DIY: Old pine furniture makeover

So, having previously modernised an old file cabinet to go in our study, found another unwilling victim to experiment on. This is an old pine 2 drawer bedside table I've had since I was a kid - I was unwilling to throw it out or donate it, but didn't want it in our house looking how it did, with many decades of abuse, the varnish peeling off, and the pine starting to yellow. The choice was either to stain it in a very dark finish like Japan Black, or to try the distressed/whitewashed look. Because the thing was in pretty poor shape already, with lots of dents and scratches, I figured the distressed look would be the way to go! Tina also picked out a really nice black French style chandelier for the entrance way, so a little bit of the house might be the "French Provincial" style, a nice contrast to the rest of the Modernist/mid-century/modern mix style of the rest of the house.

Materials needed: sanding block, medium grit sandpaper (about 400), semi-gloss enamel paint, some paintbrushes, lots of spare newspaper.

First of all, took everything outside and using the sandpaper and block, sand off all the clearcoat to get to bare wood. Wipe it off using a damp disposable cloth to get rid of all the dust. Wish I had a "before" photo for this project, but looks like I forgot!

Took it all back inside to paint, covering the floor with newspaper. Would be better if you could paint it in your garage though, as the enamel paint fumes aren't good for brain cells. I bought a little pot of semigloss enamel paint (usually used for your skirting boards, window frames etc) and some cheap brushes, and had a go slopping the paint everywhere. Didn't aim for a good finish, since the aim is to make the final product look slightly worn.

Don't paint the inside wood runners as either the drawers will bind, or you won't be able to get the drawers in at all if there's a fine clearance. Didn't bother painting inside the drawers, but you could if you wanted to. Let things dry off, and keep the dog away from it all.

After a day of drying, put it all back together. You could also have removed the doorknobs first, and replaced them with some other style - same with the legs. Actually looks pretty good in real life!

To get a really distressed look, you would now get your sandpaper and file away at the corners and edges to remove the enamel paint. However, if you wanted a really good (non-distressed) finish to your project, you should probably coat the wood with a primer prior to applying the enamel, and use a spray gun with multiple fine coats  to get an even finish, since it's impossible with paintbrushes.

Anyway, this was a nice way of preserving an old bit of furniture and making it fit in with our new house.

T&T

DIY: Fence painting

So, this isn't the hardest task of all, just a bit time consuming. Did this job around Halloween as there were lots of very scary little monsters wandering our street consuming chocolate. We love the look of timber paling fences, just not the colour that was there. You can paint fences the usual way with a brush and lots of swearing, or by using a sprayer. Dulux make a sprayer system which is actually reasonably priced, about $50 for the spray unit (no electricity or anything required) but you have to use their paint formulation, and there just wasn't a colour we liked, and the paint for the sprayer does cost more than plain standard fence paint.

So we ended up with the ol' paint in a bucket, colour is a dark grey, Iron-something, to go with our whole "shades of grey" colour scheme. The wooden rod is a leftover hardwood stake which I used to stir the paint.




So before painting, make sure the fence isn't wet, give it a clean to remove bits of dirt, spiders and other junk (I used a big broom) and cover up any landscaping you don't want splattered with paint. In hindsight, should've painted the fence first before doing anything else!









 Ended up using old newspaper to cover up the little solar lights I'd stuck along the side. I love these solar lights - no direct power required, you don't have to remember to turn them on or off, and they give a really nice little glow to the garden at night.




And all done. There's still a bit of fence tucked to the side of garage I'll get around to painting one day.



Could probably do with a second coat too, but from a distance it looks fine! Much more modern than before and works with our overall colour scheme. This section of fence, about 9m long and tapering at the front, took just over an hour to do. Got plenty more fence on the sides and back to get around to, but the front is starting to look acceptable.

Just got a call from Metricon customer service too (on a Saturday morning no less), asking whether the service manager had got in touch with me, so things have been followed up satisfactorily there - although we've decided to not get any further "servicing" done on the last outstanding item!

T&T

So, maybe we should think about landscaping?

So we've been away a little while on holidays - we hadn't taken any holidays since we started this whole redevelopment adventure back at the start of 2009!

We've pretty much finished with the house interior, just a few minor things to procrastinate further about of little consequence. Got a letter from Metricon while we were away, stating that the "90 day service items are now finished" with the exception of fixing our dodgy ensuite door, which is still bowed and scraping. That only took about... 11 months? And with still the bowed doorframe outstanding. Gotta get back in touch with them to find out how they're going to fix things.

Anyway, with the insides done, we might now have a think about getting the outside done. First admission upfront - we know NOTHING about outdoors, gardens, landscaping, stuff like that. If it wasn't for the dog we probably wouldn't go into our backyard at all. I had some excess soil dumped in our front yard months ago, spent an hour or so shovelling that and carting it to the backyard yesterday and didn't enjoy that at all, and it's only 1/4 done. Meh.

Seeing as it was a nice day, we headed down Bulleen way where there's a couple of outdoor-thingy stores and had a wander around.

Perhaps some of these big grey rectangular things along the side of the house where the laundry is?


And a whole lot of these little rocky grey things to go around the big grey things above?


And some bigger square things, which conceivably could cover our bare portico concrete. Grey of course.


Does anyone reading this have any clues on landscaping? f you can point me to any useful landscape resources to read, that'd be good (Except the homeone landscaping forum, I tried reading that and it's like an infant (me) reading a nuclear science manual. Too many complicated words and not enough bright pretty pictures).

I know I'd like some kind of raised vege/herb garden at the back of the house, except it doesn't get much sun there. And the less grass the better - unless someone's invented a new kind of grass that cuts itself, sweeps itself away and puts $25 into my pocket each time.

T&T

Couple of pics from our old place, and another milestone reached!

No real reason to post anything today, except I noticed that almost simultaneously the blog has hit 150,000 hits and 100 followers! Thanks everyone, for taking an interest in our house building project, and keeping us on our toes with many relevant comments and questions. We hope that you've enjoyed (and continue to enjoy) our blog, and that you might have picked up any hints and tips along the way, to avoid finding out things the hard way!

Anyway, I've been doing a lot of cleaning out of my junk in the last few weeks, selling things on ebay and various specialist forums. It stems from a video article I saw on NHK TV - dansharii.

"断捨離 (danshari) means to throw away unnecessary stuff. It's one of the keywords of the recent years in Japan.

"断" (dan) - to cut out unnecessary stuff. ex) receipts, shopping bags, coupons, etc...
"捨" (sha) - to throw away junk. ex) clothes, books, toys, etc...
"離" (ri) - to step away from your obsessions. ex) souvenirs, anniversary gifts, etc..."

The last thing I got rid of was my projector screen from the old house. Ahhh, memories - this is the first house we lived in, bought in 2005 in leafy Mitcham. Kinda wished we'd kept it instead of sold it, but we wouldn't be able to afford our current dream house if we did. Made many beginner's mistakes when buying this first house, including the following:

• Didn't check the windows opened - the last bloke painted them shut.
  
• Had two aircon split systems - one didn't work.
• Didn't confirm there was a double carport - more like 1.6 carport!
• Somehow managed to ignore or downplay the fact it was on a busy road, next to a petrol station, with a bus stop right out the front and a school 100m away. Let's just say it wasn't exactly the quiet life!

However, still have very fond memories of the place, made good resale and now it's an osteopath practice.

Back to the screen - here's a pic of it in our old house. The layout of the house was OK for living but terrible for home theatre, which is why I have a floorstanding speaker placed conveniently in front of a sliding door. The screen is mounted about 2ft from the wall, so when it drops down, it drops in front of the TV - that way, you don't have to move any of the speakers. This was a Brightvision 120" (305cm) screen, white glass bead with matt frame and with in-line and IR remotes. I got an electrician friend to wire up a ceiling powerpoint so the power cable could be hidden. Not a bad screen for the price (around $200 in 2005), but not suitable for our current house - too small, and 4:3 format instead of 16:9 or Cinemascope which is my ultimate desire. Plus now I've got a full wall neutral grey projection screen (just google it for more information), I don't think I could go back to a full glass-bead white screen!


What I loved about the house is that despite being small, it had very clever storage. On the left of the pic you can see built-in bookshelves, perfect size for books, dvds, cds, toys etc. I imagine you could retrofit these builtins to most houses with plaster stud wall construction - cut out plaster, remove and relocate noggins, install builtins, perhaps repaint walls. Maybe a project to undertake in many years if/when we run out of storage in our new place!

Final picture, screen down at night. BTW, anyone considering a game console, don't buy an xbox360, they're still rubbish, noisy, overheating pieces of cr@p that'll break down 1 minute after the "Warranty" expires. Google red ring of death, then go buy a Sony PS3.


So if you buy an xbox360, more likely than not it'll be part of your next dansharii very soon!

T&T

90 day service: data points replaced

Had a guy come out to check the faulty data points I had - turns out the original installer put them in "wrong" somehow, and the clips holding the data jack to the wall plate had broken off. Didn't take long to replace the faulty ones, just hoping the other ones aren't secretly crap as well!

Also had a major win today - sold my old motorised projector screen, and while I was taking the screen out to the buyer's car, my neighbour was leaving. Now, this week being hard rubbish collection, everyone has junk outside their house, with plenty of scavengers driving around in the vans and trailers looking to pinch stuff. I'm not that type... at least I thought I wasn't, and I noticed my neighbour had some very nice looking speakers on her lawn! So I asked her permission to salvage them, and she said to help myself... and I did!

Turns out they're Wharfedale Valdus 400. Hooked them up to my trusty old Pioneer amp, and they work just fine! Quite a bit bassier and slightly pitched top end compared my reference speakers (Jamo Studio) but I'll keep them for the time being, and maybe look at replacing the drivers in future, if I ever get any spare time. Definitely not an audiophile grade set of speakers, but I'm mainly after the enclosures, which are in pretty good condition!


Anyway, they look quite nice with the speaker grilles removed - only thing is the Wharfedale badge is missing from one of the speakers (can't find them on eBay, anyone got a spare one to send my way?!). I was planning to get a few nerd projects done this year, one of them being a laptop-based dedicated MAME system (like this one, or the ikea mame hack), and also custom building a set of speakers - so I may look at replacing the bass, mid-bass, tweeters and crossover, but reusing the wharfedale enclosures. Something for later!

Finally, this afternoon I cruised down to Frankston to pick up a brilliant eBay win - I love the King Kahuna beanbags that we saw in a store in Chadstone a few weeks ago, and wanted a few to set up as the front row in our home theatre room - bought 4 used ones for a bargain price! After a bit of a clean and topping up beans from our old beanbags, they've turned out fantastic! Very sturdy construction from marine vinyl, comfortable, and seeing as how our dogs manage to fight and tear every beanbag I've had, these we'll keep locked up in the HT, away from them.

T&T

Family room - just about finished! And another door damper videos

Sometime after xmas we went to Ikea and bought a couple of Besta cabinets to serve as the basis of the family room unit - I couldn't really find anyone else who could make a 2.4m wide entertainment unit to hold all the junk I wanted to stuff in it. Went back again yesterday, and Besta/Framsta is 20% off until the end of the month, so that might be of use to you if shopping for basic cabinets etc. We bought the high-gloss dark grey drawers, as well a a wall-hanging Besta unit to match the one on the floor - though for some stupid reason Ikea Australia don't sell the Besta hanging rail which is sold in USA; and it's absolutely essential for wall-mounting this unit! If I can't find it or import the hanging rail myself, we're returning this back to the shop.

Anyway, our family room is comfortable enough now, so if you check this video it'l show some of the colour choices and furnishings. Haven't mounted the surround speakers behind the sofa, and we will eventually canvas-print some of our travel photos to hang up - walls are kinda bare. I made this video for tim-and-tina.com's soft closing door dampers but it'll do OK here as well.

Shameless self-promotion, go and buy some of our self-adhesive door dampers right now!



T&T

DIY: Modernising an old bit of furniture to fit our new colour scheme

So with my parents catching the renovation bug and insisting all my "crap" is removed so they can get on with things, I've had to take back my old filing cabinet. It was a $5 special from a place selling ex government furniture, but doesn't really suit the style of our new place.

Anyway, not to worry. To bring this worn out piece of furniture into the modern age, all you need is some adhesive vinyl and a sharp knife or blade. I chose a semi-gloss silver vinyl that I normally use for car stripes and decals. Clean the piece up first, remove all the old cobwebs (that this one had, anyway), and fill in any holes with filler or putty.

The backing paper (white) just peels away from the vinyl. It's like clear-wrapping a schoolbook to protect it.

Tuck in all the corners, trim and smooth out any air bubbles and you're done! Difficulty 2/10. Cost for the vinyl on this project, about $15.

T&T

DIY: Installing Holland blinds

Happy New Year everyone! We had a quiet one at home with some of my family around to try out the home theatre, and managed to catch a view of the city fireworks, sipping champagne from our balcony - nice!

So after overeating for the last few days, went out to do a bit of belated post-Xmas house shopping, and managed to luckily snare some nice Holland blockout blinds at Spotlight for 40% off. Normally at Spotlight you can only find one random blind in a nice colour, and it'll be in the one size you don't need. But we were able to find 10 blinds, in matching colours, to suit the three smaller bedrooms plus a few other rooms.

Tools needed: Ruler/tape measure, pencil, power drill, screwdriver, a helping pair of hands. Difficulty 2/10 only. I didn't take any step-by-step photos because things were over so quickly.

Anyway, in most Holland/roller blind ready-to-hang packages you'll get the blind itself, two attachments for either end - one with a chain attached, one without. A couple of brackets to mount the blind attachments onto the wall and some screws.

Position the blind so it's in the centre of the window, with equal gaps (if any) on either side. Hold the attachments on with your hands, and mark with a pencil where the screws should go for the brackets. Double check for level using your ruler/tape measure or a spirit level. Predrill the screw holes, screw in the mounts, then slot in the blind. Should take 10 minutes per window with double checking. And the attachment with the chain mechanism will be about 1cm wider than the other attachment, so the brackets should not be symmetrical if you want the blind to be positioned dead centre.

Anyway, this is Bed 3, using a 180cm wide blockout Holland blind, with a 210cm drop. The window drop is much less, only about 100cm, but the excess length just stays on the roll. This blind is mounted in the reveal - ie within the window frame itself.


You can also get double Holland blinds - with a blockout blind combined with a translucent blind, that allows light in but not vision for privacy. Because the upstairs bedrooms had to have translucent glass in them anyway to meet Rescode, we decided that all that was needed was blackout blinds. However we may look for double Holland blinds for the sitting room, as it has clear glass and faces the street.

In Bed 4, because we had to have custom sized windows for some reason, the blinds are slightly too large to fit in the reveal, so I decided to mount them outside the reveal.


You can have Holland blinds cut to size if you wanted your slightly large blinds to fit in the reveal, but not too fussed with it. I've heard conflicting stories as to which mounting method gives you the best blockout (light reducing) effect. Checking the three bedrooms we put the blinds in this afternoon, one faces east, one faces south, and one faces west, so it's hard to make a direct comparison. Tina thinks the outside reveal mount reduces light the most, but in all cases the blinds darken the room significantly, to make sleeping no problem.

Now, just to get some custom window coverings for the master. Final tips, standard off-the-shelf, ready-to-hang blinds are normally 60, 90, 120, 150, 180, 210cm wide - so if you're in the planning stage of house building and want to avoid custom sized window coverings later, check that your windows are standard sized :) Or use curtains, which can be drawn to any size. We were trying to avoid curtains in this house, but we may have to use them in the home theatre to get the most complete blockout effect there.

T&T

Nolan "On Display" video

Found this while surfing through random videos of people playing with their Jack Russells on youtube - the Nolan display home (I think it was in Point Cook?) featured on "On Display". We never got to see this house in the flesh as it closed down before we even throught about building a house, so it's interesting to check out the video. Some of the pics from this house are also used on the website.

However, we've got to say - normally the metricon display homes are beautifully decorated - however this one has some truly shocking colour schemes. Anyway, watch for yourself and make up your own mind!




Also had a lovely afternoon at a neighbour's house who invited a few of the residents on the street over for a Christmas afternoon tea. Was really good to meet some of our neighbours who we've not met before, and all of them have said what a good street it is - couldn't agree more!

T&T

Concrete finished

OK, so this was all done last Friday - the footpath and crossover concrete was poured, and the guys were back to expose the aggregate. Here you see a bloke with his high-pressure washer spraying off the top layer of the driveway.


And a close-up view - concrete still very dark with high water content.


Unfortunately the colour didn't stay as dark after the concrete had dried out - this is 4 days later. A bit of a pity as I liked the very dark look it had in the earlier photo!


After all the aggregate was exposed, the driveway was acid etched, sealed, and had expansion saw cuts made. Hopefully we'll be able to drive over the crossover tomorrow! Think I might get a quote on getting the remaining footpath replaced, as it looks pretty crappy next to the brand new concrete.

T&T

Concreting day two

So at the end of Wednesday, we had the driveway all formed up, plus the concreting behind the garage plumbed in for two additional drains and formwork.


This morning, starting nice and early as usual, the rear concreting was done in about 90 minutes. It's a colour-through charcoal grey. Along the side near the fence is about a foot of land, will eventually get around to putting in some weed matting and probably white stones there.

Standing in the garage looking out of the house, this is the driveway. It will be an exposed aggregate, 80:20 mix of black and white stones. Because of the slight slope from the street to the garage, there's a stainless steel grate plumed into stormwater drainage. There's also a great big footprint you can see on the left side near the portico, but our concreter says not to worry - they'll be back tomorrow to wash off the top layer of concrete to expose the aggregate and that footprint will come off as well - sure hope so! Anyway, I also got a year older today, certainly doesn't have the excitement it used to when you were 18 to 21, but gots lots of concrete as a birthday present - quite happy with that!


Finally, a big chunk of footpath has been removed as well as the old original crossover. If the weather is kind tomorrow, we'll have the crossover formwork inspected by council and poured as well!


Also got a call from Bay Leather Republic saying our theatre recliner will be delivered on Saturday.... at 6:45am! Can always go back to bed after that.

T&T

Internet connection fixed in record time, and furniture sneak preview!

Well, it's been a surprisingly good experience getting hooked up to broadband. I wanted a TPG connection as they seem to have the best deals currently, but our exchange is full for TPG. So the next best deal seemed to be with iinet. I signed up with them a couple of weeks ago and was told up to 20 working days for connection, turned out to be about 8 working days.

The day after connection, I bought a new ADSL2+ modem router, and nothing happened. Lodged a fault report, the next business day (Monday) was called to arrange a technician inspection. That happened on a Tuesday, and by Wednesday (today) Telstra had been onsite to fix the problem. Plugged in my modem, and everything's great! Very good customer service by iinet, they also called me today to confirm they think everything had been fixed, and to callback if it hadn't. If only all companies looked after their customers this well, there'd be a lot more satisfied customers out there!

Anyway, the driveway/crossover which had been scheduled for tomorrow has been delayed... again... which make it about 6 consecutive weeks of delays. Some of it is due to the weather, and some of it is due to astrological improbability (which means there's no reason given, we just getting delayed). I'm told the driveway will definitely happen next week - in tradesman terms, definitely has the same meaning as probably not.

So we've been keeping ourselves busy spending lots of money ordering furniture. This little beauty should hopefully be in the house this weekend - King Furniture's Opera, a 2 and a 3 seater in black leather for the sitting room, probably.

Personally, I'm a closet modern furniture buff - think Eames, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe etc. One day I'll get around to posting pics of some of the modernist chairs we have and getting into some of the details about them, and no doubt that's when we'll hear the sounds of internet browsers been closed and people going off to watch OK Go and trained dogs. Anyway, the original idea was to get a couple of Barcelona style chairs for the sitting room as they look incredible - unfortunately all the replicas we've sat on have been pretty uncomfortable. The Opera is a good choice for a sitting room - it has a relatively low back, allowing interaction all around the furniture, but the low back means it's not great for lounging around or watching TV. Good for chatting, and I also plan to spend a lot of time on my back lying across the 3-seater, reading many trashy SF novels the size of a phone book. The design of the Opera is great too - simple, clean lines are a defining feature of Modernism, and will never date. I mean, how many 1970s' puffy sofas in green floral fabric do you see on eBay for $0.99? And did I say how good the leather is? We also have other King Furniture on the way, maybe another sneak peek another day.

T&T

Floating floors, day...?

Did a bit more flooring since the last post - finished off the study on Cup Day.


We salvaged the temporary front door (it was going to be thrown away anyway!) and stuck a couple of trestle legs underneath it to turn it into our new study table. Not sure if we'll paint it, vinyl wrap it or do something else, it's a bit rough at the moment but looks nice and is huge!

Nearly finished the entry and hallway, and there's a few fiddly bits left under the stairs and towards the powder room and laundry.


Will need to find my jigsaw for some complex cuts near doorways, and re-arrange my dropsaw to do lengthway cuts.

Also finally got my iinet ADSL2+ connection established - bought a brand new ADSL router, and... well, nothing works. Lodged a fault report with iinet who will then take it up with Telstra if it's a Telstra wiring error. However, if there's a fault in the wiring internally, then it's yet one more stuffup to fix up. Unfortunately I think we got the worst data cablers in the world to do our house, with the antenna not connected to starserve and the data plugs not correctly attached - they all "fall in" to the wall cavity when I try to plug in a data cable. Meh. Anyway, should it turn out to be a problem with the internal wiring, I'll get it fixed up and send the bill to Metricon, who can then get the idiot cablers who stuffed it up in the first place to reimburse my costs.

T&T

Floating floor installation Day 2, more pain and suffering but we're getting there.

Today I completed about 60% of the sitting room floor before lunch while Tina prepared the family room for installation; removing all plaster lumps, vacuuming and underlay. We then started on the family room after lunch.

Before: Family room cleared of all furniture (of course), slab as clean as possible. If you look closely out the window, you can just see the head of Mr Meyer, our lemon tree - despite our poor track record of keeping plants alive, Mr Meyer seems to be thriving even in the constant rain we've had the last few days.


Next picture, about halfway done with the family room. The complicated thing here is that we started the entry and hallway before the family room, and we want the boards to line up. This involved lots of measuring and calculating, and allow 15.9cm of space before laying the first full board in the family room. Once the boards here meet up with the hallway boards, I'll go back and trim a line of boards to fit against the wall.


Essential tools for floating floor installation: Hammer, pull bar, rubber mallet, tapping block, spacer blocks, pencil, ruler, measuring tape, a bigger hammer when you realise you should've spent more than $3.99 on the first hammer which weighs as much as a banana and is about as effective. Plus a few bandaids for those scraped knuckles, and lots of swearing when you accidently bang your rubber mallet against the wall and it leaves a big black scar that you'll have to come and patch/repaint later. Or just pay someone else to deal with the pain and suffering of installing a floor. But I figure we've come this far, we might as well push on until it's all done - it's like watching a bad movie, thinking you should walk out but there's only 20 more minutes to go.

Finally, the end result, family room pretty much all done, but where it extends into the hallway at the bottom of the picture not yet done.


Pretty happy with how things are going so far, but the complicated part really starts tomorrow where I have to make sure the family room floorboards are perfectly parallel with the hallway flooring. Plus doing the study with the double cavity doors - I think I'll have to put a 3mm expansion gap filled with cork, caulk or an expansion joint, depending on how closely we can cut and lay the flooring.

I've also discovered a little dip in the floor, right near the entrance door - d'oh! I think I'll put a potplant or something over it to stop visitors walking on it and noticing the defect. High tech solution, right?

T&T

Flooring update: Floating floor installation Day 1

Been a busy week, so not much time for blog posts. Tina's brother made a surprise visit from the UK, so spent most of the week eating out and stuffing our faces. Anyway, we made up for all that indulgence during the first couple of days of the Melbourne Cup long weekend, getting started on our floor installation!

The delivery of 130sqm of flooring and underlay was scheduled for Saturday, but ended up arriving Friday afternoon instead. We measured up the ground floor, and it came to 122.5sqm - but decided to order a bit more to allow for offcuts, excess etc - always a good idea!

Now, at this early stage of the post I figure it's a good idea to make this disclaimer: installing floating floors is difficult, time-consuming and back-breaking labour! Don't believe the salespeople when they say anyone can do it with a few simple tools in half an hour, it ain't true! While we have decided to install our own floating floor, I'm certainly not recommending everyone reading this blog to give it a shot unless you have the required tools, a lot of time, forgiving neighbours who don't mind 8 hours of power-tool usage, and a spare labourer or two, this is NOT a one-person job! On that note, Tina has done a superb job as my unpaid labourer, preparing floors, taping underlay and moving lots of floorboards around - gutsy!

Anyway, getting back to the story, Friday and Saturday was set aside for preparation. As one of my uni lecturers used to say - Proper Preparation Prevents Piss-Poor Performance! Lots of lumps of plaster and other junk was left on our slab, so it took a few hours going around on hands & knees with a hammer & chisel, chipping off all the lumps. Our slab was pretty flat - ideally you don't want any more than 3mm variation from flat over a 2m run. We then swept and vacuumed the slab in preparation for the underlay.


The underlay is 3mm foam with attached plastic membrane - important if you're laying a floating floor on concrete, to prevent moisture building up and warping the boards. You can lay floating floors directly over old floorboards, vinyl tiles, tiles, concrete, providing the foundation is stable and not too uneven. We taped over all the joins with duct tape. The underlay runs at 90 degrees to the direction of the floorboards.


The first row we laid along the long side of the entrance. The little black blocks are spacer to maintain approx 10mm gap between the floorboards and the skirting to allow for expansion and contraction of the boards. We'll cover up the gaps later with some flat bead/quad. The brand we chose for floorboards was Tarkett, using their "clicky-locky" system, which is actually really painful to work with, if you follow their instructions! Their idea of an easy installation is to lay an entire line of boards, then lift & click it into the previous line of boards. Easy to do, if you have 2 boards - impossible if you have a long line of boards 4 or more! To solve this installation problem, I decided to grind off the end tongue of every second board, that way we could install 2 boards at a time and tap them together.



We then just kept adding rows - we staggered the start of each row by approx 1/3 or 1/2 of a board. With the random design of our floorboards, keeping the joins consistent isn't necessary - good for us! When it comes to placing the boards in the kitchen, we'll use wood-glue to seal up the joins during placement to minimise problems of water spillage.

Finally we decided to wrap things up around 8pm (local laws state no power-tool usage after 8pm, or before 9am) and I figured I'd annoyed the neighbours enough. Plus today was Halloween - saw lots of kids walking up & down the street, but probably scared off by the noise my drop-saw was making! Luckily for us too, our neighbours dropped in for a stickybeak this afternoon and loaned us a circular saw - thanks Anthony & Suzanne!



So, this is the end result for about 6 hours of floating floor installation by a couple of inexperience n00bs to DIY flooring. My parents dropped by and were impressed so far - certainly better than the dusty concrete slab we were putting up with before! Essentially we've got the entry done, and hoping to complete the sitting room and study tomorrow now that we're getting the hang of things!

Just to repeat - installing floating floors isn't easy or simple! We slept for 12 hours last night exhausted, and that was only after slab preparation and the first 2 rows of floorboards. Will probably get the same amount of sleep tonight as there's another big day ahead tomorrow.

Thanks to everyone who have ordered our soft-closing door dampers from tim-and-tina.com! We're about halfway through our initial order of door closers and hope everyone is having as good results as we have experienced!

T&T

Flooring - narrowing down colour choices

Did a bit of window shopping yesterday - headed back to Fowles in Clayton to check out their floor display. Plenty of laminates and timber floors to look at, but not so many in the greys that we're after. There was another flooring place nearby, and we picked up a couple of samples from there as they had two that are close to what we're wanting.


These samples are from Tarkett, a German brand. Also sold in Bunnings, but they only have a few samples from a different range. Both of these samples are commercial market laminates, and the one on the left has lots of variation. When you combine it with a few other boards, the visual board width varies, so some boards appear twice as wide as the other ones. There are also "imperfections" printed into the laminate (not in this sample board); so this board would look perfect in a funky clothing store, or maybe a laneway cafe. The board on the right has a lot more consistency and has a definite black/charcoal tone to it. Matches the charcoal stain on our door, but over a larger open area perhaps will be too dark.


Closer.... and you can see how the darker board shows up footprints - but then again, with our current slab exposed we're getting heaps and heaps of dusting. The lighter board shows up hardly any footprints at all. You can also see the click system they use, similar to all the laminates in the market where you can just "click" the boards and they lock into place. I think we're leaning towards the lighter one, as it suits our grey neutral colour scheme better, and shows dirt/dust less.

So, just like evaporative cooling vs refrigerated aircon described previously, all the various floor systems have their pros and cons - for us, the main thing is the colour and appearance of the floor, and we can't find the look that we want in a real wood or bamboo floor (plenty of reds and browns, no greys) - so far only laminate. Haven't looked much into vinyl planks, but I imagine they'd be able to produce a grey vinyl plank with no difficulty.

Anyway, not going to settle on a colour yet as there's plenty of other retailers to check out - though we're hoping to have picked one and have it delivered to our house before the Melbourne Cup weekend. Plus I need to get stuck into preparing the slab for the floor; which means many painful hours on hands & knees, using a hammer & chisel to knock off all the excess plaster and gunk that has built up on the slab.

Had a little dinner party with some old friends last night, and got a Lemon Meyer tree as a housewarming present - awesome! Always had plans to get one (to supply the necessary lemons for Coronas) so hopefully today we'll pick up a big pot and some advice to keep this thing from dying - we don't have a good track record with plants, but I think we'll put some effort into keeping this one alive!

T&T

Flooring decisions - what colour and what to put on the ground floor?

So we had our carpet installed last week, and loving it - deep charcoal colour and feels great underfoot. Our main problem is still what to use on the ground floor? It'll have to be a timber-style flooring, but to use real wood, laminates, vinyl planks, bamboo...?

Whatever the actual material, the look of it will have to suit our house - grey neutrals. This dark charcoal/black timber look in the next picture is a pretty good indication of where we're heading.

The issue then becomes - is it too dark? The dangers here are that the dark floor will show every bit of fluff/lint etc. Maybe a lighter grey floor would be the way to go? This next pic is of brown toned floor but with plenty of grey tones in it. Quite nice!


We've been through plenty of chain-store commercial carpet places, you know the ones I'm talking about. Big thumbs down to the d!ckhead working at the carpet place on whitehorse rd near Adriatic - what's the point of acting like a snob and talking down rudely to your customers - reckon being arrogant will get you a sale? Give up your day job mate!

Anyway, if anyone can recommend some good places to check out varieties and prices on timber/laminate flooring in Melbourne's east, please comment below! Needing about 130sqm of the stuff just for the ground floor - anyone got that amount leftover they want to donate to us?

T&T

Home Theatre room: Fixed!

Spent the weekend repainting the HT room walls. First off, got a couple of sample pots from 3D Inspirations in Nunawading. Here's another great tip - if you want advice on paint, go to a paint shop (NOT Bunnings!!!) The paint shop knew exactly what I was on about with neutral greys, and had the whole Dulux Specifier colour chart there and gave great tips on colours to choose.

Anyway, on the left is Dulux Milton Moon (PG1F2) and on the right is Timeless Grey (PG1F4). A little too light, and a little too dark.

And the one I chose? Endless Dusk (PG1F3), exactly in-between the two colours above. The next pic shows the huge difference between Endless Dusk and Musing. However, decided to keep the ceiling Musing as it actually looks much better with the grey next to it on the walls. Also bought that step-ladder with folding paint shelf on it, very handy to have!

And the final result - much better! So the colours here are Musing on the ceiling, Endless Dusk on all walls, White-on-White trim, and Granite carpet. Just the look I was after - mid Grey with white contrast - classy but still modern.

Now if only I can get in touch with our SS to get the antenna sorted out - 2 weeks in and still no antenna connection = no TV reception!!!

T&T

Carpet delayed, Metricon house for sale in Balwyn North

Got a call from Fowles today, saying that our booked carpet installer had an injury on the job today, so we won't be having our carpets installed tomorrow. A minor setback for us, but having experience a work injury a few years back, I just hope the bloke involved recovers 100%. So maybe sometime next week or week after - they'll call me back to confirm a day.

And what did we do, the day after handover last week? Went to check out a home for sale (of course) in Balwyn North - a Liberty that was finished about 3 months ago.


Quite a nice facade. Uses our bricks in 50mm, timber windows all around, and a big light aggregate driveway that extends in front for extra parking space. Zero maintenance gargens all around are great too. Up and down lights on the ground floor plus eave downlights are really nice for external lighting. The only issue for me is that the ground floor is below street level, set down a metre or so - bad feng shui!


Nice big kitchen. Tower wall oven allows more pot drawers.


The bathrooms all have this colour scheme - it looks OK in this photo, but in real life is horribly dark and claustrophobic. Tiling goes all the way up to the cornice, which wasn't offered to us when doing our selections.

A steal at $2.25m or so - includes a pool out the back too! If you want more details on it, click here. Looks like it's a private sale, so no auction date to attend.

T&T

Handover pics continued

It's Sunday night, about 48 hours after getting our keys. Spent all weekend cleaning and moving in basic items, the place now looks a mess all over again with half-opened boxes, rags & mops everywhere, temporary foldup tables and chairs... but anyway, here's a couple of pics taken at handover on Friday, before all the moving chaos began.

The front door - part of the promotion when we signed on for the house. 1020 x 2340, clear glass, stained Intergrain Charcoal. 750mm Gainsborough pull handle upgrade. Not sure whether we'll keep the clear glass, or add some obsure tint - I quite like the clear glass at the moment. Bricks are Austral Melbourne series Hawthorn with offwhite flush mortar - absolutely love them! That portico light, we'll change to a sensor light... getting all the plain light fittings changed will happen, but it's low on the huge list of things to do.



Entry hallway, and the feature upgrade stairs. Cantilevered hardwood with continuous handrail. and stainless steel balusters. The downside to these stairs is that they look awesome, but you can't really have any under-stair storage due to all the supporting framework under the stairs. Currently in raw finish - we have the stairs guy booked in tomorrow for sanding & staining over 3 days; if he does a good job, we'll put his details up. We will probably need to touch up or repaint the walls surrounding the stairs after staining (as the stain will run onto the walls), so might even change to a feature colour around the stairs - we'll see how much stain bleeding there is and decide after that. Three step lights illuminate the treads and look very very nice! We didn't add in a light over the stairwell, as it wouldn't be very visible from the ground floor. Some designs like the Liberty have the stairwell turning 180 degrees, and I think we would have added a stair light in that case.


Laundry. Got to have one, but will be trying to avoid spending any time in here unless absolutely necessary. We decided to put the taps on the all above the washing machine position, so the taps are easily turned on/off when the machine isn't in use. Usually they're in the cabinet right at the bottom, a bit of a pain to crawl down and turn off. Had plenty of experience with split washing machine hoses that were left on all the time, that end up flooding the laundry and beyond, so turn off your taps when not in use! We also put in a floor waste under the washing machine, just in case. Colours here: floor tiles are Tecnico Charcoal 400x400, wall tiles are Linea Grey 200x300, cabinet is Laminex Polar White with Laminex New Graphite benchtop.

Standing in the family room area, looking towards the kitchen in front and dining to the left. Needs more furniture, and more food, and lots more beer & wine. Ceilings are Dulux White on White, walls are Dulux Natural White. Of course, at night with downlights or fluoros on, everything looks creamier than in daylight.

And finally, we cracked open a bottle of champagne - this was given to us by the real estate agents when we bought the old house back in May 2009, and we'd been saving it for handover day!


We had handover with a missing kitchen drawer handle, and a bloke came around Saturday afternoon to replace it, so that was pretty good. There's a couple of problems that need to be sorted out soon rather than at 90 day maintenance (mainly we can't watch TV because someone forgot to connect the antenna to the Starserve system!), but we're pretty sure John will get in touch with us soonish about them, as he's on our street all the time building our neighbour's Chelsea!

And for all you housebuilders out there - when you do get handover, with shiny new keys in your pocket, driving up to your house with the facade lit up, parking your car in your garage and walking into your house - it makes all the planning, waiting, stressing, moving, mortgage payments all worthwhile!

More handover pics another day!

T&T