My Christmas Miracle

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus and he came a little early to my house this year. There is little I can say that can convey how thrilled I am about my new kitchen, so I will let the photos speak for themselves. I still have to install the window treatment, so the window is currently bare, but I just couldn't wait to share the new space with all of you who have been following my renovation journey. 

In case you are skeptical of miracles, allow me to start with the BEFORE photo. You may change your mind. 

Kitchen BEFORE 

(not shown - a florescent overhead light-the only light)

Drum roll please.......

Flooring Detail

Pull-out Pantry (much needed)

Benchtop (countertop) Detail

This happened in six weeks. There are people to thank. Our cabinet maker, Brad Weis and his wife Sheree, who put up with my many detail changes during the planning stage and assured me the time-line was doable,  Steve's brother, Brad Shields, who is the electrical genius in the family and offered up his services at the family rate! Rob Griinke the builder who added a partition wall and seamlessly covered up all the old powerpoint holes in the walls and ceiling - I even forgive the drywall dust that still lingers! Thanks also to our very sweet and kind next door neighbour, Trudie, who provided a few home cooked dinners and volunteered to give the place a once over before I arrived home.

But most of all I want to thank my amazing, hardworking man, master of demolition, tiling, plumbing, painting and project management, Stephen Shields who managed to pull off this job in six short weeks motivated by a deadline, but more importantly, and this I know for sure, his desire to make a dream come true for me...my first ever brand new kitchen designed by both of us and inspired by our favourite kitchen at Kyeema, our Fraser Island treehouse getaway where we have cooked and shared many memorable meals.  Thank you so much my darling, my Santa, my love. 

Manufacturer Credits

Cooker - Smeg (gas cooktop, electric oven)

Dishwasher - Bosch

Fridge - Samsung

Microwave - LG

Cabinetry - B.S. Weis Cabinets

Mixer - Gessi Emporio

Sink - Oliveri

She Cleaned up Nicely

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. 

The Doors

Out with the old

Aahh yes, THE DOORS! And I ain't talkin about Jim Morrison. Mind you, it was not unlike being a rider on the storm this weekend as the re-hanging of the interior doors that I expected would take a couple of hours max, turned into an all day event on Saturday. Did I mention how much I love renovating? 

I took the time to remove all the interior doors and hinges and door handles so I could sand and paint and replace the hardware. For the last 10 days the doors have been on saw horses out on my patio undergoing a transformation. Sanding. Priming. Two coats of paint. Both sides. I was so stoked to see them back in place in their new shining glory. The new stainless steel hinges were screwed on and as it really is a two person job, Saturday was the big day. We carefully carried each one to its original home and reattached them to the freshly painted architraves. As we swung each one to check the fit, it was as though the doors had been on a 10 day cruise feasting and drinking and putting on the mandatory 5-8 pounds. They would not close. They crowded the stops. How could this be? We bought the exact same hinge size...or so we thought. When we held a new hinge up to an original hinge we discovered the problem. The space between the pin and the plate was off by a couple of mm. Hardly noticeable at all, but enough to cause the newly mounted doors to resist closing. 

So, we had a couple of options. Move the stops further on the jambs and ruin my brand new paint job that took two weeks, or move the screw holes over on each door. The latter seemed like a less invasive procedure, but it required major doctoring, as the holes only needed to move a little bit meaning the old holes would need filling. We were off to our second home to get more supplies. I knew I should have bought shares in Bunnings before we started this journey! So, we had to put some wood and glue in a total of 24 holes, let it dry and re-drill new holes. Hence, a two hour job took all day. We reminded each other that we were experiencing mere first world problems but it was still frustrating and by the time beer o'clock rolled around we were more than ready since the fit was only one problem.

The striker plates for the new handles were a different size than the original plates. On Saturday we re-mounted the old plates so the doors would close and decided to search out replacement plates another day. On Sunday we were back at Bunnings - they know us on a first name basis there now, and were thrilled to find the same size plates in a matching finish...but only 3 out of 4. Surely no one will notice that one is shiny chrome and not brushed nickel. We could turn it into a game, like those "find the difference" photos in magazines that I used to love as a kid. 

This is why I still do not have a before and after shot again today. No one space is complete yet. I do have a before and after of the hardware and doors, which is a pretty good sample of the contrast between old and new. The doors all work now and they look fresh and updated and now I can leave the confines of the hallway and move into the lounge room with my paint brushes and rollers. The laundry room is still waiting on the stainless steel backsplash and shelving to be installed. The backsplash is more than a week late as the fabricator is suddenly swamped with work and our small job likely got moved to the bottom of the priority list. 

In with the new

My plan is to live with the simplicity of the plain white doors in the hallway for a bit and then decide if I think they need to be embellished with some decorative trim application down the road. I don't want any traditional moulding as the goal is to keep things more modern and clean-lined...but I am not ruling out a more contemporary treatment to dress them up a bit.

They have already come a long way for now. Think I'll let them live in their new skin for awhile. They are fresh enough to make me want to sing "Hello, I love you" and what door doesn't know and love that song?

Botox for the Home

I am using my blog this morning to avoid painting my ceiling. There is only one thing worse than sanding my architraves and that is painting the ceilings. It's messy and by the end of the job my neck will be crying uncle louder than the voice that gleefully announced - "No worries, I can paint the whole house by myself!"

I have also spent the last few days testing various shades of grey on the walls of the living room (lounge room in Australian). I now have a dozen splotches painted in various locations of three shades that graduate from too light to too dark and am leaning toward the one in the middle that in classic Goldilock fashion seems "just right". However, before I commit, the sun needs to come out to confirm my choice and just when I needed "sunny Queensland" to live up to its name, clouds fill the morning sky here and are not giving me a reading on the possible "right" grey. Had I got my confirmation, I would be off to Earle's Paint Place to order up a few cans of "Athens" grey. Instead, these clouds are forcing me to get my painting cap on (literally) and hold my head tilted backward for the next few hours as my face enjoys a spray mist of latex just to add insult to injury to my sprained neck muscles. 

Once I get into the painting, I am OK. It is rather meditative actually. It is akin to mowing the lawn; each swipe of the brush or roller improving the look of the wall, covering the old ugly colour and other blemishes, like photo shop for drywall. A miracle really. It just took my laundry room from 1982 to 2015. Talk about transformation! It was like a wrinkle cream that actually worked. Hmmm, could I be on to something? Maybe a bit of ceiling paint on my forehead will iron out that furrow between my brows that seems more and more prominent with each passing day. 

If it works, I'll let you know. I will text you as I am boarding my private jet to Mustique as hundreds of women line up at Earle's for a gallon of  Decomama's Flat Ceiling White Miracle in a Can. 

A girl can dream. ;-)

Decomama Downunder...Renovating - Week One.

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.