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.

Sorry

It's been ages and I have been slack with the blog. It's been such a full on month though. I have been sick and my husband flew to Brisbane to be with his father in hospital. Sadly his Dad passed away a week later so emotions have been running high.

We've got the room painted and curtains hung though. My husband also started on making the storage bed today. We got lucky with the MDF and chipboard. A kitchen place nearby was selling large sheets of 16mm chipboard and 8mm MDF in 2400x1200 sheets for $5 a sheet. Pays to check Gumtree ;)

Here's a pic of the bedroom so far:

Not the best pic but at least you can see how the floor, walls and curtains work together.

Hopefully the bed won't take too long to complete but finding time is hard, especially at the moment as I am working of a Saturday whilst my parents are in Spain (lucky!). So basically we have one day a week to work on things as someone needs to keep an eye on the baby whilst the other does thing. Exhausting!

Happy Mother's Day

I had a lovely Mother's Day yesterday. I felt so spoiled by my lovely children who had specially picked out their gifts for me :) My favourite is always the cards. I love reading what they have written to me and they always make me laugh.

Not much house stuff to update on unfortunately. The weather here has been very rainy. It's great because we have really needed the rain. Tasmania largely runs on hydro power and with so little rain the dams were looking very empty. However whilst rain is brilliant generally, it's not great for drying times ;) Our floor has been rather sticky but finally seems to be dry!

I did order some Ikea curtains from House of Swede on eBay to go up in the room. They should arrive sometime soon! They were these ones:

I like that they are quirky and cute :D When I get them up I'll take a picture of the room!

Working Hard

It's been a bit longer than I meant for it to be. I've been quite sick so work stalled a little bit. We still haven't quite finished the floor! Here's a quick photo though of how it looks. It's so hard to take a good pic given how tiny the room is but I did my best haha.

The plan is to finish the floor off this weekend and then hopefully next weekend we should be able to start on the boys new room :)

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!