When my grandmother needed to sell to buy her way into a retirement place, we bought the house from her, not fully knowing the condition. It was a little tired, for sure, needed a bit of work, and her boyfriend had driven into the place a few years ago (!)... but we were not certain of exactly how much had been covered up.
For starters, the house, which is 3-bedroom, had 10 or more DIFFERENT wallpaper patterns. Sometimes multiples in the same room/hallway! In the three or so years since we have moved in, we have:
- Replaced the kitchen
- Replaced almost all the curtains and blinds
- Repainted the kitchen and dining room
- Installed ducted heating
- Replaced the tile roof
- Replaced the guttering all round
- Remodeled the bathroom with a new shower and vanity, and a resealed bath
- Removed wallpaper from the laundry, toilet, and lounge
- Replacement of some electrical, with more to come
- Removed a massive pile of junk from the back corner of the block, as well as a LOT of greenery removal (overgrown gardens)
This Christmas holidays, we decided that the lounge room needed to be repainted. No big problem, you would think.... room itself is about 6m x 5m. Unfortunately, due to the house being 45 or so years old, and with a minimum of maintenance having been performed over the years, we have had a slow time of it. Filling cracks all through the room has been a nightmare, with the window frames moving all over the shop... and the cracks in the plaster due to the leaks in the roof have needed to be filled and sanded and filled again.
At this point, I guess I should say that I work in IT, and have very little experience in proper house renovation (painting, plastering, etc etc etc).
The big idea we had with the lounge was to remove the old gas heater / furnace, installed in the chimney area, and board up the hole in the wall to give us an extra half-metre of loungeroom space. It seemed soooooo simple....
. I also don't like plasterwork....Alex
