The joys of carpet removing and spack filling... Pt 1

Apologies for another significant break in posts, I think I am being creatively drained at the moment, so by the time I even think about blogging- I'm usually about to go to sleep or waking up to face another day at school. Anyway- I thought I probably should just get stuck into our house reno's- seeing as I have been shying away from posting anything constructive. This has probably something to do with the fact I have been feeling extremely lazy and exhausted, and the prospect of writing a long post on a part of the renovation process we've been through, isn't that enticing. However, as like all things in life- it has to be done at some point or other, so here goes.

When we first got the keys to our first and only house- we were kinda pumped. We'd had an extremely short settlement period of 28 days and I'd had a million ideas bubbling up inside my head. The timing of our 'exchange' however was unfortunate- as I had just been on holidays for 3 weeks and Mr. A had been on two. The day we got the keys was the first day back to school for the term. Talk about bad timing. However, as we were living with my parentals and had been doing so for six months- we were a 'little' bit excited to get out of their house.  We were realistic about the hard work that was coming- and every day after school I would drive straight to the house (after my daily trip to Bunnings) and work frenetically from 4-8:30pm. Mr. A would get to the house around 6pm, and when we were too exhausted to go on- we'd stumble back to the parentals, shove some food into our faces and pass out in bed. This went on for 4 weeks, and probably would have been quicker had we not had a wedding in Byron Bay over a long weekend which wiped out 4 solid days of hard slog.

So this is how it went down- first of all we ripped up the carpets. These were throughout the house and pretty skanky. And by skanky I mean they smelt distinctly of piss. So they got ripped up and piled high in a few of the rooms. This pic is from the spare room, and the ripping up of the carpets actually signalled a problem with a section of the floor- mainly wood rot. But more on that later.

After we had ripped up the carpets, it was time to start spack fillings. Having painted walls and spack filled before I thought I was pretty knowledgeable- however I made two rookie mistakes. 1. I used an interior/exterior grade spack filler which dries HARD... and I mean REAL hard. 2. I was optimistic and thought I could hand sand the walls back. Big mistake. I did one and a half walls using a sanding block and some sand paper and realised that I had neither the energy nor the strength to do a 3 bedroom house this way. So off I went to Bunnings and bought myself an electric sander. What a revelation...! This was a dirty job. I would come home with so much dust in my hair it would stand up by itself. But with the help of Mr. A we go through it. We decided early on to leave the windows because 1. they had YEARS of enamel paint built up on them and 2. we just had too much other stuff to do.

Around this time we started to discover some interesting facts about our place- the smallest room in the house, which is now the study- had a painted floor of dark brown. This was actually the colour we were going to stain the hallway/kitchen/lounge.

Another strange thing- this is our bedroom and underneath the carpet was this fantastic example of lino. Needless to say it went pretty quickly.

Next the painting began. Here I am, up a ladder painting. We quickly realised we weren't going to have enough time to paint all our ceilings (remember each one is COMPLETELY different!). So after painting the study ceiling- we only touched the hall ceiling (and even then it was Mr. A's mum who did it. She actually sustained a ladder accident in the name of that ceiling)

Maybe we were stupid- but we painted BEFORE our floors were sanded and stained WALNUT brown. This meant we actually ended up doing 4-5 coats in the lounge. We used Dulux Whisper White throughout the house. Luckily- both our families pitched in to help with the mammoth task of painting. I originally looked into using a spray gun to paint because the thought of painting SO many walls within such a small amount of time was frightening. However- in the end it worked out well and we got the painting done.

Here is Mr. A getting into some roller action. I should premise this by saying he hates painting. Me- well I love the idea of it (remember I am an art teacher), but half-way through its like a part of me dies and I just want to give up. But I am always pleased at the end.

So I guess I will leave it there for now. Next time I will fill you in on the flooring (I still have a laugh to myself when I think back to all our friends and family who said we should just move in first and do the floors after... yeah right.)

Till next time.