A few cosmetic improvements

A new Coat Rack:

We solved the coats on the bed problem finally with our driftwood-random coat rack. Hooks include drawer knobs, bits of driftwood, old hooks from the salvage yard and some new hooks too. The coat rack itself is made of a bit of driftwood picked up at Lyall Bay. The biggest challenge was screwing it into the wall: we had to make recessed holes as the wood is wider than our screws are long.

But doesn't it look cool!

And in my other piece of cosmetic mastery, I started cleaning a mark off the yellow "stained glass" window half way down the hall and discovered it wasn't stained yellow glass after all. Well, it was stained - stained with 120 years of cigarette smoke and grime.

Here's what it looked like to start with. The paler panels are where I was cleaning a stain off and discovered it was a bit more stained than I'd originally thought...

And here's the before and after shots....

That's about 4 hours worth of scrubbing to get it back to its original state... but I think it looks great.

Next up: Steve's home made double glazing. Watch this space.

Aargh! a leaking roof

No sooner had we got the insulation in than it started chucking it down. It rained all week and on Saturday was pretty torrential. That was when we noticed water dripping down the walls in a couple of places....
So back into the loft I went with a raging hangover after a rather big night out with work the night before, to discover about 5 different leaks! Needless to say our lovely new pink batts was soaking in places, and all Steve could think about was how we would dry it out again!

Our immediate measure is a series of buckets under the drips in the loft but the short term plan is we think we'll get someone in to try to patch the holes - neither of us are game enough to climb on the roof as the back of the house is a two storey drop. In some ways it's really good that we had such a big storm within a month of moving in as it's highlighted a problem to be solved urgently.

It's not looking great though - everyone I've spoken to (well, two people) says we'll have to replace the whole roof (corrugated steel - about $10,000). That could put paid to the new bathroom this year :-(

On the plus side Steve fixed the gushing downpipe under the shower in about 30 seconds. Good job we didn't call a plumber!

Priority no. 1: loft insulation

After the last frigid winter in our rental property loft insulation was very high on our list of priorities.  The NZ Government has a grant scheme for insulation - up to $1300 against the cost of installation - but you have to use an approved installation company, so once you factor in the labour cost it's not worth using them - and the companies have long waiting periods - 15 weeks - which would take us beyond the end of winter!  So in the end we decided to do it ourselves - how hard could it be?

We settled on R4.0 which is 190mm thick - most people go for 3.6 but we want a really warm house!  You get 6.3m2 per bale so for our 130m2 house (it's a bungalow) we calculated we needed 21 bales - but deliberately underestimated as we didn't want to buy too much.  So we bought 17 bales at a total cost of just over $1700.

A note on types of insulation: the most commonly used brand is Pink Batts which is made of recycled glass.  It is an irritant which is not nice to install.  The ecological and less irritating option is wool - but at double the cost we decided we didn't have cash to spare.  Anyway, Steve came prepared for action in a disposable boiler suit (the same kind kiwis wear when supporting the All Whites football team!)

Installing insulation is not the most glamorous job and we didn't get much take up of our offer of pizza in return for hard graft - though Jill came along to muck in...

Some tips for insulating your loft: don't open the bales until you've got them into the roof space as they are compressed so they massively expand when you slit them.  A kneeling board is pretty much essential if you don't want bruises all down your legs from shimmying along joists.  Definitely long sleeves, gloves and mask required.  You'll need a knife to cut the insulation to size (it fits between average joist widths but you need to cut it in places) Be prepared to get very hot and very dirty.  Start at the edges and work back towards the loft entrance - and don't do what I did and insulate over the porch - here I am removing the insulation from over the porch area.

It took us about 7 hours in total, this is what the mask - and I - looked like at the end ...

Hard work, I have bruises in very strange places and a head full of cuts from

bashing my head on the beams.

The half finished product:

And the finished product:

In the end we were one bale short, which we thought was pretty good judgement, so the total cost was around $1850. 

At the same time Steve did a sterling job cleaning our very slippery stairs - they don't get any sun in winter so there's moss growing on them.

Next job: fix the ('leaking' is an understatement - more like 'gushing') pipe under the shower...

11 Howard Street's first bit of TLC in 20 years

Our first week in the house and this is what we accomplished.

I replaced the washer in a leaky bathroom tap and discovered the washer wasn't really the problem, it was a big old crack at the bottom. So new taps needed.

After much chiseling and planing, we managed to get the basement door to close and get a lock on it, so now people can't just wander into our basement (they'll just have to kick the door down).

The bathroom is the worst room in the house, so to improve it slightly until we get enough cash together to do it, we put a shelf and mirror up. 

Slightly scarier, we had to cover the holes in the shower lining with the thick plastic that our bed came in. 

We also hired a van (an automatic - rubbish on fuel economy but great for 6 point turns outside our house) and picked up the two tables we purchased last weekend. Firstly, a kitchen table,

And secondly, an extender table that had had a little accident and didn't have any legs, which a furniture shop was selling for 10 pounds! One for the future. 

 

We can't take credit for this last piece of work, removing the kitchen walls of 20 years of unventilated kitchen fumes, a nice lady called Cath came and did it for us. She did a great job. 

Inside our house - a trip back to the 1970s

The estate agent couldn't get in touch with the tenant so after some days took matters into her own hands and opened the house up for us so we could measure up. Fortunately there was nothing bad lurking for us.

Enjoy the pics of our new house and we welcome offers for any retro items you spot!

The hall

The front bedrooms - one bedroom shown as they are both the same

Lounge

Back bedroom/Bedroom 3

Kitchen

Shower, toilet and laundry (all separate)

Garden

Basement - check out that toilet!

and finally some scary stairs out the back...