New Ad Partner – Much More Relevant Links

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If you have been visiting this site recently you would have noticed that there were links from various keywords in the articles. Unfortunately I found that almost most of these links did not have anything to do with renovating, which made them pretty useless to you guys reading this site.

I have since signed up with Kontera Advertising, and after a bit of testing I am a lot more satisfied with the results that they are delivering. These links actually seem to be very relevant to home renovation and remodeling.

Sorry about the useless links during the last two weeks. From now on I am going to be testing partner products a bit better before implementing them.

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Picking our Bathroom Tiles

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I think the thing that probably surprised me the most when we were picking our bathroom tiles was that Tamara and I agreed on the tiles almost right away.

New Bathroom Wall and Floor Tiles

The tile that is actually on the wall is the tile that we picked as our bathroom floor tile. The one that you see there is a rectangular tile, but we actually chose the square version of the tile.
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Moving the Electrical Switchboard on our Queenslander

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Moving the Electrical Switchboard to the FrontOur original switchboard used to sit under our house attached to one of the bearers. Since the house has been lifted it was too high to read the meter box also with the house being enclosed the meter boxes needed to be moved outside anyways.

It was a bit of a process to get the box installed and moved as the electrician and the builder had to coordinate their time so that the wall was there, but not fully cladded when the switchboard was moved.

The meter box needs to be a certain distance from the front of the house, so for us that meant sticking the switchboard right in the middle under the front staircase. Thankfully the box can be painted, as right now it’s pretty out there, and hopefully that will help it to blend it better.

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Tradespeople Needed in Townsville

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I had a question sent to me from this site about the need for plasterers in Townsville. I sent a reply to the person asking the question, but I figured that question deserved a post.

Townsville is currently going through a huge economic boom, and it’s really affecting the building sector as well. Last year there were about 500 fewer homes built than were needed in the Townsville / Thuringowa area.

For the last few decades there has been a huge push for people to go to on to post secondary education, especially university. That is one of the reasons why there are not nearly enough trades people in Australia as a whole. That is starting to change, with big pushes happening from government and from industry to get people involved with the trades. On our current job our builder has a 15-year old apprentice who works with him part time and goes to the local tech college part time.

Another challenge that we have up here is that we are a long way from the capital cities. It’s hard to attract people to the regional areas, despite the fact that the quality of living and the cost of living is excellent compared to most capital cities.

Another way that the government is combating the skills shortage is through immigration. Many of the trades are now listed as skills that are in need within Australia, so the applicants are able to receive additional favour in applying for a visa if they have these skills. On the Australian “working holiday visa” people can also now work for six consecutive months, an increase from the 3-months of consecutive work previously allowed. This should also help a bit in attracting people over here from overseas, whether it is for a short-term or long-term period.

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