Renovating A HOUSE into OUR HOME

Last week we renovated our townhouse – in 7 days!

We have been living in our townhouse for about 3 years now. People don’t come over (because we don’t invite them over) and if they did, well they wouldn’t have anywhere to sit. Our guests would be drinking tea from mismatching, cracked coffee cups and we wouldn’t be cooking dinner because we don’t have enough plates or cutlery for everyone to eat with. Our guests would need to squat on crates in order to sit down and we would probably use crates as our coffee table too. In fact most of our furniture has been a milk crate creation… Whilst this was fun for a while we decided to progress to the next step of our life and start using real furniture.

Now we are married, we thought that we should start doing things that married people do. Like have our family over for a Sunday lunch! It was my husband’s Name Day last week so we used that as a perfect excuse to have a party.

We gave ourselves 7 days to get our house up to scratch before our family came over to visit and gee wiz…. we did a lot in one week.

This is what we did:

Cleared the Clutter – We cleaned and organised and got rid of all of the stuff we don’t need/don’ use anymore from every corner of our house including our wardrobes, office space, kitchen and bathroom. This was probably the hardest and most time-consuming job of all.
Finnish our Projects – We finished all of those “i’ll get it done one day” projects such as completing photo albums to filing paperwork and reorganising the pantry.
Got our own Stuff – We really wanted our house to feel like our own home. So we moved all of our wedding gifts from my parents garage into our kitchen. It was so much fun unpacking all of our wedding gifts! We now officially have matching dinner sets and crockery! Woohoo.
Moved all of the Furniture – We had to move everything off the floor downstairs and some how squeeze it into our bedroom. Lucky for me my husband is much stronger than I am because lifting that couch was bloody tough.
Ripped up the old carpet and tiles from the downstairs area
Tiled the living room, kitchen, toilet and laundry
Painted the house (well only the living room so far but the rest of the house will come soon)
Fitted new Blinds on our 7 Windows – Almost every supplier told me that there would be a 6-8 week turnaround time. I wanted it done in 3 days. I got it done in 3 days. Yay!
Built a Shed – This was probably one of the biggest jobs which included: smashing down the brick BBQ, dumping all of the bricks, working out the best/cheapest way to concrete, learning how to concrete at Bunnings, actually concreting the area, realising that we didn’t have enough concrete to fill the space and going back to Bunnings 3 times, making sure the concrete was level, choosing the colour of the shed, picking up the shed, building the shed and then putting all of the stuff in the shed.
Went shopping for furnishings like our mirror and TV
Redecorated our Living Space – We had to move all of our furniture back once the tiles and paint were finished but we wanted to create a practical living space with the furniture we had.
Planted a new garden (and learnt all about gardening, shrubs, trees and ferterliser in the process)
Cleaned the house and got everything ready for our Sunday Lunch!