Renovation Project #1 Laying timber floors in the living room

I can't believe we are really doing this

My husband and I have never renovated anything by ourselves in our lives. In the past, we have undertaken renovations, mainly painting and installing timber flooring in our last home. The floor installation cost about $15,000 about 5 years ago, just for the floors. Most of this was the cost of labour. As we were time poor cash rich ( at the time, I was commuting to and from work 3 hours minimum each day to my full time finance job) we engaged a company to do it for us. Fast forward five years to 2010 and we want to renovate our townhome. We have much less cash as we have changed our lifestyle so that I can be home more. So we are doing the renovations this time ourselves! The first room is the living room. I don't like carpet at the best of times, so up with the 16 year old carpet, and we are laying the timber floor ourselves. We researched how to do it, and armed with the tools of the trade, here we go! “ Although I don’t appear in the photos, I am kitted out in all the same gear, and we did the renovation together. I was the photographer and movie maker as well as DIY renovator. (Yes we made a home movie about this, warts and all!) I actually enjoyed doing this together with my husband. We had some “moments”, like when he hit his thumb, and when we had laid about a quarter of the floor and had to take it up again due to a misunderstanding of the instructions, but on the whole, it was really good fun, and very satisfying. Renovation Project #1 is now complete.

Mini goals

Laura over at Move to Portugal has posted about her mini goals for October http://movetoportugal.org/october-2010-mini-goals/.

This started me thinking about my mini goals for this month too.

Here we go:

Lose 2kg

Exercise for 45 mins on 20 days.

Finish renovating the living room (painting walls & ceiling, put up pictures, paint and replace skirting boards, select and install lighting.)

Make cushions for sofas in living room.

Decluttering toys and baby goods and clothing stored in garage.

Raise $200 from selling unwanted goods on ebay.

This will be a busy month!

Decluttering Update #5

The treadmill has left the building.

Yes, after what seems an age, Mr Man just called and collected the treadmill that we didn’t use any more and was taking up our precious space in our compact home.

Mr Techno and Mr Man are now carrying it down to the trailer. This is no mean feat as the treadmill is very heavy and there are about 50 stairs down to the garage!

I now have a little more space in my creative studio. Yay!

And $50 towards my Clutter to Cash project.

Making the most of space in your home……

Mr Techno happy with his work bringing the bookcases downstairs!

We live in a townhome. This was a concious decision about 3 and a half years ago to move from a large McMansion in the ‘burbs a long way from facilities, to living in a towhome in more vibrant community, close to all facilities and great public transport.

One of the things that I am focussing on is making better use of the space we have in our smaller home. I have found as we are changing our lifestyle, our needs have change in how we use our space.

And so to the “study” space.

Until recently we used one of the bedrooms as our study and had our books and computers in that room. However, we also had an alcove dowstairs, just off the lounge room, which never really had an identity and was basically unused space.

So after feeling energised after a decluttering spell, I enlisted the help of my husband and we moved the bookcases, desk and computer down to the alcove.

I love this new space! Now we can all be together downstairs in the evening. We have headphones for the computer, so that my daughter can watch a DVD downstairs while we are watching a movie in the lounge room, and yet we are all in the same space. Or I can blog on the weekend, and still be part of the rest of the family life happening downstairs.

This has also freed up the room upstairs ( formerly the study) to reflect our changing lifestyle, as I have set it up as my sewing and creative space. I will blog about this in a later post.

It also has a sofa bed in it for the occasions that we have guests.

This makeover has made a lot of difference. And it was a no cost endeavour, it was only our time. We used all the things we already had but in a different way, after considering how we wanted our home to reflect our lifestyle.

I will be sorting through our books over time, and putting the books that we love and use on our bookcase, and moving the ones we no longer need to new homes.