Month: December 2005

Non-Fitted Fittings

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This is my second post today in my “Renovation Frustrations” category.

My frustration this time is Non-Fitted Fittings.

These are the fittings that the previous owners have placed where they are meant to go, but not actually attached them properly to where they were meant to go. In my case it was the dead bolt on one of the front French doors. While I was attaching some weatherstripping to stop drafts the heads on three of the four screws holding the dead bolt in place actually fell off!

It seems to me that when the previous owners had installed the dead bolts they much have tightened up the screws too much and “almost” broken the heads off. Then when I applied a bit of pressure, they popped off.

So now I need to somehow remove the old screws which are still in the door, minus the heads, and purchase and install some new brass screws. Anyone know the best way to actually remove what’s left of the the screws?

Soft Screws

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As I have been working on the house there are few things that really frustrate me. As such I have added a category called “Renovation Frustrations”. I’ll be writing different things that I find frustrating in doing my renovations in this category.

So the first one is “Soft Screws”.

These are the screws that you get with flat packs or in my case DIY blinds that I was mounting in the front two rooms of our house.

Because I am screwing into actual timber, not plaster or drywall, I have to apply a fair bit of force to get the screws in. I choose to do it by hand because I can usually control the force better that way but even with pre-drilling the holes I STILL managed to strip at least one of the screws that came in the packaging.

I don’t know if anyone else out there has this problem, or if it’s just an Australian thing (I don’t think so though), but let me know in the comments…

Out of the House for Three Weeks!!!

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When we enquired about lifting our old house we were told the we had to be out of the house for 8-hours during the actual lifting, but other than that and a couple of hours here and there we would be fine to keep living in the house. With that in mind we have been planning to lift the house as soon as possible, which looks like mid-March to mid-April.

Last week though we were told that we actually have to be out of the house for three weeks during the lifting! That’s quite a change from the 8-hours that we were told by the company we talked to a few years ago. To top it off our new baby is due to be born on April 14th!

If you check out my previous article, House Lifting and Restumping Schedule, you can see a step by step guide to how the house will be lifted. We will need to be out of the house for steps 8 – 12 (maybe 13), which is about 3 – 4 weeks worth of work. That’s of course if everything goes to plan and there isn’t any adverse weather…

Security and Fly Screens

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Today we had fly screens and security screens installed on all the windows that we are keeping in the house. We are still waiting for the new timber window to come in for the lounge room and the three aluminium ones for the bedrooms. I wrote a bit about this in my previous post, Replacing the Upstairs Windows.

We talked to a few different companies around Townsville when we were deciding who to get to install our new fly and security screens and we decided to go with Garry Neven Blinds, which has about mid-range pricing but they also had more specialized screens that would fit better into our nice timber windows in the lounge room. I haven’t been over to check them out yet, but we will be heading over tomorrow morning, at which point I will try to take some photos of them.

We also got a “Super Mesh” screen installed on the front door. This is a security screen door without the metal grill throughout the entire thing. This is supposed to look better and hopefully not cover up the nice timber door that’s on the front of the house.

Here are the details for Garry Neven Blinds if you are looking for some good security screens here in Townsville:

Garry Neven Blinds
Awnings, Insect Screens, Window Roller Shutters
8 Vennard Street Garbutt QLD 4814
Tel: (07) 47289554 Fax: (07) 47289113

I don’t get anything from them for mentioning them, but let them know where you found out about them since they don’t even have a web-site at the moment.