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Living in a small house feels really great for me at this stage in my life. I love the fact that there are no stairs or multi bathrooms to clean. One level navigating is such a breeze. In this part of the world it also means there is no basement, so the challenge is storage and the fact that everything is in sight including the laundry room. It forces you to get organized and keep hording at bay.
It also means that everything that once got relegated to the basement, now gets relegated to the garage (shed in Australian). Since most sheds here in small town Queensland are not much more than a giant metal building lurking somewhere in the back yard, they are not the most convenient spot to store anything you actually care about. Sure, they are great for tools and garden gear and your car, but they are not airtight or temperature controlled, so they get extremely hot inside. There is also the added feature of scurrying geckos and spiders and all things creepy and crawly (waiting for the day when I see a snake curled up on my car hood (bonnet in Australian). Whenever I do retrieve a box or something from the shed, I carefully inspect the item for life forms. It keeps me on my toes I suppose. That sounds better than freaked out Canadian on constant vigil for Huntsman spiders.
But, back to the small space challenge. The laundry area in this house is also the back entrance to the house and serves as the pantry and linen closet and is adjacent to the toilet (water closet), so you can see that it is a high traffic zone here at Deb and Steve's Tropical Oasis. It was also tied for first place with the kitchen for the most dated and ugly space in the house. It also seemed like a good place to begin renovating. There was nothing we could do with the actual physical space in terms of expanding it, but there was plenty we could do to improve the use of what space was available. There was room to add shelving and closed storage and with a few repairs to the floor and fresh paint, new lighting, new door hardware, updated taps and a new laundry sink, it could certainly be revived and transformed into a more functional and visually pleasing zone in our humble abode.
BEFORE
The highly visible location and high traffic zone in this house has gone from dingy and utilitarian to fresh and clean and functional with a bit of added kitsch that definitely agrees with my positive chi now. What was once an eyesore and a room that I hoped people would not notice is now a space that actually feels happy to me.
AFTER
Let's just hope a Huntsman family doesn't want to move in to new digs.
Another weekend of renovating has come and gone dear readers and I regret to inform you that there will not be a reveal shot again today. That is not to say that things are not progressing along quite nicely here at Deb and Steve's Tropical Oasis (my new name for our humble abode). No, on the contrary, we got quite a bit done this weekend. Some of it major (new laundry tub and upper cabinet installed) and some of it leaning more to the tedious but necessary (replacing 3 small floor tiles that had cracked over time and caulking the throne in place and the final sanding and painting of the linen closet doors).
One day in the hopefully not too distant future there will come a time when all prior oil based painted trims and doors will become a "remember when?" and we will be able to just slap a fresh coat of latex paint over everything without having to sand and prime. Most older houses are unfortunately slathered with that stuff from the past. It requires so much more prepping and time to complete what should be a quick wash and two coats of paint. However, the finished product is so great that the painstaking journey to get there is soon forgotten, not unlike the labour of giving birth.
The jewelry in the laundry room is next. The washing machine taps are on and I am thrilled with the design we chose. They remind me of Paloma Picasso X's, without the swirled tips. Now one would argue as to why the design mattered for these, but when your laundry room is also the mud room and back entrance and pantry and linen storage and entry to the toilet, you can imagine how many times per day I walk past these taps. The old ones were ugly utilitarian plastic relics from the 70's that screamed "Look how cheap I am!" Ugh! They have now gone to join that ghastly toilet roll holder in the land fill, or the next garage sale. I removed the hinges from the closet doors as they were covered in at least three coats of paint. Apparently they are brass and there might be someone who will want to buy them at that same sale. One man's junk is another man's treasure I suppose. I might have been tempted in the 80's to polish them up and re-use them, but brass is not going to work in the current plan, unless it is some sort of fabulous modern light fixture just to mix the metals up a bit. We'll see.
About a week ago, I decided that I wanted to hang some large white letters that spelled some word related to laundry. Two days later I was out for coffee with the tennis gals and there was a gift and decorating shop attached to the cafe and as I walked in the door...BAM!, there they were. Exactly what I was looking for! How's that for manifesting? They will go up last. The finishing touches are always the most fun.
I may not have mentioned it thus far, but this renovation is not supported by an unlimited budget. In fact, we are trying to save where we can and splurge where we think we will get the most bang for our buck. For instance, as I mentioned earlier in this blog, we replaced three cracked floor tiles. The original tiles were no longer available. The cracked tiles were right at the entry to the room and the entry to the toilet. We searched around in vain for replacements and then it occurred to me we could cut three tiles out of the floor under the laundry tub where they would not be missed! This simple solution saved us hundreds of dollars on new flooring that was otherwise not bad at all. It is simple off white 2 inch squares that actually quite suit the space. With the cracked ones gone, the floor is now restored to it's original former glory. Sure, new flooring would have been nice, but the colour was fine and it works with the new palette. This will free up more money for more important flooring changes elsewhere in the house.
The palette of greys we have used are offset by white which is always a fresh clean look, especially in laundry and bathrooms. The stainless steel laundry sink and backsplash
( splashback in Australian-yet to be installed) work well with the greys as well. Now we are going to add some warmth with some open shelving in wood...Kwila to be exact. It is a wood used often here in Oz and I really love it. It is used for fencing and decking and various other outdoor applications, but I like it for indoor shelving as well. It is also a part of the new wall design we are mounting in the toilet so the two rooms will tie together nicely when they are finished.
Further down this renovation road we will be using Kwila on the exterior changes too, so knowing this, we are blending the outside with the inside so the end result with give us a nice smooth flow and feeling as you transition from outside to inside and room to room. It works well with mid-century modern furniture and as I mentioned, adds some warmth to greys and stainless steel which will also be a big feature in the kitchen as we plan to do a more restaurant/industrial style look in there.
That's it for today. Decomama Downunder has to get back to work. These peach walls ain't gonna paint themselves!
Well, well. well. My oh my, how things can change. That should come as no surprise to me since over the last few years I have been the queen of change, but this one is a complete turnaround since my last blog.
If you read it, you will know that we were faced with being evicted from the house we have been renting. The owners had apparently come into some difficult financial times and needed to move back in, do a few improvements and sell the house to cover some debts. We had talked many times over our 18 month test drive of this humble home of the changes we would make if it were ours. The house itself is very ordinary, but the quiet and nature that surrounds it has been a joy - especially to me, since I am here all day while my S.O. is off winning the bread.
It was almost painful for me to leave well enough alone. There were very strict rules around the rental that really prevented me from doing anything. I could not even replace the door handles on the cabinets or paint or replace light fixtures (OK, I admit, I did change two light fixtures). After all, it's what I do. Living with dated lighting and a host of other things that were well past their best before dates was a challenge for me. Well, I no longer have to hold back. Long story short...we bought the house.
We avoid moving and I get to have at er! It has been just shy of a week since our offer was accepted and I have been like a whirling dervish ever since. I can hardly focus on one thing at a time. I feel like a greyhound just out of the gate, but instead of one rabbit to chase, there are about a dozen. We both agreed one of the first things to go would be the hideous toilet roll holder that we have had to look at several times a day for 18 months now. The only reason it was still there at all was because we knew if we took it off the wall, it would leave a big mess on the drywall. It had been there for a very long time, probably original to this 70's house. It was actually two ugly holders in one. (cue the Certs Commercial) The original holder had broken some time over the years and instead of replacing it, they just glued another ugly holder over top of the base of the first one. Both were white at one time but now they were that ghastly yellow that occurs with cheap plastic over time, not unlike the stained fingers of a grizzled old smoker.
That decided, it would be the first room to tackle. The water closet. As we suspected, the holder was reluctant to leave it's home of 40 odd years. I kind of get it, as I did not want to leave after 18 months, so maybe this old holder was on to something. I tried prying it away from the wall but years of paint held it tight. I abandoned my screw driver and got a sharp edged chisel and hammer and still it resisted. Seriously? Knowing there was no hope at this point of avoiding a sizable hole in the drywall, I took a couple of good swings directly at it with a hammer. Whack! Whack! She hung on. Whack again. The front piece flew off, leaving the old base still intact. Now I was getting pissed. I summoned my inner wild woman and smashed the bloody thing to smithereens with a few more swings. Bits of plastic flew violently about until it finally came away and landed on the floor, leaving a couple of wall anchors clinging to the edges of the holes in the drywall and exposing the gory underbelly of 40 years of mildew and old blue paint that lived beneath. Eeewwww.
Surely this will be just the beginning of many "eeewwwws" to come. The water closet renovation is underway. A new toilet was selected and purchased and the room has been painted. We are still hemming and hawing over the details of the space. Believe it or not, the roll holder is still undecided. With little else going on in that room to really make it unique or interesting, the roll holder really needs to be the main attraction. It is the first thing you see when you stand at the doorway and it was pretty much decided until we chose a light fixture that forced a rethink. So there we were in the middle of the night Friday, wide awake brainstorming what we now refer to as Toilet Roll Holder as Art. We are almost at a conclusion as to what it will look like. Suffice to say, it will not be a quick trip to the shops to grab something simple. Because, let's face it, that would just be too damn easy.
I have taken before photos and once this space is complete, you will see the after here. The logical next space will be the laundry room as it is adjacent to the water closet and I plan to carry the paint colours out there.
Decomama has a job. It feels good to be working again.
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