Apologies! It has been a couple of week since my last blog post, because it turns out, renovating a house and BLOGGING about renovating a house is quite time-consuming.
But I am very happy to report that all is going along very smoothly. Our builder is fantastic and moving at a cracking pace. Since it’s been a few weeks, I thought I would break this into two blog posts. The following photos are what the house looked like a couple of weeks ago… there has been a lot more done since, which I will show you in upcoming posts. To refresh your memory, this is what the back of the house looked like a couple of months ago…
- This photo was taken the day of the auction 5 years ago, I don’t actually know the people in it… ha!
After demolishing the back of the house, the builder started building a new side wall. He built it a metre closer to the neighbour’s house, so we will have a much wider living room, but it cuts off our side access to the backyard. This isn’t a problem though as we have rear-lane access at the back of our house. This kind of wall is called a Brick Veneer Wall. It means the outside wall is made of brick and the inside wall is made of timber. This is cheaper than building a double brick wall.
- The gap between our house and our neighbour’s house used to be 1.3 meters. Now it is only 30cm. We gained an extra meter in width!
In this shot, you can see the brick wall on the outside of the timber stud-wall. This wall will eventually be built all the way up to the second story.
Here is a shot looking back at the house from the backyard. A new floor has been laid over the existing concrete slab – the builder lay down a timber frame and nailed particle board onto it. We will lay floorboards on top once the walls and roof are up! Where I’m standing will eventually be the new kitchen.
- Baby bump is growing at the same rate as the house.
This shot is taken looking into the backyard… what a mess! One of the best things about this house, is that the backyard faces north. This means we will have sun streaming into our living room throughout the day. Sadly, I took this photo on a rainy day so you can’t marvel at the sunshine.
You can see that the floor is nearly a metre off the ground, so we will need to have a couple of steps down into the backyard from the living area.
Something I’ve discovered about renovating, is that you need to be a few steps ahead of the builder. This means I am often making decisions and placing orders for things so they will arrive in time for the builder to install them. Otherwise, the builder sits around waiting for them. This delays the build AND costs money as you are still paying the builder each day.
I have already ordered doors and windows and am waiting on them to be built and delivered this week. Will show you pics once they arrive!
I hope you are all enjoying the silly season!
