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.

Floor Sanding Fiasco

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We are paying a company to sand the floors in our house. They are pine floors that were a bit scuffed up, so we are just getting a light sand with a “satin” polish put on it. We have been having a few problems actually getting this done though, which is a bit frustrating for us and the company that is doing it.

From what they have told us there are a few different reasons for this:

  1. Different manufactures of the polish actual control their product at the molecular level to bond best with their own product, which sometimes means that it won’t bond or work properly with a different product.
  2. The consistency of the polish varies from pot to pot, so it’s sometimes difficult to just do touch ups of a job from a different can of polish.
  3. The finish of the product varies depending on the temperature and the humidity of the day.

Right now they are on their fourth try to get the polish right. The first two times there were little areas that needed touching up, but touching it up didn’t work. Then they cut back half the floor again and did that whole half again. The new half ended up with a very different finish though, so now they are cutting back the other half and repolishing that.

Part of the problem they said is that the weather here in Townsville when they did the very first coat was not too hot and raining, where as with the other coat it was very hot and humid.

Well, we’ll see how it comes up after this coat goes on…

New Floorplan for the House

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I just spoke to the guys who are coordinating the lifting, re-stumping and enclosing under of our house. They should be picking up the plans from the architect today and I will have them in my hands hopefully tomorrow. As I put in a few of my previous posts we have had to make a fair number of changes to the original plan plan, but below is the original plan that I drew up:

New Floor-plan by Bill before architect

Since then I have had to pull the garage in to be under the original roof line and move the ground floor bathroom to where the walk in robe was. In the top right hand side of the floorplan is where the stairs will be, I just couldn’t put them in because the program that I use for house design isn’t real good with turning staircases.

The plan on the left is the bottom / ground floor and the one on the right is the top floor. Sort of backwards from standard houses because the living areas will be upstairs and the bedrooms downstairs, but that saves us moving the kitchen and also allows us to have an elevated deck. The deck should then catch more breeze and hopefully keep us a bit further away from the insects.

House Re-Stumping Checklist

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The article below about house re-stumping is quite an old one, so I don’t know how relevant some of the technical information is, but the more general information seems to be quite good. It is copyright 1997, so that would explain some of the diferences that I have seen between what they write and what I’ve seen around Townsville now.

One thing that is definitely lacking is that there is no mention of steal stumps for your re-stumping project. Almost all of the new homes that I have seen up here in Townsville that have been re-stumped in the last 5-years or so have used steal stumps instead of the older timber or concrete stumps.

Archicentre: DIY Restumping Checklist

You can check out my own checklist for what we are currently walking though in getting our own house lifted and re-stumped here, House Lifting and Restumping Schedule, we are currently at step number 1 still, although I should have the plans for the house tomorrow to move on to step number 2 which is taking it to the Engineer.