Flush Plumbing

This is the unbelievably ridiculous sewerage plumbing situation we created for ourselves when we demolished the old bathroom that came with our house. We lived with it for a little while, hoping against hope that it would stay put and not fall over and shower nasties all over the place.

Thankfully it lasted long enough for us to create this flush-with-the-house-pole situation.

In order to make that possible, Tom and his brother attacked the slab of concrete at the base of that pole (left over from the old laundry under the house before we raised it).

That concrete all ended up in the front yard (as seen here).

They then dug a little trench to allow the pipe to sit as low as possible on its way to the sewerage hookup.

We thought it was hilarious that Allie immediately claimed the trench as her own.

We had some work to do to reroute the rest of the pipes that used to connect to the old ridiculous pipe.

That makes it look like it was me doing all the hard work.

It wasn't.

And after working into the night, we were left with this connecting to the kitchen...

And this connecting to the bathroom (and our new laundry)...

And the most important part, this connection to the sewerage pipe.

And it works! Thank goodness!

I'm so glad to have this now in our past, as something we can laugh about forevermore.

An Actual Dining Room!

 

We've reached a milestone! We have a dining room!

This doesn't sound as impressive as it actually is (well, I think it is, at least). Let's go back a step, shall we?

This is what the room looked like after we had redone the floors, and brought in the table.

And here is that same view now.

 

This poor room has been in a constant state of transition since the beginning. It's been the dumping ground for tools and all sorts of junk since the beginning, being close to the back door. Now it finally gets to be a proper room that belongs in a liveable house with a table and chairs and other pieces of furniture and even some ornaments! Amazing, I know!

I've made it my mission to try to furnish this room as cheaply as possible, with the extra goal of adding as much storage as I can manage!

That dining table used to look like this.

We snagged it for $40, and then sent it off with our Black Beauty for the gloss black spray treatment. Both items cost $600 to be painted, so I attribute $200 of that to this table, making him a $240 investment.

This guy came along next. He was another $40 find, and he couldn't be a more perfect size for the little wall space between the bathroom and laundry doors.

The picture on top of him is something I made while we were living in our last house, with little scraps of fabric and cut-up doilies.

The hutch that sits in the corner near the kitchen was our next addition. He set us back only $75.

I wasn't actually planning to go with only dark-coloured timber furniture for this room, I've been motivated mainly by price and size, but this guy came along for $50 next, matching the other pieces nicely. He slots in perfectly to the tiny little corner on the other side of the bathroom door.

Atop him is a silver vase I think I got at Target a few years ago, and a wedding photo.

Here's the view into the bathroom, with those two little cabinets on either side.

Next, this cabinet. It's pretty shocking quality, but it provides some storage, which is at a premium in this house. I got it for $30 from someone just wanting to get rid of it, and I have some ideas for making it a bit more interesting. Allie insisted on getting in this shot.

 

And the final addition, at least for now, are these chairs.

We sold our big dining chairs leftover from our last house on Ebay. They were just too big and chunky for this room, and we really didn't have space for eight of them!

I've been looking around for alternatives, and would really love to get some armless Louis ghost chairs. But I'm looking for cheap options for the moment. Then I found these guys.

I was actually looking for outdoor chairs when I found them, butI figured they were kind of unique and interesting, so bought the lot (including the table) for $30.

The chairs weren't in the greatest condition, so I bought some wood glue and glued up any loose bits.

And then lined them up in the yard for a makeover.

The idea of sanding all of those spindly bits was enough to send me a bit crazy, and then I remembered this stuff!

One of the guys in the paint section had recommended it as an alternative to sanding when we were asking about painting our kitchen cabinets (we haven't progressed beyond thinking about a new paint colour with those yet), so I found a rag and wiped it onto each of the chairs, and then left them for 90 minutes. It leaves them feeling vaguely sticky.

Then came an undercoat...

And I decided to stick with a gloss white for the final coats, to keep them looking fresh for their potential future life as garden chairs, and to add a touch of lightness to the currently very dark dining room.

Here they are looking a bit spooky and gleaming in the moonlight just before I brought them inside on Halloween.

And here they are living their new life as our dining chairs.

The room isn't perfect, but it's much more functional and much more attractive than it used to be, so we're making lots of progress!

 

And best of all, with all the furniture totaling just $465 (which I should probably round up to $500 to cover the cost of spray paint for the chairs), its transformation has definitely been cost effective!

Slip Slop Slap

What's the next logical step in our stair-building and fence-building projects? Other than perhaps an actual railing for the stairs?

Sunscreen?

In a way, yes! It's a house's version of sunscreen. Paint!

But that means it's time to deal with my serial indecision when it comes to choosing paint colours yet again. What's more, it's going to be grey again!

The question is...yet again... which grey?

Of course this decision wasn't just about the stairs and the fence, but about the entire colour scheme for the outside of the house, since obviously the stairs and the fence need to match it. There was a lot more riding on this decision than just the task at hand. Great! That makes it easier to be decisive!

So I got every single grey-ish paint chip I could find from Bunnings, eliminated the ones I definitely didn't like, and taped the rest up near the front door.

Taping all of those samples up on the wall was incredibly helpful, since it made me realise that the grey paint chips that looked quite dark inside actually showed up pretty light-coloured outside with the morning sun shining on them. I selected the darker non-blue-looking options (except the really dark one on the top left which is actually the colour we painted the office - Taubmans' Inverness), and took them with me.

First things first, we had to go through the usual pre-painting pattern. Sanding, and then undercoating the stairs and the fence. Sigh.

Four hours after starting the undercoat, Daniel was done with the fence, and I was done with the stairs.

The undercoat is blindingly white in the morning sun!!

We let it sit like this for a full week, to harden up nicely before we added coats of colour.

But that required me to actually decide on a colour! Hmm.

I discovered recently that a friend's brother actually works for Wattyl Paints, so I went to see him with my samples to make a decision and get some paint. I had decided that I wanted to keep things simple and crisp with the colours for the outside of the house, so just needed to find a grey for the walls, and a white for the trim colour.

After much dithering on my part (which was probably very annoying for the poor guy), we decided on Taubmans' Gunnard, the darkest grey paint chip I'd brought with me. And to ensure that the white we chose would match it nicely, we decided to tint the white with a very small fraction of the Gunnard grey tint, so it was only just off-white, but off-white in the right direction (i.e. not too yellow or blue or brown or anything except Gunnard-like).

And so we got to work.

And we painted and painted and painted and painted.

Have I mentioned before that I wouldn't be sorry not to see a paintbrush again? No surely not.

Not when the finished product looks like this!

Needless to say, the white and the grey match each other very well!

And doesn't the fence look amazing?

This...

Compared with this.

And these were the stairs.

And now they look like this. Crisp and clean! Shame about the still-yellow house. We'll get to that eventually.

Sometimes I wonder how it's become so easy for me to cover up beautiful timber with paint.

But then it's usually so worth it!

One baby step at a time we're making our way toward a completed staircase (and front fence)! As always though, there's still a way to go! A handrail would be handy...