Sunday 9 November 2014

More little renovations - Spare room refurb

We've had house guests recently so our spare room (aka the junk room) had to return to being the guest bedroom it was always supposed to be. After clearing out the accumulated junk it was decided that the room needed a lick of paint to freshen it up before it would be guest ready.

Somehow "a lick of paint" turned into "demolish a wall and re-plaster". I'm still not entirely sure how that happened, but with a week before our guests' arrival we were pulling off wall sheeting and teaching ourselves (with the help of Google and you tube) how to hang and finish new plaster sheets.

It begins! skirting boards and cornice removed and the old wall sheeting coming off

Nice new plaster  sheets hung
Note the panel installed back to front with the print facing out?
Don't do that - it causes no end of trouble when it comes to painting!


Well we managed it! The room was replastered and back together, fit for guests within the week (if not entirely finished with all the little details) and we learned heaps in the process.
  1. Moving 3m long sheets of fragile plasterboard from Bunnings to home and then into the house is a logistical nightmare.
  2. Gyprock definitely does have a right and a wrong side
  3. It's tricky getting those joins and corners plastered neatly
  4. The 16 square metres coverage claimed on the tin does not apply to undercoat going on fresh plaster.
  5. Oil based sealer is a really handy thing to have around when red ink printing starts appearing through your new paint job (see #2 above).
The other half has said he wouldn't mind redoing the joins and smoothing out the layers of sealer we used to cover the red print that kept seeping through the paint where one section of sheeting was installed back to front,  but overall I'm pretty happy with the results.

Next jobs on the list for that room - repainting and re-installing the pelmet over the window, new curtains and replacing the old louvre door.

Saturday 8 November 2014

Christmas is coming (Ready or not)


I had a colleague return to the office after lunch yesterday and announce that she's just finished all her Christmas shopping. And just in case I needed another reminder that there are less than 7 short weeks until the holiday I stopped in at the the pharmacy on my way home last night and there were carols playing  over the store PA system.

How can it be November already? My how the year has flown!

I've barely even started my preparations this year! Sure I've been browsing Pinterest a lot, and I've pinned some potential decorating and gift ideas - but I'm always browsing Pinterest so I don't think I can really count that towards actual Christmas preparation.

Now that I've been forced to think about it, I'd like to try and get back to basics a bit more this year. The last couple of weeks before Christmas always end up being a frenzy of preparations, parties and spending so this year I'm going to try and avoid that a bit, do more to actively enjoy and share the festive spirit and put more thought, time and love into selecting (or making) gifts for family and friends that will hopefully be appreciated more than an easy commercial option that will be broken or forgotten within days or the no-brainer gift cards which are my usual go-to gifts when I run out of time or ideas.

All of that basically boils down to the fact that I need to get motivated, organised and creative again... and really soon

Have you got your festive season planned and organised yet?  If you're going the home made gifts option this year, what have you got started so far?