You see a mess, we see an opportunity

When we said overgrown and abandoned, we really meant it. Here's the before shots of our next challenging property make-over.

There's rubbish and piles of secondhand building material under all this weed.

Ok now for the inside:

Are we mad or what? You bet!

Four properties in 2 years

Property number 4 is in the bag. Our friends are joking that they'll have to name the street after us as like a domino effect we just keep buying the next house over the fence.

No.4 is going to be our biggest challenge so far. There are several 'problems' with it:

1. Residual title. A friendly valuer I sought advice from said he'd never recommend buying a property that's still sitting on a residual title (i.e. clear title for the section hasn't been completed).
2. Abandoned unfinished 2 bedroom cottage. Twenty years ago the previous owner attempted to build his last home - a 2 bedroom Skyline cottage. He got as far as insulating the walls and doing some pretty shoddy lining; failed the consent and became ill never to recover enough to continue.
3. The rubbish. Bless his heart the old guy collected a sh...load of second hand building materials and concrete blocks, reinforcing steel, fittings... the house is as full of crap as the yard. Plus, over the last ten years since his death the neighbours on 2 sides have pitched whatever they could over the fence.
4. Nature. There are numerous letters of complaint on file complaining about the overgrown unsightly section and the rats.
5. No drive. We've got heaps of drive but there isn't one to drive down to get to the section. The people in front have turned it into lawn.
6. It's a crosslease. Anything we want to do will have to be approved by the owners of the front half of the section.

So, why'd we buy it? We think it was a reasonable price, for a section that already had services (drainage and power) laid to the house site - it's a right-of-way section so that represents a considerable saving. There's an existing building consent, so the development contribution (which cost us about $25,000 for House No.1) has been paid. It's adjacent to House No.3 and overlooked by House No.2 so any improvement we make will lift the value or at least standard of living of 2 of our other rentals. We need to replace the fence between House No.3 and this new one anyway, so at least 2 of our properties will benefit from that. Our tenant over the fence will keep an eye on it while it's under 'construction.'

We don't know what we're going to do with it yet and we don't know how badly it'll hurt us financially. It'll take a while to find out, because after 2 years of working almost every weekend and nearly every day of any annual leave we get, we realise we can't maintain such a gruelling schedule. Property No.4 is going to stay looking abandoned for a few more weeks at least.

House 2 nearly finished

It's been nearly a year since we took possession and begun renovating this house. We're nearly nearly there. Didn't quite get it done before the holiday we soooo badly need. We're both exhausted to the point that it's hard to drive without falling asleep. Day jobs Monday to Friday and then renovating all weekend, every weekend... tired tired and worn out. But, the house is looking fabulous. The bedrooms are done: Main, 2nd front and 3rd

The bathroom is complete. It's adorned with an orangy-red glass sliding door - absolutely dazzling touch.

And the lounge dining is dressed and ready.

The kitchen is just getting some kickboards and a clean and it's finished also. The laundry is pretty much done. The toilet room has been relined, but one wall is a bit rough, so thinking of wallpaper in there and we're still to level the floor and tile (one more weekend needed for that).  We've had to build a new back door entrance, but that's done. Then we've got to build some stairs to the new french doors (x2) and voila.

But we're off to the warmer weather on the Gold Coast for a week and we don't care. We can't care that we didn't get the house finished and rented in time. It's just too bad. The ad on Trademe can wait a week. Hopefully we'll come back renewed and be able to smash the last few jobs off the list.

We better be quick because we take possession of no.4 a week after we get back. Oooh nooo what have we done??

House No.2 almost finished

Insulating against noisy showers

Thanks to ANZAC Day, which is a public holiday falling on Wednesday this year, we've had an extended long weekend which has enabled tremendous progress inside the house. The lounge walls are lined down 2 sides.

It's dark in the photo because this was taken at the end of our work day at about 5.15pm. We're moving on to May and it gets dark by about 6.30pm. The Gib is all different colours: blue is the Braceline, white is ordinary and green is Aqualine for use in the bathroom and kitchen. The kitchen is lined also.

We've also started scraping back the layers and layers of paint on the scotia (up the ladder). There's so many layers some of it comes off like a thick sheet of plastic. It's hard work scraping. Useless to sand. We've opted for heat gun. We'll only need to do this in this one area. Throughout the rest of the house a light sand will suffice.

The balance of the Braceline went up in the third bedroom. In this photo can be seen green insulation in the wall between the bathroom and the bedroom. These are Noise batts.

The noise batts insulate and cut the sound of the singing in the shower. They go in the walls and in the ceiling of the bathroom and over the laundry also to cut the sounds travelling to the rest of the house via the ceiling cavity. The bathroom is almost totally lined, walls and ceiling, and insulated.

Back to our paying jobs for a couple of days now and then back into the building on the weekend.

Bracing ourselves for the end

A major milestone has been reached in our renovation project. Today some of the Gib board arrived and the interior walls are finally being lined. This has not turned out to be as easy as we first thought it would be. Extra costs are piling up, because we're working with house framing a century old, applying 21st century products. There isn't enough framing in the walls to glue and screw the modern plasterboard to. So, we've had to buy un-budgetted for framing timber and build in new framing and put in new nogs.





Because we took 2 walls out, we have to use a certain amount of Braceline, which requires special brackets to be used to hold together the framing, special (more expensive) screws to fit the Braceline to the framing, and many of them fitted at regular intervals. Braceline also has to be fitted in a solid wall to ceiling uncut piece. The Council inspector (who is coming back in 3 days) needs to see this, so we've had to cut out some of the scotia. We'll put it back after and will have to bog the cut marks:

Actually you're not supposed to cut pieces out like in the picture above. Cutting a slot for the beam is technically not correct. The part of this piece that is counted as bracing is only the width between the windows. It's been cut like this - flowing around the window, to move the joint (where pieces of Gib will meet) away from the corners of the window which leads to cracks.

In this next photo, a piece of Braceline is going up on the wall between the lounge and kitchen. We couldn't fit the required amount around the exterior walls. More will go up on the wall between the bathroom and third bedroom.

It's a huge relief to see this progress. When the rooms start to look like rooms someone will soon be able to live in. To know that maybe only 2 more months of our weekends will be needed to finish the inside. To think that maybe next school holidays we might actually be able to spend some fun time with our daughter instead of her going to the school holiday programme (which she actually wanted to go to and really enjoyed, but that's not the point - we want to bring her up, we want to be the ones having fun with her).

Stripping, tiling, wiring

Our easter long weekends are over. There's one more public holiday for Anzac Day which we'll make longer.

The Council inspector put us off til tomorrow - typical. We forge on: the house is nearly rewired. We've been running the wiring ourselves and placing the boxes for powerpoints and light switches. But, some shonky junction boxes joining old wiring and new have been discovered up top. We'll need the electrician to have a look at those.

The tiling has been grouted. Really would you know that we'd never done this before? Looks great doesn't it?

Here's the second bedroom washed and ready for painting. All the staples and nails have been pulled from the floor also, readying the floor for carpet. Bits of the kitchen are stored here waiting for installation.

The small hallway off the front door receiving a stripping today. It was the only room with wallpaper - layer upon layer upon layer and then paint. It's a fascinating study in history though uncovering the different wallpapers used throughout the years.

This photo shows the ceiling panels removed also. The nails that held the panels in place all had to be pulled from on top of the ceiling rafters pictured.

The original wallpaper shows a real 1920s to 1930s classic design.

It looks like new wallpaper was applied every 20 years or so. From the 1950s - 1960s is this ghastly large flower pattern. Then from the 1970s a green vertical pattern seen here over the flowery one. Lastly a creamy coloured paper was then painted.

The underfloor insulation has been done for us. It was crawl space - sometimes it's worth paying other people to do the really dirty stuff.

There we are from top to bottom of the house in a few days. Looking forward to the pre-line and plumbing inspection tomorrow then we get on to lining the walls. That will feel like major progress.

Prepping for painting

It's a wee bit premature to be claiming that we are prepping for painting. This is just a psychological ruse to trick us into feeling like there's not long to go. This is a carrot, a shining beacon, a promise. But, actually today we did finish one complete room ready for painting and carpet.

It's the front room that had not suffered any demolition. It only needed a wash down, carpet removal and nail pulling. It's been the storage room. All the secondhand wall insulation that was in there has just about been used so there was space to move around in there. So, it's cleaned and ready and the door is shut to keep it that way.

It's important to keep focused on moving forward, on the next thing but not ALL the things that need to be done. We dream a lot about what we're going to do when the house is finished too. There's heaps of bigger boats on our Trademe watchlist and we're searching for holiday deals: maybe LA for Disneyland and Hollywood, or Greece? Yeah right!

Keeping a clean work site

Sometimes all we seem to achieve is a clear floor - we move piles of wood from one side of the unfinished lounge room to the other. We pull some nails, sweep up bird's nest refuse fallen from the rafters, sweep and sweep the dust.

The Council plans require installation of braceline - this is needed to strengthen the rigidity of the house structure, especially since we've taken some wall out and installed windows and french doors. Most of the morning was spent working out where to install the braceline to get broad enough coverage.

It's hard when you take annual leave from work and don't seem to acheive any big step forward in the building process.

Progress is however inevitable. Underfloor insulation is being installed. Just in time too, because we were about to book Council to do a pre-line inspection and hadn't realised they'd be wanting to see the underfloor insulation in place. So, inspection has been put off until next week.

Tiling Easier and Cheaper Than Vinyl

I don't think anyone would disagree that tiled floors give a more expensive polished look than vinyl. Because it looks more expensive, we assumed it would be more expensive. But, not necessarily. We also assumed it would be hard to do. We put vinyl in House No.1 but we got the professionals to lay it. That's what puts the cost up.

For this house because the bathroom and laundry are new from scratch we have the opportunity to make it look really good - so why would we do vinyl? The tiles are expensive compared to a roll of discounted vinyl, but we decided to lay the tiles ourselves. We watched several 'How to' videos on YouTube and the next day we put down the tiles in the laundry.

Looks pretty good so far:

This is Step 1. After 24hrs drying we need to grout.

How to remove internal walls

Big milestone in the renovation achieved this weekend. The final bits of wall framing separating kitchen to dining and dining room to lounge have been removed and two very large heavy beams have been installed. Here's some photos showing the steps involved in putting the beams up.

This first photo shows the final bits of wall framing holding the ceiling up.

A lot of preparation has gone on before being able to put the new beams in. This new framing which will support the beam had to be built ready to fit in to place. Below this under the floor, new piles had to be put in to support the weight. The photo below shows the holes cut in the floor. We had to dig down into the dirt and concrete in new piles, then secure these to the joist with strapping.

Next is fitting a bracket to the first beam. This is where the second beam will join on to the first beam. Measure 5 times: measure, mark, measure again, fit or cut and measure again. Note the beam is laminated pine - pieces of offcut finger jointed and then these are layered and glued together. This is apparently more solid and stronger than a single piece of timber.

Safety is paramount. It's time to take out the last two posts of old wall framing and hope the ceiling doesn't fall down.

Now is the exciting part - getting to use the Genie Lifter.

The beam weighs about 120kgs. Machines like this make it almost a one-person job.

Here we go winding up the Genie which lifts the beam into place, with a little bit of jiggling. The good things about these beams is that they will slot in between the old scotia.

Nearly there. Now slip the new post in to secure the beam in place.

Bashing the post in to place. Below in the hole you can see the new pile and the strapping.

Insert a temporary post at the other end and then lower the Genie. Stand back and see if it's going to stay up.

Now bolt in the new beam at the top.

The adjoining beam now needs to be shaped to slot into the bracket.

Hoist up the second beam, jiggle and guide it into the bracket and hope it fits. It didn't the first time, so we had to bring the beam all the way down and using a long drill bit, we made the slot deeper. Perfect on the second go.

With the beams in place the new wall framing can be built into place.

Nogs are built into the exterior wall ready for braceline gib (as required by Council). The ceiling framing you see in these photos is hung and barely supported by the interior walls. So no walking around up top.

With the beams up and all the interior wall framing gone, we begin to get a feel for the new open plan area, for how the kitchen flows into the dining area with it's new french doors opening out onto the carport, and over into the lounge area, similarly with new french doors where the chimney used to be. Now a light large space, where once it was dank, dark and cold with a broken fireplace and bright green walls. 

All the staples and nails have been pulled from the floors ready for polishing. Can't wait for that. It's such a great feeling of satisfaction.

Over the demolition hump

We're finally building, instead of just ripping out. The house is getting underwear (building paper and insulation) and the new bathroom is taking shape.

This is the kitchen. We've removed and boarded over where the exterior window was as this will be where the hob will be with glass splashback above.

We totally gutted the bathroom and have cut the laundry down in size to make the bathroom bigger. We've had to move the laundry window over a bit. There'll be just enough width for the laundry tub and washing machine to go in under the window. The hot water cylinder will be tucked in a space to the right of the window. This juts into the bathroom but forms an alcove where the new bath fits.

The bath is smallish but it's just a bath, no shower over it. As per regulations we're using aqualine - gib board for wet areas, hence the green colour. This will be undercoated and painted and the lower third will be tiled.

We're installing a new shower box 900 x 900 in the inside right hand corner. We had long debates about the layout. We've changed it from the plans provided by our designer. It was all about maximising the light coming in from the one window, and privacy. It's feasible that someone could look in the french doors (driveway side) right through into the bathroom if the bathroom door was open. So the shower is tucked in the right hand side corner and the bath is on the left. The eye-line from the other side of the house will flow along the floor unimpeded to the vanity. A photo later will show why this will work to make the house appear bigger.

All new flooring in the bathroom.

So it's end of month 4 since possession. We can only manage weekend work on the house on top of our fulltime jobs, travel for work, school and after school things, Girl Guide biscuit selling, family events: an engagement party, a death and thus funeral. But, we are finally over the demolition hump and it's satisfying to be able to glimpse what it's going to look like. There's light at the end of the tunnel, or in this case the light is in the back porch where Steve is sawing timber.