The Results of the Late Night Painting

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Last week I did a bit of late night painting on the posts and banisters out the front of our house. Almost as soon as I was finished it started to rain, which had me really worried about the paint (it was an undercoat) running off.

Thankfully the paint didn’t wash off, but seeing as how it was 11:45 at night when I finished I did miss one of the shorter posts, and a bit under the handrail. I also had a few streaks on the last post that I did, but I’m not sure if that was the rain or the fatigue that caused that one…

What to do with our Concrete Stumps when Building in Under?

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Tonight I got an e-mail from someone who is Renovating their Queenslander here in Townsville. They have enclosed underneath and are currently adding a bathroom, bedroom and rumpus room. They had a question though about what to do with the concrete stumps that are under the house holding it up.

Concrete Stump under QueenslanderThe concrete stumps used under many Queenslanders are quite large and very difficult to conceal. The ones that we had at our old house were about 300mm x 300mm square (unfortunately the image on the right is the best I can find tonight). These stumps are quite ugly and can be difficult to work around while enclosing under. So what can we do with the concrete stumps holding up the house?

The solution that I suggested was to restump the house with new steel stumps, or even just the stumps that are in the way or too obvious. You can see them under our house in the story House Concrete Slab is Complete.

The new steel stumps are available in 75mm and 90mm width, depending on the load that they need to bear. The great thing about this size is that they can easily be concealed in walls, which are what we are planning to do under our house. It is something that you can attempt to do yourself if you are game enough, or the guys at Northern House Raising can also probably do it for you (they raised and restumped our house).

Some questions for you:

  1. Does anyone else out there have any suggestions about what to do with the concrete stumps?
  2. Is there an easier / faster / cheaper solution to make them look nice without having to go through the trouble of replacing the concrete stumps?

Your ideas would be appreciated and would help this person out with their own renovations.

Late Night Painting

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Well, it’s 11:45 pm and I just got inside from putting an undercoat on all the steel posts on our front stairs. Do you want to know what it started to do as I was cleaning up the paint brush?

It started to rain!!!

I guess it figures that would happen with all the luck that we are having with our house, but it is still frustrating.

So why was I painting this late at night anyways?

  1. It was cooler then in the day. That is relative though as it was still about 28C (83F), but cooler then the day and no chance of sun burn.
  2. Tamara and I watched “March of the Penguins” while the kids napped in the afternoon, which is my usual time for working on the house.
  3. It just needed to get done.

The centre flight of stairs is still not actually complete, but I think that if I wait until the builder actually gets that up to council regulations then I will be waiting for a very long time…

“The House is Killing Us”

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These were the words of our four year old son the other week. He was only repeating what Tamara had been saying, but it has been true for us in the last few months.

Our house has completely consumed our family.

Our weekends are no longer our own. Our spare time is always spent on our house and our relationship with each other and with the kids is suffering.

We feel right now like we are at the end of our tether.

  1. Our contractor has verbally confirmed that we will be dissolving our contract, but has still not gotten the letter to us to finalize it and he is not answering our phone calls or returning our messages. Until he does this (been waiting for three-weeks now) we can’t move ahead with anyone else, or even doing stuff ourselves.
  2. What was meant to be “temporary” plumbing and gas fittings is now going to have to be make semi-permanent as it will probably take us over a year now to get someone to replace our builder based upon most builder’s waiting lists.
  3. Our deck is still sitting a pile of timber and metal in the back-yard waiting to be erected. I really don’t want to see that timber rot, or the metal rust if it sits there too long.
  4. The timber yards are closed until the 8th of January, so even if we could do something ourselves we might not be able to get timber for it. Steel, for the deck stumps, will take even longer.

Right now we are considering putting a hold on our major renovations. The plans for council are valid for six-years, as is my owner-builder license. This means that realistically we can put it on hold for quite a while before we move ahead with things, and we can also take our time and not rush the project and put too much pressure on ourselves.

At the moment we are not really sure what to do with everything. Thankfully there hasn’t been too much talk about walking away from the house and selling, but for us to continue down this path won’t be good for our family.

Any advice from other DIY renovators would be appreciated…