Bog carpentry

Real craftsmen/women please don't judge us.

Remember, last week when Jason was figuring out how to re-mould the decorative top for the batwing lattice door? Read here to refresh your memory.

Well, he's done it. Have a look in the photograph below and see how he's matched the top bits. For those not in the know, it looks for all the world like there had never been an issue with the doors.

After shot of the batwing lattice doors

Jason's managed to shape and fashion a new decorative top with plain old builder's bog. Yep, a wannabe tradie's best friend...guaranteed to make you the Rodin of the carpentry world.

It's a slightly unorthodox approach to fix the problem but it seemed better than the alternative, which was to get new doors made. The batwing lattice doors are not a standard size - it would probably have cost us the best part of a grand to get new ones custom-made...

So, for about $25 for the bog and hardener set, the doors have been salvaged.

And now Jason's OCD twitch has dissipated substantially and all is right with the world. Amen.

before shot of the batwing doors for the sake of comparison

Dinky window reveal

That dinky little window in the bathroom is now finished. I probably shouldn't keep calling it that, because it doesn't look dinky at all now it has been primed and has a couple of coats of gloss white.

Single-pane casement window with chrome casement stays and handle

It's a major improvement to what was there.

The old window which was just odd bits of louvre glass which could not open or close.

Dirty little window

Having the window custom made was a good experience for us, especially as we have mostly worked with salvaged joinery. It is so much easier fitting something new than the old stuff according to Jason. It just slotted into position, as it should.

The little window cost $135 not including the fittings. And it is another small project we can tick off our list.

Bathroom: before and after

We are happy with how our bathroom looks now. If we had imagined that painting the wall tiles would've looked this good we would've done it at the very start of our sojourn at the Sow's Ear. 

Although we are not really advocates of temporary renovations, sometimes it's just necessary... particularly if you are 'umming and ahhing' about whether you intend to stay in a home forever or planning larger long-term renovations where rooms may need to be changed to accommodate a growing family.

Painting the bathroom tiles was a quick and cheap fix of our bathroom. The old beige tiles and grey grout did no favours to the out-of-square room. Every flaw was noticeable. The higgledy piggledy grouting and dated feature tiles stood out like the proverbial - the white tile paint disguises it so well.

We would totally recommend painting tiles as a temporary measure if you are unhappy with how your tiles look...but Jason and I agree that white is the only colour we would consider for such a task (I'm sure others have had equal success with colours though). 

The total cost of the tile painting was less than $150 for the paint. We used a one litre tin of tile primer and two tins of white tile paint. The process of painting the tiles was quite easy. Prepping the walls is probably the most important step to ensure a nice even finish.

Bear in mind that painted tiles will never really be as nice as a good professional tiling job. It won't have the same longevity...but I guess we will find out as we live with it. But considering how dubious we were of tile paint, it is worth a shot if you are despairing of your tile situation!

Just to refresh everyone's memory, here are some photographs of the Sow's Ear's bathroom from about 2009 when we first moved in.

Before:

Our old bathroom was quite serviceable but just needed a freshen up until we decide what to do with a full bathroom renovation...

Beige tile, grey grout, cream painted wall, ceiling and windows. 

timber vanity, timber mirror and towel rails

Country style bathroom with beige and green decorative feature tile

After:
This mini bathroom makeover has really been a work in progress for the past few weeks but with the huge advantage of allowing us to still access the bathroom. It was never out of action for too long...which is important in a one bathroom family house.

white painted tile, white walls, windows and ceiling.
We also removed the bars across the windows which we think  were installed to stop small children from falling through the opening!

We started with painting the door white, it was originally cream. A traditional chrome hook on the door provides extra hanging space.

After the fiasco of the dodgy chrome towel rails that we purchased earlier, I went out and bought a towel rail ladder. We picked it up at the Bathroomwarehouse in Newstead who provided particularly nice service, hence the shout out. Nice is always good.

A towel ladder gives us more towel hanging space. This is the round profile Heirloom brand.
I also bought a couple of new dark grey towels that were on sale.

We still have some of the el cheapo fittings like the towel ring and toilet holder...we're hanging on to them until  they fall apart. Hopefully they won't, but we're not worried because we know where we can get new ones without too much fuss.

Painted white vanity.
An old Dickies towel from the 70s and makes a cool, yet substantial hand towel

Painting the vanity and changing the handles have made it disappear completely. It never really deserved to be a feature in the bathroom. We like vanities like this to just blend quietly into the background. We also painted the heavy timber mirror frame so that it blends right back into the walls.

I'm loving these new bathroom runners that are around.
It's really soft and will be nice over the winter months...before it  becomes a hot mouldy mess. Ha!
We've left the floor tile as they were.

Jason built new window architraves to match the rest of the Sow's Ear.
He's the details man. The rubber ducks have a nice spot in which to reside.

We still have a few small things left to do on the bathroom, but that's pretty much it for now. Yippee!  You can read all our bathroom posts here if you're not up-to-date with what we have been doing. 

Anyone out there tempted to paint over some ugly tile? Tell me because I know your pain.

Boys' bedroom: before and after photos

I was planning on publishing a big long blog post about redoing the boy's bedroom today...but instead I'm just going to show you a big long pictorial of the room. You'll be able to read all the details in the next blog post.

What we have is a bedroom that our two youngest boys can share for the next few years until we build in some rooms underneath the house. Son #2 is seven years old, while Son #3 is four and they are little rascals!

This room would have originally been the Sow's Ear's master bedroom, given it is such a generous size. We are able to comfortably fit two king single beds into the room and it has good clothes storage in the built-in cupboards that were here when we moved in.

I hope you'll enjoy the little tour of the room's evolution.

So here are the afters:

Renovated boy's bedroom in a Queenslander house

Repainting the ceiling has freshened up this room no end. Vintage Danish glass pendant was purchased second-hand 

Freshly painted white walls are a perfect match with framed vintage Cuban movie art

The boys have a place to hang their bags when they enter the room

New shelves and if you squint you'll see Obi-wan riding a horse. They have a collection of Simba knights and horses. There is also a sprinkling of their own artworks.

Gloss white doors make the built-in cupboards disappear in the room. 

The architectural glass and decorative architraves need only the simplest of window treatments. 

Vintage Anna Castelli  Ferrieri componobili cabinet which used to be in Son#1's room. We swapped furniture. Neutral rug adds warmth to an all white room.

Now these images are the befores. (As in the year that we moved to the Sow's Ear in 2009)

This is the bedroom when we moved in. You'll note the cot and change table. This room has evolved from a toddler/baby room to two growing boys sharing a room.

Brown louvre doors. What can I say?

The young occupants back in 2009!

These shots are the during and how the room looked just before we renovated!

Flaky paint work. The 80+ years of paint layers which we added to.

deconstruction phase

sanding and scraping phase

Some gratuitous shirtless Jason shots. For the fans! Don't thank me.

This is a before shot of the room when it was tidy (which was practically never!) in 2010.  Mouldy ceilings and tired colour scheme.

The room as it was a month ago. A great big mess!

So, what do you think?

If you want to find out the details of how we transformed the room, tune in for the next blog post!

Missed that 3rd year blogiversary

It's been three years since Fun and VJs became more than just a figment of my imagination...Sadly, I forgot to mark our 3rd year Blogiversary.

No cake, no giveaways and not even a second thought until it was already over. Thankfully this blog is made of the tough stuff. It is definitely a persistent little bugger, so Happy Blogiversary to it!

I thought it would be fun to see what we were doing three years ago today. From memory, I don't think I was terribly happy, as we were in mid kitchen renovation mode and I was very hungry. The blog post below was chronicling some of the smaller projects we tackled when we first moved into the Sow's Ear.

Hop into the Tardis and travel into the past...a time before I knew how to caption images...


Wednesday 5 August 2009
The first few projects 

With any condition Queenslander house there is always work. And lots of it when they need TLC.

The first job we did was to sand the deck and oil it to bring it back from the brink. It's a massive covered area, so it was a big job - particularly when it was pouring rain every time Jason was ready to oil it.

The second project was to sand and scrape the front entry ready for a coat of paint. Jason also needed to fix up the VJs which were covering the architraves. It looks a million dollars now.




We used Dulux acrylic low sheen white (wash and wear) for the VJs and a gloss white for the doors etc.

We are now living without a kitchen, waiting for it to be installed later this week. It was ripped out last Friday, so it has been an experience with my hungry boys.

Anyway, I can't wait for it to be up and running!

*the image above has been pixelated to protect the innocent

Three years at the Sow's Ear

Three years ago this week we became the owners of the Sow's Ear. What a busy three years we've had in the old house.

I was not at all keen on the Sow's Ear when we first saw it. In fact, I was dead-set against it - it needed too much work (given we have three growing boys and Jason works long hours in his job). Who wants to be a slave to their house?

Jason on the other hand was very much in love with it and said that we should grab the opportunity to buy it. He also said while caressing the VJ (vertical join) walls: "Don't worry. I can do most of the work myself. It just needs paint."

Three years on, Jason is still painting - the shine of romance with the Sow's Ear has somewhat waned but he's still committed.

For me, the best thing I did was to start this blog a few months after we moved in. Writing about the changes we've made and the weekly goings-on in the Sow's Ear has definitely made me like our home more.

See what I did just then? It's no longer a house, it's our home.

The Sow's Ear during our second inspection

The Sow's Ear today

Study before and after

Another room down. 

Jason found the study to be the most frustrating room to work on because it was poorly constructed in the first place. Nothing is square and it was rough as guts. 

It still is, but that's an old house for you. It would quickly lose its appeal if we tried to make it into the Taj Mahal. It's come a long way though from how it used to be.

The only thing left to do is to source a suitable light fitting for the ceiling. Anyway, here are the after shots. 

View of study from the sunroom.
The architraves around the windows were replaced and made to match the rest of the house.  The two chairs are Danish Quality Furniture (DQF) which were made in Brisbane.

New brass fittings (which caused so many tears last week) on the old casement windows 

quad was used around the walls as skirting  - to seal the gap from floor board to wall.
Jason built floor to ceiling book shelves last year in a dead space in the corner of the room.

We've centred the desk under the window when we decluttered the study.
We also moved all the electrical points lower to the ground, there used to be one power point at waist height near the door. 

It's nice to be able to open the two doors of the study to get a nice breeze on hot still days.

A fresh coat of paint in the study made a world of difference. We used Dulux wash and wear for the walls
and gloss white for the doors and windows. We scraped the cream paint off the old door knobs. Jason then polished the copper plate

 And here are the before shots:

This photo was taken just before we moved into the Sow's Ear in 2009.  It's very crude in its construction.
On our first inspection of the Sow's Ear there was a large wardrobe blocking one of the two doorways. It was used as a craft room but it was basically a junk room.

Bodgy wood work

We put the desk close to this wall because of the lack of power points in the room. We also had a set of  book shelves on the other side of the desk

We've put these shelves in Jason's hobby room under the house

It's a gorgeous room now - such a pleasure to blog in the new headquarters.

P.S The Australian Modern giveaway is still open. Make sure you leave a comment to win your very own copy. Open to all world wide. HERE

Deck reveal

The very last project for 2011 was to complete all the work which we started on the deck. I'm happy to say that it is now finished and it has come a long way from where it began.

The deck was pre-existing when we purchased the Sow's Ear in 2009. It would've been added by previous owners in the early 90s (it also appears that the deck was extended after it was originally built). Anyway, it is a great space. Our main issue with it was that it was unusable during warm summer days. The tin roof made it too hot to sit out there comfortably.

Our deck is a major part of the house, taking up approximately a quarter of the size of our entire home. Yep. It's huge. The orientation of the deck with the lack of shade trees combined with sun and tin roof equalled HOT AS HADES!

So a retrofit of an insulated ceiling was the solution. Fortunately, we had enough height to do this. We only lost about seven centimetres by adding insulation and a ceiling.

Below are some before shots of the deck. 

This is the deck in mid 2010.  Our outdoor setting was on its last legs and we had three deck chairs remaining. You can also just notice the variation of the different boards used from the middle posts - from old deck to new deck. 

When we renovated the kitchen, we replaced the old casement windows with bi-fold windows and had a servery built. It makes a nice little bar area when we have people over.

This is the deck when the house was on the market in 2009 and is an image from the real estate listing.

And here are the after shots:

There used to be lattice above the balustrade in this section.

The bright white colour scheme works well with our mid-century style of furniture

It's a fantastic entertaining deck, with different zones for seating.

So what did we (um...I mean Jason) do?

Removed extraneous lattice and laserlite roofing
The lattice closed in the deck substantially on two sides. It may have been put in as privacy screening, but over the years the shrubs and trees around our fence line have matured enough to afford us privacy. It is much more open and our views are now unimpeded. We also replaced sections of old brittle laserlite roofing with tin roofing.

Painted
The 'heritage' colours of cream, dark green and maroon were well past their use-by-date. We used Dulux exterior acrylic gloss - Vivid white (which is the untinted white straight off the shelf - a bright white that is probably not to everyone's taste but works for us) for the weatherboards and deck railings; Peppercorn Rent (it's a chocolate brown with a green undertone) is the contrasting trim on the top handrails, window sills and guttering. The ceiling is also painted a gloss white, which surprisingly evened out the imperfections and warps that naturally occur when retrofitting anything.

Oiled the decking boards
We oil the floor boards at least once a year with Cabots Decking in a Merbau tint. The tinted stain evens out the variation in colour of the two types of decking boards. It is quite a rich colour, which hides the sins of the past. It is hard to pick the difference now and the boards look more seamless.

Insulated the ceiling
Standard ceiling insulation was used on our deck to make it more comfortable on hot days. Fibro cement sheets were used as to make a panelled ceiling. The panelled ceiling on the deck mirrors the ceiling inside the house which we thought was a nice touch ('same mother, same father' as our literary builder, Mr Rooney, would say) - it makes the deck feel more like a natural extension of the house.

interior panelled ceiling

Insulating the ceiling was a massive job. You can read about how massive it was here,  here, here and here, if you're super keen...This is real life weekend renovating which happens over a matter of months rather than days!

The difference the insulation and new ceiling has made is amazing. We can now sit out on the deck, have lunch and not fry. Heavenly. Comfort and function can never be underestimated.

Added new light fittings
There were old fluoro lights on the deck but we swapped them out for more discreet bunker lights which provide low ambient lighting which is perfect for entertaining in the evening.

Decorated with new and vintage furniture
We splurged on a new outdoor setting which can seat a crowd of adults and kids. Over the years I've collected and thrifted a number of vintage mid-century pieces such as Casalino chairs, T H Brown bar stools, butterfly chairs, Stoppino nesting tables. A friend of mine also sewed some retro curtain fabric I had into some colourful outdoor cushions. They add a splash of colour while cushioning our backsides!

So there you have it.  A new improved deck which we can use all year round; and another project is crossed off the renovation list. Yay!!

p.s Special mention must go to Mr Rooney, our very helpful builder, who assisted Jason on the weekends to make our 'new' deck possible. Thanks!!