Friday, October 10, 2014

Renovations...Plastering

Plastering was easily the worst phase of the house renovations, it's dusty, it makes an incredible mess that you can never quite get clean and you just feel so gross through the whole thing. It's the phase that most people will warn you about when you say you're renovating and doing it all yourself, everyone I know seems to have a plastering story whether they did it themselves or would never even consider it.

We're glad we did it ourselves (I say we, but SJ really did most of it) even though there are some visible flaws, particularly in the ceilings. We've learnt from experience and have noticed worse flaws in other homes so it was worth the savings. 


A lesson learnt for me was that plaster dust and my skin do not mix. After the first day I had an itchy red rawness to my face, I possibly cleaned too thoroughly and the dust was a major exfoliant. I found wearing a primer and BB cream helped a lot that week (I wasn't wearing makeup to work but I wore it to renovate, how bizarre) and the dust sat on my skin rather than in it after that.

It took us about three weeks for all the plastering and sanding, overlapped with hanging some of the gyprock. We didn't sleep at the house much during it all (we weren't living there yet) staying instead in the dust free haven of my parent's house, but there were plenty of nights we did. So it was terrible timing when our hot water system system broke...since we didn't have a kitchen we were using a camping stove and BBQ for meals and I supplemented my cold showers with a tub of camping stove heated water...and one night we ran out of gas for the stove. We tried to see the funny side of it, but a freezing cold shower to wash off plaster dust was only marginally better than staying dusty.

And then...a few days after the stove ran out of gas (but also after we replaced the hot water system, there goes another $1000...) we finished up work around 9pm and SJ turned on the BBQ to start cooking dinner...no gas. Since raw potatoes and steak aren't particularly appetising (and it's hard to find late night GF takeaway) we then had a little expedition to replace the gas bottle (two petrol stations later) and finally ate dinner around 10pm. Given this happened on a Tuesday, it was a really long week.

Okay, enough of my tales. Admire all our hard work in these photos instead...
Bed 2 after the start of the plaster

Bed 3 close to finished (no corners yet)

Bed 3 almost finishsed
Bed 2 almost finished
Bed 2 almost finished
An example of the mess, I never really got the camera out when it was really dusty though
The kitchen all finished with square set ceilings
The kitchen looking a lot cleaner
The toilet finished




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