New drawbridge for the Castle

Okay, well it's not really a drawbridge but a new front door is just as exciting, especially because of it's new placement in the Castle.


So off we went to find our front door. We checked out a few places but most places needed to order the doors in. And we (okay, I) was fussy with what I wanted in a door. A door that wasn't too modern but that would let natural light into the lounge room. And here is what we ended up with.

Boss, Mrs Boss and I got to work marking and cutting out the new placement for the Castle's front door.

Putting the door frame in and securing it into position. Making a door header and creating a recess for the door hinge to sit into.

 

 Cutting 2 circular holes and installing the door hardware aka door handle and dead lock. We opted to put them a little bit higher than the suggested height.

 All installed (while the front of the house was still naked)

And because we hadn't yet decided whether we were going to stain or paint our new "drawbridge", so we covered the door with heay duty plastic from the hardware store to prevent the rain getting to our unfinished door.

Have you ever installed a new front door? Would you paint or stain? Any tips on painting or staining?

Man cave treasures

While in the "Man cave" under the Castle, the boys kept finding all different kinds of old treasures.
We think our old treasures are too interesting not to share with you.

"Capstan" Navy Cut Fine Flake Medium Strength Tobacco

An old nail, we think it's probably out of a wooden railway sleeper

Gillette Blue Blade razors

Peters Tommy The Tasmanian Wois Lid

Some dried herbs

An article about Hitler Attacked - Destroyer of Freedom

Some bones - we are told probably a sheep

A gun advertisement

An old bottle

Have you ever found interesting old objects?

Stripping the old bathroom & hallway

While the boys were busy working down in the "man cave", Mrs Boss and I began to strip the bathroom of it's belongings aka tiles, bath and vanity.

Bathroom before:

No sooner than we started, we run into a problem. The tiles were not tile cemented to the cement sheeting, they were liquid nailed to it. Making the job of removing them a lot more difficult. The more we tried to carefully hammer and chisel them off, the more we kept accidentally putting holes into the cement sheeting.
 
We decided it would be easier to remove the cement sheeting completely and start all over.
So in came the big gun boys to do all the rough stuff.

Boss Junior  working on removing the bath

 Bath ready to be removed from the bathroom

  

 Bath completely removed

Boss Junior worked with Miss J and I to remove the tiles from the floor of the bathroom and from down the hallway.

 Boss Jr. & Miss J hard at work on the hallway tiles

 

YAY!!! Almost finished.

Have you ever stripped a bathroom or removed tiles?

The hard work begins

We started work on the Castle straight away. In charge Boss (Kirra's Dad) with Mrs Boss (Kirra's mum) by his side and trusty side-kick Boss Junior (Kirra's little brother) was roped in to help aswell. (Boss Jr. will probably kill me for not only uploading this photo of him to our blog but also to facebook. Whoopsy!)

The first step was to re-stump & level the flooring in the the front of the house which included the master bedroom, kitchen & lounge room. We pulled up some of the floor boards in the kitchen to gain access to below the house.

 The "Man Cave" under the house 

Boss brought in a laser level which spins around putting a level line around the walls to see how much we would have to raise the floor to be back in level.
The only problem with the spinny-roundy level was if there's too much movement in the room, it would stop and reset itself... So much fun with an almost 2 year old running around in the house.

Red laser level line around the lounge room*

Once all the rooms in the front of the house had been marked on with a level line then began the task of slowly raising the house millimetre by millimetre back into alignment.

 *Just to clarify, the laser line around the room isn't how high the house needed to be raised.
We worked out the common level in all the rooms and raised the floor to where it needed to be.

While the boys were measuring, cutting & placing stumps, Mrs Boss & I were mixing concrete by hand shovel. Definitely not the easiest way to do it but we had some laughs when we accidently splashed each other with concrete. Warning! Do not get it in your eyes! IT HURTS!

Brad & Boss Junior cutting stumps

Brad putting a stump in

Concreting the stumps in

Mrs Boss mixing the concrete

Have you ever done re-stumping or concreting?

The Castle is officially our own!

On 1 July 2011, the settlement was granted for our first house. In the past it was something we had only ever dreamt of - owning our own house. We never even gave a thought about renovating especially with a young child. We know other people do it but we just didn't think we would have the patience or knowledge to be able to. And to be completely honest, we really still can't believe that we are.

Here is a rough plan of the house "before" - keep in mind this definitely isn't to scale one bit but atleast you'll have some idea of what we are talking about in our posts. :) 

The house was originally built sometime around the 1950's. Maybe earlier or maybe later, not really sure.

The Castle's exterior is a white vinyl/plastic cladding or siding.


It has an enclosed porch entrance, 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom, kitchen, small bathroom, small laundry with an extra extra wide hallway.

To the rear of the block, there is a single car shed, an old shack which might have been an old laundry, a garden shed, outdoor toilet, large clothes line, a mature lemon tree & an overgrown wattle. And a bunch of weeds.


Alot of work but even more potiential.

Our castle

Enclosed porch entrance

  Bathroom

Laundry

Kitchen & Dining area

 Lounge room

 Part of the backyard

So that's our castle.

This is our first blog, so let us know what you think.