It was an intensive few days in Melbourne. S had been advised by our stylist to make some changes to our house, the general theme of which was to reduce the clutter. So, we rented some space from the Fort Knox storage facility in Eltham and went to Rent-a-Bomb for a van to cart the stuff. It was a bomb to be sure, making my EXA seem like a luxury vehicle. Driving the thing was an interesting experience. It was difficult to tell the difference between 2nd and 4th gear, and at the first set of traffic lights in this thing I pulled the hand brake on and had difficulty releasing it. So, without really panicking, but feeling a sense of tension I worked at it. It doesn’t take long before the people behind you start honking their horns.
Anyway, the van rattled along and it did the job. We ended up putting the good desk in storage (we had two of these monsters), along with the chairs we’d been asked to get rid of, the box seats, filing cabinet, table and a few boxes packed with stuff. If you pack these storage facilities carefully, with stuff stacked well, it’s amazing just how much you can fit inside. After about two van loads the storage room still looked mostly empty.
The stylist said she had an arrangement with Fort Knox to give us a discount, but when we mentioned this they claimed ignorance, saying they didn’t know our stylist. Now that’s interesting. Someone was lying. Anyway, they gave us the first month free. Perhaps we just looked honest. It all helps.
S had done a surprisingly reasonable job of the painting, considering some of the work was very awkward, and she doesn’t like painting. I just couldn’t keep on going when I was at it a few weeks earlier. Anyway, I touched up some gaps on the ceiling that seemed to be missed, and fixed up the gaps in the cornices, which all turned out okay. I find it amazing how interior paint (flat or semi-gloss) can blend into the existing paint without showing any tell tale marks. Doing this might be a quick way of freshening up the place, with the minimum of effort. If you don’t have time to paint the whole place, and you can’t wash off any scuff marks that have developed over the years, just paint over the marks. It does a great job, and you’d never know there was a touch up, unless of course the paint is very old and faded.
We removed the lounge room curtains as we had been advised by the stylist, as well as removing the fly screen doors, and they went to Fort Knox. This seemed like a very strange thing to do, I thought. But it worked. This house was a bit unusual in that the front entrance had two standard sized glass doors that swung open, kind of like French doors, only larger. So with both doors open wide and no curtains hanging it left the lounge with a wonderful open feeling. The vista from the floor to ceiling windows, which occupied the entire length of one side of the lounge, was spectacular, and with the doors open it had a pleasantly inviting feeling. It brought a surprisingly pleasant atmosphere to the room, and made it very light inside as you’d imagine. Though, the effect was kind of cold and exposed at night, but was fabulous in the day. Anyway, the punters only come during the day, and it was done for their benefit.
Lots of little things were done. We dusted the lounge ceiling to get rid of the cobwebs (cathedral ceiling), got the whipper snippering finished, repaired the nest of tables, a bit roughly I must say. We removed the various boxes that were cluttering the place, and removed the wall hanging, which all went into storage. The amount of dirt that was impregnated in the wall hanging over the years was amazing. Tiny pieces of brick and cement must have been falling from the ceiling. You wonder how it happens. I got some boxes packed and into the EXA for the trip back. I also took the small filing cabinet with me, so the car was well loaded.
We got rid of a spare mattress from under the bed. Perhaps it should have chucked out, but why do that with stuff when it’s still good. People throw too much away. It went into the caravan for storage. It was a very neat fit in the caravan, standing on its edge in the walkway of the caravan.
I was disappointed I couldn’t clear an outside drain that was at the side of the house, and there was the smell of something dead somewhere out there too. Bugger. I hope the blockage had nothing to do with the smell; thinking something might have crawled down the drain and died. The smell of something dead is the last thing we needed when the punters come round.
I got most of the garage sorted. It’s funny how the stuff builds up in sheds. I was surprised by the amount of rat and possum crap all over the place, the smell of which was almost overpowering. Which was all very disappointing because I had some good things stored in there. I had a stereo amp, turntable, notebooks and textbooks carefully wrapped in old sheets, plastic wrapping and in cardboard boxes and the little blighters had used as building materials to build their nests. Their little teeth marks were everywhere, as well as the holes they had made in the timber sideboard to get to where the stuff was kept, there were nibble marks everywhere. Of course the cardboard boxes were no trouble for them. This material and the pages from my textbooks must have made lovely nesting material for them.
We were beginning to get ruthless in sorting through what could be kept and what gets dumped. That’s a lesson on starting the job in plenty of time. It takes a lot of time to go through your old stuff, and you do become distracted in looking through things you haven’t seen in years, reminiscing in old notebooks that you had at school or wherever. It can be difficult to decide whether to keep or discard them.
So, in the end a lot of work had been done, and although the place was cleaner, a whole heap of a mess was left for S to put out in the rubbish. A lot of work was left to do before the photographer came. Still feeling unhappy with the selling price. Considering talking to the agent with a view to increasing it.
Showing posts with label painting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label painting. Show all posts
20 February 2008
14 February 2008
The stylist
S has been continuing with the house painting, including the cornices but isn’t happy with them. Cornices are difficult and you need a steady hand. I’m going back to finish off. Driving back this time. I checked the various web sites for air fare prices, but prices seem to change like a roller coaster and higher than I’d like. S said she was feeling rather sad about selling. There are so many memories in this house. So much work has been put into the place, for someone else. And the work doesn’t stop.
The real estate agent had recommended a stylist. Was this a hair stylist calling by to do an in house haircut? No. The stylist offers her opinion as to what to do to improve the presentation of the property. I’d never heard of anything like this before. The agent said some people find her confronting, but it turned out that S didn’t mind her. Possibly people can be offended by her manner. Though, it’s probably the suggested improvements that offend people.
Her recommendations included
The dates for the photographer have been moved. So, with that extra week and me being able to take a couple of rec days off work to give me a decent weekend just prior to the photo session should give the place a boost. Well, at least relieve the load on S a bit.
The real estate agent had recommended a stylist. Was this a hair stylist calling by to do an in house haircut? No. The stylist offers her opinion as to what to do to improve the presentation of the property. I’d never heard of anything like this before. The agent said some people find her confronting, but it turned out that S didn’t mind her. Possibly people can be offended by her manner. Though, it’s probably the suggested improvements that offend people.
Her recommendations included
- getting rid of any personal items (photographs etc)
- we have a handmade wall hanging that has to go
- two chairs in the dining room have to be moved into the lounge by the table, and
- the four chairs from the table have to go
- the fly screen doors have to be removed and stored
- the curtains in the lounge have to come down
- she liked the brush wood cabinet, but not the antique oil lamps that were on top
- the CDs have to go from the bookshelves
- the bedspread had to be replaced with a yellow one, no doubt to match the walls
- she offered the loan of another bedspread for the end bedroom, which was generous
- the nest-of-boxes in the end bed room that had been purchased recently had to go
- but she did like the wardrobe that was in that room, but wanted it moved
- we had to put white towels in every bathroom
- she was not impressed by the garage, at all
The dates for the photographer have been moved. So, with that extra week and me being able to take a couple of rec days off work to give me a decent weekend just prior to the photo session should give the place a boost. Well, at least relieve the load on S a bit.
01 February 2008
Feeling like the Mad Hatter
It was a very busy time and throughout my stay in Melbourne I could see that time was running out. Time just seemed to evaporate. So much to do, so little time.
We bought some ferns to cover a hole in the driveway. There is a wood burning stove in the house. These things can set a nice mood on a cold evening, but wood fires are messy, and the firewood needs to be carried by hand. Woodstoves are hard work, and I won’t miss it. Anyway, the driveway is bitumen, and a firewood delivery truck had one of its wheels put a depression in a corner of the drive that gradually turned into a pothole. Filling it with concrete would have been a solution, or calling in some bitumen repair company would be another solution. An easy alternative solution, since this was in a corner of the driveway that doesn’t get driven over, was to fill the hole with soil and a few plants. Half a dozen ferns of different sizes and shapes from the local nursery transformed an eyesore into a pretty highlight of the garden. Another way of considering what we did was that we didn’t repair the drive, but we did a cover up job, which irks me. But it did look good. So, I’m not feeling so bad.
I must reinforce some advice I’ve mentioned earlier: before moving house, get yourself fit. Make yourself nice and strong. You are going to need those muscles. Spend some time in the gym or do some home exercises to build up your strength in the months beforehand. The following exemplifies how unfit we were.
We shifted a desk from the house into the garage. This was a large desk that I grabbed when one of the places I worked about eight years earlier was doing a clean out. It was going to be dumped. It wasn’t a brilliant looking desk but was very large and functional. It dominated the room and made it look small, but it was a great surface to work. Getting rid of it and putting a smaller desk in its place helped make the room look spacious. Spaciousness is good for the punters.
Anyway, I can remember carrying this desk into the house. It was heavy, but we did it. The two of us, one on each end carried it through the garage, popped it on its side, and up the narrow garage stairs and into the house. The desk was so big it wouldn’t fit through the hallway and into the study. We had to remove the study window glass and lift it through the window.
So, here we are, eight years later, wanting to take this desk out the window and down the stairs and into the garage. That was the plan. You’d think it would be easy, and it might have been for other people; we were going down hill, after all. But we could barley lift it over the window sill. Getting it out the window seemed positively dangerous with it threatening to crush us.
It would have been best to lift it clear of the ground and carry it down the garage steps to prevent it from becoming damaged (just like we did in bringing it up the stairs all those years ago). Concrete steps can be very rough on polished wood. We had no energy, and it got dragged and bumped down those concrete steps. Why was it so heavy, this time? Where had all our muscles gone? It was a surprisingly shocking experience.
We cleaned and painted the decking out the front of the house. The job took a whole day from start to finish, but it looked so good in the end that we didn’t re-clutter it by putting our pot plants back. It was a huge area, all under a covered veranda. With the decking left clear like this, it seemed such a huge expanse. Doing jobs like this and seeing the end result so quickly made me feel like reconsidering selling. The interesting thing here is that I thought the task would have taken a few hours, but no, the whole day was gone.
The bedroom and ensuite and toilet got painted. I was standing on the bed painting the bedroom ceiling. S got tipsy that day, and I became distracted with her lying on the bed and tickling me. So many distractions.
If you are planning to do some work prior to selling, make a reasonable estimate of the time things might take, then double it. You need to rest at times, problems occur, and you get side tracked. No, quadruple the time estimate.
We bought some ferns to cover a hole in the driveway. There is a wood burning stove in the house. These things can set a nice mood on a cold evening, but wood fires are messy, and the firewood needs to be carried by hand. Woodstoves are hard work, and I won’t miss it. Anyway, the driveway is bitumen, and a firewood delivery truck had one of its wheels put a depression in a corner of the drive that gradually turned into a pothole. Filling it with concrete would have been a solution, or calling in some bitumen repair company would be another solution. An easy alternative solution, since this was in a corner of the driveway that doesn’t get driven over, was to fill the hole with soil and a few plants. Half a dozen ferns of different sizes and shapes from the local nursery transformed an eyesore into a pretty highlight of the garden. Another way of considering what we did was that we didn’t repair the drive, but we did a cover up job, which irks me. But it did look good. So, I’m not feeling so bad.
I must reinforce some advice I’ve mentioned earlier: before moving house, get yourself fit. Make yourself nice and strong. You are going to need those muscles. Spend some time in the gym or do some home exercises to build up your strength in the months beforehand. The following exemplifies how unfit we were.
We shifted a desk from the house into the garage. This was a large desk that I grabbed when one of the places I worked about eight years earlier was doing a clean out. It was going to be dumped. It wasn’t a brilliant looking desk but was very large and functional. It dominated the room and made it look small, but it was a great surface to work. Getting rid of it and putting a smaller desk in its place helped make the room look spacious. Spaciousness is good for the punters.
Anyway, I can remember carrying this desk into the house. It was heavy, but we did it. The two of us, one on each end carried it through the garage, popped it on its side, and up the narrow garage stairs and into the house. The desk was so big it wouldn’t fit through the hallway and into the study. We had to remove the study window glass and lift it through the window.
So, here we are, eight years later, wanting to take this desk out the window and down the stairs and into the garage. That was the plan. You’d think it would be easy, and it might have been for other people; we were going down hill, after all. But we could barley lift it over the window sill. Getting it out the window seemed positively dangerous with it threatening to crush us.
It would have been best to lift it clear of the ground and carry it down the garage steps to prevent it from becoming damaged (just like we did in bringing it up the stairs all those years ago). Concrete steps can be very rough on polished wood. We had no energy, and it got dragged and bumped down those concrete steps. Why was it so heavy, this time? Where had all our muscles gone? It was a surprisingly shocking experience.
We cleaned and painted the decking out the front of the house. The job took a whole day from start to finish, but it looked so good in the end that we didn’t re-clutter it by putting our pot plants back. It was a huge area, all under a covered veranda. With the decking left clear like this, it seemed such a huge expanse. Doing jobs like this and seeing the end result so quickly made me feel like reconsidering selling. The interesting thing here is that I thought the task would have taken a few hours, but no, the whole day was gone.
The bedroom and ensuite and toilet got painted. I was standing on the bed painting the bedroom ceiling. S got tipsy that day, and I became distracted with her lying on the bed and tickling me. So many distractions.
If you are planning to do some work prior to selling, make a reasonable estimate of the time things might take, then double it. You need to rest at times, problems occur, and you get side tracked. No, quadruple the time estimate.
30 January 2008
Preparation gets serious
I didn’t manage to get all the painting completed in the main bedroom on this trip to Melbourne. It’s so tricky and time consuming painting cornices, when they are a different colour from the ceiling and walls. I threw in the towel at 2.00am. There was no way I could possibly finish the job at the rate I was going before it was time to leave. Anyway, I was beginning to feel wobbly on the ladders, and there’s no point risking an injury over a coat of paint.
With two and a half hours sleep under my belt I was whisked off to the airport. For the first time ever and despite my child like fascination of the view from aeroplane windows, I dozed during the bulk of the flight back to Canberra. I felt dead all day at work. I hope no one noticed. I couldn’t concentrate on work, and left for the day earlier than usual. I caught the bus home, but unfortunately got on board the wrong bus and had to walk miles in the hot afternoon sun.
Less than 12 hours earlier I was cleaning paint brushes in another state, and here I was trudging along a street swishing flies away on a hot afternoon. What a day!
Not sure why my back was aching: because of the strange angles I was standing while hanging onto the ladders, or because we slept on the lounge room floor on the last night trying to avoid the paint smell that was in the bedroom.
So many things didn’t get done on this trip, but a lot did get done. The house is taking shape ready for sale, but oh, it’s a slow, painstaking, painful, tedious, boring job. I'll say more shortly.
I phoned home in the evening. S said that Elsa (our cat) was pining for me. She had been wandering around the house looking for me. Poor thing. I played a trick on her when I got home. When I arrived, I crept quietly into the house by the back door, and tiptoed into the bedroom, hid behind the bed, and called her name when she walked past. She took a double-take when she saw me. Okay, I’m a softy for our cat. Her nineteenth birthday has just gone.
With two and a half hours sleep under my belt I was whisked off to the airport. For the first time ever and despite my child like fascination of the view from aeroplane windows, I dozed during the bulk of the flight back to Canberra. I felt dead all day at work. I hope no one noticed. I couldn’t concentrate on work, and left for the day earlier than usual. I caught the bus home, but unfortunately got on board the wrong bus and had to walk miles in the hot afternoon sun.
Less than 12 hours earlier I was cleaning paint brushes in another state, and here I was trudging along a street swishing flies away on a hot afternoon. What a day!
Not sure why my back was aching: because of the strange angles I was standing while hanging onto the ladders, or because we slept on the lounge room floor on the last night trying to avoid the paint smell that was in the bedroom.
So many things didn’t get done on this trip, but a lot did get done. The house is taking shape ready for sale, but oh, it’s a slow, painstaking, painful, tedious, boring job. I'll say more shortly.
I phoned home in the evening. S said that Elsa (our cat) was pining for me. She had been wandering around the house looking for me. Poor thing. I played a trick on her when I got home. When I arrived, I crept quietly into the house by the back door, and tiptoed into the bedroom, hid behind the bed, and called her name when she walked past. She took a double-take when she saw me. Okay, I’m a softy for our cat. Her nineteenth birthday has just gone.02 January 2008
Working holiday
I spent a bit too much time having fun. But the weather was very hot at times so we went to the movies a lot. Got two rooms painted. Shell Cove was a strange colour that looked different on ceiling and walls which seemed to vary in colour between rooms. It looked pink in one room and yellow in the other. How is that possible?
I had never used a paint roller before, but it wasn’t so scary after all. Rollers leave a mottled finish on the surface that I dislike that the brush doesn’t, but you can cover a lot more area much faster with the roller. Over the years, we got into the habit of painting the walls, ceiling, cornices, and skirting board different colours, and wished to continue it. It looks good when done nicely, and when selling your property if your place looks good it will attract the punters. When I say different colours, the colours have to blend. The colours must be shades of one another. Perhaps a very, very light yellow on the ceiling, with a deeper yellow of the same hue on the walls and the cornice and skirting board in a mustard to make it stand out, but it too has to be of a colour that fits appropriately with the other two. So, painting the wall and ceiling was easy, but the cornices nearly broke my back in the painstaking work that it was with fine brush strokes and keeping a straight edge between the different colours.
S got me a video game for Xmas – Doom. I got hooked and spent hours at it. I shouldn’t have, but I was on holiday so I don’t feel too guilty. I don’t think Doom is a game you can win, and it was kind of scary if you let yourself become engrossed in it.
I was looking in the roof space for some cardboard packing boxes. After we unpacked from the move to Melbourne we had kept the old removalist packing boxes. We stored these fire hazards in the attic space. They store well when flattened out, and surprisingly after about 15 years in the attic still seemed remarkably well preserved.
While I was in the attic I saw about 4 or 5 rats climbing over the bricks at the far end of the house. There was no scurrying away when they saw me. Mamma rat and her children or friends stopped dead in their tracks, looked at me for a moment, looked away, and continued on their way as though I hadn’t been there and casually went about their business. A couple of rat traps were purchased; we got cages that captured the little blighters rather than killing them. Three were caught within two days, though we couldn’t decide whether they were baby rats or large mice. We released them away some distance from the house and they scurried into the bushland. They ran like the blazes.
I had been reading some material on the web and had made a few phone calls about rats and how they are controlled. One of the more interesting things one of the commercial contacts said to me was something along the lines of wherever you are at any time, on average, you will be within 10 metres of a rat, and it doesn’t matter where you live or work; they will be there. Some of the poisons used to kill rodents sound nauseatingly unpleasant. There seems to be no regard for animal welfare in their development. From preparations that cause rats to thirst to the extent they will drink until they are dead to chemicals that induce bleeding both internally and externally. These animals will suffer an agonizing death. My solution to remove them harmlessly will at least provide some nutrient to the local wedge tailed eagle or other wild life interested in eating them, but at least their death will be relatively quick. And if some of them get away to live in the wild, that’s fine.
Looking back I recall watching one of our cats sitting on the lawn looking up at a tree. This was a cotton palm tree. As an old cat, she was content to watch the rats. I didn’t know it at the time but these trees are a lovely refuge for rodents. One evening I crept up to the tree and could hear a lot of rustling between the large leaves that was more than just the wind blowing.
I had never used a paint roller before, but it wasn’t so scary after all. Rollers leave a mottled finish on the surface that I dislike that the brush doesn’t, but you can cover a lot more area much faster with the roller. Over the years, we got into the habit of painting the walls, ceiling, cornices, and skirting board different colours, and wished to continue it. It looks good when done nicely, and when selling your property if your place looks good it will attract the punters. When I say different colours, the colours have to blend. The colours must be shades of one another. Perhaps a very, very light yellow on the ceiling, with a deeper yellow of the same hue on the walls and the cornice and skirting board in a mustard to make it stand out, but it too has to be of a colour that fits appropriately with the other two. So, painting the wall and ceiling was easy, but the cornices nearly broke my back in the painstaking work that it was with fine brush strokes and keeping a straight edge between the different colours.
S got me a video game for Xmas – Doom. I got hooked and spent hours at it. I shouldn’t have, but I was on holiday so I don’t feel too guilty. I don’t think Doom is a game you can win, and it was kind of scary if you let yourself become engrossed in it.
I was looking in the roof space for some cardboard packing boxes. After we unpacked from the move to Melbourne we had kept the old removalist packing boxes. We stored these fire hazards in the attic space. They store well when flattened out, and surprisingly after about 15 years in the attic still seemed remarkably well preserved.
While I was in the attic I saw about 4 or 5 rats climbing over the bricks at the far end of the house. There was no scurrying away when they saw me. Mamma rat and her children or friends stopped dead in their tracks, looked at me for a moment, looked away, and continued on their way as though I hadn’t been there and casually went about their business. A couple of rat traps were purchased; we got cages that captured the little blighters rather than killing them. Three were caught within two days, though we couldn’t decide whether they were baby rats or large mice. We released them away some distance from the house and they scurried into the bushland. They ran like the blazes.
I had been reading some material on the web and had made a few phone calls about rats and how they are controlled. One of the more interesting things one of the commercial contacts said to me was something along the lines of wherever you are at any time, on average, you will be within 10 metres of a rat, and it doesn’t matter where you live or work; they will be there. Some of the poisons used to kill rodents sound nauseatingly unpleasant. There seems to be no regard for animal welfare in their development. From preparations that cause rats to thirst to the extent they will drink until they are dead to chemicals that induce bleeding both internally and externally. These animals will suffer an agonizing death. My solution to remove them harmlessly will at least provide some nutrient to the local wedge tailed eagle or other wild life interested in eating them, but at least their death will be relatively quick. And if some of them get away to live in the wild, that’s fine.
Looking back I recall watching one of our cats sitting on the lawn looking up at a tree. This was a cotton palm tree. As an old cat, she was content to watch the rats. I didn’t know it at the time but these trees are a lovely refuge for rodents. One evening I crept up to the tree and could hear a lot of rustling between the large leaves that was more than just the wind blowing.
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