Renovate Australia

When not in use Air Conditioners are an easy way for hot or cold air to escape from the house. In Australia we were usually worried about the cold air getting out, here in Canada it’s more of a worry of the cold air (-23C today) getting in.

Since I was up on the bench top checking out and closing the vents on the air conditioner I also had a look at the filter. Part of me wonders if that last owners even knew that it had a filter, given how dirty it was.

A dirty, clogged or blocked air filter on an air conditioner can be an energy hog and a safety risk. The air conditioner needs to work harder to draw air into the machine, which causes extra heat and an electricity drain.

To clean our filter, which you can see above, I’m going to hook up the vacuum cleaner and suck off the dry dust. If you are in a humid climate you may need to look at using bleach or vinegar to clean the filter if mould has started to form on the filter. Make sure to let it dry fully if you’re going to do that, as you don’t want to be drawing the fumes, or any liquid into the air conditioner.

If you are a regular reader of this site you might be wondering why things have been so quiet lately. Well, they say a picture is worth a thousands words so here you go …

Yep, we finally finished most of the renovations, sold the house and moved.

Like our house renovations we don’t like to do things half way, so we didn’t do a small move, we actually moved to the other side of the world, Canada …

I still have literally dozens, if not hundreds of stories from our time renovating our house in Townsville, Australia. I’m hoping to somehow find the time to record them on this site before I forget them, but at the moment my family and my work with Youth With A Mission (YWAM) is taking up pretty much all of my time.

We purchased a house in Canada that we thought wouldn’t need much work, but of course that never works out quite as planned…

I reckon that every man’s garage needs a decent workbench. It’s the hub of a man’s world out there, whether it’s being used on the latest project, propping up the man during a good chin wag, or holding the man’s beer, a proper garage is simply not complete without a workbench.

Since I didn’t have a workbench yet I was considering buying one from the hardware store or picking up a second hand on-line.

Buying a New Workbench

The cheapest new workbench that I could find was about $70 for an all wood basic workbench kit. The workbench came ready to assemble with the plans, hardware and timber that I would need to assemble it. The kit would probably suit my needs pretty well.

Buying a Used Workbench

Looking at used ones was a real mixed bag. There were not nearly as many listed as I would have liked, and most of those that were listed weren’t cheap. A lot of them were tradesman grade benches coming out of workshops, so they were upwards of about $300. The best priced one that I could find that might suit my purpose was for about $50.

After searching for quite some time I finally gave up on finding a decent used workbench for my garage.

Building a New Workbench

After my fairly fruitless search on-line for a workbench I starting to think that maybe I could build one, so I started another search to find the best way to do that.

After a bit of searching I came across an article entitled “Building a Low-Cost Sturdy Work Bench from 2×4’s and OSB”. After reading that I figured that I could probably build it and end up with something pretty usable. I ended up with the workbench in the photo below, and all it took was about 2-hours of building and only $22.00 in materials!

The workbench top and shelf were both off-cuts that I picked up for only $2.00 each from the hardware store. They were 24” x 48”, so I based the rest the size of the workbench on that.

I then spent $10.00 on 5 x lengths of 2×4 and about $8.00 on a box of screws. Because I had the kids with me I reckon I spent nearly as long trying to buy the materials that I needed as I spent actually building it.

You can read the step by step instructions on how to build it here, but honestly, it’s super easy to build, and you end up a very sturdy and cheap workbench in the end.

Our house was relocated to the current site in about the 1930’s, probably from Charters Towers about 150km West of Townsville. Also the house that we owned and renovated before this one was sold as a removal home by the developer who purchased it from us. House removals has been a fascinating process for me, especially coming from Canada where it is definitely not as common as it is here.

I’ve been talking lately with a house removalist about some of the questions that people have had on the site about house removals. He’s been active on the site answering peoples questions in the comments, so I thought I would ask him if he would like to contribute a guest post to the site about the topic. Below is the article by Guy Drake. I hope that you find it illuminating, I know that I did … Keep reading →