The Toilet

The toilet was our first major exploration into renovation, or rather trying to put a room back together rather than ripping it all out, or just painting. Oh boy was this room a major trial! We ripped out the asbestos walling, took off the lovely 70's tiles, and found the screed underneath was too high for what we wanted... so then ensured hours of my partner chipping away at the screed to get it lower.

Here you can see the toilet before in it's full glory:

 Here is after the walls have been ripped out, screed chipped away and new screed laid.

We had to re-screed a couple of times to get it level, even though it was self-leveling screed.We realised during this process that we would have to let the screed dry for approximately 3 days before we could waterproof the floor, so we extended the portable toilet for another week, and finished gyprocking this room.

When this was dry, we laid the waterproof, waited for that to dry for another day, and got to laying my beautiful big grey tiles (500x500 that I bought on sale from Beaumont Tiles)!

Now here is a tip for everyone, the big tiles look great, but they are harder to lay, your floor needs to be perfectly level so they don't crack. Even after laying screed a few times we found we still were not perfectly level... believe me it was a pain in the arse!

We learned how to tile online watching tutorials, then went out and bought a wet saw and got started tiling. Once the tiling was done, and grouted we got to installing the toilet. We bought a new toilet cheaply from Evans & Clarke Auctioneers for approximately $120 with a soft closing seat, which after looking around, was extremely cheap for what it was. However, when we went to install it, we realised our flange was not set a normal distance from the wall, and our toilet sat about 8 inches away from the wall with no support for the cistern.

Rookie mistake... so guys, make sure you measure the distance so that you don't have to buy a second toilet. Our second toilet we also bought from Evans & Clarke for less than $200, which is a soft closing close coupling system. This means there is no bolts showing, and the water pipes are hidden.

Unfortunately this also means it is extremely hard to install. My partner was in the process of installing the toilet, when the guys who delivered our portable toilet: All Area Portables came to pick it up, but could not as it had not been pumped. While he was here, he asked to look at our toilet, it turns out they are actually a bathroom renovation business who have portable hire to supplement their business. He took one look at our toilet and told us we were doing it all wrong, using the wrong flange to change the P trap (wall connection) toilet we bought into a S trap (floor connection), and gave us the correct flange for free with a few tips. After many days and complete frustration of my partner he could not push our toilet all the way up to the wall and finish installing as the water connection was in the wrong position on the wall. I called the plumber that had delivered our portable toilet and helped us our jamb (he was coming to pick up the portable toilet again that day) and asked if he could help us out. He said he could, and he would only charge us $20 to move the pipe. He came around, cut a hole in the wall, moved the pipe across, fixed up the flange (we still had it wrong) and installed the toilet for us.... all for $20 (and in the end he did not even want to take the $20, but do it for free). So I would definitely recommend Michael and Jason Kelly from All Area Bathrooms, they helped us out in a jam when they did not have to.

Thanks to them and the wonderful work from my partner (and myself) we have a toilet! Here it is

I still have a bit of work to do in the toilet, I have to prime and paint the walls and ceiling... sand, prime, paint and re-frame the window, and replace the tile on either side of the toilet (we had to pull it off to fit the toilet directly against the wall). So I will come back and show you the finished product when I get there.

15 renovation mistakes you can make

I recently found an article on the 15 biggest renovation mistakes that people can make, which gives some handy hints to new home-buyers looking to invest in a property, and are considering renovation as a way to create profit on their new home. I hadn’t read this article before we bought our house, but I know the whole thought process in what was right and wrong, and how we were willing to spend was very confusing. So hopefully this article will help someone else in their house hunting considerations.

Renovation wasn’t our main focus when we were looking at buying, ideally we wanted to buy a house we could just live in comfortably. However when looking, we found the prices for houses that met our criteria were way more than we were willing to pay, as we were very set on the amount we felt comfortable repaying fortnightly back in a loan. Therefore we started to look to houses we could renovate, and ideally end up with a house that was similar to others we were looking at for a more reasonable price. I know that there would be a lot of other people out there with this same dilemma in this current financial climate, and this article will help others consider some very important points such as suburb selection, researching your property, and considering offers before buying. Although we did not read this article before buying, we didn’t rush into buying a house. We spent a lot of time researching to understand our means; in how much we were willing to spend, our criteria for a house, and then more time researching suburbs, selling prices, and weighing the pros and cons to houses we are looking at and their immediate areas.

Another very interesting point I would like to discuss from the article is confusing fiction with reality. Renovation TV shows houses being renovated quickly, but they have trades and bundles of money handed to them. Realistically renovating is dirty and hard, but what no one tells you is how long things can take, and how much things can cost! In reality you have a limited budget, trades are astronomically expensive so you end up doing as much as you can DIY, and DIY takes a lot of time! So consider these points discussed in the article carefully before you look at buying, and especially renovating!

A bit about our house

We bought a 1970's house, that pretty much looked like it had not had any TLC done to it since it was built. Undoubtedly one of the worst houses on the best streets (which is great for renovation and investment purposes).

(View from the back yard when we bought it). On the first day of owning our house we went in and filled up an entire skip bin from our demolitions. We ripped up carpet, lino, smashed out cupboards, got rid of the curtains and blinds, you name it. By the end of the week the house was bare, we were down to the sub-flooring, we had taken off walls that had been dodgyly gyprocked, and ripped out the kitchen. A week after that we moved in, since then we have done a fair bit, but nothing is finished to completion... we are very much living in a half-done-house.

The work we have to do is; paint the entire house, lay flooring through whole house, new kitchen, new bathroom, new toilet, new laundry, new wardrobe in main bedroom. All of the windows have been painted in Mission Brown, which unfortunately is a mission to get off, and we aim to get rid of it! We would like a verandah extending along the length of the back of the house with decking, this will extend our inside living space and add value to the house. We also aim to knock down the single garage that currently exists (and is in terrible condition) and replace it with a 6x9 metre garage, and stud-wall a section at the back to create a games room/study, and once again add extra value to the space with an extra living area. We also have plans to landscape both the back and front yard.

Our vision in the end is a clean, modern looking house filled with light, but that feels comfortably and lived in. We would like to make the house as sustainable as possible, and are looking at putting in LED down-lights through the entire house, when we put in the new garage we will look at adding solar panels to that for the house. We have plans to add water tanks, and already have a bore. When we put in new lawns we will be installing underground drips, so not only will it save water, it will be easy to maintain for tenants when this eventually becomes an investment property... Phew, when do we hope this will be over? Well, hopefully by the end of next year, if not sooner. This is our mission, get it done within a year of buying it! Can we do it? Keep posted.

My next posts will go through the process of painting, and show our journey of each individual room.

Why you should read this blog!

I am hoping that this blog will be a source of inspiration to people that are renovating, or looking to renovate so they can learn from our mistakes and do it right the first time around, or even learn from our 'do it right first time round' achievements.  Hopefully this blog won’t just be a ‘letter’ to my friends and family to keep them updated on the progress of our house, but instead a window into our world and home, where we can share our laughs, frustrations and triumphs.

My partner and I are first-time renovators, and this is our first house, so it is very important to us to do it right, but we are also rather clueless when it comes to the know-how of renovating. Therefore we have spent hours combing the World Wide Web to find tutorials on things like gyprocking , laying laminate flooring, tiling, installing a toilet, installing a kitchen, and painting. We have also spent hours scouring the internet trying to look for the best and cheapest deals, as we are not locals to South Australia, and are not aware of all of the hidden stores that have the best deals, or the cheapest and most reliable tradies to use. 

I would therefore like to use the hours and hours I have spent searching the internet for the best deals, and post links to the best tutorials and information that we have found and utilised. So that others people can benefit from our crossed eyes and hopefully avoid having to get glasses themselves (not that I have to, my eyesight is perfect, just slightly strained) by conveniently finding the information they need on our blog. 

So not only will this blog take you through the creation of our renovation, but it will also hopefully be a source of information for DIY, and the best places and things to buy, and inspire and teach others. Over time I would like this blog to mimic others like Young House Love, and offer not only the fun of the journey, but be a source of knowledge in tutorials and information on a range of DIY; from renovation, landscaping, sustainability and interior design, to cooking and craft.