Decoration distraction

'Mummy when are the builders coming' - this is a question my daughter has been asking a lot lately. I feel like responding, with 'good question, now that the contract is finally signed it depends on when the permits come through'.

But for my four year old we count the sleeps (hopefully only about 30 more at most). And depending on her mood she is either really excited about having new rooms built and can't wait to show her friends, or on other days she gets really upset about the idea - 'I love our house the way it is, I don't want it to change'.

So I am trying to get her excited explaining how she is going to get a new room that she can help decorate. She loves to draw, paint and strangely enough move furniture around. Maybe a designer in the making?

And so we have started with some art work for her new room. Luckily for me, her favourite colours are red and blue, though I might have had a bit of influence on that. Decorating with red or blue candles, cushions and pictures against our white walls is fitting in with the French theme I love.

Bring Spring inside

Well it is meant to be Spring in Melbourne but the weather has generally been more like Winter. Even so at least the trees are blossoming and Spring flowers have appeared. So having packed up most of my ornaments ready for the build, thought I would decorate using flowers throughout the house and add a little Spring indoors.


An easy way to change the mood and decorate the house especially as can reuse old bottles like here

Love for bookcases - storage with style

I am now in packing mode getting ready for the builders to start in a few weeks and our bookcases are one of the first things I have started to pack as we have quite a few.

Packing up our books and seeing the emptiness left behind has made me realise that bookcases really are a feature in our house - they provide a wall of colour against our white walls adding character and warmth to the room.

I love how they reflect our families personality and style, housing our books, pictures, ornaments we have collected on our travels and different things my daughter has made.

They also provide what I call ‘storage with style’. Ours are filled with coloured boxes containing CDs and cane baskets filled with toys (you can buy all those pictured from IKEA). Not only do the baskets look great but my kids love them. Maybe I am just lucky but both my kids enjoy sorting through the baskets (they are just the right size for them) and then putting the toys back in them at the end.

The issue with bookcases though is if they get too untidy they don’t look that great. In my case I haven’t seen keeping them tidy as a chore (packing them up is though). The way I look at it is by swapping over ornaments, changing photos and other things you can give the room a little easy design re-fresh. Also if you are an avid reader like me it is great to pull books out and reorder just to remind yourself what you have.

The bookcase itself can also add a ‘style’ to a room. In our family room I love the warmth that our large bookcase made of recycled timber provides. Whereas the simple white bookcases in our lounge frame our white art deco fireplace really well. Our smaller bookcase in the hall acts as great storage for shoes and for displaying things on top to act as a nice welcome into the house.

My dream with the extension is to have a wall of bookcases in the new family area. I can’t wait to do this and restock our existing bookcases once the dust settles.

We did it - contract signed!

Yesterday we finally signed our building contract after seven weeks of almost daily phone calls or e-mails between us and the building group. It has been a long and frustrating couple of months why we waited for questions to be answered and new quotes to be done. Everything seemed to take so much longer then I thought it would and we haven't even started the build yet.

However I am glad we were thorough, so hopefully there won't be too many surprises during the build.

Now I thought I would give a few examples of things we questioned to give you an idea of what to consider if you are negotiating a building contract.

We asked to see what internal doors, external sliding glass doors and windows they were going to put in - so glad we did as they weren't what we wanted even though we had specified high quality in the beginning. Fittings such as these are worth checking as builders often use cheaper models so they can pass on a lower overall quote.

This was also the case with flooring, cornices and picture rails which weren't what we expected in all rooms.

Timeline - we were given a number of days but make sure you are clear what is considered a builders day and what contingencies have been included. It is also good to have a clear commencement and end date.

Anyway we may have sorted the contract but I am told that now the real fun and games begin especially as we are living in the house for the whole build.

A change back

A number of posts ago I mentioned that we were initially, with our build going to do the ensuite before Christmas and the back extension after so it was easier to live in the house. I then went on to say there was a change as thought the whole build could happen before Christmas, well this is not the case and so we are back to plan A.

One thing I have learnt from this is make sure you get your builder to explain time lines in detail and you understand them. There has been a misunderstanding in our case and so we have been busy packing up the house and getting organised. At least I have only packed things I don't need on a day to day basis!

And on it goes - contract negotiations

Yes, we first looked at our building contract over three weeks ago now and we are still trying to sort it out. We had so many questions and items in the contract that weren't exactly what we had asked for or expected.

I know I discussed this in an earlier post but really want to reiterate as it is causing us a bit of angst and I hope by talking about it you can avoid similar.

Sharing our dilemmas with friends I have heard so many stories of delays at this stage. Or in the case of one friend they signed the contract in good faith and then discovered the doors and windows weren't what they were expecting when they were being installed - they proceeded to give the advice, 'it is good what you are doing, you should check every item and look at exactly what they are providing you with'.

This is exactly what we are doing and have discovered the doors aren't the quality ones we wanted and need to upgrade, plus a whole lot of other items we thought were included in their initial quote to find they weren't. This I am told is very common.

So now knowing this I can say to any of you out there about to start a renovation check your builders contract thoroughly!

Window design and the environment

Windows placement and style can add so much to the house, they let in the light and as some say provide the soul of the house. So how do you decide on what windows to use? What is more important to you the style and size or how well they protect your home, by keeping heat inside during Winter and heat out in Summer - the energy effectiveness? Can the two go hand in hand?


These are all questions my hubby and I recently asked ourselves as going through our building contract we realised exactly what windows and glass sliding doors we were getting. We didn’t really think about it until we saw it in writing.


Initially we weren’t keen on getting the awning windows listed and wanted double hung ones but then we checked them out on the Trend website and discovered the star rating was quite high so decided to keep them. This is important to us, one because we want an energy efficient home but secondly because two of the bedrooms face West and so are heat boxes in Summer. With this in mind we are getting all new windows double glazed with PVC frames. Did you know that PVC frames transmit less heat then others? I certainly didn’t until I looked into it.


The other important thing with windows is placement and this can be looked at more easily when building from scratch but as we are extending an old house we unfortunately can’t change this as much. We are lucky however that our main living space faces North and this will be the area with the glass facing doors, good for the Winter sun but we need to make sure they are well shaded in the Summer and so are looking at our eaves and a pergola for this.


If you are interested in finding out all about windows and energy ratings – visit the Windows Energy Rating Scheme website.