Gone but not forgotten

Forever in our hearts.



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Down stairs mini renovation/makeover

We have been busy over the last 6 weeks giving our downstairs area a bit of a makeover.

The area I am referring to has our garage (which we haven't done more than tidy/organise). We also have a 4th bedroom, toilet and laundry. These rooms, along with the stairs and landing have been our focus.

Here are a few of the “before” pictures. We didn’t take any proper ‘before’ pictures, so these are from the photos we took of the house before we moved in. Most of the furniture is not ours, but you get the idea of what the rooms looked like.

In no particular order……

The tiles of the laundry and toilet

The walls in the laundry – some exposed brick, some unpainted rendered and some dark blue rendered wall. And a big gouge out of the wall below the power point.

The stairs. Sorry for the terrible quality, its from the video i took. The stairs are covered in a terrible grey carpet. Under the carpet is even more terrible tiles. They are unevenly laid and not grouted.

Downstairs bedroom. We had just started our work patching all the holes in the green wall in this photo.

The laundry brick wall

Looking down the stairs. (before we moved in).  Not long after we moved in, this area flooded and we had to remove the carpet on the floor. It’s been only concrete slab for 4 years.

The down stairs 4th bedroom. We only ever used it as a storeroom for the last few years. This was taken before we moved in.

The toilet. – See the magazine rack on the wall and how they didn't paint the orange paint behind it!

The laundry - before our time. See the rusted sink at the bottom. Terrible tiles too. They were lifting off and able to be removed with our fingers!

 

The next pics are some of our work in progress pics…..

Removing the laundry tiles and sand and cement base. You can easily see the rusted sink in this photo.

Toilet gutted. We also had to remove the rear wall as it was rotten at the bottom and smelly. It was glued on, and those green patches are glue. They had to be scraped back a bit to smooth it out for the new wall to go in.

And the final pictures…..

The toilet – new paint, new rear wall (gyprock/drywall), new toilet, new light switch, new tiles.

 

The laundry – new sink,  new taps, new light switches and power points, new floor tiles, new paint on all walls, including the exposed brick (not seen in this photo)

The 4th bedroom – now our guest room.

New paint (no longer green), windows now white. New floor (wood look floating floor in the room and landing), new light, new light switches. New blind.  Same curtains. New bedside table and dresser. Same bed from upstairs.

 

The stairs.

Now with white risers and wood-look treads. This is close to matching our stairs that go up to the bedrooms upstairs.

We still have a few jobs to do. None of the rooms have new doors yet, and the bedroom still needs some skirting boards. We are going to get the doors done by a pro…

We did most of the work our selves. We did employ a plumber to install the taps, toilet and sink, and a tiler to lay the tiles in the toilet and laundry. We did the rest!

Week 1 of big school

It's Friday and we've officially made it through our first week of big school.

The boys love school. They are keen to go every day, and come home with lots of animated stories about playing with their friends at lunch time.

So far we can only establish they played a game counting to 10 and did some colouring in. I guess they are easing them into it! The boys are not very forthcoming with information about actual class activities. They have told us that their classroom has a toilet and a smart board! (Important info for a kid)

They formed the classes on Wednesday and both Ben and Ethan are in Mrs Flood's class (KF). She seems nice, she is also assistant principal and head of kindergarten. We are happy so far :)

The boys have been learning their getting ready for school routine. It's a basic getting ready routine, but we need to do it in a timely fashion, and not fuss and play around too much. Play time is after they are ready!

Here's our routine boards







They close the cardboard flaps when they have done that step. They are allowed to play before breakfast if they wake up before us and do those first few jobs.


We have only used this for 1 day, so there is still some excitement about it. I'm sure it will wear off and won't be used in a few weeks. Hopefully by then they will learn the routine and the right time to play. Playing when they haven't finished getting ready is the main problem we had before this chart. They would play all morning and we would constantly list the other things they should be doing. Apparently every morning they need reminding of the same jobs!

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First Day of BIG School

Ben and Ethan are currently at their first day of “big school”. We have been excited and nervous about this day since Christmas. The boys were great at drop-off. They happily went into the classroom and Ben ran to find his friend Hayden straight away. We had to keep calling him back to talk to the teacher and put his bag and hat away. We left after spending a few mins talking to one of the teachers. There will be 4 kindergarten classes, and they are not yet formed, so the 85ish kids are all together for the first few days until they work out the final classes.

Here are our photos from this morning.