The Bathroom... and the rest - Part 2

Last weekend, my wonderful Mum took all 3 of my children overnight on Saturday so that I could get the painting done before she went off on a 6 week European holiday. She has only ever taken the older two for the night before, so I was a little bit apprehensive about her taking Red, but I knew if I wanted to get it all done I needed to have no children, especially no grumpy 2 and a bit year olds who have a tendency to do exactly what you don't want them to do!

I spent much of Saturday morning masking off the bits that I didn't want painted the new colour and putting down drop cloths. Mum collected the kids around 10.30, they were gone by 11. I popped into Port Chalmers and got myself some easy 'meals' that required no cooking in my now out of service kitchen - a couple of filled rolls.

After 12pm when I had had my last Skype with my wonderful Amir in Sweden, I snaffled a bit of lunch and did the last of the preparing to paint bits. Then Salena arrived ready to paint.

I had her start undercoating the bathroom, which she did in record time, then she moved on to the toilet and the hallway, and eventually met me halfway around the dining room.

While Salena was undercoating, I started the first coat of ceiling white in the kitchen. I hadn't realised just how cream-with-kitchen-gunk-spots the ceiling was in the kitchen until that crisp, white ceiling white paint went up! What a difference! Truly amazing!

Bathroom BEFORE

Bathroom AFTER

After I had done the first coat on the kitchen ceiling, I started undercoating the kitchen and dining room. When I met Salena halfway around the kitchen, we took a quick brush and roller-washing break, and waited a little longer to make sure the undercoat was dry.

Kitchen ceiling - the white is the first coat of ceiling white, the cream is the previous colour.

Salena then set to work in the bathroom with the enamel paint that she kindly donated for the occasion. Both the walls and ceiling were done in incredibly smelly enamel paint.

Toilet and hall BEFORE                Toilet and hall AFTER - Yes, I still need to paint the cupboard door

In the meantime I did the second coat of ceiling white in the kitchen, then started putting the first top coat of colour on the walls - British Paints 'Bubbly' It is a very neutral colour, with just a hint of pink, so it lovely and warm, but makes the room feel light and airy, and more importantly, it makes everything seem bigger! I managed to whip around the kitchen and dining room in record time, then out into the hall by the time Salena had done the first coat of enamel in the bathroom.

Soon after, she headed home to feed her family. I am incredibly grateful that I had her to give me a hand, otherwise the weekend would have been much longer and less amusing!

Kitchen BEFORE and AFTER

After I finished the hall and the toilet, I stopped for my dinner break, watched some rubbish TV and managed to get paint on my leather couch - I was a bit cross with myself about that! It is still there too, though I know it will wear off eventually. Before I started painting again, I called and woke Amir for the day, then it was straight back into painting - the second and final top coat of 'Bubbly'

Dining room BEFORE and AFTER

Later, on one of my facebook update breaks, with a picture to update of course, my neighbour Sue said she'd pop over with a bottle of wine, so I had another wee break, and a lovely chat. Then it was back into finishing the top coat. I surprised myself by being in bed by 11.30!

Looking toward the kitchen from the hall - I really must re-attach that laundry door soon!

Sunday morning, I woke up to a totally new house! When I walked out the lounge door to the back of the house, it was so bright and airy, and smelled like fresh paint - I was in heaven! I had left the window open in the bathroom over night to try and get rid of some of the paint odour, but it was still pretty strong. I closed the window and turned the fan heater back on. 

Looking from the dining room toward the kitchen.

I love having the fridge hiding around the corner out of the way!

When I was ready to paint again, I headed straight for the bathroom and did the top coat in there. I'm not sure what the name of the colour that is in the bathroom is. It is also neutral, but there is paint over the colour name on the tin. A Dulux paint this time. I had never painted with enamel paint before. Very runny. I managed to get a bit of a headache from the fumes, so ended up taking a couple of panadol. 

British Paints 'Bubbly'

Upon closer inspection, I could see that due to the dark colours I was trying to cover up, the turquoise in the kitchen and dining room and the olive green in the toilet, I needed to give a THIRD top coat in most places where those dark colours had been. That didn't take very long at all. I think I was all finished painting by lunch time.

THEN I was all finished! I did a little happy dance and started to fold up and put away all the drop cloths, and take all the masking tape and newspaper off and put the clean bit in the recycle bin.

The curse of the undercoat!

The end result is one that I am super-duper impressed with! A week and a half later, I still walk into the kitchen and am surprised that it so calming. I actually find myself wanting to just sit at the dining table and relax there now - something I hadn't really ever considered doing before. In the bathroom it is also amazing! I took my first bath since the renovation today - I managed to languish in the bath for an hour! Decadent I know - but I have a nasty bug and no children today - so a luxury I afforded myself. I didn't open my eyes only to want to squeeze them tightly closed again, I could open my eyes and enjoy being in a peaceful bathroom. The toilet too, looks fantastic (who ever thought I would utter that about a toilet?) The previous olive green was so dark, I wanted to turn on the light every time I went in there, but now there is no need to turn the light on during daylight hours, the light, bright colour on the walls solves that problem! As for the previously yellow, and least offensive coloured, hallway, it too is light and airy. 

Now for all of you who are wondering, how on earth did a solo mother afford all this paint? Well, quite simply, I had everything I needed already! I bought 20L of the paint I knew I wanted to paint all the walls of the house in 3.5 years ago when we bought the house. I still need to paint some ceilings, because I am out of ceiling white, but that can wait.

The entire project cost me only time and $1 for the bathroom mirror I won an auction for on Trade Me! How is that for renovation on a shoestring? :D

The Bathroom.... and the rest PART1

On Saturday, a fortnight ago now, my 'thinking' about doing up the bathroom moved up a gear. I stripped off the rest of the hideous wallpaper! Then my friend Salena (who offered to lend a hand with the painting) suggested we also do the kitchen and dining room at the same time.

And so, we embarked upon re-painting the LAST of the house that still needed to be re-painted! Not JUST the bathroom, kitchen and dining room, but also the toilet and the back hallway! I don't do things by halves, you understand!

So, I stripped the dining room with the help of everyone else in the house. Part way through this process, when the wallpaper wasn't falling off in the way I had hoped it would, I suddenly had an epiphany - I had a garment steamer left over from when I owned my shop. I filled it with water, plugged it in, and lo and behold, the garment steamer was now a nifty wallpaper steamer too!

Once the stripping was done in the dining room, even with half turquoise walls, it already looked SO much bigger and brighter. That night after the kids went to bed I also stripped the friezes from around the top of the toilet walls and the kitchen walls. I also managed to give myself a really fantastic steam burn with my improvised garment steamer come wallpaper steamer. It was late, around 11pm, I had about 2m of frieze to remove still, so as any good DIY-er would do, I swore, got down from the bench, turned the steamer off and stood with my hand under cold running water for a bit, while looking up at the last bit of frieze muttering under my breath. When the stinging had stopped, I applied the magic burn cream and carried on. The next morning I wasn't in any pain at all! There is still a big patch of rough skin that I am moisturising regularly, but it is healing nicely!

The next day, Sunday, I plastered all the blemishes. My goodness there were a LOT of blemishes!!! Salena came over in the late afternoon and lent a hand as well - after plastering for so long it was good to have a fresh set of eyes to go over the walls and see any bits that I had missed.

Some of the plastering in the bathroom

Then it was Monday. I got out my sander and I sanded every piece of wall. Plaster dust everywhere. I also went around with a whiteboard marker as I sanded putting a mark on the wall if there was a piece of wall that had been missed. When the sanding and marking was done, you guessed it, I did more plastering!

Covered in sanding dust. And yes, I AM wearing bright red lipstick under my mask! A girl can still look pretty, even when doing DIY!

Tuesday. Thank goodness the kids are with their father on Monday and Tuesday!! I sanded again. Then I started washing down the walls and ceilings. Very tedious! But after the tedium of prep, comes the fun of painting, then the delightfulness of the end product!

Sanding done in the toilet. 

My wee step I made at carpentry class is fantastic! I get SO much use out of it. 

Also, there was a LOT of gouges in the walls in there... 

I hate to think what the previous people did in there! Ha!

I don't enjoy the prep terribly much at all, but the painting and the end result are always made 100x better by good prep, so I do it anyway, much as I hate it! I learned this the hard way!

The Bathroom

Lately I have been thinking about sorting up my awful bathroom. Last February we had a new shower put in, and since then it has remained un-gib-stopped where the new gib has been put up, there is a gap all the way around the shower box where the old one was removed where there are no cork tiles, and the fact that, as with the rest of my house when it was purchased about 3.5 years ago, it was clearly decorated by someone colourblind who managed to secure a job lot of miss-tints!

The new shower, put in February 2011

The colour combination...

As soon as I walked into the bathroom when we were looking at buying the place, I felt a little seasick, maybe even a little drunk... if the delightful single coat of olive green on the lower half of the bathroom wasn't enough, the wallpaper on the top half was enough to make your eyes water! Burgundy, green and cream vertical stripes, quite close together, and then some kind of celtic-inspired boarder around the top... oh my! I said that it would be one of the first rooms to be tackled. Um. Yes, clearly my priorities changed. Admittedly, eventually I got used to not looking at the walls when I went in.

The bathroom immediately after moving in.

The shower immediately after moving in.

Check out the maroon sink - it shows EVERY single dried speck of toothpaste!

In fact, the left vanity door is really only held on now, because I have a lock on the handles, to stop Red getting in there!

Over the past few weeks, I have just been therapeutically tearing off wallpaper when I have been in the bathroom, a little rip here, a little rip there, and the white undercoat underneath is rather refreshing!

Today I have done a bit more, and it is thankfully looking quite bare - though I will need to get in there with my scraper soon I think.

The ease of which the paper is now coming off is helped considerably by the fact the pull cord has come off of my bathroom heater, and now condensation is beading on the ceiling again, just like it used to, pre-installation of the heater 3 years ago. This is not so great - I really must get someone to fix it - being on the south side of the house, and most likely uninsulated, it is like a fridge in there in winter! I was going to give it a go myself (I killed the house mains and went in with my toolbox, but found I didn't have the right kind of screwdriver) I went and knocked on the neighbours door in the weekend - he is an electrician - but there was no answer. I fear I will end up paying someone to do it for me *gasp!*

Mostly stripped walls in one corner - and the offending heater!

I have arranged with my Mum to take the 3 kids away for both days on the weekend of the 11th and 12th of August, and my friend Salena (another Handy-Mummy, in fact!) will come over and we will blitz the bathroom and toilet walls, and if I can manage to get myself organised to get some cork tiles and sealer etc, we will do that too. SO many other things I want to do to that bathroom, but sadly I don't have the funds at the moment. But getting it gussied up will make me feel a LOT better about it! Ideally I would like to tile the walls, but it's just not in the budget now.

The same olive green walls in the toilet as well.

The yellow in the hall way also needs to be vanquished soon!

I can just imagine a serene bath while the kids are at their fathers. I open my eyes, and I am soothed by the walls, rather than the assault on my senses that I currently experience!!

What a slacker!

Oh my - I have been rather distracted, clearly!! I have been regularly thinking 'I really *must* write another blog post' but unfortunately thinking about it has been as far as it has gotten!

This Handy Mummy has been getting to grips with single-parenting and, sadly won't be back to the night classes next term - but really, by the end of the term, I wasn't even sure what I should make as I didn't really need anything else made for the house. What I really need to do is do handy things IN the house - soon I need to go and get more wood and a sheet of ply to build the window seat into my bedroom! Plans are underway, I just need time and inclination!

Most recently I have been slowly stripping the hideous wallpaper from my bathroom walls - my heart isn't in it at the moment though, so I have been doing a little therapeutic 'riiip' here and there when I am brushing my teeth etc.

I have also discovered an unlikely new love... I started going to the gym in April and have managed to lose in excess of 11kg so far! I barely recognise myself! I am off to a family function tomorrow night, I'm quite seriously thinking about wearing a name tag 'Hi, I'm Rachel. Remember me? You might not have seen me since I was almost 24kg heavier'

I won't be able to remember details of my classes now, so I'll put up a brief description of the pictures I took, hopefully in the right order! I was up to class 3/8 when I last posted WAY back in May!


This was week 4:

This MDF in a former life was shop fittings from Little Chalmers. All cut and ready for assembly!

Oooh the beginnings of assembly - what could it be?

If you look closely, these are just stacked up, not connected yet - that comes next week!

Week 5:

After some frustration, having made a slight (less than 2cm!) error in my measurements I had to dash home mid-class to get the last 2.4m MDF from my hall way to do the sides!

It is now living behind my front door, full of shoes! The bottom ayer of cubby-holes is almost twice as tall as the others to accommodate boots. 

Week 6:

Marked out the design to cut with the bandsaw

All cut, now all ready for filing and sandpapering to within an inch of its life!

It is ill-advisable to accidentally file ones knuckle with such a beastly sharp file! 

Preferable to only file the wood!!

'Safety first' says Handy Mummy ;)

Mmmmm sawdust!

It looks like thats as far as my photos got! I must not have been thinking about taking photos the last two weeks! The last project is a shelf for my bathroom, once the wallpaper stripping has finished and the gib stopping and painting is done.

Until next time! Hopefully I won't be so long between posts next time!

Carpentry Class: Term 2, Week 3

I left my run a bit late this week. Admittedly I have had many many other things on my mind, and pulling apart another pallet hasn't been high on my list of priorities.

So after realising early this afternoon that it was indeed Wednesday - how it got to this late in the week already is beyond me, quite frankly - I started wondering out loud about exactly what I could make tonight.

I trawled through the plan catalogue on Ana-White.com and decided on this 'Vintage Step Stool' - something for the kids to use to help with baking and cooking in the kitchen. Heres hoping it's not used more for reaching the biscuits from the top shelf instead!

So, after a quick visit to Mitre 10 Mega, I had some dressed pine and a large tub of 50mm screws. I decided I'd just use the last piece of ply I had sitting behind the door in the hall way for the sides.

Vintage Step Stool

All the cuts done

Safety first people - ear muffs and protective glasses before we have fun with the bandsaw ;)

I managed to lose my pencil (ok - I lost it last week, and forgot to find another one) so it had to be pen to mark out where to cut. 2 pieces of ply stuck together to cut the identically.

Oooooh! Bandsaw!

10 minutes later - all cut out. Apparently I'm a 'wildcat' - quote from Robert there haha

Oops - I forgot you're not supposed to file your knuckles - just the wood!

Two sides all ready - filed and sanded.

The two bottom supports attached

The two top supports attached as well.

I really could have kicked myself! I picked up the wrong width of pine for the tops of the steps! So I needed to improvise. I used ply instead. It looks OK, but I'm not as happy with it as I hoped I would be. Never mind - kids won't care!

All done - side view!

I need to figure out what I'm going to make next week. This took only an hour and a half - and had I not needed to wait for the table saw to make the cuts for the tops of the steps after realising I had the wrong size, it would have been about 15 minutes less! Super-easy project, but will be very handy in my kitchen!

Long time, no blog

Back, by popular demand (or something similar haha)!

It has been a while since I last blogged, and to be fair, it feels like a long time since I did much worthy of blogging about.

I am almost at week 3 of the 'Intermediate/Advanced' Carpentry course at LPHS - I'll tell you about what I made in week one and two shortly.

I'm thinking back right now, trying to remember just exactly WHAT I have done in a little over a month that has been handy. In the last three weeks, I have discovered a new love - the gym! Those of you know know me well, will know that the gym and I have never been good friends, but I have been going 4 times a week, and have lost 6.2kg in that time! That is very exciting, I'm down to a size 16, probably for the first time since I *was* 16!

Red turned 2 on Easter Monday, and she has started kindy, the big kids are back at school now after the two week school holiday that followed on after Easter. And the biggest news of all, The DIY-Impaired husband is moving out next Monday, after a long time of us not being terribly happy together. We remain friends, and he will be living close by, but for the foreseeable future, it will be the kids and I. Good thing I'm no weak woman ;) And yes - I'm totally fine about this! I don't need any sympathy :)


Week 1 and 2 of Intermediate/Advanced Carpentry Class


Carrying on from my last carpentry class post, when I had pulled apart that pallet, taken it to class and dressed the timber, I used it in the first class of term to start making a headboard for my Red. It took 2 weeks classes to complete (4 hours all up) and again, was a learning experience, but I'm pretty pleased with how it came out! There are things I would probably do differently next time - and there WILL be a next time, because I need one for my big girls bed as well!

Week 1

Nailing the frame together

Uh-oh, a wonky nail!

The two bottom boards are on, and I decided to put a wee shelf on the headboard too, for keeping a drink, books, little treasures etc on. 

This pic is the shelf in position, clamped on, waiting to be screwed on.

And another angle!

All screwed on - this did make it much less easy to attach the other boards of course! 

Improvisation in the form of clamping the frame to the work bench was used after this park was done.

The finished headboard, before legs and finishing were done.

And another angle!

Week Two

Legs going on!

Somewhere between drawing up my plan originally and the first week of term 2, it went walk abouts (possibly something to do with having 3 children?) So I needed to draw something else up quickly before T2,W2 so I knew finished measurements, and placement of screw holes to attach the headboard to the bed. This was my rough plan I drew up before class, when I was scrabbling about behind the bed measuring spaces for screw holes! THEN I found I misplaced my pencil! 

The finished product! I need to stain or varnish it now - so it still isn't attached to the bed, but I want to protect it from Miss Red and her drawing skills first ;)

So there we have it! I am quite pleased with it really, though, I know there are a few things I would do differently for the next one.

Week 3 is this Wednesday, so I really do need to get out there and pull another pallet apart, as I'm in need of another 3 slats!