked, and for that I love the stuff. But I can't smell it now without memories of long, angry reno days seeped in despair so if I have to use it now, it makes me feel a bit sick. A side effect of this method was that some of the paint underneath would get scrubbed off too. Mostly you can't tell but if I had known at the time I might have slapped on a thin layer of plaster over the scrubbed sections. Unfortunately, I also did a half-arsed job in some places and I can tell under the paint where there are still some little bits of glue. It's the first rule of tackling jobs like this - do it properly, do it well. At the end of the day, your the one that has to live with it.
So eventually I got this room painted. The inital effect is great, the block white  gives the walls such clean lines and really gives the room more light - important as there is only one window (very sad.) If you study my First Ever Paint Job a little more closely you can see my mistakes, the cutting is very visible in some places and I swear in some lights the darker green layer on the lower half of the wall is still visible through the paint.

The next room was a slightly different story. Most of the wallpaper tore off easily however it took huge sections of paint with it. No matter how gentle I was the paint just flaked and peeled right off and kept on peeling away. I was luckily enough then to get some help from a regular customer who does some painting around the cafe occasionally. He told me what I should do and showed me how. First I had to paint the surface the paint had peeled from with PSU (primer, sealer, undercoat). This helped to stick the edge of the paint down so no more would peel away and would also help the plaster and new paint adhere to the wall. The Paul plastered over the holes for me. He showed me how to do it for next time but was kind enough to do it for me, in exchange for some free coffees and eggs! It was good to learn but he got it done so quickly, I was so grateful. The next step was another coat of PSU, once that was dry I was ready to paint. This time I started with a layer of primer over the darker, lower half of the wall (blue in this room). It didn't take long and made all the difference when it came to covering up that blue. Also, primer or PSU seems expensive compared to paint but it actually goes a long way and makes such a difference that it's worth it. Having had some more experience I got this room painted pretty quickly. I also got my sister or friends to come and drink wine with me and keep me company while I painted and the time went so quickly I even tackled the tired looking fireplace with one of those $5 'mistake' pots of paint you can pick up at the hardware.

before shot, the midline has been plastered over, here it is quite minor, behind me it is about 20cm wide...ugly colours. 

another angle, the fireplace before.

I also did my small hallway at the same time as this room. I didn't bother doing the ceiling in there because I hate painting ceilings and you can't really tell.

Next was the bedroom and I put this off for ages because it was the same sticky-glue story as the first room. Here's where more help steps in, this time my ever suffering, ever supportive lovely boyfriend. I got home from work one day to find a collection of bits and pieces from the hardware, including my new best friend....I think it's called a window scraper? Its a razorblade with a plastic handle. It scraped the glue of real good. With this little lifesaver (and just a little Citro Clean) the walls were ready to paint in no time. And then they were painted in no time. Three rooms in, this painting game was becoming a lot easier for me. Even the ceiling wasn't too bad.
I had just finished the final layer and Oli & Alex were having a look and a wine when this happened.

see the glass of wine.

Ok, so I had looked for floorboards previously. Bit embarrassing but I think I must have just looked at the underlay and thought oo, well not sure what that is under the carpet but it's not wood. Idiot. Alex and I pulled up the carpet properly and found the wood.
This is when things got more traumatic.
So for one thing, I had already been moving all my furniture around, usually on my own, to accomodate the painting. Now I have to not only get things away from the walls but off the floor entirely. Yes, I know I could have done this before I moved in. But to be honest, I would have seen all these things as interiors I could live with, not worth changing. I had to live here for a while to know what I wanted to do.
So I'm pulling up all the carpets...and it sucks. Pulling up carpet is not as fun as I thought. Not even as satisfying. It's dirty and cubersome and frustrating. I will say this though, once you've pulled a carpet up, you will never want to live on one again...
And then I found out what terrible condition the floorboards were in.
All crumbly and horrible.
I freaked out and got Dad to come round and see the TERMITE PROBLEM but he said no, that's just rot, and I calmed down a bit but was still sad. Then our carpenter friend Glenn came round for a look and said no, it's not rot, it's borer. Borers are little wood-eating bugs that live in trees so if they live in a tree and you cut it down and make wood and make floors they will eat the wood until they die. We wouldn't be able to sand and polish because most of the boards were too flimsy - some even broke through (how had I not already fallen through the floor??) also the little borer tunnels apparently look horrible if you do try and polish over them. Like weird, webby patterns and not in a good way. Glenn was good for straight up advice. Obviously we could replace the floorboards and then polish them, but that's on the very expensive side of the scale. The better option for us would be to just cover them back up again, not with horrible carpet again, but floating floors.
I did my research after that and got some quotes and had some flooring specialists come out for a look. I thought about timber floating floor but in the end decided on laminate. Quick Step Colonial in Blackbutt, for those playing at home.

It looks good, feels good, sounds good, costs good. The only thing is you can't let it get too wet which I'm worried about but will just deal with it. (You just have to clean spills quickly and tbh if there is damage it's easy to replace, will just be an extra cost.)

So there we are. In about 10 days time the flooring guys are coming to install my new laminate floating floors and then, if my dreams are correct, I will be living in a lovely little cottage with all my nice things and it will all be swell. Until then I am camped out wherever I can fit, bascially. This is one of those times when I know I could have organised things better - like have the floor installed the day after the sander? (common sense & hindsight for the win) But this is why I'm not a Project Coordinator and never will be and another little lesson for "next time." (truthfully, dear internet, I was too worried to book in the installers until I knew the floor was all sanded and ready to go. I thought something would go wrong with one stage and I would have to cancel the next one. I guess the lesson there is yeah, dickhead, you could have just postponed the next stage. ANYWAY...)

It's not so bad living in the kitchen. It feels a bit like being on holiday?? Coffee accessibilty is amazing.

Until next time, which will hopefully be a series of proud "after" posts.... XXX