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!!

Tuesday, Carpentry Day

I do believe that Tuesday has become carpentry day.

I made a flying trip to Mitre 10 this afternoon when Red woke up from her sleep. I bought a pack of 38mm screws, a large spring (the type you put on a gate to make it self-closing) and a twin pack of hooks and eyes. We made it home just in time to walk around and collect the big kids from school.

When all 3 of them were happily playing, I took myself out to the gate (yes, again), and attached the spring brackets and spring, then tightened the spring so it will close the gate once it is opened. It took a little trial and error but I think I got it just perfect. Then I attached the eye to the gate and the hook to the fence post. This is for when we actually need the gate to stay open for any period of time - say for bringing something large in or out.

Self-closing spring and hook and eye on the gate.

Carpentry Class #6


The mood in the class tonight just seemed a bit off for some reason.

I ended up crawling around on the floor screwing my seat together, which wasn't terribly comfortable, as this morning, walking home from music and movement group with Red on my back in the Manduca, I rolled my ankle and skinned my knee. My ankle was fine about 3 minutes later, but my knee has been stinging the rest of the day.

It actually started to look like something tonight!

A rather large annoyance tonight, was that there were about 4 drills in the room, but only one had a partial charge that was useful enough, the rest were so un-charged that they were next to useless. I did see that there was a spare battery for one drill in the charger, but the charger wasn't plugged in! I would have thought that they would have charged them over night so that the school Wood Technology students could use the the following day. Being me, I plugged it in, and when the partially charged drill (which was being shared by 3 people!) pretty much ran out, I figured I had nothing to lose by at least trying the charging battery, which at this stage had been charging for about 15 minutes at the most. Imagine my surprise when it actually seemed to have a bit of oomph behind it! So I managed to get the seat looking like a seat tonight!

7 pieces of wood, 30 screws and some glue. Now looking a lot like it is supposed to!

I actually left a bit early tonight. Really, I couldn't do much else. I did think about taking my own drill this week, but it didn't happen. Next week I will make sure I do. And I will make sure it has a full charge in it too!


I am thinking now that I won't put the fancy looking feet on it - they just don't look sturdy enough and I don't have enough ply (in one length) to make fancy bits for the front and back. I think it will be better for the girls at the height it is now too - it will eventually have a squab cushion on the top of it too, which will give it more height.


More Planning


This afternoon I had the kids help me do some measuring.

I am in the very early planning stages of a play fort for the back yard. I established that it needs to be 1.5m from the back fence and probably 2m or 2.5m from the hedge along the side boundary. I think it will be between 1.5-2m square. It will be raised, underneath there will be a 'storage cage' for all the outside toys - bikes, ride-ons, naughty children (haha!) etc) Up on the platform, I want to build a really cool, functional play house, with a deck. There will be a slide to come down on. I also plan to put a large beam out from the side, with an a-frame at the other end, and I plan to attach 3 swings made from old tyres, suspended by chains.

I'm really excited about it! But I think it will probably cost an absolute bomb!! The kind of wood I will need isn't cheap! But the kids will have such a lot of fun in it!


Tools

I managed to win a Trade Me auction for a jig saw last week - $30! It arrived on Friday, but I didn't get to open it straight away as we had a very busy Friday and weekend. When I did open it, I was amused that a spider came crawling out! DIY-impaired husband, who is also scared of spiders, was not so impressed. I may have to employ spiders to guard all my power tools from him in the future!

Oh, the possibilities!

I am sitting here with a sleeping Red on me. I can't do a lot right now, and aside from thinking about dinner (which may just end up being fish and chips for the kids, and a lovely curry from India Garden in Port Chalmers for me, right now) I'm sitting here thinking about my next project.


For those of you who might be reading who don't know me personally, last year I took the plunge and opened a wee shop in Port Chalmers. It was full of locally produced products and clothing for babies and children - I called it 'Little Chalmers'. I did most of the work in there single handedly, with a then 10 month old Red on my back. I did have a few merry helpers too, who helped me over a weekend painting the shop and in the week leading up to opening. I made shelving units and other bits and pieces for in there too. It was all done on a shoestring, so being able to do all these things myself was a godsend!


Unfortunately, just as I felt like I was getting somewhere, out of the blue I had a letter from my landlord saying he wanted my shop back for his own purposes. Just over a month later, I was out of the shop, and my freshly painted bedroom had to be used to house all the stock that had unceremoniously been dumped in my house. Technically I was then running an online shop, but when there was ONE sale in just over a month, and I had to start PAYING for the website, I decided to just cut my losses and close down completely.

Ok, I'm about to get to the point of this post!

So, tonight is the night, I am having one last hurrah - a closing down SALE - on Facebook. It starts at 8pm. I am desperate to purge the rest of the stock that I own (a lot of it was on consignment, therefore, it went back to it's owner last week, aside from a couple of lots of stock). When the stock is gone, it means that the only thing standing in the way of me building the window seat in the bay window in my bedroom is my own stuff! 


I am terribly excited! It means that it is nearly within the realm of possibility that I may, one day (soon?) have more storage in my house - villas don't seem to be big on built-in storage, y'know. It also means that I will get to use tools! I plan on recycling some of the framing wood that I used in the shop, to frame up the window seat, although I don't think I have quite enough - so that means I also get to buy more wood!

This is currently the view from my bed, where my window seat will be. 

Just think of the possibilities!!

Watch this space.