Renovate Australia

Alright, I’ll admit it, I’m a nerd and a fan of Star Wars…

This week I found a free Star Wars audio book that I have been listening to while painting the ceilings under our house. I’ve actually found it to be really good to listen to an audio book while painting.

You can download the free audio book here. It’s “Star Wars - Legacy of the Force - Betrayal“, which is supposed to take place after “Return of the Jedi”. You can get Star Wars - Legacy of the Force - Betrayal for free, but then if you want any of the follow up books you need to purchase the written or the audio versions of them

Although I am a fan of Star Wars I have yet to see the second or third of the new movies. My wife can’t stand sci-fi, so I haven’t seen them yet, don’t know when I will.

What do you do when painting? Do you have a favourite thing to listen to (music, podcasts, audio books, etc.) while painting?

Let us know below…

Well, it only took me three weeks, but I finally completed the paint undercoat for under our house. In the words of our builder “It’s a real s#*t job!”.

When I took time of work to paint it took me about 4-days of full time work preparing before I could even start painting. This involved a lot of putty, no-more-gap (calking), scraping and sanding. It felt like every door had nearly 100 holes to putty, scrape and sand.

Now that the undercoat is finally finished I’ll be working on the ceiling paint first. It’ll be a basic flat white ceiling paint, which I hope I can get done within the next two weeks of evening painting.

Should the government force home owners to upgrade their homes to be more environmentally friendly?

Should new green housing legislation be applied to new homes only, or also to existing home?

I’m listening to an ABC By Design podcast that is interviewing Tim Redway, the chief marketing officer for AV Jennings, one of Australia’s larger residential builders. He is advocating for the federal government to enforce green standards on all new houses. Old houses are also targeting, when an old house is sold he reckons the owner should be forced, through legislation, to improve their sustainability.

You can listen to the podcast here. The segment discussing the legislation of green housing in Australia is from about 14:00 - 26:00.

What do you reckon? Should the government force home owners to improve the sustainability of their homes? Should it include old and new homes? Let us know below in the comments …

We added a deck safety gate to our front veranda to help keep the kids from falling down the stairs. The gate can also be locked for added security if desired.

I was lucky in that I had some railing left over from the old landing that was torn down when they lifted our house. I was able to cut that down to the width of the opening from our veranda to the new landing. On either side of the cut down railing I added a 2×4 and then added a diagonal support to help it maintain shape, since it would only be attached on one side.

For the gate latch I used a pool gate lock, which was easy to install, and makes it hard for the kids to reach the latch top open the gate until they are older and taller.

The gate is a bit of pain to open if I don’t have a free hand to pull the latch, but I figure that the added safety outweighs that little bit of inconvenience.