Weekend of activity

It was a hive of activity this weekend. Not only did Clint have a small job to finish off for a customer on Saturday morning, which he took Mackenzee along to but we also had the delivery of a skip bin which means clean up time at our place.  We had a whole pile of rubble from Clint’s retaining wall demolition a few weeks ago that needed to go in it for starters so we got to work on that…Mackenzee even pitched in filling up small bucket with broken bits of concrete.

Clint dusted off the jack hammer on Sunday and got stuck into gutting the downstairs bathroom, removing the vanity, shower screen, mirror and tiles:

 

The vision for the bathroom will be as followed…(dreamy voice)…imagine Turkish travertine mosaics spread out across the floor and flowing up the bath hob and onto the rear bath wall. The remainder of the walls are caressed in 600×600 Italian travertine tiles in classico tones, except for the shower enclosure which will again feature mosaics. The shower closure will be encased with frameless glass and will feature a 200×200 rainhead. The floating vanity will sit beneath a large mirror flanked by two scone lights. How’s that for dreamy?!?

In terms of the not so dreamy version, basically that bath tub and hob has got to go. Not only is it too small but the tub is pretty scratched up and is a yucky cream/yellow colour. That wall that you can see sticking out in the corner (that’s the technical term!) will also be removed. We’re thinking it is hiding plumbing from the toilet (next to the kitchen) above but seeming Clint gutted that room as well on Sunday, we should be able to remove the plumbing work and wall. The previous shower wasn’t sealed so there is a wee bit of water damage to one of the joists in the framework which will need replacing. Some additional joists need to be thrown in on either side of the shower to support the frameless glass screen that will be installed. In the photos you might see a faint pencil line at about the 1200mm mark. The wall beneath that has to go and will be replaced. We will be tiling up to just over the join so it should look pretty seemless. We’ve got the vanity, the rainhead and shower mixer as well as all the tiles. I just need to get out and get another mixer, bath spout, vanity tap and pair of scone lights and we are right to go in this space.

As I mentioned, Clint also gutted the upstairs toilet which is above the downstairs bathroom. This will become our new you beaut walk in pantry. Unfortunately we don’t have the space to create a full blow butlers pantry (I wish!!) but this space will offer us tonnes of storage and best of all, the shelves wont be a mile deep so that I can’t find anything like in our current pantry. This is what the pantry to be looks like as of today:

Here’s the dreamy scenario…(dreamy voice!)…imagine a room with shelves cascading down the right hand wall, with additional shelving at the end. There you go, that’s as dreamy as it gets! It’s all about practicallity…well, I am a Virgo after all! Lol.

In terms of the work that needs to be done to the pantry, well, that door is coming off and going downstairs to be the door that hides under the stair storage…which will possibly be our wine cellar (not that we have much of a collection or are wine fanatics or anything!). The wall and door frame separating the two rooms needs to come out to make this one big space. Because we are doing that, it means all the wall and ceiling gyprock needs to come off and be replaced. We’ve already got the flooring so that will just flow from kitchen into pantry. Clint will then make bookshelf type shelves…pretty much like what we have in our office area…and install them for the storage.  We’re still umming and arring over the depth but thinking either 200mm or 250mm might be the go.

Our plumber friend Tim will be coming to stay with us again probably this week so he will be able to sort out all our plumbing work. The plumbing work in the downstairs bathroom won’t be as bad as what our ensuite was because we are keeping facilities in the same location (this saves money folks!). What does need changing though will be both the shower and bath taps which will be one mixer each instead of the hot and cold taps you now see. The vanity plumbing needs to be moved over a bit as the unit we bought on eBay has the vanity on the right hand side of the cabinet. Remember what I said about buying things cheap and needing to be flexible? Well, this is the result of getting a good deal on a vanity. You have to counter in these sort of adjustments when you are making the purchase and, at the end of the day, it is still saving us hundreds of dollars this way.

We also need to get a sparky in to add some side vanity sconces in the bathroom as well as move a power point. Upstairs in the pantry we will get him to move a light switch, add a power point in (you never know when you are going to need power in the pantry right?) and while we have that gyprock off the wall, we will get him to add a few more power points to the neighbouring kitchen.

As usual we’re working to a deadline (after all, there would be no fun if we just went on our leisurely way!). The orignal plan was to get the bathroom done before the baby arrived so we have no more dust in the house. I’ve got my friend coming to stay for a night in less than a week and although I would love this room to be finished by then, I think we will be pushing it (if we weren’t running businesses and could renovate all day “block style” then we would get it done within the week!). The next deadline is Clint’s sister’s arrival on the 1st September (my birthday!) so that gives us just under 2 weeks which is more realistic. The pantry on the other hand, not an urgent project so that can be finished any time between now and the baby’s arrival.

And if you thought our weekend sounded dull, uneventful or not quiet full enough, Clint decided to start creating our meandering garden at the front of the house. This is the photo that gave us the inspiration:

 

We had already bough some heliconias a few weeks ago so Clint figured we should get them into some big pots because we didn’t want to have garden bed so close to the house like in the picture. So off to the markets we went yesterday morning and I am glad to say we found the perfect ones…off course, they were on special! So here’s what it looks like so far:

 

You can see where Clint has been marking up the ground as to where he is going to cut concrete out to make way for garden beds. Stay tuned for the progress!

Have fun!