Floorboards – Better than carpet

So far in this house, we’ve:

– Replaced the previous super-six roof with a Colorbond roof, complete with R1.5 insulation (the ceiling was already insulated).
– Replaced the hot water system with the Apricus Solar Hot Water collector.
– Replaced the previous windows and jail bar security bars with new Sliding windows, and Invisiguard security screens.
– Recladded the house with Weathertex timber, replaced all eaves and painted the house.
– Installed a solar power system, switched over to Time of Use metering, and added a wireless power monitor.
– Created a food forest out the back.

The next idea on the horizon is to rip out the carpet of the common areas of the house, and clean up and polish the floor boards.

The idea here being that carpets typically trap and build up what lands on them over time, they hold dust, require vacuuming and stain easily.

The benefits which sold the solution to me were – less vacuuming, a cleaner house, no worries when the kids spill something on the floor.

The only concern I had was temperature related, in that in winter the floors in this place can be pretty cold. The solution to that is to install underfloor insulation, which would effectively create a ‘container’ situation, keeping the heat we generate inside the house.

I’m not sure we’ll do the insulation just yet, as a rug in winter could do just fine – we don’t know yet.

The walls and ceiling need a sand and also need a coat of paint when we finally get around to it – but for now, our walls remain the same color – a very strange shade of yellow, painted around furniture (the cupboards obviously were too much for them to move!).

The floorboards will be interesting, we haven’t yet exposed them, which hopefully can be done tomorrow – clean them up, and see what we have to work with.

I’ve done some looking into it – we’ll likely need some putty to match the color, and a lotta sand paper to sand back the old floors.

Once done though, and stained up, it should look OK. I doubt it’ll look too out of place with the desired effect we are aiming for by completion – whenever that comes around.

Remaining on the house though, the interior needs to be painted up as above, the front needs gardens planted, and lighting done so we can see (apparently the stairs I put in aren’t easy to see in the dark – I plan LED light strips under them to solve that). The fences down both sides are a fair bit degraded.

The fencing on one side is that of townhouses, who have a concrete driveway that is falling apart. Our oldest child has become acquainted with the neighbours kid which then later revealed the driveway actually shifts when they drive over it – Let’s hope for their sake the concrete doesn’t end up through the walls. The fence itself is pretty bad, falling over itself, but the driveway repair (whenever they eventually do it), will necessitate fencing repairs as the driveway is right up to the fence.

The front needs a fence after a few weeks back, a drunk felt it right to sleep on our front steps. I wouldn’t have thought they were so comfortable.

Then, we need to look into plans for the shed and granny flat. I doubt we’ll rent the granny flat out again, we’ve had some interesting experiences with people there. The 3 differing people we’ve had in  are at odds with our ideas on consumption – it’s not a cause of argument though, with those who did live there all leaving of their own accord for their own reasons.

There is plans for chickens too apparently. There’s a massive tree out back which I cut back significantly last weekend, but still, it’s branches drop leaves with blackspot on our garden beds. I’m far from a monkey, so it might end up going or a lot smaller in the future.

The rainwater tank is a tough one. I can’t find anything worthy of the location behind the shed for anything reasonable. $99 for a 210L tank. That’s not great at all. I’m wanting something in the 5000L range, but it has to be slimline to fit comfortably between the bottle brush tree (live and let live) and the shed.

I can’t wait for a dog though. I’m still waiting for our youngest to grow enough to be a fair match with any dog we later choose, but a dog is a must. Something needs to finish the chickens once and for all.

It’s fairly clear to me that planning this is going to be a very tight exercise. For example, the extension is a must. The kids need their own rooms, it’s a two bedroom house at the moment. The extension is also a must. I need somewhere to kick back and ignore everything after work. The fencing is falling down, it’s pretty clear it’s not going to survive much longer – but I wouldn’t care much if it was down as I’ll just patch it again with a picket.

The rainwater tank will help conserve water – this will be more and more important as summer creeps up.

I can’t see much wrong with our plans, costing is where the issues will be when we finally reach that point. Cutting the costs of the plans will mean a lot more of the work gets done ourselves. I’ve sworn to not do anything structural myself tho. But we can save by doing the plasterboard, fitout, painting, etc all ourselves (when that time eventually comes).

I search my music collection for “Paradise” (the outcome desired of all the planning). The first result is “Amish Paradise” (Weird Al). Perhaps that’s significant.