villa renovation part four

Another instalment in the villa renovation series. This time its the main bedroom and ensuite. This room was two and we knocked out a middle wall to create one large bedroom. The two existing rooms were small and dark and barely fit anything in them, trust me. Or simply scroll down..

We added glass leadlight doors to make the most of the available light throughout the house.

Plus im a bit obsessed with glass doors. These happened to match (there is one at either end of the room, we didnt block one door in when we took out the wall). Plus the bonus was that they werent see through, the glass was mottled.

The wall was taken out here in the middle of where the bedhead now sits.

The windows were painted a very chocolatey black. Thanks to the kids for taking these photos or id have none to show you. Sorry about the child being in the way of the architecture!

This gives a good indication of 1. how crazy/funny my daughter is and 2. how dark and gloomy the room was even when the fluoro light was on. You can spot the original central wall here to the left. Again about the wall, but the rooms were tiny!

same room, some brickwork in the background, same window

and another. Yes, I let the kids have full decorating rights pre the reno.

This is the other room on the other side of the wall. This room was the larger one of the two.

The central wall again is the one with the posters on.

I hope this gives you a glimpse of what we started and finished with.

Anyone else doing a renovation project please leave me a link in the comments.

Id love to take a peek

villa renovation part three

I cant seem to upload photos to my computer to give you anything crafty at the moment. So ive been scrolling through some more of the shots from our villa renovation that I had saved for a rainy day.

 A glimpse of the finished rangehood that isnt yet constructed in the shot underneath.

We attached it to the wall and then built around it, much easier than having to measure.

 We had no electricity for ages so we had lamps at night which I think gave it a really nice frenchy glow.

 The tiles were big 600 by 300 travertine which I cut up with a grinder into 5 smaller tiles (I love my grinder)

I wanted the effect of handcut tiles, and adore moroccan tadlekt in particular, but they are NOT CHEAP and we needed 6 metres of them so I decided to give it a go. Afterall, it was either going to work or it wasnt.

This is the bad photo of a photo that has taken all this time for me to find and im now wondering if it was worth the search.

This is the best I could do but nothing can make this kitchen look good.

The floor sloped by a whole brick height from one end to the other.

The stairs were built across the window.

The electricals were never done ie. the stove was plugged into a powerboard under the sink!

It was a challenge.

If you are doing up a house at the moment please leave me a comment as id love to check it out.

found

loft

A while back I posted about our house renovation. I was new to this and began the post hoping to inspire someone, anyone, with the transformation only to discover I couldnt find the complete set of photos in order to give the full impact. Well, I found the photos under my sons bed while preparing for my recent overseas and interstate visitors! So here is the first installment of a better attempt at the power of white paint. 

Now, you need to know that we were pretty gung-ho with our approach.

When we viewed the property for the first time we knew it had to be white from top, where ill begin, to bottom.

You can see why.

This is a photo of the real estate brochure ad so its pretty poor quality sorry.

I wont post them all today in case youre here looking for an update on Malis quilt,

(its coming along nicely thanks for asking)

Hope you had a lovely sunny weekend

where ive been

before and after of the lounge, (kind of)

This is where ive been. 

Hopefully this wont be too boring a post for some of you but im kind of astonished that

this kind of thing is achievable in less than a week.

Mum had settlement on Monday last week and we started work that same day. We planned to get the floor coverings removed and walls and ceilings sugar soaped and painted by the end of the week. Has anybody else done this? Its really exhausting. She had ordered the carpets ahead of time and they were being delivered by Friday and were to await installment for the following/this week. The floor sanding guys had a tentative booking for this Tuesday (yesterday).

We were as organised as we could be. 

And we did it!

Just. 

With an hour to spare!

before and after of the kitchen, the cupboards will have to wait for some attention

before and after of a bedroom. It was dark but the curtains were making it seem so gloomy and they now lie in the front yard along with the rest of the carpets and rubble.

 

Its was grotty but mum was happy to have her new place, she got stuck into the cleaning.

Zja and Dan finally able to start painting after two days of cleaning and preparing. They got the fun jobs while mum and I tackled the floors until late into the night. The old lino was stuck down so hard it took us three hours to pull up and we woke up sore the next day from that alone.

But they definitely had to come up, dont you think?

 a corner of the kitchen with all of its tiled, jigsaw-cut lino glory

 

 cobwebbed curtains and the more beautious real spidery sculptures.

 Did I ever tell you that I housed spiders in my childhood and fed them flies? This amazing story may have to wait for another time .... I named him Sultan. He was fast. And black and beautiful. Probably your average garden variety but he was my friend.

the tiles that are no more because the grout was non existent and I know how to tile thanks to my hubby and therefore they didnt need to stay one moment longer

The toilet had to come out to get rid of the smell and the tiles just fell off the wall.

That'll be a job for next week, now. Oh! and we had to take out the walls in the lounge because the wallpaper was going to take so long to remove it wasnt funny.

 We did a two foot square in half an hour, for example. As in two of us.

 Theres no way we wanted to spend two days just doing that.

Mums darling, Dan, (mum got married last November at 73). They have so much fun together. Im told they giggle into the wee hours of the morning. Nice hey?

In the time its taken me to post this ( is there a new format for the upload photos or have I pressed the wrong button by mistake?)  ive done dinner, had extra teenagers here doing homework, dropped dvd's back, done some tidying (pointless), welcomed hubby home from work and the AGDIdeas conferences and we're now in a deep conversation about all things artistic. Also his recently revisited life-drawing classes with a best friend that he's enjoying so much.

Wait! Im being given a present.

He brought this home tonight.

I didnt know anything about this. He never said a thing.

He started painting this a year ago. For me.

He chose to bring it home tonight.

I cried.

I feel as if it is he and I rolled into one image.

I dont think even he knows what this means to me.

He and I will decipher it in years to come.

There are no words worthy of this image . Yet.

Only a feeling.

more white in the country

Originally the stairs were at the other end of the room and their was a wall across,

 dividing the entry from the actual kitchen.  A close friend flew down from nsw to show us how to weld and helped us do the staircase. We had to fire up the forge that we had never used and it was the best fun Ive had bashing the steel into a beautiful artisan style curve. (see before shot below)

These arches were not original we built in the pantry cupboards and put in a narrow window seat.

Below shows before the window seat and the window frame still unpainted as we considered keeping the black for dynamics.

The cupboard in the island was an old buffet we picked up at a country auction for $275

and we built the whole island from scratch around it. The view in from the lounge decided the central placement to the doorway, in order to hide any kitchenalia.

While we had no lighting during the renovation we cooked by lamps plugged in to sockets,

the nice ambience of which I missed when we finally put the lights in about 8 months later.

This is the before shot and its the only one I can find, sorry im standing in the way. We didnt take many shots of the room when it was dark and ugly, you see. Plus we were too busy ripping it apart to bother with a camera.

I glad my son took this one.

Its the before I had drunk my Guiness shot...

 before I had probably taken my end of day shower and washed my hair after renovating ....

before I had considered doing a blog and that this would be used as a photo too

Im pretty certain the pink number im wearing is my pyjama top donned at the beginning of the day!

the power of white

I was so inspired by the image of Eleesas lounge room and how she puts together her rooms. She speaks to us about painting her room white.  I wanted to inspire back with shots of our country house renovation. Especially the power that simple white paint can have

lounge ceiling before

lounge ceiling after

plus a new central chandelier

looking from the lounge into the kitchen

before painting the doorframe and ceiling

after

looking from the kitchen into the lounge

during rendering the brick walls

the same view after painting and rendering

If you have painted something white recently (even if its not an entire house) Id love to see it!

 Dont hesitate to link back to here. Lets get out our paint brushes ladies!