Decisions decisions

The last week or so has seen lots happening at the house and lots of stuff to think about.

I had one of those wake up in the night “oh shit” moments and realised that it would be very difficult to hang paintings if there is only gyprock with a gap behind it or worse old mortar that just falls out. I am of the belief that every wall needs something on it, so the thought of not having our art, collected over many years (none expensive and most from overseas but treasures to us), displayed was very disappointing. Anyway, after a bit of internet surfing, and the go ahead from Trevor and Dean, I found a great company in Balmain called  FX Hanging Systems that make ceiling mounted shadow line handing systems. The downstairs gyprocking will happen in the next week or so and I’ve found most products seem to have a 10 day lead time at least but these guys will send from Melbourne (I think) and arrive 2 days later to site. I thought it was pretty well priced, it cost about $400 for about 22 lineal meters, but I also really like the idea that we can move the art around without having to patch walls and re-paint.

Dean had the painter around and was basically advised that if we painted on top of the old paint on the exterior walls it would just peel off. There are about 4-5 layers of paint with the last one being some textured thing to hide the imperfections – kind of worked as we did not notice when we bought the house. So we spent 2 days scraping paint off the front of the house and the side wall of our place and next doors. The front of the house looks very Tuscan now – sort of rustic but not the kind of look either Mr R or I really like. The plan is to guerney all the scraped areas and then the front will be re-rendered putting back in the lines that made the houses look sort of like sandstone (if we can afford it but probably not much choice). The problem is that we only allowed for re-painting and there are some areas that just look too terrible i.e. we didn’t know that there are two massive cracks over the door and the lintel is broken in half – apparently it isn’t going anywhere but if we are going to re-render we have to fix this.

Also got a quote to put in a new section of tessellated tile path – didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the $5,000 quote for an area 1.2 x 2 metres. We were thinking of replacing the lot as the bullnose edge is not original and many of the tiles are cracked but that was an extra $3.7k without the concrete slab. So we are going for plan E – replace the door sill with Italian slate bullnose (as would have been original), clean up tessellated tiles, paint ugly terrazzo edge black, lay new side path side with grey tint; then next year if/when funds allow we will just get the little section done. We found a place that can supply the tiles and have some recommended (and apparently not hugely expensive) tilers. Renditions tile seemed much cheaper and we think it would still look great, currently they don’t have chocolate brown tiles, which we need, but they will be bringing these in in February so we can wait until then.

We are also missing our cast iron lace work – just got a quote for that $1k a lineal metre WTF! Am I living in the 80’s or is that very very expensive??? Got another quote for about $2000 but I'll just wait and see if you can find a 2nd hand one.

Been so busy I haven’t taken any photos but will take lots this weekend and load them up.