Nearly finished....I hope!

These past few weeks have been a bit of a blur as we have been invaded by various tradies and our quiet routine has been disrupted while kitchen and bathroom renovations have been happening as well as the long awaited and much overdue painting of the outside of the house. Today has been the first day I have had a chance to take a long look at how my plants are surviving as they have been covered in dust on several occasions as the house was sanded and then new stairs were installed. I thought I had moved most of the pots out of the line of fire but it is amazing how far dust spreads.

I was so pleased my beautiful Esmeralda rose has coped with the dust from the sanding plus the dust storm which blew through during the week not to mention the dreadful wind these past few days. 

I have no coverings on the windows at present so it is difficult to take photos with the afternoon sun streaming in so I do hope we get the blinds up soon. I believe the person who is putting them up arrived the other day when the house was full of tradies, took one look and said he would be back. I have no idea when that will be.  I still haven't used the induction stove and am already regretting buying it as it gets covered in dust. Also I was reading the instructions booklet and it said something about being careful if you have a pacemaker. What!!!! I think I should have done a bit of research about them instead of taking notice of the CEO's friend who said they use up much less power than other stoves. Anyway, it is there now and I will have to learn how to use it eventually. It has two ovens and the bottom oven has a side opening door. Also it is made in Britain so I am hoping it is a good quality stove.

Everything is in the kitchen now apart from the fridge which will go in this corner and the blinds for the western facing windows which will be needed this week with the temperatures rising once again. The walls have been painted a very light green and depending on the time of day they can look white or green. It is amazing how the colours change. I will be pleased when I can put everything back into the kitchen. I did start filling up a cupboards only to come home one day to find that the painter had been sanding and everything was full of dust after I had cleaned all the cabinets thoroughly. Then the windows had to be kept open for the paint to dry on another day when the dust storm hit. I gave up then and went and stared at a wall.

This was taken at night to show the LED lights under the shelf. They were put in as I was concerned the kitchen would be too dark with the internal window being taken out. This is where our wood stove sat in between the kitchen and the bathroom. Such a strange arrangement.

The bathroom renos have had a couple of hiccups. The builder asked us where we would like the shower niche. We had never heard of anything so exotic. LOL! As it turned out the builder had put a couple in a friend's bathroom down the road so I went down and had a look. Then it was decided to put one in up high for shampoo etc. and, seeing as the CEO had put his foot on the tap in the old bath and broken it off when he was cleaning his feet, he was given the option of having a smaller niche further down. As it turned out, after the niche had been put in and tiled over he decided that it was too low and wanted it put higher so the tradies had to come back to fix it up. Sigh! The waterproofing is on and the tiler will redo the tiles this coming week I presume.

This is part of the waterproofing done last week on the bathroom floor and in the shower which is at the top left where it is black. The poor tradie who did that had double booked so had to come back at 5pm to get it done as they are so busy with trying to get all their work finished before the Christmas break.

This is the feature tile in the shower. I thought it was just going to be a thin strip but will go with the flow. I went out the day all this work was going on so got a few surprises when I got home....

...like finding out from a very heated CEO that the medicine cabinet had been put up too high and he could only see the top half of his head in the mirrors.

 

As the tradies had been working in there all day it was difficult to check everything out until the work had been done. Anyway, he spoke to our wonderful builder the next day and he got on the phone and organised for the cabinet workers to come back and fix up the cabinet and for the tiler to take out some of the tiles. One of them said that this happens all the time and not to feel too bad as I was so embarrassed. The good news about the bathroom is that I now have a linen cabinet to put the towels in.

Something I have learned during these renovations is that it is like opening up a can of worms. In the kitchen when the internal window was taken out the wall was filled and that is the area where the fridge is going to be put. On the other side of that wall which is on the enclosed back verandah the boards are going to have to be painted which wasn't a part of our original quote from the painter and I am not sure if he will have time to paint them as the whole back verandah is now going to have to be painted and new flooring put down as the carpet is wrecked. It was really badly in need of replacing beforehand but it is kaput now well and truly. I was so hoping the renos would be finished soon but it looks like they will be ongoing for a while. 

All the tradies work very hard and I have been very impressed with their work ethic. I do wonder though why they all have radios on all day when they can't even hear the music with their powertools going much of the time. One day we had a radio on out the front and another one out the back. LOL! 

Have a great week everyone and think twice before doing renovations :-)