The Bell Family

Well, we’re slowly adding the finishing touches. We’ve done a little more painting since our last blog, but still need to enamel the doors and do a few little patch-ups here and there. The main action now is happening outside in the backyard…

Just before Christmas, we decided to borrow a little digger affectionately known as ‘Thomas’ – a skidsteer mini loader (thanks Wendy and Gary)!!!

Thomas has been helping us to level out the backyard, create a little terraced area and of course rip up the compacted track from the front street to the back door where all the trucks came back and forward with building materials! Whilst we had the digger on loan, Laura woke up every day and asked ‘is Daddy going to work in the backyard with Thomas today’ and she was convinced that she needed a purple Thomas to help Daddy’s orange Thomas out!

Once we’d finished levelling the backyard and had removed around about 12 tonnes of dirt and rocks to the tip, we spread some new soil and lay some grass seed. Turns out we did it just in time, we’ve only just had our first dry day in about a month, so the grass is going gang-busters!!!

We’ve also started on a sandpit for the girls, but things are going pretty slowly with all the wet weather.

Early days yet, with lots more work to go but here are a few piccies to let you in on our latest round of devastation!

… Jason working with the digger

… terraced section awaiting new retaining wall

Cheers,
Jason and Chrissy

Well, as they say, a picture says a thousand words!!! We’ve finally finished the three bedrooms, hallway and stairwell! The tilers finished up last week and the carpet was laid today. We’ll now be able to move the girls back into their rooms after four months in the lounge room – yippee!

…new hallway to stairs, store room and girls rooms

…Laura’s new room

…Katie’s new room

…Spare room

…Stairwell (to games room)

…New tiles in dining room

Still a fair bit to be done though – bathroom is yet to be finished, the renderers are only about half way around the house and there is lots of putting and varnishing still to be done. Once we’ve finished inside, then it will be time to start cleaning up around the yard! All the extra vehicle traffic, storage of bricks and timber and washing out of mortar, concrete and paint has really taken its toll on the gardens and lawn (mmm… what grass down the back?)! So we’ll be at it for a few more weeks yet!

Jason and I are pretty buggered at the moment… it’s been hard work spending a day at work, coming home to look after the kids, tucking them into bed and then heading out to put the finishing touches on the extension often until the wee hours of the morning! But we’re really happy with how it’s all turned out and it’s certainly been a worthwhile experience! Can’t wait until it’s all finished and we can sit back and enjoy our house (plus maybe a well earned break)!!!

Hope you’re all doing well and thanks for tuning in!

Cheers,
Chrissy and Jason

Well, it’s all go here…

Since our last update:
* The majority of internal timber has been put up around the doors and windows and the new doors have been hung (although the skirting boards are yet to be done);
* The cupboards and shelving have been put in;
*We’ve finished the bulk of the painting in the new section of the house (although we still have a fair amount of patching to do where the new part joins the old and we still need to paint the doors and cupboard shelving, plus finish staining the architraves and skirting boards when they are completed etc);
* The light fittings have been connected and the electrical finished off; and
* The concrete pathways poured around the back section of the house.

Here are some piccies…

Piccie of JB painting the “Games” room!

Piccie of JB painting the “Games” room, using his special “cutting in” tool!

Piccie of the feature wall in the games room!

Piccie of the finished feature wall in the games room!

Piccie of one of the unfinished kids cupboards in their bedroom!

Piccie of how the house looks from the outside at the moment!

Jason’s done a great job with all the painting and I’m actually pretty impressed that he’s been able to finish it in such a short time… there was a heck of a lot of work there and we must have used at least 120L of paint… so that’s no mean feat given he works full time and we have two young kids! We’ve both been burning the midnight oil… hooking in once the kids are in bed each night, so we’ll be looking forward to a good break when all this is done!

In the next month or two, the following things still need to be finished off:
* The internal stairs;
* Install sliding mirrored doors in the new bedrooms;
* Install the security screens;
* Install the new bathroom shower, toilet and basin;
* Tile the bathroom;
* Tile the games room;
* Tile the main part of the house (the old bit);
* Lay new carpet in the bedrooms;
* Replace the back timber ramp;
* Finish patching and painting;
* Return the backyard to some sort of order; and then
* Return our house to some sort of order!

We’re all looking forward to graduating from our temporary ‘one bedroom flat’ back into our new and improved four bedroom house with extra storage and living space!!!

Cheers,
Jason and Chrissy

The external rendering and painting of the new extension has just been completed… Once the scaffolding comes down, it will look amazing. We can’t wait until the rest of the house is completed, we won’t know the place!

Here are a few piccies…

Cheers,
Chrissy and Jason

Wow… things have really taken shape since our last update!!!

Over the last fortnight:
* the windows were removed from the girls old rooms;
* external windows and doors were put into the extension;
* the extension was joined up to the back of the house;
* the wiring was completed;
* the brickwork was done;
* the eaves were put up; and
* the gyprock was nailed up inside (although it still has to be plastered).

We can now walk through Laura’s old room (which will become our walk through study/hallway) into a new hallway, storage room, the girls new rooms and down the stairs into the games room and new bathroom! The place is huge!!!

Here are some piccies…

…view from back corner

…stairwell (well – hole with a ladder anyway!)

…games room

…games room

It’s looking really good and we’re so happy with how things are turning out. We couldn’t match the old brick though and the closest match wasn’t close at all, so we’ve decided to give the whole house an update and it’s currently being rendered and painted. More photo’s on that one soon.

The next few weeks should be a busy time with the internal and external painting, bathroom fitout, stairs, architraves, doors, cupboards, external pathway, electrical fittings, tiling, carpets and furnishings to be done! But for now anyway, there’s nothing more important than spending some time with our girls!!!

Until next time, cheers,
Chrissy, Jason and the Girls

Well… it’s all happening here!

In the last fortnight:
* all the bricks have been removed from the back wall so that the new frame could be joined up to the existing part of the house;
* the roof trusses have been erected;
* the new colourbond roof and guttering has gone on;
* the water has been put through to the new bathroom and garden tap;
* more support beams have been added for the floor; and
* the frame has been finished off with extra timber ready to receive the gyprock walls.

…side view

…rear view

…courtyard view

The builders will soon be ‘breaking in’ to the back section of the house, so we have moved the girls out of their ‘old rooms’ and they are sharing the loungeroom (yes, even our barnyard sized loungeroom is looking rather crammed, packed full with toys, furniture, boxes and of course two little girls)!!! We convinced Laura that it would be fun to stay in a ‘cubby room’ whilst Ray was finishing off her ‘new room’, so we set out to make a little hidey hole for her and her bed, constructed from boxes and all the odd bits of furniture. She thinks it’s pretty cool, so hopefully the novelty of it all will keep her occupied until her new room is ready. She’s been keeping her little sister in order too… Katelyn was having a little whinge when we put them both to bed one night, to which Laura responded “Katelyn, just be quiet, it’s time to sleep!” When we need to escape the chaos, we resort to either Susie or Mum and Dad’s houses (thanks guys, you’re the best)! I think we will be spending even more time there in the next few weeks as the noise and dust levels increase!

In the next few weeks, we hope to see the bricks go up, the external doors and windows go in, the electrical wiring go in and the internal gyprock walls go on. It’s great to see the jigsaw puzzle coming together and it’s starting to look really good!

Anyway, all the best and thanks for visiting our blog!

Cheers,
Chrissy, Jason, Laura and Katelyn

Good news… the extension has finally started! It took all of a few minutes for the first bit of machinery to wreak havoc and devastation on the backyard as a new plumbing trench was dug. Laura was pretty impressed though, shouting “Mummy… Ray the Builder’s here…. and he’s got a digger… he’s going to make me a new room!” She was very cute!

…before chaos

… chaos begins

…’digger’ at work

Little does she know that it’s going to take about 3 months to finish and in that time, there’ll be a lot of dust and noise and she’ll even have to move out of her current room for a while too! Now that will be interesting.

Cheers and we’ll keep you posted on all the action,

Chrissy and Jason

One of the jobs that I have been involved with lately is the installation of a “pool” style security fence in the court yard. The old fence we had (as can be seen from the image below) was too dangerous because Laura could easily fall through, so we decided to remove it and install a new fence.

I initially thought that this would be a simple job (as usual, famous last words)…
• Remove old fence.
• Use the holes from the old fence post and pour new concrete footings to which the new fence would “dyna-bolt”.
• Install new fence.

Now it sounded simple, but let me tell you, it is never the case!!!

Removing the old fence was pretty harmless… The problem arose when I tried to bolt the new fence to the newly poured concrete footings… I bolted the first post to the concrete and it looked okay…. but when I tested the strength of the structure, the post moved quite a bit which was due to the fact that about 2 meters of the old brick capping was moving with the post!

This was way too dangerous because if Laura or another kid hit the fence at speed, the entire fence would topple over! With the spate of accidents involving fences, I didn’t want to be another statistic!

Of course by this time, I wasn’t too impressed as the simple job had turned into a very time-consuming and expensive one!!! I would have been happy to get a professional in to install the fence, as I didn’t really have that much time on my hands anyway. But after getting a few people to quote on installing the fence properly, and once we actually got a few tradespeople to return our calls), the price was astronomical and the methods suggested were pretty dodgy. So I decided to do it myself (with a bit of help of course).

What we decided to do was:
• Remove the entire brick capping and lay a concrete slab across the length of the brick retaining wall that separates the courtyard and the backyard
• Then bolt the fence to the concrete using dyna-bolts.

Now, special thanks must go to my father-in-law “Dave”, who at the time had some time off and spent a day removing the brick capping and “forming up” ready for the concrete. Thankyou very much Dave for this!!!!

Then on then following weekend, we got in a concrete truck and poured some concrete and smoothed it all out. On the following weekend, we got a friend of Dave’s who does some brick laying part-time to help place a “half” a brick run beside the concrete (which made the entire thing look like it had always been there).

Then, on the following weekend, Dave and I (with the help of Laura, Chrissy, Kerrie and Susie) installed the fence. As you can see from the results below, it looks pretty good, and is much more secure than it would have been if we had stuck with the previous method of installing the fence.

As you can see, we have Laura’s swing set (that she got from Santa) and a “see-saw” and slide (which Laura got for Easter, instead of chocolate). Of course now that Laura is getting a lot more active she just loves to play out in the new courtyard area.

I have also just installed (about an hour ago) a security door leading into the garage which now makes the entire courtyard secure.

Until next time, take it easy,
Jason.

As you have probably read from previous blog entries, we’ve been doing some substantial renovations to the backyard. So I thought I would give you guys an update.

As you know, we have put up a garden shed and also laid some concrete edging for the gardens.

Over the Xmas holidays, we managed to dig out all of the weeds and rubbish from the yard (with many thanks to Dan, Mum, Dave and Kerrie for their help). We then filled the garden beds with 3 big truck loads of garden mix soil.

We then went to the Sunday Markets and also a few nurseries and ended up buying 23 palms to plant into the gardens. These included:

• 4 triangle palms
• 4 alexanders palms
• 7 foxtail palms
• 2 bottle palms
• 6 golden cane palms

As you can see from the picture, there was a few of them to plant. We now have them all planted into the garden and as you can see from the picture below, it doesn’t look that bad.

All we need to do now is to place some sugarcane mulch on top and plant a few crotons and golden-sheena’s and the garden will be finished.

We’ll post another blog entry when it is all finished to show you what it looks like. As you can probably tell, I will be glad to head back to work so I can take it easy!!?!

Take it easy,
Jason.

Well, last Saturday we all got in and built the Bell’s Garden Shed. The shed was one of those “ABSCO Regent” Garden Sheds, that comes in a flat pack with a hundred or so screws and pot-rivets and a number of colour-bond sheets that some how goes together to make a shed.

With the awesome help from my in-laws, we managed to put together all the sheets to form the various panels for the shed, as some of the panels can be seen in the photo below.

After lunch my brother finished work and came around to give us a helping hand as well, which was greatly appreciated. After a few more hours things started to take shape and actually looked like a shed. Of course when things got shady, Laura also got in to the action and helped as well.

We got the bulk of the shed done on the Saturday only a few fixing points to the cement fitted and latches to mount, which was completed on the Sunday. I am very grateful for the help Dave and Kerrie (in-laws), Dan (Brother) and Chrissy provided and as they say, many hands make light work. Even though we were out in the Sun all day, it was gratifying to see it take shape and to have it actually finished.

You may have noticed that I wasn’t in any of the photo’s, well someone had to take them . But to prove that I actually did some work, here I am helping out.

Unfortunately I don’t have any photos of the shed in its completed form, but I am sure you will see some photo’s of it when some more work has been completed on the back yard.

Until then,
Take it easy,
Jason.

Well the back yard blitz is still going strong and we now have a slab down for the shed and the edging down for the gardens.

Still got a lot more to do, but it is slowly getting there.

Will try and keep everything updated so you can see all is going on.

Takes it easy,
Jas.

Well the demolition has begun!!! I have taken this week off work to begin the renovation of the backyard.

This morning we had a bobcat come in and remove a lot of the grass, rocks and roots from around the fence line where we wish to install a new garden edge. We also got the bobcat to level the rest of the backyard and lay the foundation for a slab for the shed.

We’re also going to install a new in-ground sprinkler system, fill the gardens with new garden soil, plant some palms and then mulch the new gardens.

So over the coming weeks and following weekends we will be kept very busy.

Will endeavour to keep the Blog up to date to keep you informed on how it is all going.

Take it easy,
Jas.

It’s been a while, but we have started doing some home improvements again. With Laura growing very quickly and soon to be walking, we thought it was critical to repair the back ramp as the decking boards be starting to rot and crack.

So on the weekend, I removed all the old decking boards, sanded the main structural frames and we applied 3 coats of paint to the frame to make it a bit more weatherproof.

I then cut the new timber decking boards and have started to apply decking oil to the new timber. It is hoped that I can start nailing down the new boards to the ramp this weekend.

I will post another entry as soon as the back ramp has been completed.

Cheers,
Jason.

Well, as you can imagine, one of the major things we had to complete as part of the renovations was the refurbishment of the nursery.

If you were un-aware, every bedroom and living room walls were made up of a lami-panel type timber. The unfortunately thing was that every bedroom’s timber was a different colour and shade. Below is what the nursery use to look like before we started the renovations.

The bedroom was once desigenated as my study, which housed things like books and of course computers. Though, as soon as the news that we were expecting our first child, it of course became the nursery.

Like the master bedroom, when we decided to renovate the back bedrooms, we decided to replace the lami-panel with gyprock as well. The timing for the renovation was quite crucial, as Christine was currently 3 months pregnant and we wanted everything to be completed before bubsy came along. If you are unaware, they recommend that new carpet and paint be allowed to air for three months before a new-born is allowed into the room.

It was then decided that to speed up the process, you would employ a carpenter to fix up and improve upon the storage of each of the bedrooms, as well as get plasters to gyprock and plaster the walls. The main reason for this was the speed up the process.

The nursery use to have timber shutter opening doors for the cupboard. This was one of the things the carpenter improved upon, which he installed sliding mirrors, new hanging spaced and sliding drawers.

Once the new cupboards were installed, new door hanged and the walls covered in gyprock, it was time of course to paint. Like the master bedroom, I did do a lot of the timber work myself (door jam, window sills, architraves, skirting boards and various other timber work) which saved us a lot of money.

Other additions to the room include:

• Carpet to replace the lino;
• Timber bind for the window (I also installed and trimmed the blinds to fit the window, the new drop saw which I purchase has already payed for itself many times over); and
• New fan and adjustable down lights (Which have be great for late night feeding).

The only thing that we have recently done is place a nice “Teddy bear pattern” valance over the window.

As you can see, we selected fairly netural colours, as we didn’t like the idea of painting the room blue or pink. As we felt we could decorated the room to the sex of our first child, which you all know is a girl.

Anyway, I hope you like the looks of Laura’s room and the changes we made to it. Remember to keep those comments coming.

Cheers,
Jason.

G’day all

For those who have visited our house recently, you will have noticed some changes to the look of the house inside compared to when we first bought it.

One of the first major renovations we completed inside our house was the refurbishment of the master bedroom. For those who haven’t visited our house, the walls were made out of that lami-panel timber and were accompanied by lino on the floor.

As can be seen from the above picture, the room was quite dark and felt cramped.

I started the renovation firstly, by sanding back the lami-panel to remove all of the bumps in the hope that I could paint directly over it. Unfortunately, due to the think thickness of the lami-panel, as soon as anyone lent on the walls, the paint would crack across the seams. It was then decided that I would remove all of the timber and plasterboard the room.

It was quite funny, that during the master bedroom renovation, the first installment of the TV show ‘The Block’ was on and it was ironic that I could relate to the show in some parts. Though it did give me some inspiration to complete the reno and to have it all looking great.

As with all renovations, I must admit that I learnt a lot of things about how to do things properly. With some help from my Mum and Christine’s Parents, I was able to do most of it myself, this included gyprocking, cornices, plastering and painting.

Because the old lami-panel was about 3mm think and the plasterboard was 10mm thick, I had to replace the door jam, window sills, architraves skirting boards and various other timber work. We bought Meranti timber and stained it ourselves.

Like all renovations, one thing it did enable me to do, was to buy tools I was able to purchase a drop saw which has proved invaluable, as it enabled me to cut the timber at various angles to suit each job.

The only things that we brought in outside help for were the laying of new carpet and installation of down-lights (though I did help with these).

As you can see from the above photo, the light colours, downlights and new timber give the bedroom some warmth and have really improved the look and feel of the room, not only adding value to the house, but modernising the look.

Well, as you can imagine, more renovations have been conducted and completed throughout the house and I hope to show off some more of the work we have done around the house soon.

Until then, keep visiting and let me know what you think of the changes.

Cheers,
Jason.

Whilst we were tackling the front yard of the house, we also performed a face lift on our courtyard area (gee I feel like this post is part of a back yard blitz) !

As you can see, the courtyard area was in need of some major renovations. The bougainvillea was running riot and the garden was in disarray!

So we hacked into it and practically removed everything from the garden, hoping to start anew. Whilst removing everything, we did come across a few interesting things, including some old concrete edging (buried under the already existing edging).

With new soil, tropical palms and plants and a splash of paint, we have made some major changes to our courtyard area.

Well thats a brief look at the changes we have made to the yards of our house. As soon as I get a chance, I’ll add some pictures of some of the renovations we have made to the inside of our house.

Until next time,
Jason.

As we have had a lot of people visiting our website, especially those who haven’t been kept up to date with our house renovations, I thought I would begin showing some of the changes we have made to the house over the past few years (we have been here about 2 years).

Need not to worry though, as most of the posts to the website will be about Laura, I just thought it would be good to show off some of the changes we have been making to the house and yard since we bought the place.

As you can see from the top photo, the front yard looked okay, but it was fairly over crowded and the pine tree was a bit dangerous. So the first thing we did was remove the pine tree. We then removed the gardens from the front of the house so that we could keep the termites as far away from the house as we possibily could!

We also removed some grass and made a new garden with nice curbed edging and tropical palms and plants. I think the changes have really improved the look of our front yard!!! What do you all think????

Note, all of these posts to the website have been made under different Categories, so by clicking on any of the category links on your right, you can choose to view the category that you are interested in, for example, Princess Laura or House Renovation.

Take it easy,
Jason.