Final Reno Post

My final post about Ben's renovations is his Magnum Opus, the storage room behind the garage.

I'm very annoyed that I took no 'before' shots, but if you can imagine it was a dark, dingy basement-like room, which had exposed, cobwebbed brick walls and a dusty concrete floor.

Now it's very different:

The walls were very hard to paint because the brick was so porus.

He painstakingly painted the floor and then one by one stencilled the Fleur-de-lis over the top.

Now it's ready to go on the market!

I'm back!

After some severe morning sickness and a bout of Gastro to boot, I am now somewhat back to normal and have the energy to blog again!

My sister and I think we caught the Gastro bug from some sour cream that we had with wedges at a cafe. It could have been much worse than a few days of (extra) vomiting and the runs, so I'm thankful for that :-) A few days in bed was the best remedy.

I've been wanting to post some more about Ben's work on our flat and one of the major things he did was to paint the brick veneer wall in our living room. The dark brick made that part of the room a gloomy space and was somewhat dated. 

Ben used  Porter's Paints interior Limewash and had a big job with the porus brick absorbing all the paint.

After all his hard work, the wall came up a treat and the room looks much more spacious now.

Two adventures

On the weekend we visited a place called the Brick Pit, which was obviously once a quarry for making bricks. It's now an environmentally protected area due to a rare green and gold frog that lives there and it was turned into a great aerial walk which circumnavigates the pit.

It took a while to convince our Little Man to stop taking the exits so we could do the full walk, but he finally got the idea and we walked the whole way around :-)

On Monday, we had the chance to catch up with two friends with whom I volunteered in Indonesia about five years ago. Bev lives up by theLakes and Mel and her Indonesian husband Dikky were visting. We took to two hour drive up there to have lunch and catch up after a long time apart.

It was a very happy reunion for me. It brought back so many memories of Indonesian life and the friends I made there. It also allowed me to reflect that at that time I could not have imagined my future as it is now, and how happy and blessed I am with my little family.

Bev lives right on the water and on such a calm day, the water was glassy and smooth. A view one could never grow tired of!

Thanks to Bev for her hospitality and for such a great lunch. Even though Dikky and Mel were exhausted from travelling they made us welcome and it was a day I'll never forget.

"We forgot to take his plug out for the photo!" says Bev.

Bedroom renovations!

I don't have any 'before' shots of our bedroom but basically Ben has painted the very dark wooden built-ins with a Porter's high gloss enamel in Milk White. It's a non-toxic paint that doesn't smell very much at all when being applied.

Our bedroom is very small, so it was important that we painted the wardrobes white, and the gloss on the paint reflects the light from the window and helps make the room appear larger.

Ben also fixed new handles on the doors and little silver knobs on the very top sliding doors.

Nice job!

Bathroom renovations!

Finally, I'm posting about Ben's renovations! I'm sorry to family in other parts of OZ that it's taken so long..

Below are pictures of the original bathroom which had a charming avocado and khaki green colour theme. It's a very small bathroom and the busy pattern on the tiles made it look smaller:

You can see that he has already painted the inside of the shower in the above photo.

Mmmmm. lovely...

Ben painted all the bathroom walls, tiles and ceiling white, which I think has created a calming effect. The tiles have a detailed embossed pattern on them and once painted white, the lovely texture of the tiles came though more clearly (although it's hard to see in the photos).

He painted the basin white with a special paint for sinks.

He made from scratch a lovely frame for the mirror which matches the cabinet.

And he put a new fly screen on the window as the old one fell out.

With brackets bought from Ikea, Ben made the shelves and stained them. I love these shelves! We really needed a towel rack and I like having fresh towels available in the bathroom.

He also bought the cabinet in the above picture on ebay and put it up himself.

My one contribution to all of this work is the fishbone fern! The rest is all my talented husband.

Latest news

We've been quite busy here lately and here are a few things that have been happening:

1. Our Little Man was sick with a 39 degree cel. temperature on Sunday. It was his first 'big' illness, poor thing! He lay in our arms all day and was burning hot. We took him to Emergency and they said we could wait 3.5 hours or go home and see if he get better, so we went home and after a somewhat disturbed night he was better the next day.

2. I'm pregnant! Seven weeks so far. I've been vomiting as usual but this time I seem to be able to keep it more under control with Maxolon and vitamin B6 tablets. Please pray that all goes well with the pregnancy!

3. My ever-resourceful husband has amped up the renovations on our flat and in between work, caring for me, and helping our with our Little Man, he's been painting, fixing lights and chipping off the cork veneer from the kitchen walls. An amazing man!

I'll be posting pictures of what he's done to the place when I get my act together.

4. I've joined a FANTASTIC mother's group which answers all I'd been looking for in a group. There are many mothers connected to my Catholic primary school and they are all fun-loving yet take their faith seriously, and many want to homeschool! What's more they are lovely ladies.

Helping hand

Our little man loves nothing better than to help his dad.