The Pros and Cons of Our First Renovation

Whilst we bask in the peace and solitude of our "new" house with no tradesmen making noise and ever more mess and all rooms now fully operational, I thought I would summarise the highs and lows of our first renovation experience:

The Highs:

Removal of the hideous faux-federation balustrading and skirting boards

No more cream carpets

No beige, nothing even close to being beige, anywhere in the house

The lights, the one in the living area especially!

Our electricians (see below) and most of our tradies

The colours, the floors, the walls and furniture. We love it all!

Our budget, only because we stuck to it and didn't spend all of the emergency funds (phew!)

The Lows:

Wiring that ran across floors and upstairs that was discovered only when the carpet was ripped up

The smell of paint, glue, solvents and waterproofing membrane

Project Managing the renos whilst holding down a full-time job (aaaargh!)

The DUST!!!

The alcoholic painter that drank our open bottle of wine in the fridge, got copious amounts of paint on our new carpet and bedding and then tried to hide the evidence in the shrubbery outside our front gate. He was caught in the act  by the electrician who took a photo and emailed straight to us (Yay, we love you Josh!)

The sheer inconvenience of living, eating, sleeping in one room (or having to de-camp to the inlaws place)

I do have to say that all of the lows resolved themselves easily enough and dare I say it, I have almost forgotten the stress involved now that I can look around and appreciate the home we have. 

The inside is done!

It has been a very busy month since my last blog post and why is this so? One simple word for you - renovations. My gosh, what a stress they are! I don't think I ever fully appreciated the sheer extent of madness they can cause in even the most sane and sensible of people. Surely witnessing the huge number of tears shed on every renovation show we have ever watched should have given us some insight but no, we were none the wiser when we woke up in excitement on the first day of "Renovations Stage 1A" only a few weeks ago. And in all honesty, having come through the other side, I don't think there is ever anything that can fully prepare you for the intense highs and lows that occur when your long saved for and hard-won house is at the mercy of builders and tradesmen and meticulously drawn-up quotes. Even though our renos paled into insignificance compared to the wild and whacky plans unleashed on "Grand Designs" (ah, Kevin McCloud, not just the thinking girl's crumpet but probably a very handy person to have around when debating measurements and all things structural), the anxiety levels reached fever pitch for both Eady and I. Luckily for our sanity and that of Honey Boo, the cutest puddy in the world, we never lost the plot at the same time.

Here we are though, one month later, and I am pleased to say that "Stage 1A" is now complete. We tackled most of the townhouse in this phase, both upstairs and downstairs, and rather then looking like the dated-early-1980s-faux-federation-drowning-in-beige place that it was, we now have quite a simple and elegant look that mixes a very modern colour palate with a mix of modern classic and retro styling. In a nutshell, we have solid floorboards downstairs, charcoal carpets upstairs, soft grey walls and vivid white woodwork throughout. We made all of the decisions ourselves, without engaging any professional help and we both really love what we have created. Downstairs has been described by a Stylist we engaged for the outdoor area (Stage 1B!)  as "very masculine" which is interesting given that most of the suggestions we went with came through me. In this area, we have paired modern white and black gloss furniture with some very cool light fittings which were first released in the 1970s and sourced through our new favourite lighting store in Surry Hills to create a very stream-lined and minimalist living space. For two Type A personalities like us where clutter of any kind is not just unwelcome but down-right distressing(!), we just love the clean lines and clinical colours we went with. Not to say that the space is cold, it definitely isn't thanks to the soft grey we used on the walls but rather it is more low maintenance and perfect for getting home from work and knowing that everything is as it should be with no "stuff" to distract us from relaxing. Upstairs is definitely a little more relaxed. Same colour palate but softened with charcoal carpets, oak furniture in our bedroom and white and red in our study, with plantation shutters throughout and lets of personal effects too that remind us of our travels and experiences. 

The planning for our outdoor space is nearly done and work should kick-off in about 2 weeks time in what we have imaginatively called Stage 1B (work with me people, between an accountant and former project manager we like our simple and concise names). With all of the issues around plumbing and fencing and asbestos, we can't wait for the first bit of soil to be turned or in this case, first brick paver be removed! So ideally we are looking at everything being done by June. Well I say that, but we do need to update our wardrobe doors and re-do the bathroom even though a lick of paint has done wonders to both. Planning Stage 2 already? Seems we may well have caught the renovation bug....

Back to the Grind Stone

As the sun rose this morning,  I realised that our holiday had officially come to an end and it was time to head back to The Office and the reality of earning a living. Luckily for me, I love work and the people I work with so I was quite excited to be heading back. I'm sure my plan to debut a new outfit recently purchased over in Hawaii helped too! Hooray then for my new navy and white polka dot shift dress from Tommy Hilfiger. By the end of the day, I realised just how easy this dress was to wear and how super-comfy too (just like a beach dress only corporate!) and after only the first wear, it has now become my new favourite work outfit. Paired with my Jimmy Choo patent flats and a navy Zara cardigan, I was ready to hit the desk running on Day 1 post-holiday.

In other news, our renovations started this morning with prep work being the key aim for the builders today. So when Honey Boo, the cutest puddy in the world and I came home this evening, we found the carpets and skirting boards had been ripped up, the balustarding on the stairs had been ripped out and a water-proof membrane painted on the downstairs floor which can't be walked on until tomorrow morning. It is messy and dusty and a tad inconvenient but also very exciting! And the best thing ever about the builders? After taking Honey Boo to work with me today so she wouldn't get in the way (she was a terrible flirt with John Paul, one of our builders, when he came to do his measurements. It was really quite a shameless spectacle but he seemed to fall for it hook, line and sinker!) and knowing we couldn't access the kitchen to get to her food, the builders left a selection of puddy treats on the stairs for her dinner. Who says flirting doesn't pay?!!

  

Home Improvements are on the Horizon!

Being a science geek and more recently "a suit" in my day gig, I was very chuffed this weekend to be asked by a super cool retailer "Do you work in interiors?" This very unexpected thing happened to me whilst doing some home renovation research in Surry Hills i.e. the capital of cool homewares. Eady was there to witness this miraculous event, miraculous as budgeting and management are really the antithesis of anything remotely creative so to be accidentally mistaken for one of the arty brigade really was a miracle that made me giddy with excitement. Hence the re-living of it every 5 minutes: "Gosh, babe, how funny that they thought I was an Interior Designer?" (Cue preening and self-deprecating shrug whilst Eady smiles and nods his head for the 150+ time).

Anyway, compliment aside, the home improvements are really at a very exciting stage which is reason enough for some giddiness on my part. We have now done all of the hard work for phase one of the townhouse project - chosen colours, materials and suppliers so we are all good to go come March. Woo hoo! In a nutshell, we are updating flooring (upstairs and down), two staircases and an outdoor area and then replacing window dressings upstairs and furniture downstairs. For the downstairs flooring, we have decided on bamboo as it is very environmentally friendly and super hard-wearing and therefore more likely to stand-up to any punishment metered out by Jimmy Choo. We debated about floating floorboards but have decided to go with the solid, stick-down variety as we absolutely abhor squeaky floors plus we love the feel of something solid under foot. It was a huge decision about whether to go carpet or bamboo on our dog-legged stairs and mezzanine level due to the amount of work needed to make each step symmetrical and even but bamboo won out in the end and we are quite excited by this as it will really make a feature of the staircases. We are going for a mid-brown colour (the bottom sample in the photo to the right) which we think will work really well with both our current furniture and new furniture. 

Upstairs we are going to stick with carpet but go for something which is much easier to keep clean then the current cream sisal. Greys and charcoals are my favourite shades and to offset the colour of the timber flooring and stairs, we have selected a beautiful dark grey carpet. We had our bedroom furniture made last year in Tasmanian Oak and think the carpet will look fantastic against these pieces plus the feature wall which we are re-painting to a cool pale lime / soft green colour. The other walls are a soft vanilla, the ceiling and plantation shutters will be in white. We love the thought of all of this combined so fingers crossed it works as well in the bedroom as it does in my mind! The study is also very accommodating to grey carpet as our furniture is white, large accessories are red with some anodised aluminium thrown in for good measure.

For the plantation shutters upstairs we are going streamlined with narrow louvres and narrow panels (the top sample in the photo right). They will be made up so that each window is made up of 2 x 2 bifold shutters for a total of 4 shutters per window. We felt that if we did want to open the shutters and allow some sun in (in all honesty, there is 0% chance of that happening as we face South!) or watch the fireworks in the harbour at night, we can do so easily and without the shutters taking up hugs amounts of room when open. I really love the look of plantation shutters although the wider louvres (bottom sample in the picture right) really seem to be more suited to a Queenslander and not a teeny, tiny townhouse in inner Sydney. I have seen examples of both sizes in properties nearby and I am pretty certain we have made the right decision. I guess we will know for sure in about 3 weeks time...