Tuesday, January 8, 2013

I Love old Houses but.......


.......they can be a lot of work.


I have lived in a lot of houses (about 25 by memory last count)
Brand spanking new, some where in the middle & the old. So I think I can pretty safely say I know what I like....give me an old house any day. 

You know the one's where the heart & soul of the house is held in the walls, where if they could tell tales there would be many to share. Where the floorboards creak one day in one place then another time in a different place. It's almost like some of these houses have minds(ghosts) of there own.The only drawback is that they are a lot of work maintenance, and this place is just that.




my yard looking like  the local council dump shop lol!

So what have we been up to?? 
Resealing the slab of the house.

Over time the slab has slowly began to leak moisture. If you happened to pick an item up off the floor it was most likely going to feel cool or even damp/wet during the flood season we experienced a while back. 

However we have had to wait this long for the extremely dry weather we are having now to dry out the slab right through and therefore the surrounding ground as well. When they concreted under these old hours years ago concrete wasn't like the super blend that they use these days likewise they didn't lay the plastic down under the slab either. 
Result...rising damp,moisture etc.



High pressure cleaning the slab before sealing

We started by taking the entire contents of downstairs out into the back yard, I swear it looked just like one of those council junk shops, you know the ones where they take all the things out of the tip, sell it to you for a ridiculous price then tell you what a good deal your getting. 
Seriously though I think it was a ploy by partner & Son to remind me of how much junk we have. 

Removing the carpet was fun yuck BUT really not as yucky as I thought(thank goodness) Straight into the Ute and to the dump it went. Next we had to clean the slab with a high pressure water cleaner (Gernie) & Chlorine. 

Then waited & waited & waited some more for it to dry. Of course a storm was brewing by this time and everything was dumped out into the yard. We started to prepare for the worse and gather the tarps. 




Finally it was dry enough to start applying the sealer, sweeping it in so we could fill any nicks or crevices in the concrete. Letting it dry between coats. Continuing this process three times over.

All sealed and dried AGAIN... and still no storm. Carried everything back in and piled it in the- I don't know where places as I haven't been able to find anything since. 
Never mind, it all needs to be transported back out into the yard again when we lay the new carpet.



New carpets will be a while yet though as Steve wants to replace some of the timber trim and we want to repaint. 
My daughter painted the orange feature wall(2nd photo) one Easter several years back. She had a lot of fun doing it but I think I'm going to go neutral this time around and open/lighten the place up a bit. Along with a fair bit of de-cluttering and organizing it should look good.

We will be doing it all ourselves through out the year. We normally do this as financial and time constraints allow. It ended up costing us around $150 to do ourselves with some product left over. In comparison a lady I know paid for this to be down and it cost several thousand. Better in our pocket I reckon!

So here starts my year of simplifying, de-cluttering, maintaining and hopefully organizing. 
Years ago when the children were young we used this area as a playroom, it has been used as a teenage retreat & as bedrooms for my eldest two when they wanted some independence before moving out. 
My office is down there too but since sealing the slab I have moved it upstairs to one of the spare bedrooms(but that's for another post)

Now, to go and sort some of this downstairs STUFF. 
Me thinks it would be a good idea to mark a Garage Sale somewhere into the calendar this year.

Interesting to see if I'm sitting here this time next year eating my words? Seems like we're off to a good start though.

Caroline




5 comments:

Jackie said...

I couldnt agree more I love old homes, mines about 80 and I could never live in a brand new home although my DH could lol. We've lived here for 16years now and are bursting at the seams but I dont think we will move yet, I am eyeing off an old house in Maleny. Im lucky and know the history of the house and who lived here. We are just about to lift up the carpet and lino (again) repaint again, it's never ending. Ive been decluttering for about a week Im so sore Ive only done the shed, the old filing cabinet and most of my room. Must get back to it Have fun
Jackie

Tania said...

Wow you have been busy Caroline!

I would love to have an old house, but hubby is not interested, reckons there is too much maintenance involved with them, so all I get to do is watch what everyone else is doing with theirs lol!

Amazing how we collect junk isn't it? A dear friend said recently that we spend the first half of our life collecting "stuff" and the last half getting rid of it. He has just turn 70. How true!

I look forward to seeing what else you get up to this year :)

x


Caroline said...

I know the feeling Jackie we're bursting at the seams too although now our life is changing -& the kids are flying the coop we SHOULD have some room but then along has come Grandkids :)I could see myself moving up the range in fact we have looked at a few houses up that way late last year.
Have a great day
Caroline

Caroline said...

Lol! your hubby is so right Tania. So is your dear 70yo friend, maybe we're all just getting to that stage now.
There does seem to be a lot of de- cluttering/organizing going on around the blogs this New Year.

Cassie said...

Hi Caroline. We're 10 years here in our Phoenix,Arizona condo now. Enough time to accumulate too much "stuff" too. Since we have our cabin up in N.Idaho, where we intend to move full time after Patrick's retirement 2014, we have double "stuff"...Yikes!! I've been slowly trying to prioritize what's needed and what's too much. No sense moving clothes that are 3 sizes too small for 1500 miles. lol.

Now, I would love to know what you sealed you concrete with. We had our concrete basement floor (in Idaho) stained and sealed and calcium deposits still came through after 2 years. We ended up having the floor tiled and that took care of the problem (so far).

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