Hi Folks,
well I got made redundant 2 weeks ago, and I have decided to spend the time and redundancy payout on a renovation.
I have a house in Cessnock that was purchased as a one bedroom house for $51k about 5 years ago. The bathroom had been installed into the second bedroom.
The house is very rundown and needs a good spruce-up.
I'm also going to move the bathroom from the bedroom into the laundry, which is quite a large area, and move the laundry into the outside loo, bring the loo indoors.
Here is my diary of events so far....
02/08/2003
Tenants move out today. There is still a dead car body in the garage (groan) which they need to remove, as well as alot of garbage. May need to get a mini-skip for that.
03/08/2003
More reconissance of the inside. Measured the house up and started making plans. We now have a very long list of things to do and work to be done. At about 5pm I picked up the corner of the vinyl in the kitchen to discover beautiful raw floorboards in very good condition.
All three of us drooled at the floorboards as the other houses we had done had not had boards this good in them. It was an amazing surprise as the rest of the house is pretty crappy. Anyway, a ripping-up-vinyl and carpet frenzy began and we had all of the 4 layers in a pile in the middle of the room within 2 hours.
The carpet was dumped outside (and disappeared. We are not sure who took it, but good luck to them! It was the dirtiest and most disgusting carpet I had ever seen!)
I was thinking I might need a mini-skip to get rid of the old vinyl, but Mum managed to fit it all in the regular garbage bin. That woman has the tardis-touch when it comes to garbage bins. I'm sure if I asked her to dismantle a 3 storey building she could fit it into a regular council garbage bin!
Pile of detrius from the kitchen / dining floor...
04/08/2003 - 07/08/2003
Great Keppel Island. I thought alot about the reno while I was away. Seriously......
08/08/2003
Time to start scrounging materials. The current bathroom has a bathroom window in it that needs to be replaced with a regular window. Obtained one for $90 from Kurri Kurri second hand building supplies. I also need to buy 2 windows for the kitchen as the kitchen has no natural light. I went to look at some from the trading post but they weren't suitable..
Here is the kitchen...
The cabinet on the left will be removed as well as the "lovely" picture and two windows will go in either side of the old stove.
09/08/2003
Scraping off paint on the outside of the house where it was flaking. I have some leftover teal from the last house that will look really nice. I had a closer inspection of the fence, which is falling apart. Hhhmmm. Bloody fences arent cheap. I'm going to have to work out something inventive to fix up this one. Some work completed on door jams. This place has been broken into on a couple of occasions and the door jamms are screwed up. The back door is actually an internal door that has been "modified" to suit. It's falling apart and there is a steel bar in use to keep it closed and secure. Oh well... add a new back door to the list.
10/08/2003
Could only spend half a day here today but between myself and Mr Cornflower we got most of the lining in the bathroom ripped out. I had a bright idea that if we can get the plumbing turned off then we can get a move on with fixing up this room before the real plumber comes to install the bathroom in the laundry later on in the month. Dad is looking into it....
Here is the bathroom....
Here is the bathroom half stripped of the lining... gee they really loved that green colour, it's under everything...
12/08/2003
Washing down interior walls ready to paint. Someone on this forum recommended using the detergent for dishwashers on walls. I tried it and it's bloody brilliant. I think it probably takes a few microns of paint off but that is just fine by me.
We retouched a few bits and pieces in the front two rooms (bedroom and loungeroom) but they wont need much more. Thankfully.
13/08/2003
Carpet time. There is some carpet on sale in a store in Kurri that is supposedly worth checking out. I did the rounds and it looks pretty good. I can't get enough to do all of the house in the same carpet. Decisions decisions..... A trip to the second hand place in Redcliff wasn't fruitful, so it's back to Kurri to make a choice on the carpet available there.
This carpet would retail from $175 to $225 a metre in regular stores but here it is being sold off at $30 a metre. It's lovely carpet. I have managed to get some beautiful blue and cream wool for the 2 front rooms, some cream for the third bedroom and some cream in a similar pattern that is a little more hard wearing for the sleepout/study. None of these floors abutt one another so I think with some interesting paint work to pull it all together I should be able to get away with it. All of the different coverings come together at the edge of the kitchen/dining room which will be polished boards.
The carpet cost me $380 including delivery. I'm very happy.
No more windows appear in the trading post so I will have to keep looking.
14/08/2003
Didn't start work today until about 3pm due to taking Mr Cornflower to the airport, however we got through alot anyway.
A big pile of junk was removed from the chicken coop. A big pile of junk now resides next to the chicken coop. Anything half salvageable has been picked over and picked out and what is left really is junk. One suprise find was a whole lot of beautiful and quite expensive looking blue tiles, about 2 inches square. This will save me some $$ in decorative tiles in the bathroom. I'm not sure why somebody would dump a bucket load of expensive spanish looking tiles in the chicken coop, maybe they wanted spanish chickens?
I have ripped out all of the kitchen benchtops to reveal a carcass that is in very good condition and re-useable. I'll put some new door handles on, a new countertop and sink and nobody will be any the wiser. I like the 50's door hinges so if I can reuse them and make them a feature all at the same time, that would be great. The doors themselves are quite rough but a coat of decorative paint should hide all that. Some of the decorative paints I have bought before have not been too robust so this is something to watch out for this time, especially being in the kitchen.
More washing down of walls and ceilings. With the use of "finish" the ceiling in the "new" bedroom has come up so well that we will not have to paint it. Always a blessing!!! A dig around in the roof cavity to locate the manhole cover quickly revealed some used syringes in a syringe case. Um, nice..... glad we got rid of those tenants.
We got a quote for replacing the two wall panels and the window in the "new" bedroom. $250. To answer Adrian's question - I'm going to pay somebody so the problem goes away
I will have a close look to see what he does though and report back.
To answer Nigel... I intend to sell this house once we have done the renovations and put the money in shares or another project. Therefore I'm working more on some "wow" factor rather than just puting in hard wearing stuff that will last a tenant or two.
-----------------------------------------
To be continued.............
well I got made redundant 2 weeks ago, and I have decided to spend the time and redundancy payout on a renovation.
I have a house in Cessnock that was purchased as a one bedroom house for $51k about 5 years ago. The bathroom had been installed into the second bedroom.
The house is very rundown and needs a good spruce-up.
I'm also going to move the bathroom from the bedroom into the laundry, which is quite a large area, and move the laundry into the outside loo, bring the loo indoors.
Here is my diary of events so far....
02/08/2003
Tenants move out today. There is still a dead car body in the garage (groan) which they need to remove, as well as alot of garbage. May need to get a mini-skip for that.
03/08/2003
More reconissance of the inside. Measured the house up and started making plans. We now have a very long list of things to do and work to be done. At about 5pm I picked up the corner of the vinyl in the kitchen to discover beautiful raw floorboards in very good condition.
All three of us drooled at the floorboards as the other houses we had done had not had boards this good in them. It was an amazing surprise as the rest of the house is pretty crappy. Anyway, a ripping-up-vinyl and carpet frenzy began and we had all of the 4 layers in a pile in the middle of the room within 2 hours.
The carpet was dumped outside (and disappeared. We are not sure who took it, but good luck to them! It was the dirtiest and most disgusting carpet I had ever seen!)
I was thinking I might need a mini-skip to get rid of the old vinyl, but Mum managed to fit it all in the regular garbage bin. That woman has the tardis-touch when it comes to garbage bins. I'm sure if I asked her to dismantle a 3 storey building she could fit it into a regular council garbage bin!
Pile of detrius from the kitchen / dining floor...
04/08/2003 - 07/08/2003
Great Keppel Island. I thought alot about the reno while I was away. Seriously......
08/08/2003
Time to start scrounging materials. The current bathroom has a bathroom window in it that needs to be replaced with a regular window. Obtained one for $90 from Kurri Kurri second hand building supplies. I also need to buy 2 windows for the kitchen as the kitchen has no natural light. I went to look at some from the trading post but they weren't suitable..
Here is the kitchen...
The cabinet on the left will be removed as well as the "lovely" picture and two windows will go in either side of the old stove.
09/08/2003
Scraping off paint on the outside of the house where it was flaking. I have some leftover teal from the last house that will look really nice. I had a closer inspection of the fence, which is falling apart. Hhhmmm. Bloody fences arent cheap. I'm going to have to work out something inventive to fix up this one. Some work completed on door jams. This place has been broken into on a couple of occasions and the door jamms are screwed up. The back door is actually an internal door that has been "modified" to suit. It's falling apart and there is a steel bar in use to keep it closed and secure. Oh well... add a new back door to the list.
10/08/2003
Could only spend half a day here today but between myself and Mr Cornflower we got most of the lining in the bathroom ripped out. I had a bright idea that if we can get the plumbing turned off then we can get a move on with fixing up this room before the real plumber comes to install the bathroom in the laundry later on in the month. Dad is looking into it....
Here is the bathroom....
Here is the bathroom half stripped of the lining... gee they really loved that green colour, it's under everything...
12/08/2003
Washing down interior walls ready to paint. Someone on this forum recommended using the detergent for dishwashers on walls. I tried it and it's bloody brilliant. I think it probably takes a few microns of paint off but that is just fine by me.
We retouched a few bits and pieces in the front two rooms (bedroom and loungeroom) but they wont need much more. Thankfully.
13/08/2003
Carpet time. There is some carpet on sale in a store in Kurri that is supposedly worth checking out. I did the rounds and it looks pretty good. I can't get enough to do all of the house in the same carpet. Decisions decisions..... A trip to the second hand place in Redcliff wasn't fruitful, so it's back to Kurri to make a choice on the carpet available there.
This carpet would retail from $175 to $225 a metre in regular stores but here it is being sold off at $30 a metre. It's lovely carpet. I have managed to get some beautiful blue and cream wool for the 2 front rooms, some cream for the third bedroom and some cream in a similar pattern that is a little more hard wearing for the sleepout/study. None of these floors abutt one another so I think with some interesting paint work to pull it all together I should be able to get away with it. All of the different coverings come together at the edge of the kitchen/dining room which will be polished boards.
The carpet cost me $380 including delivery. I'm very happy.
No more windows appear in the trading post so I will have to keep looking.
14/08/2003
Didn't start work today until about 3pm due to taking Mr Cornflower to the airport, however we got through alot anyway.
A big pile of junk was removed from the chicken coop. A big pile of junk now resides next to the chicken coop. Anything half salvageable has been picked over and picked out and what is left really is junk. One suprise find was a whole lot of beautiful and quite expensive looking blue tiles, about 2 inches square. This will save me some $$ in decorative tiles in the bathroom. I'm not sure why somebody would dump a bucket load of expensive spanish looking tiles in the chicken coop, maybe they wanted spanish chickens?
I have ripped out all of the kitchen benchtops to reveal a carcass that is in very good condition and re-useable. I'll put some new door handles on, a new countertop and sink and nobody will be any the wiser. I like the 50's door hinges so if I can reuse them and make them a feature all at the same time, that would be great. The doors themselves are quite rough but a coat of decorative paint should hide all that. Some of the decorative paints I have bought before have not been too robust so this is something to watch out for this time, especially being in the kitchen.
More washing down of walls and ceilings. With the use of "finish" the ceiling in the "new" bedroom has come up so well that we will not have to paint it. Always a blessing!!! A dig around in the roof cavity to locate the manhole cover quickly revealed some used syringes in a syringe case. Um, nice..... glad we got rid of those tenants.
We got a quote for replacing the two wall panels and the window in the "new" bedroom. $250. To answer Adrian's question - I'm going to pay somebody so the problem goes away
I will have a close look to see what he does though and report back.To answer Nigel... I intend to sell this house once we have done the renovations and put the money in shares or another project. Therefore I'm working more on some "wow" factor rather than just puting in hard wearing stuff that will last a tenant or two.
-----------------------------------------
To be continued.............
Last edited:
