Floors

It took a month, but the urge to renovate has hit again.

Our house is like most modern houses, and has tiles. Which is a problem when you don't like tiles.

I am thinking of convincing the husband to rip up the tiles and relay floating timber floors, along the lines of these

Source: susieharrisblog.com via April on Pinterest

Source: fromglasgowwithlove.wordpress.com via April on Pinterest

Source: via April on Pinterest

This might take some convincing.

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Finally I painted the rest of the hallway

I finally did it. I painted the rest of the hallway. Only 2 years and 9 months after I started! Sadly it only took me an hour to do, and we had the paint, so it's not like I have a decent excuse for not doing it.

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Mirror Mirror on the Wall

I have been looking for a mirror for the hallway for a little while now, and eventually found this beauty on ebay one day. It just happened to be missing the mirror part.

Only thing was that I wasn't overly taken with it being gold. Never being one afraid of a challenge, I decided I could change it rather easily with a tin or two of spraypaint.

I loved the detail in the mirror so much more when it was white, especially as some little fiddly parts couldn't be painted.

Once painted I took it to a local framers to have a mirror insert custom made. I have to say, I was glad I didn't attempt to do it myself, as they did such a wonderful job on the finishing of the mirror. As soon as the husband returned from a week away with work I made him hang it in the hallway for me.

I love having it in the hallway, not only does it reflect light more, it means I can quickly check my reflection before running out the door for work without having to go to the bathroom (the only other mirror in our house!)

For the grand total of $90 I have a beautiful mirror that I am more than happy with.
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Hall Table

Last week was a cruddy week in our house. A funeral, End of Financial Year, family issues and just an overall flat out week, left me feeling very deflated by the time Saturday rolled around.

I needed cheering up, and with one friend overseas (which I am insanely jealous about!) and my BFF in Melbourne with her babies (which are doing extreamly well - I am so proud!) I needed some therapy. Retail Therapy.

Now, given that I have hit the shops pretty hard the last few weeks, shoes and clothes weren't going to cut it. It needed to be something different. Something foreign. Something like IKEA!  Which was handy, as I had been compiling a list of things I need from Ikea for a few weeks. Including my hall table, which I had been harping on about for some time.

I came home with these little gem:

In its proper Swedish Ikea life it is a shoe storage, but in our house it is used as a place to store the phonebook (the husband won't let me throw it out, and insists on using it rather than the online version), random cables to the camera and other identified objects, and of course, a place to sit the mail of an evening before it is opened. As our hallway is so narrow, a normal halltable wouldn't fit, and this one is the perfect width!

What do you think?


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Jobs to finish: Front Door

It has now been a year since we renovated our hallway, and, well, nothing much has happened.

Our front door still looks like this

The frame is still not painted. The door still hasn't had its top coat. The windows still have its green (slightly speckled) glass. And I still haven't convince the husband we need a hall table.

That is about the change. I have set the challenge of having the glass replaced with clear glass before August, and the door frame painted before September. Totally do-able, I just need to organise to take a day off from work to have the glazier come, which isn't as easy as it sounds.

The hall table? Well it can wait for a few months until the husband has returned and got his 'build it mojo' back.

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Hall Tables...re-visited

A while back I mentioned how I wanted a hall table. Somewhere to put the mail, a potted (fake) plant and a photo-frame

Well after months of looking. And looking. And doing some more looking. I have given up. See, the issue is that although our hallway is wide, the spot for the halltable is only 300mm deep. Most hall tables are  between 350 and 450mm deep. See the issue?

So what does when do when handed a problem like this? They beg their incredibly kind and loving husband to build them one. Basically all I want is something that looks like this Malm Ikea one

Surely it can't be too hard! It is only three bits of timber, except I want a shelf on the bottom.
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Valentine's Day

We don't really do Valentines Day in our house, possibly because our wedding anniversary is two weeks prior. Seems a lot of people I know don't do Valentines Day, which makes me feel better, as I always thought I was the only V-Day Grinch!

Anyway, I saw Young House Love blog about Home Sweet Home, who blogged about Pearl and Earl's Married Life Print, (got all that?) and I thought it was rather cute.

So cute that I have ordered one, sans frame, for our hallway. It is kind of fitting for our marriage, as someone always leaves their pants on the floor and the loo seat up.

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Lighting

I am loving this light from Beacon, but it seems it isn't available any longer, as I can't find it on their website. So imagine my suprise when walking through Bunnings, when I saw something mighty similar! And for a third of the price! SCORE!!!

Now to convince husband that it would look great in our hallway.

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Hall-stands

Today, whilst torturing the husband (ie. I forced him to go to Ikea with me), I looked at a few options for our hallway. And came up with the following mood board

Teamed with our new glass in the window (which still hasn't happened. lets be honest, i still haven't painted the door frame!) it should look nice and streamlined.

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I need your help

I have finally decided on getting a print for the wall in our hallway, preferably black and white, with a wide matt and a thin frame.

But I need your help to made a decision.

Option 1

Option 2

Option 3

Just for a fresher, this is our hallway, it has cream walls with white trims.

So which one do you prefer? I am considering getting a giant wooden letter (ok, maybe only 30cm or so) of the first letter of our surname for the wall closest to our front door

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Artwork?

I am on the hunt for some artwork for our house, so far I need something for the hallway, the office, and the lounge room.

Pity I have no idea on what I really like or want. All I know is that I love thick mounted photos, either really vibrant or black and white.

So here is a few I have found that I do like

Sunshower Kim

Opticwaste

Any suggestions where I can find anything else?
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Moving

Well today was the day. The day I have waited 11 weeks for.

MY CARPET WAS LAID!

Now, this is quite a simple thing to be thrilled about, but to me it is huge. We never had nice carpet in our house, it was ugly 1950's floral, 1970's floral and some retro blue crap that reminded me of marine carpet. But now we have lovely plush brown carpet.

Carpet in the bottom of our linen press (note that it still is neat, and empty)

Our bedroom

And our cupboards

A close up of our carpet, I dont think I have show you all yet.

And with furniture (must buy new lamps and another Euro pillow tomorrow)

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All in a long weekend.

So besides the front door being finished here, we did the following:

Put in a bedroom door

Painted the door frames in the hallway (ignore the skirting boards, you will hear about them in a minute)

and, finished our linen press

and look at all that spare space! I still have one shelf to clean out in our old cupboard, but still plenty of space in there!

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Stripping

No, not the hip grinding, becoming naked kind. Instead it was stripping 100 years of paint from our front door kind.

Now I know the results will be worth it. But Oh. MY. GOD. The pain in my back. Really do need to invest in a higher work bench. Though not sure how that will go fitting in my hallway, seeing as though that was where I chose to strip the paint (read: the door was quite heavy, and that was as far as I could go).

So, 6 hours later, a very cold house (maybe should have picked a better day to do this, not the 8 degrees raining day I did chose) I have ended up with this.

Finally the putty was dry and we could hang the door back up (thank god for that, it was freezing in the house!)

On Sunday I gave the door a coat of undercoat

A couple of coats of paint later (still needs another coat, and the trim painted)

It hasnt come up to bad considering there used to be a deadbolt hole, and a number of other imperfections in the door (the current holes are for the door handle to go back on when painting has finished).

We still have to paint the surrounds and side panels and replace the glass. 

Not long now...

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OMG, we are almost done

I had worked up some time at work, and decided to make the most of the long weekend this weekend and make it into an extra long weekend...6 days to be precise. So yesterday I had doctors appointments, and we planned to spend Thursday and Friday renovating in attempt to get it all finished, waiting for the carpet people next week.


So after some foot stomping (mine), a tantrum (again mine), and some choice words at the weather (both of ours, it has rained for 3 days straight, making it very interesting to get timber from Bunnings (an hour away) to home.) But we got there

Bedroom mostly painted. I plan to do all the skirtings tomorrow

The robe doors back in, still needing to be painted

The shelves which are currently housing a lot of tools (oh and my lonely work shirt to make sure )

The lights and fan (I put the fan together...twice in fact, due to putting half the blades upside down the first time. Doh! )

The hallway. We still need to paint the front door, and will then have the glass replaced after that. But you get the idea

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