Office Unpacked

My office was the very first (and to-date the only) room I fully unpacked. If I didn't have my office in order I wouldn't have been able to spend my spare time writing lovely blog posts for my readers. I spent a year working for Kikki-K, which means I am VERY obsessed with stationary and love having things filed in their right place.

For the first time ever I have enough space to create a comfortable and inspiring work area, which I have struggled to leave since unpacking. Its fantastic to wake up on my 'non-work' days and work my butt off in a room I love. Especially when both of my windows face palms and one looks out to mount Coolum.

I still have lots of renovation work to complete in this room (ceiling needs replacing eventually, DIY chair project is in order, blinds need updating, lighting needs redoing, and the walls need painting) but for now its a fantastic space and one that I have never had the luxury of owning before!

Floor Sanding

The beautiful hardwood flooring throughout our home was one of the reasons we purchased it. Having timber floors has been a dream of mine after years of mouldy/flea ridden/glass riddled/hairy carpeted rental homes. We gained access to the property before settlement in order to do a bit of a clean up. One of these tasks was to remove the carpet and sand the floors before we moved in. 

The not-so-beautiful carpet above is what we had to work with. It was ripped, stained and best of all, smelt like dogs. It wasn't tacked down very hard so the initial carpet removal process was the easiest part of the whole process. The carpet ran through from the living/dining space, down the hall, and one of the bedrooms (the office room) was carpeted also. Two bedrooms were already polished floors, but were a high gloss varnish and a mahogony stain, which we didn't really like.

Once the carpet came up we realised we were dealing with a MDF covering over the dining (and kitchen once we ripped the lino up) floor. This took a little more muscle power to remove than the carpet but was a relatively easy job.

Prepping the floors for sanding was honestly the most time consuming and difficult process we faced during the whole sanding experience. The hard work wasn't made any easier by a severe heat wave, that saw temperatures reaching the low 40's and sweat beading from our brows. We each took a skateboard and worked our way across every inch of floor, removing the boarding that the carpet was tacked too, and pulling each and every nail and staple out of the floor. The MDF in the kitchen and dining room was tacked down with thousands of ridicuoulsy small staples which our removers were too big for. With some creative use of a screwdriver and a hammer they were painstakingly removed at half the pace of the regular staples.

Once all theses extras were removed each flooring nail had to be punched into the floor to ensure they didn't tear sanding pads as layers were stripped off the timber during the sanding process. Lucky for us my parents (DIY floor sanders from way back) came to visit and lend a hand. So each of them grabbed a hammer and assisted in this process.

We hired a floor sander and an edge sander from Bunnings for two days, and worked solidly taking layers of old flooring off (starting on a course grit and working up to a fine one), until the floors were at our desired consistency. The edge sander was back breaking work and a little difficult to get an even finish with. We had to use mouse sanders for the tricky corner areas as the large sanders just would't fit.

Some areas of the floor (the edges and corners) look a little 'rustic' and DIY but we are overall quite happy for our first ever floor sanding attempt. I never thought I would know a floor as well as I know this one. I have seen every plank of flooring SO many times over I feel I could draw a picture of it with my eyes closed.

Once the sanding was finished we coated the floors with two coats of Cabots CFP Floor. This product was selected for its water based clean up, low odour, and fast drying time. We wanted a low sheen finish and the natural wood to shine through.

Normally you would mix some sanding dust with the CFP and use it to fill the nail holes. My man and I decided we liked the 'industrial' look of the exposed nail holes and decided to keep them to theme in with the rest of our decorating.

The supervisor was kicked out for the polishing process. He isn't really that impressed with being outside, or the fact that his doggy door is a little undersized.

A few days later we we finished the move and the dreadlocked removal crew (my man and one of my good friends) cooked our very first BBQ for our very first night in the new house. Following on from past moves, the first meal is eaten on a cardboard box table!

The most exciting part for me was getting to read the RUSSH magazine that I had bought prior to the move and hadn't yet had a chance to read. So I sat on my thai cushion, on my floor and spent an hour devouring every page with a nice cup of green tea.


First pic credit here

Bathroom Adventures

Bathrooms have never really been a place of joy for me. My parents place ( a ridiculously old cottage) had an itty bitty bathroom with space for a shower and a sink and nothing else. It also had carpet, in a bathroom, YUCK.

The first share house I moved into was co-habited by a beauty therapist who hogged the bathroom and coated it a nice shade of orange thanks to her tan-in-a-can. Tim, my fellow housemate, and I had to get up pre dawn to even get a look in at the bathroom. Most days I ended up walking across the road to finish my morning get-ready routine at my Uni Campus rather than wait for the bathroom.

I had a few nice bathrooms in my post uni travels, none of which were ever really 'mine', no more than a place to dump my suitcase for a short time. One that I had in India was washed down on a daily basis by the house-staff. So if you left anything in it, it would get a impromptu wash. I ended up with many soggy rolls of toilet paper this way.

My 'pre-Queensland' share house had towels that were so mouldy I swear they would move by themselves. We also had a toothbrush holder (half filled with mouldy water) with over 15 toothbrushes in it, and only three people living in the house. I kept my towels, toothbrush and toiletries in my room.

The rentals we lived in before we bought were no better. One bathroom was so small you had to undress outside of it. The other was a living breathing organism. When we moved one of the walls in the bathroom had come away from the other as the stumps of the house had sunk. This left a large gap in the corner of the bathroom through which you could see the outside world. The owner proper up the house and re-stumped that section so the gap eventually disappeared. However the bathroom fun never ended. In the four years we lived there I found the following living things in our bath/shower; a brush turkey, rat, worms (on several different occasions and often crawling out of the plug hole while I was bathing), maggots, moths, mould, and beetles.

So it seems that this house had the facets and most functional bathroom I have ever owned.

I can't wait to renovate it and make it perfect. But in the mean time I look forward to enjoying it just how it is, MINE!