Before & After - The Big New Project - Part 2

Welcome back for some more before and after renovation photos of The Big New Project. Are you sitting comfortably? Then we shall begin.

The Dining Room

Another area that has completely transformed was the former sitting room which is now a dining space. The pendant lights look better than we expected and the shabby chic furniture really suits the paint colours and wooden floorboards.

Wallpapered sitting room - before

Sitting Room - before

Dining Room - After

Chimney, Cupboard & Pendant Lights 

Second Bedroom

This room originally had a huge built in wardrobe which was chewing up a fair bit of space, so we took it out, removed the wallpaper and gave everything a freshen up. 

Only annoying thing is that there is a bit of colour variation between the 2 cans of paint we used.

More wallpaper - Before

The built in wardrobe - Before

Bright & cheerful bedroom - After

Lovely view through the window of the Dogwood tree - After

Backgarden
The established plants were already there so we just had to replace a beam and paint the pergola. We cut back the vine and planted some lavender and added the outdoor setting.

Pergola - Before

Back garden - Before

Outdoor entertaining area - Before

Newly painted pergola - After

New lavender, mulch and outdoor setting - After

Pretty garden from under the pergola - After

Newly cut grass and mulched garden - After

Herb & veggie patch

Bedroom 3

This was the first room complete in our renovation and was used as a dining room and involved yet more wallpaper stripping and then a nice lick of new paint and sanded floorboards. This is going to be a twin room but for now we have left it as another small lounge.

Bedroom 3 - Before

More wallpaper - Before

Bedroom 3 - After

Bathroom & laundry pictures are still to come so we can save a treat until next week! Hope you all have a fantastic weekend. 

The Big New Project - The Kitchen

Original kitchen - very retro!

The kitchen was in desperate need for a makeover, the layout was fine but everything was pretty dated so we turned to IKEA for inspiration.

Stripped out kitchen

After lots of planning and many hours spent measuring, designing and working with the IKEA kitchen team we had drawings and were ready to go!

Mr L'Orange and I hired a truck and drove down to Sydney early one Saturday morning to go and pick up all our kitchen items.

We came back with enough boxes to fill an entire lounge and got to work putting the cabinet carcases together.

Putting together the cabinets was easier than I expected, Mr L'Orange and I had all the kitchen cabinets complete in just a few hours.

Me and our first completed cabinet

Cabinets ready for installation

New kitchen with new stone bench tops

Smart sink from IKEA and stone bench top

New gas hob also from IKEA

The recipe book nook - we love it! 

Fridge panels, pantry and overhead cupboard go in

The grand reveal of the kitchen is coming shortly, prepare yourself for pressed tin panels, lovely kitchen island and trendy handles!

The Big New Project - Bathroom Update

There is always one room that proves harder than all the rest combined and ours most definitely has to be the bathroom.

Lovely retro orange and black tiles with a blue bath were just a few of the charming features of this room. Not surprisingly we wanted them all to go and to add a toilet to this family sized bathroom.

Sadly, nobody resprays baths in Orange anymore so we had to rip out this cast iron one and replace it.

As we pulled out the existing bathroom and started to take off the tiles we kept finding more and more issues.

We discovered the tiles were concreted on to the wall so very hard to get off and then there was another layer of concrete behind them, combined with some chicken wire, more cement and asbestos sheeting.

Poor Mr L'Orange spent about 2 weeks trying to get all of the tiles off and managed to get through 2 hammer drills in the process.

The fun of removing the floor tiles!

After spending all this time removing tiles, we then realised the concoction of concrete and asbestos from behind the walls needed to be taken out so that the plumber could install new pipes into the walls. Time to call the experts for what we thought was going to be a costly nightmare asbestos removal job.

Luckily Central West Asbestos Removal came a few days later and organised to remove and bag all the waste for a very reasonable price. We breathed a huge sigh of relief as some of the quotes we were getting to do the same job were close to $3000!

More pictures to follow!

The Big New Project - Bedroom 1 Update

Sorry for the delay between posts LALO readers, the 'Big Project' certainly seems to be all consuming at the moment and to be honest the last thing I have been able to face is the computer when I get home.

Demolition continues as we rapidly fill the huge skip I ordered in just a day and only a couple of rooms stripped out. Luckily the skip man keeps giving me top renovation tips every time he comes to bring a fresh skip so it isn't all bad.

The previous owners were clearly very keen on storage and the built ins are massive and so well built that it is really difficult to take them apart! This wardrobe took Mr L'Orange days to split up as it was so solid - they knew how to build things back then.

Big into wall paper, the previous owners have an eclectic mix of wallpaper patterns all over the entire house! How easy is this going to be to take off, I'm wondering?

This is Bedroom 1 which has an add on and wall in the middle of the room - we decided the best thing was to take this out and open up the space.

Here is the room with the wall included and underneath you can see photos with the wall removed, helping to open up the room.

The new beam is in place and ready for plastering, the hole in the floor is also getting patched up before we re-carpet.

Here are a few more pictures of the area being transformed into a lovely big master bedroom.

We are really pleased with the finished results and can't wait to get the rest of the room finished off and ready.

The Big New Project

Always keen for a new project, Mr L'Orange and I decided in one of those rash moments to buy another property with plans to do a quick renovate and rent it out.

As usual, the plans went somewhat awry and we ended up purchasing a 2 bedroom house that was for sale just around the corner from our place but in need of a lot of work.

The fibro house (built in the 50's) didn't just need a bit of a facelift but tummy tuck, nose job, implants & lipo-suction! We need to do an entire overhaul of the kitchen, bathroom, floors, heating, walls, verandah and garden and we have given ourselves 4 weeks to do it! 

Our first task was to rip out the retro kitchen and pull up the vinyl floor covering so that the sanding guy could come in and start work roughing in the floors.

I took off cupboard doors whilst Mr L'Orange broke down the carcases and removed bench tops. I managed to get all the tiles off which I was pretty happy about and this was all done nice & quickly.

The old vinyl all came up and lovely wooden floor boards were discovered underneath, except in one third of the kitchen where we found particle board that will need to be replaced with floorboards.

Happy to see the vinyl was 'Made in Scotland'

The empty kitchen is ready for action and is filled with light all day and we think will look really lovely when it is finished in 2 weeks time. 

We are off to Sydney to pick up our IKEA kitchen tomorrow along with a truck full of furniture that Mr L'Orange has secured at some bargain prices - excellent work from hubby.

Lots of ugly crazy paving adorned the verandah, so I got busy with a crow bar and lifted it all off so we can lay some decking or tiles instead.

The ugliness in close up

Nice cleared verandah

We are removing the steel posts and replacing with timber to bring this 50's verandah up to date and hopefully get it looking a lot better, well it certainly can't look any worse.

Got to go and pick up our pressed tin panel splash backs, my fav thing we have purchased for the new house so far! But promise to give plenty more updates and pics over the week.