Merry xmas, etc!

phew, seems like the last couple of weeks just flew by. Finished up work for the year, which means we've got a few weeks free to tidy up the house, try and start on some landscaping etc.

Anyway just before xmas we submitted our 90 day inspection report, along with a copy of the invoice the concreter gave us - and a few days ago we received a cheque from Metricon covering the replacement of one cracked footpath bay. Nice to see the builder coming good on reimbursing us for the cost of that one as promised! We haven't heard anything yet about getting the 90 day inspection items done, but the office is probably shut for a few weeks so I imagine we won't hear back until end of January. Until then, the most annoying thing is putting up with a recalcitrant garage door that opens, but rarely closes properly, grinding away and getting stuck. Still cursing the cack-handed data wiring zombies that didn't connect the antenna and gave me crappy unsecured data jacks that fall into the wall cavity.

We've also had heaps of furniture arriving from Bay Leather Republic and King Furniture - and for anyone with a bit of spare cash around, the current King Furniture post xmas sale is pretty good, for what it's worth. You gets what you pays for. I'd love to get more King furniture but Tina says I've spent enough there and we've run out of room for any more of their designs. Then again, I reckon I could just about squeeze a chaise lounge into the laundry...

On that note - we've got a sofa to give away for free if anyone wants it, it's a two seater fabric sofa with black & white stripes, couple of coffee stains, comes with a brown suede type cover. Erm... maybe good for the shed, or if you're a hard-up student, or just want a free sofa. It's free, remember! Pickup from us in Melb eastern suburbs. If you want it, put your email address in the comment section below and we'll get in touch with you.




And with xmas over, it's time to keep the credit cards burning. Erm... towels, pillows, blurays, and the impulse buy of the day was a Jura superautomatica Ena coffee machine. Just as a hint to anyone considering coffee machines, in general we've not had good experiences with Sunbeam stuff - cheaply made not to last it seems and we've been through 2 of them. Was considering a Saeco, but my boss has had trouble with 2 of them. We did a housesit with a place that had a top-end Jura that worked brilliantly, so we thought this one might be good - house ain't a home without a coffee machine! And the silver-white colour matches our kitchen perfectly!


T&T

More DIY shelves - laundry cupboard and pantry

Figured while I was going about making shelves, I'd add another one to the laundry cupboard and pantry. With the tall 2.7m ceilings, there's a huge amount of empty space above the standard 4 shelves the builder provides. To be honest, if we had thought about this we would've got the builder to add another 1 or 2 shelves, I'm sure it wouldn't cost too much extra - handy hint for anyone building with taller ceilings! Get tall doors, maybe raise your robe fitoffs, maybe add in extra shelves.

As it is, it costs about $10 per shelf in materials, so it's not that much anyway, just time and tools to make. This is the laundry cupboard, full of junk. The starserve is up above the top shelf, as well as all the data fitoffs, as well as my adsl modem router.


I simply measured the width of the shelf and cut some melamine to suit, and cut up a couple of additional bits of melamine for end supports. This shelf, just like the shoe shelves, simply sit on top of the existing shelf so if we ever want to remove them in future, just lift them out.


End result, another shelf above the top shelf in the laundry cupboard. I won't be putting anything heavy up here, but it's good to have the extra storage. Did exactly the same for the pantry.

We have our 3 month maintenance coming up soon, so this weekend we're going through the house to check the operation of all the doors, windows, checking cornices and other joins for cracks etc. We've been keeping a list ever since handover, so this we'll submit next week.

T&T

DIY: Additional shelving in cupboard

With the floors pretty much done, and an itch to go spend yet more money at the Bunnings conglomerate, I figured it would be time to give Tina a little present and give her the shoe cupboard she's always wanted :)

We already have a huge walk-in linen cupboard in the laundry and another one upstairs, so the one in front of the powder room at the bottom of the stairs would be ideal to convert to a shoe cupboard. We don't wear outdoor shoes inside, so this is the best location near the front door and internal garage access door for swapping over shoes.

Things needed: Measuring tape, pencil/marker, drop-saw (or jigsaw, circular saw, hand saw if that's all you have access to), eye and hearing protection, glue, nails or screws.

Anyway the standard linen cupboard has 4 shelves in it. They're about 126cm wide and 35cm deep, but the doors are slightly narrower. If you wanted to go all out, you'd figure out how to remove the shelves (peel off the little white stick-on dots hiding the screws, undo everything etc etc) but since the additional shelves would only hold a few pairs of shoes, I decided to make mini-shelves that would rest on the original shelves at each end.


You can buy melamine boards in various lengths & widths, and fortunately found some in 1200x300mm which was ideal for what I needed.

So we got 4 of those planks and a spare one to cut down into supports.


And finally reassembled everything - a little tricky without removing the original shelves, but not too hard. Held together with wood glue and nails, plenty strong enough for shoes.


And the final result? Linen cupboard converted to shoe cupboard. Plenty of space! The downlight positioned just in front of this cupboard lights it up perfectly.


Really didn't take much time - about 10 minutes to measure, 10 minutes to cut, 30 minutes to assemble and install. Difficulty 3/10 - hardest part is measuring and figuring out how to construct your shelves - whether they stand on top of the existing shelves like I've done (recommended for light loads), or whether you want them fixed like the original shelves.

Whle there, we also picked up a sample of some simple white quad to install around our floor, so if it's wide enough to cover all the gaps, we might start on that next weekend.

T&T