Boys Bedroom Progress

I have managed to get quite a lot more done recently. Thank you second trimester energy boost! The boys bedroom has been my main focus at the moment and even though it's not quite done yet we have made a lot of progress. I have painted their floor and my husband has installed some new wardrobes from Bunnings which are great. The kids also had a big toy cull so now all their toys have a place in their room. No excuses for messy floors (yeah right lol).

I also bought them a new computer desk and chairs and decided to paint their bookcase to match. I am really loving the bright pop of yellow against the white and black :)

Next is to install their new curtains and make them a house bunk to match the girls one. That may take awhile though as we have quite a few other jobs to do in the meantime and with Christmas approaching a lot of our money is going on that at the moment! 

Well off I go to finish filling the bookshelf :)

Changing Things Already!

Not a whole lot to report. We are still waiting on a time when the roofing guy and electricians can both make it so no work yet on the roof or electrics. We have however hung some new sheer curtains (Vivan from Ikea) and I adore them! They let so much light into the dining/lounge area whilst still giving us privacy.

I also decided to change the fireplace from Malay Grey to Vivid White. I just felt it brightened the room up more and provided a better contrast with the hearth and fireplace surround:

I also finally got around to painting the last wall in the boys room. I'd fallen pregnant before finishing the room off and have only just started to feel back to normal! 16 weeks pregnant today and my first hospital appointment is next week. I am really hoping my 20 week scan will be booked in then too so I know when we can find out the bub's gender. I have strong boy vibes so curious to see if I am right. I don't really care what we have and we already have two of each anyway but I still love finding out. Such a nice halfway surprise given I am really not a fan of pregnancy. I think that surprises people because of how many children we have chosen to have but whilst I love the result and am grateful I am able to have children, I still don't really enjoy the process beyond the scan and kicks. 

Off now to do the boys floors so we can install some cupboards and get their room tidy!

Great News

We've had two lots of great news recently!

Firstly our loan has finally been approved so we can get the house reroofed and rewired. There's been pretty much no progress of late because our leaky roof makes it hard to do any of the other rooms! After the roof and wiring is done we should be able to finish off the few remaining rooms. I cannot wait. As an apology for the stuffing around and time it took they also refunded us $200 which is interest we would have gained if the money had been in the account. It was a lovely gesture because I was pretty upset and angry about the hoops we had to jump through and the time it took.

The other fantastic news is that we are expecting baby number 5!! 

I am currently 15 weeks and should have my scan in a month. I can't wait to see bub again. We had a bit of a scare early on with some bleeding so I saw bub at 8 weeks, but haven't seen the little blob siince. We will also most likely find out the gender. We have no preference I just need a half way surprise as I am not a big fan of pregnancy haha. This baby will be the tie-breaker so all bets are on!

Fireplace and Boys Room

Progress has eased off a little of late. We are currently still waiting for the bank to (hopefully) approve a small loan so we can get the roof done and the house rewired. However we have still managed to get a few things done :)

I bought some gorgeous seeded linen from The Remnant Warehouse and a sewing machine from Spotlight and made some curtains. So far just the one pair but I bought enough fabric to do all the windows in the Dining/Lounge areas.

We also fixed up our fireplace. I was hoping to be able to make the space inside usable for shelves or something but it was revolting and would have taken a lot of work and sanding bricks. Maybe if we'd done it before painting but with the room almost done we decided to just block it up.

Lastly I also started painting the boys room. So far the walls are black as chosen by them and one feature wall I have painted with constellations for my astrophysics loving boys:

Hopefully in the next few weeks we will be able to make the boys bunks, paint the floor of their room and install their wardrobes!

Dining/Lounge Area

One of the biggest changes we have made is choosing to make our Lounge room more of a Dining room with seating area. Our dining table gets used a lot more than our couch- not just for eating but also board games and Dungeons and Dragons nights. So we decided we'd rather have our big dining table and a small seating area than a Lounge area and small Dining table.

We started work on it a few weeks ago and it is now nearing completion. The floor was sanded and painted with the same Feast Watson White Floor Paint as we have done in the other rooms :)

 

We did have a minor issue with the cat not understanding the words "KEEP OFF THE FLOOR"

 

The walls were painted in Dulux Silkwort and the trims and door in Malay Grey. I decided to go a darker trim because I love the look and I was hoping it will stand up better to kids grotty fingermarks than white did! My husband then painted the ceiling and also hung the chandelier we bought a few years ago above the dining table, replacing the horrible ceiling fan that used to be there.

 Then my favourite part, decorating!! I've spent quite a bit of money in at KMart lately haha. The homewares department is so very addictive and a nice but cheap way to get the look I like! Here are some pics, though we are still waiting on our new couch:

There's still the Fireplace to finish off, the couch and the curtains to make so hopefully I will be able to update with those fairly soon :D

It's really nice being able to properly sit down for meals and fun times again. As my kids get older I really appreciate all the moments I can steal with them. Now the plan is to build up our board/card game collection to store in the barrel cabinet.

 

Busy!

I've been slack again but we have also been very busy. It was Willow's first birthday this month. A year that has absolutely flown by. I am so glad we went back for another baby even though it seemed insane with our other kids older and more independent. Why would you go back? people asked us a lot. We don't know, sheer madness perhaps? Whatever the reason we are very glad we did :)

We have mostly been busy doing up the girls room. I have a few more things to arrive and I will do a proper before and after but for now here are some photos of our journey so far.

First step was painting the walls and floor. I got my husband to tape the wall out because I hate taping so much. I don't think he likes it either but he still did it for me haha. Thank goodness for a patient husband that goes along with my harebrained schemes. Here is the feature wall just after painting before we did the other walls and floor:

Then I added black spotty wall stickers to the white triangles:

Here's the room after painting before furniture (door still isn't painted):

Then I added some wardrobes which are actually flat pack pantries from Bunnings. Most cheaper wardrobes just had mostly hanging space (no Ikea here :( ) and we wanted to screw them into the wall to make them more built in. Here they are before doors:

I added some decoration and a shelf for all my daughters shopkins. Willow helped me put the books away by removing them as I was putting them in:

And finally my favourite is this bed that I asked my husband to build. I am so in love with it and impressed with him! 

So that's what I have been up to :) Pretty much everything has come from Bunnings, KMart and Fantastic Furniture. The bedding which I adore is from Cotton On.

Getting Our Hands Dirty

We started work today on the "Master" bedroom, and it feels so good to finally be able to do something. Had a quick trip to Bunnings last night for the paint, plaster fill and brushes/rollers so that we were prepared. I ended up changing my mind on the paint colour (I always change my mind haha) and went with French Limestone. I love the look of it so hopefully it's just as nice on the walls! The Pale Sage was just a little darker than I had wanted whereas this colour is lighter but still the green I wanted.

Then yesterday morning we emptied the room out of the kids toys. This turned out to be a bigger job than I thought as there were toys all over the ground and then we had to find places to put them all whilst we worked!

After the room was clean we set out with a heatgun and scraper removing the wooden name sign and butterflies that were on the wall from when it was Ashley's room. We also took down shelves and picture hooks.

Next we filled in the holes and cracks with plaster filler and went on a trip to KMart whilst it dried. The boys were desperately in need of new clothes as they won't stop growing and Willow needed a few more winter clothes. I also stopped in at Harvey Norman for a look. I could browse the furniture there all day I reckon. They have some really nice stuff but not really in our meager budget ;)

When we returned home my husband sanded the walls whilst I fed Willow but unfortunately not all the plaster had dried so painting couldn't start until today.

The walls are now done :D but pictures will have to come next time sorry!

First (and Most Expensive) Jobs

I thought it would be easier to break down what we need to do to make our home meet our needs as their is so much. The first and most important jobs we need to do involve structural type work. It's hard to get that excited about structural stuff but it's very necessary in order to be able to transform our house into a place we are happy to be living in. 

Our major issues have always been the roof, lack of insulation and the wiring. Currently every time it rains we get two indoor water features (one in my room and one in the kitchen), our house is too warm in Summer and too cold in Winter and every time you try to watch TV, boil a kettle and cook toast at the same time the fuse blows. All fun and games when your house is small and there are six of you!

We are planning to do rewiring, reroofing (is that a word) and ceiling insulation at the same time. My husbands brother is luckily a builder so the plan is to pay him to do it. We have to replace like-for-like so we will be going colourbond. Once the old roof is off it should be easier to rewire and add ceiling insulation as our skillion roof provides no crawl space to access it internally.

The next stage will be to hopefully replace all our windows with double glazed ones as most of our external walls are covered with large windows. This should help a lot with the house temperature! Our newest plan is to replace the very large window at the front of our house with double glazed bifold doors. We have a large porch that we never use out the front as it's cut off from the house. By adding bifolds I am hoping we can really open the space in Summer and pretty much double the usable space in our Lounge area. The porch is currently wasted by being blocked off from the rest of the house.

There are also some weatherboards that we'd like to replace, not too many thank goodness and then we will get onto the things we can do ourselves- painting the exterior! This is the much more fun bit for me ;)

My colour scheme for the exterior is this:

Woodland Grey for the roof and guttering, Dieskau for the exterior walls, Vivid White for the trim around the doors and windows and a Delicious Mint door :) I am also planning on painting the porch in Woodland Grey and White as it's just bare concrete currently. Some inspiration pictures:

Now off to tend to my sick child who keeps trying to help me blog!