Decision fatigue - Reno day 80

The builders finished the carport by the end of the week. When it is painted in the final shade of grey we choose for the house (still undecided) with white trims, I think it will look great. The other good thing is that it now conceals the unusual 5 degree angle of the laundry roof. With the rest of Betsy's roof a traditional 20 degrees, the 5 degree slope solved all of our complex merged roofing issues but did not really suit the style of the house, so I am happier now it can't be seen.

Inside, all the newly installed windows were completed. The old bathroom window has simply been vj'd in and the builders are going to put some shelves in there to turn it into a nook. This may be filled with a collection of bath ducks, Octonauts toys or something more of my liking. We are still in negotiation phase. Eventually we will widen and re-do the bathroom completely but I like having an in progress space that I can do what ever I please with for the time being. First to go will be those blue walls.

The master bedroom window was completed. This room is south facing and is the dullest in the house but given that sleep ins are a good few years away, that is ok with us. We should be able to lie in bed and see the stars at night.

The new floors were completed in the end bedroom which shall henceforth be known as the Legoroom as that is where all those plastic bricks will be living. We kept the original floors in this room but had to fill in the gap from the old verandah and the builders did a great job of matching the hardwood's reddish tones.

For me it was a crazy week of more last minute decisions. That would be all the door and window hardware for the entire house, toilets ( changed my mind at the last minute), fans and downlights. Needless to say, my brain is fried and there have been many negotiations with four year olds ( especially when we had to go back to the lock shop with the witches at least four times).

I have decided that I have the renovation affliction  known as  decision fatigue. ie when you get to the point that when someone asks you a  question you wave your hand in the air and say "whatever".

While I held onto the last vestiges of actually caring, I managed to make a decision to keep the old front part of the house separate from the back where hardware was concerned. All our new contemporary doors have satin chrome hardware, however for the front door and all the bedroom windows I decided to choose a chrome finish. The new doorbell looks lovely and shiny but the tring is not as substantial as our old one so I might be doing a swappo at some point.

Here are the new old doors in all their glory. The light alone that they allow into the house is glorious.

Now moving onto upcoming events, the laundry is arriving very soon, so I thought I had best hurry up and share the plans. Ignore the raked ceiling as that is not happening, but otherwise these are spot on.

The cabinetry will fill the left hand wall of this space, which will also be our main entrance into the house. I am hoping to hang some hooks up for school bags in here on the right, and fit a small rack for shoes and boots.

Outside on the back landing sits our proud new outdoor toilet feature. Perfect for sitting with a beer and a laptop whilst surveying the goings on in the street.

 Just kidding. I'll give you a close up. Boy did they make cisterns massive ( and ugly) in the eighties. This beauty is an absolute stinker as it lost the ability to flush several months ago but that did not stop the builders making use of it while it was still connected. It has now been in this spot for a few weeks, I suspect while the boys draw straws as to who has to actually deal with it further. Sounds like a job for the apprentice (he was also given possum extraction duties).

Anyway, I'll leave you with the carport completed and fully lined. (Had to choose lights for that too, nearly pushed me over the edge). Next up it's floors, floors, floors.

Subfloor, backdoor, steel beams, laundry dreams - Reno day 24

So much progress has been made this week but it has also been frantically busy with no time to blog. Most excitingly the deck floor has been finished and it looks superb. At the same time on the opposite side of the house, the back landing is nearly complete.

Then presto, the laundry subfloor is down and the frames are up. This laundry is  the only new addition to the footprint of Betsy so it is exciting to see it take shape.

This is looking directly at the framing for the new back door and adjacent window. This room will be a laundry/mudroom/entry and it seems will have a lovely view onto the neighbours trees.

This is looking back the other direction through what will be the kitchen, onto the deck. See the schmozzle that is the current junction of the rooflines of the house and grannyflat? And the different heights of the flooring that we discovered last week? We ended up deciding to raise the floor in the laundry and adjacent family room and put the step down only into the end two rooms of the granny flat as it will be less conspicuous there.

Meanwhile, there has been some major destruction in the granny flat, which is almost unrecognisable.

And the new framing to enclose the big sliding windows on the granny flat verandah has all gone in.

and most excitingly, the big steel beam to support the deck roof and bifold doors, is now in position.

When rain arrived at the end of the week, hampering framing progress, the boys made a start on the back stairs instead. Miss Liongirl is proudly demonstrating the new concrete dance platforms.

But it's a reno, so of course it is not all fun and games. Did I mention there are supposed to be louvre windows above the back door for cross ventilation?

 There is just the teeny tiny problem of where the heck are they supposed to fit? That brown horizontal lintel added by the engineers, is of course structural and needed to hold up the new roof. Hmm, time for some more cursing problem solving. Thankfully, we have a few days to work it out while asbestos is being removed from the ceiling in the kitchen.