House Update

It's been some twenty months since we purchased the house we are renovating. We thought we would have finished, sold and be part way through our second renovtion project by now. Unfortunately we totally underestimated just what a poor state of repair the house was in so work is still in progress. The good news is it's almost finished with just one bedroom, the dining room and rear garden still to do.
Our first project was to renovate the flat in the basement as we had a tenant waiting to move in. This was completed and I posted pictures of the flat about fifteen months ago.
Here's a few more pictures showing before and after shots.

Guest bathroom on the ground floor

I was hoping to remove and keep the mountain scene tiles above the old bath as something to remember the old bathroom by but unfortunately broke them trying to remove them. Shame, as they were hand-painted!

Children's bathroom first floor

Both of these bathrooms were undertaken at the same time and were out of action for about five weeks in total. Good job we have four bathrooms in the house!
A change of tiles and bringing in a curved shower screen have made this children's bathroom much more spacious

My beautiful kitchen

I'm not sure whether green wallpaper, yellow curtains, barbie-pink work surfaces and wood-effect cupboard doors were fashionable in the fifties and sixties or whether the previous owners had colour-blindness mixed in with a large dose of bad taste? Either way this kitchen was awful and I hated cooking here. The kitchen is now my pride and joy and is a much more practical layout.

Kitchen and breakfast bar

Where there is now a functional breakfast bar used to be a floor to ceiling cupboard, part of it can just be seen in the picture on the left and the picture below. Removing this monstrosity makes both the kitchen and adjoining dining room a much lighter and spacious place. 

Kitchen seen from the breakfast room

This picture is taken from the adjoining breakfast/sun room. There was a wall here but we had a large unglazed window knocked through which not only opens the room up but lets light flood in. It also allows me to watch the 'Simpsons' on the wall mounted TV whilst I'm cooking!

Lounge

 This is the lounge room. I used to like pink until I moved here but the amount of pink in the place was overwhelming. Taras and his Dad, Bob, rendered the brick fireplace and it was painted with a suede effect paint. I made the fire surround out of an old single headboard and tiled the hearth with slate. Taras, with just a little help from me, laid the beautiful parquetry tiles. The large folding doors have been replaced as the old ones were rotten and we weren't terribly keen on the mexican themed etched glass!

Mexican themed old door

"Tasteful" old front door

For a joke we put the old Mexican-themed doors on ebay. We never expected to sell them but amazingly sold them for over $100.

Furnished lounge

The lounge room was completed just before Christmas and is a much more comfortable and enjoyable place to sit and un-wind. The bi-fold doors look great and really suit the style of property. There were no doors here before and it's good to be able to close them.

Lounge with view of hall and front door