Floored! (Last post of 2017)

This week we have a final visit from the roofer to add spouting and downpipes, but the main event is the arrival of the flooring.
Shane and a large truck arrive Tuesday morning, and a load of floorboards is moved into the back courtyard by crane.
Over the next couple of days Shane lays the flooring and it looks gorgeous.
He will be back in the new year to sand it, and put a wash on to colour it a bit, followed by the finishing protective coats. We can't wait to see it so he's promised to send photos.

Note the tarps on the windows. Shane doesn't want too much sun on "his" floor before the coating is done.

Movement in the kitchen area

A generally productive week, although not a lot to show for it inside Little O'Grady Street.

Monday

• Plasterers return and finish off the cornice in the hall in no 8. It looks spiffing.
• Roofer does more flashing on 1A Little O'Grady.

Tuesday

• Nothing happens.

Wednesday

• Tony the builder comes for a check on progress. We discuss options for relocating the water meter.
• Tony waterproofs the shower area in the bathroom.
• Nick from West City cabinets comes and we get moving on finalising the design of cabinetry in bathroom, kitchen and laundry.
• Shane arrives to start on the floor in the big back room.
• We drive down to West City cabinets showroom in Hoppers Crossing to look at options for colour of door fronts and benchtops.

Thursday

• Decisions are made about colours.
• Omissions in the kitchen design discovered.
• Preparation work on the floor continues.
• Much to our annoyance, the panelling for the bathroom is not yet at Bunnings and they are now saying 7-10 days, when we were promised it was available in 3 days. It's already a week since we chose and ordered it.

Friday

• Shane covers the concrete floor in green goop.
• A skip is delivered and Tony's son Fraser clears out the backyard (again). We dispose of a couple of unwanted doors while there is spare space in the skip.
• Email exchanges with West City cabinets continue, modifying the design and quote.

Weekend

• Final (?) email sent to West City cabinets.
• We rehang the hall lights in no 8.
• Another mini-buying spree: a fan with built in light for the second bedroom (Beacon are conveniently having a fan sale), exterior lights for front and back, and a light for the storage area over the bathroom.

Meanwhile, back in the "big" house...

Years ago, in the dark ages before we renovated 8 Finlay Street, we had major water ingress in the hallway during a thunderstorm. The old, original cornice in the front hall was damaged, as was several feet of paint on the wall below. And the new cornice in the second part of the hall became loose. When we had the reno done, getting all that fixed was supposed to be part of the job, but somehow it just didn't happen.

So when the plasterers return to do 1A Little O'Grady, we ask them back to inspect the hall. The plasterer has coniptions as he is certain that the loose cornice is about to fall down any minute. I point out that it has been like that for at least four years, but he insists on coming in immediately with his mate to take it down. And we arrange to have the whole lot fixed, and this two-day job fits nicely into a gap that they have this week.

On Friday they arrive, put up a channel about 150mm lower than the original ceiling, put in new plasterboard, then redo the cornices. This is a long job as it's a large, fancy Victorian cornice, so they don't quite finish and will return Monday to do so. But even unfinished and unpainted, it looks so much better than it did.

Sledging

Today it's time for front fence demolition, part 2. Peter's son has provided us with a sledgehammer, and with that the wall comes down in no time. We both enjoy the satisfaction of wielding the hammer.

The friendly builders from the place across the lane lend us a decent-sized barrow, and with that and our small one it doesn't even take us too long to clean up the debris and barrow it all around to the back, ready for the next skip.

Decisions, decisions...

Friends kindly gave us tiles left over from their bathroom renovation project, and we have spent some time trying to work out whether we had enough, or would need to buy more. We also spend a lot of time trying to work out what colour to put on the bathroom walls, to offset the very dark grey colour of the tiles.

After much cogitation, we decide the gifted tiles are just too dark, so we head off to National Tiles in Port Melbourne to look for alternatives. After much to-ing and fro-ing we settle on a paler grey tile described as slate, and we find two boxes in the tile liquidation area which significantly reduces the overall cost, as we only need four boxes altogether.

Armed with the tile we then go a-Bunning to select the polymer wall panels for the shower sides. We've been in contact with the manufacturers, who tell us that we can get the sheets at Bunnings and also that we can have any Dulux colour as a custom colour. Peter is given to understand that there is a three-day turnaround between the order and receiving the sheets. In Bunnings we spend about an hour with our tile looking at various colour chips, and sample panels. When we finally settle and go to order, we discover that we can't be guaranteed to receive a custom coloured panel this side of Christmas. Three days it appears, was only for standard colours. So we start looking at standard panels and find a splash-back sized panel in a colour called called Silver Ghost, that we think will do, but it turns out not to be in any of the lists of standard colours and no one is sure whether we can get it in bathroom wall sizes. Finally we give up and settle on a metallic silver called Platinum, because at least that is available and will come early next week. We just hope it looks OK. Neither of us liked the idea of a metallic finish much, but perhaps a bit of shiny reflection in a small dark room will be a Good Thing.

Plastered!

House is transformed as the plaster is now all in place.

We are fascinated to find that the plasterers use stilts to put up ceilings and work high up the walls...

They all went home, leaving their stilts behind them.

Weekend work for us

Once the first part of the plastering is done, the room that is the remainder of the second bedroom looks much too small to have a fireplace, so we decide to pull it out and remove the mantelpiece.
Filthy job, but someone has to do it.

And we want it done before the plasterers returned so that they can sheet over the hole, so that is our first Sunday afternoon activity.

In addition to demolishing the fireplace , we start on the low brick fence at the front of the house.
Why you ask?

The fence is a 50s addition that is not at all in keeping with the house, and although the original red-brick and terracotta capping has been painted the same colour as the house, it still looks pretty ugly.

At some point in a previous renovation, the original galvanised iron water pipe was replaced with copper, but instead of running it through the house where the old pipe was, they took the pipe along the inside of the front fence from the water meter to the side of the house, right down the side of the house and round to the back, making it vulnerable to vandals. Our neighbour had his similarly placed copper pipe cut and stolen from the side of his house.

The plumber has now brought the water pipe back to where it was when the house was first built, which is running down the hall under the floorboards. But the mains connection, which is a very messy collection of pipes, is still behind the front fence. We hope to be able to relocate it to the other side of the gateway, so that the pipe can go under the tiled veranda without having to wreck the mosaic tiles, which are original.

Some of the existing piping is actually embedded in the wall, so to find out what goes where, we decide to at least knock down the gatepost. Lacking a more appropriate tool, we bash it with the back of the axe. Hard work as the bricks and mortar are relatively modern, but by the end of the afternoon we have exposed most of the pipes, ready for the plumber to advise on whether the meter can be moved.