“A Tasmanian green renovation” …. It just makes sense

Why a Green Renovation ??

WHY NOT !!  It just makes sense.

Welcome to our GreenTas Reno, our blog that follows the renovation we are carrying out to our 1950′s weatherboard and tin roofed house in the village of Westbury, Tasmania, Australia. Here you will find information, links and pictures of our renovation as it progresses.

To see the latest updates check out THE BLURB!! in the Index or the archives. To find specific things make use of the search bar.

Use the Index on the left hand side to have a look at posts on each room, the exterior, and the garden as it progresses.

Subjects like hot water systems, roofing, solar , paints and finishes, and many other things that we are including in our renovation.

On the right hand side is the button that will take you to all the links that we have collected.

Below the links button are the  picture galleries of different projects as they progress.

Most important of all make sustainable changes to your house and the world reaps the benefit.

• Use sustainable or recycled products.
• Non toxic coatings on floors and walls
• Sensible insulation
• Solar power
• Alternative hot water systems
• Publications and websites that offer some of this information
• Introduce new technologies that help reduce waste in this wasteful world.
• Half the fun is in the challenge and hunt for these things.
• Spread the word about products that work or not in some cases.

 

To find out the reasons as to why we are doing what we are doing check out the “About Us” page

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 22,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 8 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

IT’S FINISHED !!!! (the extension that is)

A week after New Year and one year and one week after reaching  lockup stage the studio extension is finally finished. I mean really finished (except for doors on upper cupboards)

Its a little weird really after all this time to look at the room and realise that we can use it for its intended purpose as our working studio. What is even stranger  is that it turned out exactly as planned.

We had finished the cupboards and knew that there was a lot of trim to be put up. Between the windows, above the windows, around the cupboards, skirting board. The list went on and on. After much thinking about what sort of trim and realising that there were small discrepancies that needed ironing out it appeared that a painted plywood trim might work. It could be planed here and there where necessary and be cut to suit easily.

A measure up and then off to Timber World in Meander to source some 12mm plywwod with a good face. they have a cutting service which was not expensive and saved alot of time. Don’t forget that you may need to allow for sanding if the cutting is a little rough and you see the edges like we do.

Much thought went into colour for the trim. Around the cupboards was easy. White, the same as the cupboards. Around the windows was not as easy to decide but eventually a little trickery was decided upon. As our internal doors had been tricked up with copper paint we thought that it would be fun to have the effect of rusting metal. Paints Plus at Invermay is our local Haymes paint store. Haymes are an Australian family owned paint company who have kept the multinationals at bay and have a good eco credential. They also make a rust effect paint as well as the copper one that we used previously.

You paint on two coats of this dark grey paint and then paint an oxidising patina onto it. With some experimentation we learnt how much to paint on. Nothing seems to happen and then after a few days you can see surface rust starting to appear.

The room looked great after I added the dark grey panels. A 5mm shadow gap was left at each join. I could only add the panels to the top half of the room as the floor had to be laid before finishing off.

S.O.B.S (Slow Owner Building Syndrome)

Apparently Christmas is not too far away….. again…. Yep the house was going to be a two year project……three and a half years ago!!!  As I gaze at acres of plywood that needs to be sanded, undercoated and painted my mind drifts.

When you are Owner Building it seems that time stretches, in the words of Buzz Lightyear “To Infinity and Beyond!!!” then folds in on itself, has a bout of hysterics and then tells you that your Owner Builder permit needs renewing.

Life it seems has a nasty habit of getting in the way of building. Does this mean that professional builders do not have lives I muse. Hmmmmm. Take for now for instance. Put my trusty Hiace van in for a much needed service and get told that it needs a new or reconditioned head. Bye bye $2000 ish or in other words the money for the Laundry and part of the kitchen. Or that other bit of life ….. work. Yep that is a necessity to pay the bills but it gets in the way of lifw/owner builder unbalance.

People do ask “Hows the house going?” as you see a macmansion pop up it seems very other week. Grrrrrrr through clenched teeth politely. I am now rambling.

On the plus side you do get a warm fuzzy feeling when the Building surveyor comes around and passes everything bar two minor things and you get a Certificate of Occupancy. That’s right we can legally occupy the house that we have occupied since we bought the place.

S.O.B.S or Slow Owner Builder Syndrome has  been borne out by at least two articles in Owner Builder Magazine that I can recall and probably more. One “Owner Builder Limbo” in issue no 142 Aug/Sept 2007 and the other more recent “Finding Zen in the process of Owner Building” issue 168, Dec/Jan 2012.

I do wonder how a house gets built at all somedays. On others things start to come together and projects get finished only leaving a million small unfinished things like wardrobe doors to be built, bathrooms not even started, Mosaics for the laundry splashbacks and that is without going near the garden. still there is satisfaction when you look back on what you have achieved. It is easy to forget what the place looked like when you moved in and what it does today. the other realisation with renovation is that you spend an awful long time taking things apart and cleaning them, stripping paint, denailing, storing them, measuring them, knowing that Murphy’s Law will say that a piece of timber will be just too short, narrow, or shallow.

So to allay Murphy and to keep it all in perspective I thought a slide show of now and then with a bit in the middle might help.