Gardening Plans

The most overwhelming part of the renovation has definitely been tackling the garden and also trying to the design the garden. Our house doesn't have the standard backyard, we actually have a front courtyard that needs the most work. We plan on creating a simple garden with low-maintenance plants and a large deck for entertaining.

The plan is to:

1. Spray and weed the entire area

2. Put a weed mat down

3. Remove the weird sculpture at the front

4. Paint the retaining wall

5. Lay a deck

6. Put in fake grass on the left hand side

7. Put in low maintenance plants around the border

 

How to demolish a bathroom

The first thing to check before demolishing the bathroom is whether or not there there is asbestos present, as in the 60's/70's it was very common for it to be found in the cement walls in wet areas of houses. We found asbestos in the roof of the bathroom as well as some of the walls so had to get a professional company to come and remove it, which wasn't cheap, but it is absolutely necessary to get someone else to remove it!

Guest Post: Finding the potential in your home

One of my good friends has gone through a similar renovating process with her fiance and have designed and renovated their home beautifully, she has also provided us with a number of useful tips and suggestions when we went through the renovation process ourselves. I asked her to share some of her experiences, challenges and she talks a lot about finding the potential in your home.

By Claire Butler

Three years ago my partner and I bought a house in Weston Creek. It was a house that turned a lot of buyers off because they couldn't see its potential. They couldn't look past the bright coloured walls, the dated bathroom and laundry (including a bright pink toilet) and the three different flooring's (carpet, tiles and vinyl).

How to Renovate a Kitchen

The Kitchen Renovation was definitely the biggest part of our renovation process. We started the process in September and it wasn't finished until January. One of the best piece of advice I could give about the kitchen is to START EARLY! 

We thought about a number of options for the kitchen renovation, including buying flat packed cabinetry from Bunnings or Masters. The quality looked good but it was the start of our renovation process and didn't trust that we had enough skills to be able to put it together and for it to look professional. We ended up going through Good Guys Kitchens and had an initial meeting with an interior kitchen designer which was really helpful. She measured up everything and helped us plan the layout and design of the kitchen. Final plans are below.

The original kitchen had a half pantry wall in the middle of it, with black slate floor and beaten up cupboards.

How to level a concrete floor

The original floor in the kitchen/dining area was a black slate floor. Whilst I think slate can look really nice in some houses, ours was splattered in white paint stains and it only went into the kitchen, not throughout the living room area. So when we decided to remove the wall to make it open plan, I wanted to use the same flooring throughout the kitchen and living room to create a flow throughout the house.

So the first thing to go was the slate flooring! After drilling up the flooring, there was concrete bumps all over the floor and as we wanted to lay laminate flooring on top of this it would have been uneven and it needed leveling. And your final finished floor will only be as good as the sub floor under it!

If you need more information, this video from the Ultimate Handyman was also great help for us when trying to level the floor, youtube is a great resource for Renovating Rookies!

You will need:

Costing Photos

The photos below are just a couple of many that helped us to budget our renovation costs, they are from a range of shops around Canberra. However, the majority were taken at Bunnings & Masters as we could get a good indication of a lot of product costs in the two stores. As discussed in the post on budgeting, use these photos to plan and budget your Reno in the spreadsheet.

You might think its a waste of time to go around taking photos when you could be getting stuck into the project but before settlement date is a great time to start doing your research. It will give you a good idea of how much you are in for. Always overestimate on your spreadsheet how much things will cost as you can see below for the amount we paid usually ended up being more than the costs indicated in the photos.

Paint - Roughly $150 per 10 L

Progress photos

I realised I hadn't posted any after photos so here are a couple so far!

Bathroom

Kitchen & Dining Room