Renovate Australia

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 →

I’ve written before about wanting to build a kid’s kitchen from an old entertainment system. I haven’t gotten around to doing that, but I did make a small kitchen out of some Cardboard Boxes that my daughter Jessica loved…

I can’t remember where I got the boxes from, but they were probably from the local hardware store. I got two that were the same size and in pretty good condition.

I primed the boxes with a 3 in 1 primer / sealer / undercoat that I had left over from when I undercoated the house. The boxes were taped together using normal clear packing tape, which the paint didn’t take to all that well. In retrospect I should have re-taped it using a cloth tape or even a masking tape.

After undercoating the boxes I put on two coats of flat white ceiling paint. You can use any paint that you have sitting around, but I had a lot of this left over, so it worked …

After the paint had dried I drew out the pattern that I wanted for the burners and over door on the first box, and the cupboard and sink that I wanted on the second cardboard box. I used a saucepan lid and a milk bottle cap to make the circles round.

Using the “donkey” colour of paint that we had left over from painting the living room, dining room, kitchen and office upstairs I painted in the patterns that I had drawn out before. I also cut a hole in the “cupboard box” for the sink and put in a plastic bowl.

For the doors to the oven and the cupboard I just cut it out with a knife and then used some old string that I had lying around for the handles. To accent the door to the oven a bit more I painted around it with the same donkey colour of paint.

All up this little kitchen, that Jessica loved to play with, cost nothing as the boxes were free and the paint was all left over. It did take me a few hours to paint, but it was well worth the effort.

I got this e-mail from someone in Sydney …

Allan Zhong wrote:

I have a fibrate house in Sydney that we want moved away. I’m wondering, do you want it?

I am guessing that they meant a “fibro” house for removal in Sydney.

I have no need or want for the house, but I thought that I would put it out there in case there is someone else out there who might want it. If you do then just put a comment below and I can put you in touch with Allan so that you can discuss the removal of the house.

When we were choosing the lighting for our master bedroom we had a lot to consider. There are two types of lighting that you need to consider when choosing your lighting options. They are:

1. Work / Task Lighting
2. Ambient Lighting

Work / Task Lighting

Typically your work / task lighting can be found in one, two or possibly three locations in the master bedroom. We have task lighting in only one location, but it would probably be nice to have it in the other two as well. The main locations for task / work lighting in a bedroom, in order of prominence, are:

1. Bedside Tables
2. Dresser Mirror
3. Closet

We have reading lamps on our bedside tables. In purchasing these lights we went for a 45watt light that matched our bed set on each bedside. I have also seen the reading lamps mounted to the wall above the headboard for the bed, which can be quite effective.

Some dresser mirrors have lights built into them. This can help with getting dressed and ready for the day. Since we have an ensuite attached to our master bedroom we didn’t really have a need for lights for the mirror on our dresser.

Having lighting in the closets is something that I am starting to see more of. Once it was something reserved to walk in closest, but now you can find built in lighting in standard closets. I’ve seen closet lights can be attached to the wall, in the ceiling or sometimes attached to the shelves in the wardrobe.

Ambient Lighting

The ambient lighting in the master bedroom is your general lighting. We’ve had the ambient lighting provided by wall light scones, a light attached to the fan, inset in the ceiling or more traditional ceiling lights. If done properly the ambient lighting can be used to really “set the mood” in the master bedroom.

My favourite lights that we’ve had for ambient lighting in our bedroom so far was halogen down lights on a dimmer.

There were four lights evenly spaced in the ceiling around a ceiling fan. The placement of the lights helped to stop the flicker that can sometimes being experienced with a ceiling fan. Being on a dimmer allowed the same lights to be used for a wide variety of uses.

What kind of choices have you made in setting up your own lighting in your master bedroom? What have I missed in planning out bedroom lighting?