Almost Done: Laundry & Storeroom

 It has been a busy spring of construction so far.  I found a fab old shop trolley and brought it home to keep and use for my art paints, palettes, and mediums.  Someday (when I have a completed studio space to deploy it in !).  Meantime, it has gotten pressed into service as a paint trolley for our works in progress.

And so while Ian tackles jobs big and small around here, things are coming together.

storeroom, with a crate
sitting in middle of the
space

laundry/bathroom, feels
a real room now !

The storeroom and the laundry/bathroom are looking pretty good.  These photos show both as they looked when I departed on the latest business travel, at end of October.  Both rooms with tidy wall boards and ceiling board.  Plus some moulding at top of the walls.   What a difference it makes having the walls and ceilings up.  Like "real rooms."  Though no lights as yet.  You see the electrical cables hanging from the ceiling for the overhead lights.  The photo of laundry on left has a worklamp in it at time of the photo, to light up the area.  Both areas have concrete slab floors, but a bit rough, they will get covered with tiling later.

Laundry now ready for service.
Two overhead lights, installed but replacement
glass domes on order

 And then after my travel, I returned mid November to find a lot done !  Lights connected and installed.  Warm mid grey porcelain floor tiles leftover from our inside renovations laid and grouted.  Walls finished off and painted (Porter's Icelandic Stone in Laundry, Porter's Old Church White 200% in store room).

In the laundry the shower base, toilet are in place.  A sink cabinet and new tap installed.  A broom cabinet also put in the corner.  The washer is in place and even working !!


The overhead lights need new glass covers, as both were broken when we opened the box.  Apparently happened to a lot of buyers of them, the supplier has had to order replacements. But they work !  We will be putting in a sky light in between them.  Sometime in early 2013.  The skylight fittings we want are 440 dollars, just for all the materials.

Accent light fitting above sink.
Need to put up a mirror or mirrored cabinet.
Must find the Dryer bracket
to mount it on the wall.

the shower area, not yet tiled

 The decision of what colour for the laundry walls was especially difficult.  What to use with the mid grey floor tiles, the white appliances and sink cabinet ?  And the cream coloured tiles we have for the shower.  White would have seemed more versatile, but we got the tiles for a good price, $5 a box.  And they are older tiles, made in Australia.  Simple 100 x 200 subway tiles.  But cream, not white.  I was intent to find a way to use them, as we have had to do everything we can to reduce outlay for this laundry/bathroom.  We will also order or later get a piece of tempered glass for the side of the shower nearest to the toilet fitting.  A fixed pane of glass for side of the shower.  The other two are the corner shown in the photo, yet to be tiled.  The un covered side will have a rail and a shower curtain.  That's the plan at this point !

Storeroom. one overhead
ceiling light and two
pendants, with simple
decorative glass bulbs.

And the store room is looking very neat and tidy.  A few boxes already moved in.  More when the base moulding can go in.  The wall on right (where the crate is) will be storage.  I hope a wall full of closet/cupboards.  Not too deep, maybe 60 cm deep.  Floor to ceiling (which is not that tall).  Fitted with shelves for lots of storage space.  Underneath the pendant lights, will be a desk.  To its left, most or the whole wall will get painted with chalkboard paint.

More soon, I have more with tiling done to show next post.

Looking Like Progress

Wall boards have gone up this week--
it's beginning to look like a real room !
Wiring for overhead lighting dangles from ceilings.

The work on the back construction has gone so slowly this late winter, or so it seems.  I know it is all important bits, framing, preparations to put things in place.  But it has taken its time, even though Ian works on it all week and every day, all day long.  He only takes breaks to do other chores or watchmaking on the weekends.  So good marks for industriousness for sure.  But the work that has been underway was just that sort of slow thing that takes while when only one person is advancing the tasks each day.


Last week the electricians were in doing some cabling and soon we need to have the lighting fixtures ready to be put in and connected.  Must source these before they come back--needs to be at the ready (so I am told !)

wool insulation in the ceiling space

So this week it was a bit exciting to see insulation batts appear on the construction site !  Honestly, I never quite know what will be out there or going on when I step out the back door, so this was a surprise and a development too !  Eco wool batts, nice and fluffy and not as scratchy as fiberglass sorts.  They looked like dirty sheep in colour actually like noone bothered to wash the fleece (like sheep can look when running around in dusty paddocks, the same colour as the ground they trod upon !).  Apparently there is a mix of fibres in there, including some little bit of glass content, but it does look and feel like pure wool batting.

gyprock sheet lifter,
a very useful tool

The insulation went in between the framing and then wall boards went up.  Ian borrowed a gyprock sheet lifter to put the ceiling panels up.  But even with the lifter, it was still a heavy and difficult job for one person going it alone.  (I wasn't readily available throughout the timing for this task, with work and other appointments already committed.  And maybe I am not the best helper for a task like this anyhow ?).

some wall and ceiling boards  now up in the
laundry/bathroom (pale grey)

Today the wall boards started to go up.  And by afternoon, what a transformation.  Before that it all looked so rough and like an outdoor place.  By afternoon it was looking like an interior room !  I can really see what the space will be like.  Yes, these two rooms are smallish, not palatial proportions to be sure.  But they are now looking very tidy and I can imagine they will work out very well.  For people just checking in or finding this story, the room on the left and below foreground (before ladder) will be a combined laundry and bathroom.  The room in the photo below (at and beyond the ladder) will initially be a store room, but next year we will fit it out with a wall full of built in cabinets/cupboards, a desk, and a wall (opposite the built in storage) painted in chalkboard paint and covered to allow sketches and also place for creating mood boards or other inspirations.  The wall board material in the two rooms is different, a water resistant product has been used for the laundry/bathroom (paler grey finish, the regular gyprock is a grey beige colour)

wall boards on walls and ceiling
of the storeroom (beige).  

Both rooms will have sky lights.  Ian has found a sort he will order, not cheap, but looks well engineered.  Oh well, why not !  The space between their exterior dome and the interior is short, so not much ducting or tubing is needed.  But these rooms are bounded on sides by thick stone retaining walls, and a low ceiling.  Windows were not practical.  So sky lights will give us some filtered light during day hours.  And we will have good lighting for other times.  The skylights will be where you see green in between the insulation battings.  Though now ceiling boards cover it, and have careful markings to cut the interior skylight area when the exterior skylight unit has been installed.

Part of next week I am away to Sydney, short business trip and doing my world hours plus local timings meetings from there.  Wonder what things will look like on my return ?  Stay tuned for more news.  And maybe some ideas on procurement of lighting fixtures.

Back Construction Now in Progress

gorgeous glazed old doors at the salvage
building supply yard

I have been slow to post on this blog, have been cloistered in working during the winter.  In the past two weeks, we have gotten construction started on our back extension and fit out project.  Ian is busy with this every weekday.  We have begun to source some of the building materials we need for our project.

First, a peruse for some old doors.  Ian has had to restore several of our old doors, they were in shocking condition, you could see throughout the cracks in their timbers and one let rain into the house when rain blew a certain direction.  They had rotted timbers that had to be replaced to restore them.  And also get wood putty, and glue.  It is a fussy and time-consuming job that is also rather boring.  But we wanted to use the old doors where we could, as they have fab old door hardware, including ancient old locks with big skeleton keys.  Ian has made them all sound again, and even restored the locks so I can turn the keys more easily.

We picked this yellow painted set.  Had the
best door furniture, hardware, and in best
condition.  No warping.  Awesome 10 lights,
fitted with thick beveled edges on each light.

At an Adelaide business selling salvage building materials we found a range of great old ten light glazed doors with beautiful beveled glass and door furniture.  All in wonderful condition.  This appealed to Ian a lot after all the doors we had here that were in such poor repair.  This set of glazed doors seems to have come from the same building we think.  A careful look through them helped us pick the ones we thought were a best fit.  Happens to be painted yellow, so will definitely get new paint work in time.   This set of doors will be the entrance to our studio, coming in from the old red brick paving and path we have put in.

The door I spied and WANT !  Still have to talk
Director Engineering into this.  Need to
work out if it suits one of our door requirements.
Fab big door with half glazed facade inscribed.

This week we will go back, after three more doors.  Plus maybe one additional to replace an interior door that is a sad cheap door (probably replacement for the original one ?).  We want a door that matches the character of the other interior doors in the house, but sized to fit the door frame set in the stone wall, and it is not a very big doorway, so we need to find something to fit or that can be cut to fit without ruining its character.  The other three are for the extension under construction and will include a door for the new laundry, I hope to find one half glazed (top half).  One for the storeroom next to it.  And one for the steps out of the studio  at the steps that go up to the clothes line, also half glazed if we can.  I found one for either the laundry or to the clothes line steps, with old inscription Operations Branch.  I love it and would love it in one of those areas.  But considerations include the side of the glazing the inscription is on, and the side of the door already organised for the hinges and knob.  also its size.  This turns out to be a rather large door.  Might not fit the laundry space (which has a lower ceiling height).  And not sure if the hinge and knob placement plus inscription work for the one to the steps up to clothes line.  This to be worked out this week.  And then a trip with the trailer to the salvage yard.  See if it is there still if suitable. If not, find something else and bring it home to design doorways around.

Steel framing for the laundry.  Washer and Dryer will go on
the far wall, stacked in left corner.  Need to find a cabinet for
 sink for middle of that wall.  

Meantime, work is underway for the wall framing for the laundry and also for the storeroom to its right.  Ian has chosen steel framing.  As you can see in the pic, the framing for wall boards is all up and he has also put up framing beams for the ceiling boards.  He now needs doors to work out placement of door framing to hang them in place (which will be done later).  Because we want old salvaged doors, we need the doors and he can build framing for their size (or whatever cut down size we decide for them).

The far wall you see there is a stone retaining wall.  This property is built on a slope, we have heaps of stone retaining walls.  Other side of it is a water tank and pump, we catch rain water from roof into gutters and drain into the tank.  The pump sends the water to one of our large tanks up on the hill behind our house.  One of the tanks is plumbed to provide water to the toiler.  The others are storage reservoirs.

We don't want to use the retaining wall for our interior walls.  It is thick enough, but it is rather rough in finish and a neater fit out will be had with framing just in side it.  So both laundry and store room to its side will be fit out this way.

The  roofing materials above the laundry and storeroom will be renovated with some transparent polycarbonate roofing.  This will allow us to create some "skylights" in each room's ceilings, for a bit of filtered light.  See how that looks in material of same sort in pergola roof as shown at centre top of last photo below.

This last photo shows the framing for the side of laundry.  Plumbing in place for a toilet and shower along the right side of that wall.  The other side of the wall will be finished off and clad with something on the studio side.  And tall bookcases will go in front of it.  Reference materials for art and design studio.

Outlook shown below is to the someday-studio area, which will be almost completely enclosed.  Do please ignore all the stuff stacked up !  Much of it will go into the store room when it is fit out, we will do it up into a small office with tidy built in storage later on.  But initially, it will be a clean and dry storage space while we get laundry and then studio done.  Large windows planned over looking garden retaining walls.  We are not yet sure whether to get them as salvaged pieces or buy some.  More posts on that as this develops.

Framing of side of laundry space, where a shower will go in right
corner and toilet next to it.  Was the best way to get a second
bathroom in and make good use of efficiencies in plumbing
(one wet room, not two).  Other side of the framing will be studio. 

Exciting, construction happening.  Each day has lots of construction site sounds while I work on my IT things, or on plans for a small local business we want to launch next year.  I asked Ian when the work on the laundry, storeroom and studio enclosure might be finished.  He thinks it could be in December.  Stay tuned and see how we go.  More progress posts to come !