RIP Wacky Clock & More Asbestos Woes

So firstly I'd like to offer a little rest in peace to Wacky Clock who departed this earth a week ago at the Mugga Lane tip.

In a fit of rage at having tripped over it a number of times and just generally being sick of all the stuff in the apartment, it went to the tip along with a table, 6 chairs, the curtains, the blinds, two mattresses and other bits and pieces including - the evil pelmet of death - a 2.5m long, 10cm wide piece of wood that you can see in earlier pictures above the windows, which spontaneously detached from the window in one of the bedrooms and knocked me out with a large whack to the head.

After a brief stay of three hours in a bed at Calvary Emergency Department, 'because i was a-talkin funny and laughing at everything the doctor said' I came upon the following wisdon:

Everything in Your Renovation is Dangerous.

Case in point - my earlier concern regarding asbestos in the Vermiculite ceiling, which fortunately tested negative, has re-emerged following media reports in the last week that pre 1970's carpet underlay may have been made from recycled hessian bags, formerly used to transport asbestos by James Hardie.

I ripped up the carpet, and got covered in dust....With any luck there might still be a piece of this stuff somewhere in the apartment I can take to the ACT Health Lab to get tested.

As I discovered the first time around neither your building inspection that you pay for, nor your conveyancing solicitor, nor the state health authority who signs the asbestos certificate that comes standard with your contract in the ACT will say a peep about potential Asbestos dangers.

So for future reference, if you are renovating or planning to, treat every surface, every material and every task as if it were f#@ing toxic.

I will update the blog with the results if I can find a piece of the underlay and get it tested...

NEw KITchEN!!!!!!

W00t W00t!!!

Looks good huh!

...well as always with this renovation there are a few niggling izsues...

Turns out the new loo I bought which I triple checked was a 'Back To The Wall P Trap' is in fact, not. And will have to be returned to Bunnings.

The light fitting I was assured was adjustable is, sadly, not and the electrician has already installed it. Its sort of weirdly in the exact centre of the room and even if you are only at my height you sort of get the urge to duck when you walk in...

The sink (you might have spotted is missing from this image) was ordered the wrong way round and isn't coming until Friday...

And I am sure I remember several conversations with the designer about my cupboards that would go all the way to the ceiling...as you can see - that didn't quite get through.

Which means there is a bit of wasted storage.

I also asked for there to be room to stick a mop/broom/ironing board down the side of the fridge...sadly there isn't.

There may not be enough room to install the floor under the white goods (dishwasher and washing machine) and there is this weird big space above the fridge...as you can see marked by the pink circle the cupboards dont line up. I think this is because in the original design there was a giant fridge space which I asked to be reduced to fit my fridge and a broom (and no, I didn't measure the broom because I thought that would be a pretty straight forward request). So the width was reduced (not enough space for a broom), but the height wasnt....so you'll see in the image the cupboards don't line up. and there is a huge space above the top of the fridge.

I guess my main gripe is that the whole reason I went with the expensive Kitchen place was that they provide a fancy two hour design service with a design expert, which I would have thought would avoid these issues...but there were problems the whole way through.

The initial design was done following an onsite measure which didn't pick up the problematic location of the hot water heater and water pipes and subsequently the design was wrong and had to be re-done, by which time I felt pressured to just sign on the dotted line and I didn't go over the designs with a fine tooth comb and didn't pick this stuff up. I didn't individually check each measurement with a tape measure because I figured - well thats what the designer is for and if I was going to have to do it all myself, I could have just gone to IKEA....

Anyway, my previous gripe about being disappointed with the colour isnt so much of an issue now, I managed to find colours that work with the beige and its come off looking really nice - its just still a little disappointing to have so many niggling problems. I guess you live and learn, and hopefully other renovators reading this blog will avoid stuff in the future in which case - my hot tip is: GO TO BUNNINGS for your kitchen. You'll get the better materials, for a cheaper price, and because you'll be doing all the measuring yourself, you'll probably pay much more attention and wont rely on a 'professional design service'.

Kitchen Day

the Painting is finished and the Kitchen is going in right now!!

and, I discovered this morning that at the local shops across the road, they are building a cafe/BAR!!!

yippee...

The painting was nearly going to be a disaster because the creamy paint i bought for the walls i thought would be too creamy to go with the beige colour of the cupboards.

But I bought just enough of another colour called Princess Bling (?!?!?) to go on the walls directly behind the cupboards to lighten it up a little, then put the cottage cream on the remaining two walls.

Altogether, with the Rainsong colour on the feature walls, and princess bling on all the skirting, it looks lovely! the bling and the cream actually go really well together and create a light but warm feel and all the colours now work well with the cupboard colours - which redeems them from being an awful beige to quite a nice almost pale pinky colour!

The painting has nearly killed me trying to paint around the kitchen which was delivered and stored down the middle of the room as you can see - rolling the walls has been a bitch of a job with all the stuff in there....

but - live and learn...

I'll post a pic of the installed kitchen tomorrow!

Yay for Bunnings weekend sausage sizzle

Feeding the renovaters

Let me tell you bout Vermiculite...

So there's this stuff called Vermiculite which looks kinda like gravel stuck to the ceiling and its commonly found in old units because it hides uneven ceilings and apparently reduces noise. Unfortunately it is a total BASTARD to paint. It's especially difficult if you get bad advice. The first paint shop I went to, after a long discussion they sold me four litres of acrylic under coat and a short nap roller. This was supposed to cover all 50m2 of ceiling and ended up covering about four. In the end, it would have been smarter to put in a false ceiling, which was my original plan but I got talked out of it as over-capitalizing... Something like $600 later I have finally done my final ceiling under coat in oil paint which, it turns out is the only thing that really seals vermiculite. For future reference - if you ever consider buying something and someone mentions Vermiculite- Run RUN as fast as you can in the opposite direction.

.......Don't even get me started on the asbestos scare...after I had already swept the ceiling in preparation for painting - getting covered in loose vermiculite in the process- I read online that this stuff sometimes contains asbestos. Fortunately a test at the ACT health labs came back negative but FYI - neither a standard building inspection report nor the local government certificate nor my conveyancing solicitor had even mentioned this as a possible risk so Buyers Beware!!!!!

In case you've googled Vermiculite and stumbled upon this page- in the end what worked best for me was Bunnings Tradecote Interior/Exterior Oil paint - in the Tradex range.

Two coats of the oil under coat then one coat of pink to white ceiling paint. this ends up being the cheapest and least painful way of painting Vermiculite. dont even bother with fancy expensive acrylic water based all in one primers - they are a bitch to roll onto the rough surface - you will use a TON of paint and need to do three or four coats.

Make sure you have the longest nap roller as well - I think mine in the end was about 3oml....

So Disappointed

Well, the kitchen arrived yesterday and it turns out that "Antique Pearl" which I was told was an off white, is actually quite a dark beige.

Its neither white, nor antique, nor pearl.

Beige. I can't think of a worse colour for anything. Beige is synonymous with yuppie, boring and the 1980's.

What on earth am I going to paint the walls now? (bearing in mind I already bought 15 Litres of a creamy paint that was supposed to work with a white kitchen).

Beige......