Before and After - the main facade

Ok, these photos are pretty amazing, showing the transformation from sad, old, neglected house to shiny new loved house.

Before:

During:

..and after:


Ta da!

So clean, so white, so shiny, so waterproof! So awesome.

Before and After - some exterior shots

Looking at this shots, I realise I have already forgotten what terrible shape the concrete block was in when we moved. It's amazing what a difference paint can make.










It is also obvious that we have a long way to go with regards to landscaping - we have basically ignored the garden and allowed the tradespeople to stamp all over it, and we've cut a lot of things out, but it felt that when we moved in it was too far gone to really salvage much anyway.

Before and After - the living area

Okay, these ones are fairly awesome, as not only have we made things so much cleaner with the paint (and stripping the tiles and painting the window frames, and the chimney flue, and sorting out the aluminium door and...)... but our stuff is way cool.



Oh, and as you can see above, we have lights too (when we moved in, the fittings were taped to the ceiling). Our lights are not very bright. I think they are a bit silly, as they provide less light than a candle, but Matt smuggled them in before I had a chance to voice an opinion. And yes, I know they look very nice.

Before and After - the windowsills

I could have taken a photo of each of the windowsills, as they were all in equally terrible condition, but this office window gives a nice idea of how things were then, and are now.

Before and After - the upstairs toilet

The pictures say it all, really.

On the bright side..

The bathroom is the only major thing left to do right now (well, apart from replacing the drains and skylights - out of sight, out of mind), so I thought I would start taking some 'before and after' shots. Starting with the bedrooms.

Firstly the main bedroom:


Before:


After:


Before:


After much deliberation regarding the colour of the cupboards (and several cans of unused paint), we decided against the original orange, and instead went for the colour of the downstairs chimney - a blue/grey:


Before:


After:


And the spare room before:


And after:


I guess we're pretty happy with it, it the main bedroom is a thousand times better without the purple walls, and it's nice to have all the handles back on the cupboards.

I'll get some more photos up early next week probably. We are taking a break this weekend - the first proper break since we moved in, and probably the last break in a while. I am SO looking forward to it.

More bad news

This is a close up photo of the grout in our bathroom tiles. It is all porous and eroded. So water is seeping through the walls of the shower and down on to the floor (and the ceiling below). It has been happening for a while, but has been flushed back into the bath at the bottom of the tiles. Since we sealed the bottom with silicon, the water has had nowhere to go except over the edge on to the floor.

Bummer.

Long term solution: Re-tile bathroom.

Short term solution: Re-seal tiles, and possibly use plastic sheeting to prevent leakage.

We have runout of money so will have to consider the short term solution for the time being.