The Fintelmansion

The bit where we broke the bench. When we move into our house we will be immediately ripping out the filthy kitchen, bathroom and laundry to make way for a new back half of the house. Initially we were planning to buy a cheap, secondhand kitchen to install temporarily until the structural work is done and the shiny, pretty, complete-with-dishwasher kitchen is ready to go in.  But... we are lucky enough to have a friend who is renovating his apartment and getting rid of his kitchen, and who was happy for us to take out his current quoite noice kitchen for free as long as we got it out ourselves.  So this week off we all toddled to take out a kitchen. I went there with no knowledge or skills in kitchen removal.  Things I learnt about taking apart a kitchen:  Don't wear your nice pants.  It's not hard at all.  Find the things that hold the kitchen together and take them apart. This might be scraping away glue, unscrewing screws, yanking t...

I'm reading a book called  Built Like a Woman  by Sandra Broman  which is one woman's tale of how to renovate when you are a girl and have no idea what to do. I'm finding it very inspiring and challenging. One of the first things she said in the book was that in the beginning she had no idea of how to renovate and after a while of learning and becoming awesome she bought her own chainsaw. What I'm taking from the book at the moment is that you just have to get stuck in and get your hands dirty.   Last night the saw came out. My first reaction was "Ew, a tool." Then the voice inside my head that is Sandy B said "Girls can saw stuff." So off I went to saw something/take over the world. In my feminist dream of the situation, I would have picked up the saw without asking for permission or instructions, then found the exact right spot to do the sawing and sawed something to perfection.  In reality, I said "Can I do the sawing?", got...

Today we visited the Richmond Town Hall. This is the HQ of the City of Yarra Council and it is very pretty inside. It also smells very old. Why? To do building renovations to your house, you need to submit an application for a planning or building permit, or both. The changes to your site must adhere to a set of standards and rules based on your particular council and block. Before you can knock down, build or install a helipad, the council has to approve these plans. Most people would use an architect to design the building and write the planning/building application, but in the interest of saving a  bajillion dollars, we are doing it ourselves. (Note 1: Gary has a lot of technical knowledge that I don't think we could do this without. Note 2: Gary is for hire.) We have done most of our planning permit application already (more on that to come), but went in to have a chat basically about what our plan was for the renovation and to double check we had identified all the rules...