Week 7: The chaos before the re-build

This week, preparation continues for the facelift which our house will receive over the next few weeks. Upstairs, electrical rough-in continued, the windows have been removed in preparation for the new ones, and more demo has completely exposed the back part of the house.

Future living area, open section will be stacker doors to the deck

Another exciting development was demolition of the floor of the original kitchen, opening up where our staircase will be. It's going to be a welcome double height space in an otherwise compact house, complete with gorgeous feature light which Michael snapped up for 30% of the retail price off eBay.

Future staircase

Our front patio was also opened up this week, which will completely change the look of the front of the house (obscured by scaffold at the moment). The house would originally have been in the form of an asymmetrical bungalow with a gable and porch, but the porch had been built-in at some stage in the past to form a study/sleep-out. 

Federation and Inter-war asymmetrical bungalow (image courtesy Queensland Museum)

Reinstated front patio, looking forward to polishing up that lovely original hardwood floor

In addition, the footings for the deck were concreted in, and there has been timber delivered for its construction. 

What did we choose this week? Our biggest purchase was a couple of timber benchtops. We had originally wanted a timber benchtop for the powder room (which is a sink separate from the toilet and shower upstairs). The price and quality of the benchtops we found were so good that we purchased one for the laundry also as it is coming in a little cheaper than laminate (and we think will add some interest and warmth to the space too). Am happy to share the details of our supplier if anyone wants them!

Thanks for reading :-) Questions or comments welcome of course!

Week 6: Naked house!

Despite the Ekka Day last week, week 6 was another busy week. Sometime in the 1970s, the original chamfer board covering the house was removed, and it was then re-clad in a lovely (!) 'weatherboard' made of vinyl. While low maintenance, it's not the most attractive house cladding. This was nailed over asbestos sheeting, and had stayed this way until last week.

Monday and Tuesday saw the professional asbestos removal team come in. They removed all the vinyl cladding, and the asbestos underneath. So now our little house is a bit naked - with the internal VJ walls on display for now!

Vinyl cladding removed, asbestos visible

Asbestos off! That's the internal walls you can see there

Going for the breezy feel

Thursday and Friday saw more framing work, and plumbing & electrical rough-in. Basically the cables which will supply our lights/power points etc are being run, and pipes for the plumbing.

Cables!

Pipes!

What else did we decide upon this week? Well we braved the public holiday crowds and ordered our kitchen from Ikea. Every piece bar one was available and delivered the very next day. All 500kg of it! We also got a hot tip on another manufactured stone place to check out, and found they have a range that contains a veined option very similar to our top Caesarstone pick, BUT with a lovely white base (the Caesarstone range seems to have a creamier or greyer base). 

Ikea workshop

And finally, we started to assemble the Ikea base cabinets on the weekend. Shout-out to one of Michael's good mates for giving us a hand. 9 cabinets down, about a million drawers to go, haha.

Thanks for reading, comments welcomed! Until next week! :-)

Week 5: Rooms take shape

 This week was an exciting week for the reno. After the slab cured last weekend, the downstairs framing went in. These are the stud walls to which the external cladding will be attached, gyprock for the internal walls will be nailed to, and insulation packed in-between. The main thing now is that we can see how our rooms will look, how big (or small) they feel, and the location and size of the windows.

Our bedroom!

I think overall the rooms feel about what we expected. We did lots of measuring during the planning stage, particularly comparing our current rental bathrooms, walk-in-robe size etc to what was in the drawings. Our ensuite will be small but functional, and the bedrooms feel a decent size. I think given our limited size to begin with (having decided on building under without an extension), I am happy with the proportions of the rooms and how the space has been used.

Attractive scaffolding, hmmm

Also this week, scaffolding has been erected to allow the cladding to be removed, and more importantly, the asbestos underneath the cladding to be removed. Asbestos is a building material (often used in an asbestos cement form) that was widely used in construction from the 1940s to the late 1980s. It is incredibly common to find it during renovations on any property constructed or renovated during this time. An excellent resource from the QLD government on asbestos can be found here.

That grey stuff under the cladding? Asbestos.

If you are disturbing asbestos, you should take care. It is made up of microfibres which, when inhaled in large quantities, can lead to asbestosis, mesothelioma and lung cancer. Generally a high level of occupational exposure is required to lead to these outcomes, but protective measures should be taken any time you are around asbestos. In Queensland, you can remove up to 10 square metres of non-friable asbestos yourself if you follow the guide contained at the bottom of this link. Otherwise, you're going to need the professionals!

Also this week, we consulted our cabinetmaker for an initial walk-around and chat. We are contracting the cabinetmaker ourselves to make joinery for the bathroom vanities, laundry and walk-in-wardrobe. We took a look at some pre-fabricated vanities online but in fact, the quote we received from our chosen chippie was very competitive. We are also aware of products offered by companies such as Ikea, but when it comes to limited spaces like our WIR, to make the most of the space we have, we think custom cabinetry is worth the money. The other strategy would have been to suss out the sizes of pre-fabbed products and design to that spec (which in fact our building designers did for the bathroom, giving us options).

Lessons learnt this week - we are glad we contacted the cabinetmaker when we did as there are some framing bits & pieces to be altered which will make it much easier to hang the vanities, add brackets etc. Any further on and those changes would be impossible to make. This is one of the downsides of subcontracting ourselves for certain items - miss the boat and we will have to make changes, or pay the builder more. I am also constantly checking our paint, laminate and stone choices against each other to ward against clashes. While neutrals can work together, it is better if they have a similar base as otherwise they can 'throw' colours like yellows, browns and greys.

A common sight on our dining table.

That's it for this week! Thanks for reading (if you've made it this far ;-) ) and we always love comments.

Week 4: Concrete, baby!

Hello all, a slightly delayed post due to a long weekend in chilly Melbourne! (on a side note, I highly recommend seeing Book of Mormon if you enjoy musicals, like a laugh, and are not easily offended...)

Early week 4 mostly consisted of preparing for a slab. Reinforcement got delivered, plastic got laid and the site really started to take shape.

Our engineers were also consulted by the builder to check the re-stumping work and the preparation for the concrete.

After 2 days of prep, the concrete was poured in a few hours - and all of a sudden - we had a ground floor!

What did we learn this week? Firstly, rooms on a slab look small! Our house is never going to be massive, but we know that rooms tend to expand and shrink according to the stage of the build. Also check that you have a set-down in the slab for your wet areas (this is so when the tiles go in, you don't have a 'step down' to the rest of the house; oh and it handily prevents flooding!)

What decisions did we have to make this week? The main ones were unrelated to the slab pour. In fact, it was regarding windows. The upstairs windows need to be ordered soon so that the upstairs cladding can be removed, the windows replaced, and the house re-clad in quick succession (to limit weather exposure as much as possible).

Like everything in the construction industry, the choices of windows are endless. Not only material (aluminium, timber, vinyl, fibreglass...) but also style. Not to mention colour, glass type, glass colour, and also size!

We are going with aluminium windows due to their low maintenance with regards to re-painting and warping. While we accept that this won't give as authentic a look as traditional timber windows would, our choice of a clean crisp white will match an accent colour on the exterior, as well as give a clean look on the interior (where we are using a neutral palette). Upstairs, most of our windows will be double-hung, in keeping with the style which would have been popular in the 1920s. Casement windows would also have been in keeping with the period but are much harder to fit flyscreens or security screens to.

Example of a double-hung (or sash) window

Example of a casement window

We had actually done quite a bit of thinking about the windows during the design phase, but still we have had more thinking to do this week! I rushed out to the manufacturer to check the colour choice in person, a few of the downstairs windows have been made bigger, and we decided to go for a 'low E' glass on certain windows to improve thermal performance (at a minor increase in cost). Your window supplier should know from your plans which windows require toughened, or safety, glass (for a start, bathrooms and stairwells).

Windows are a super-important part of any house, and my advice would be to take your time checking each and every one before they are ordered. Any fan of Grand Designs will know that delays on windows arriving can set back an entire build schedule by weeks to months!

That's it for this week, please comment below :-)