Finding home renovation ideas in NZ can be frustrating: there are very few good magazines, and while the overseas publications are generally better quality, we can't get hold of the stuff that's featured in them down under!
I've even been surprised at the lack of online resources for people renovating in NZ - which is kinda surprising considering (a) how many kiwis do renovate their homes, and often DIY; and (b) what a powerful - and cost-effective - marketing tool the internet is.
That's one of the reasons I started this blog, to add a bit more variety to the online resources for kiwis renovating their villas.
One website which does seem to have quite a few ideas for kiwis is Homestyle New Zealand magazine... I'll keep an eye out for the magazine itself too :)
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Installing Expol underfloor insulation in a villa
While the house is minus front steps, Mr Kiwi took the opportunity to install Expol insulation under the bedroom floor.
Usually this area is difficult to access and only has 2' clearance anyway. Plus it's muddy and full of cobwebs - as well as being criss-crossed with the ducting from our heating system. Not an easy - or a pleasant - job!
Above: The area underneath the bedroom floor doesn't have much clearance, plus there's heating ducting here too. Mr Kiwi has now blocked up the gaps in the weatherboards - there's no more daylight shining through!
The bedroom is south facing and therefore one of the coldest rooms in the house. It also has bare wooden floorboards: they look good, but are pretty darn chilly underfoot in winter! We may Expol more rooms later, but it's not a priority right now.
Expol is made of polystyrene sheets that fit between the floor joists. It comes in 4 different widths and has insulation value of R1.4.
Calculating how much Expol you'll need
The challenge with installing Expol in a villa is that these houses were built in a hurry, generally without plans or building regulations. Consequently, the floor joists were built by eye, rather than with a ruler, and the measurement varies from joist to joist.
In our case, the bedroom joists varied between 300mm and 500mm.
For now, we're just expoling under the bedroom - that's an area of approximately 20 square metres, which requires 4 packs of Expol.
But with the varying joist measurements, we needed to know which size to get.
Mr Kiwi went under the house and measured each joist. From there, he was able to work out how many packs of each size of Expol to get. The 4 packs he purchased were in 3 different widths, so if you're doing this job for a villa it's well worth measuring and calculating before you purchase!
What's more, not all the joists were parallel - many of them tapered. Many of the Expol panels had to be individually trimmed to ensure a snug fit. That's a slow job, and it took Mr Kiwi the whole day to install the insulation under the bedroom.
Home insulation subsidies from the NZ Government
The NZ Government is currently offering householders subsidies for insulating their homes. This is via EECA Energywise.
Alas these subsidies only apply when the insulation is installed professionally: it isn't available for DIY-ers. So no subsidies for us :(
Project cost: $$ (Materials only, for an area of approx. 20 square metres)
PS. I haven't included an "after" photo, as it's now pitch black under the house - it wouldn't be a very exciting photo!!
Usually this area is difficult to access and only has 2' clearance anyway. Plus it's muddy and full of cobwebs - as well as being criss-crossed with the ducting from our heating system. Not an easy - or a pleasant - job!
Above: The area underneath the bedroom floor doesn't have much clearance, plus there's heating ducting here too. Mr Kiwi has now blocked up the gaps in the weatherboards - there's no more daylight shining through!The bedroom is south facing and therefore one of the coldest rooms in the house. It also has bare wooden floorboards: they look good, but are pretty darn chilly underfoot in winter! We may Expol more rooms later, but it's not a priority right now.
Expol is made of polystyrene sheets that fit between the floor joists. It comes in 4 different widths and has insulation value of R1.4.
Calculating how much Expol you'll need
The challenge with installing Expol in a villa is that these houses were built in a hurry, generally without plans or building regulations. Consequently, the floor joists were built by eye, rather than with a ruler, and the measurement varies from joist to joist.
In our case, the bedroom joists varied between 300mm and 500mm.
For now, we're just expoling under the bedroom - that's an area of approximately 20 square metres, which requires 4 packs of Expol.
But with the varying joist measurements, we needed to know which size to get.
Mr Kiwi went under the house and measured each joist. From there, he was able to work out how many packs of each size of Expol to get. The 4 packs he purchased were in 3 different widths, so if you're doing this job for a villa it's well worth measuring and calculating before you purchase!
What's more, not all the joists were parallel - many of them tapered. Many of the Expol panels had to be individually trimmed to ensure a snug fit. That's a slow job, and it took Mr Kiwi the whole day to install the insulation under the bedroom.
Home insulation subsidies from the NZ Government
The NZ Government is currently offering householders subsidies for insulating their homes. This is via EECA Energywise.
Alas these subsidies only apply when the insulation is installed professionally: it isn't available for DIY-ers. So no subsidies for us :(
Project cost: $$ (Materials only, for an area of approx. 20 square metres)
PS. I haven't included an "after" photo, as it's now pitch black under the house - it wouldn't be a very exciting photo!!
New wooden steps for our villa
When I first started writing this blog I thought I'd be able to write about each project in a complete article. But I've realised that home renovations don't work in such a neat and orderly manner!
Instead, you start one project which gives you an opportunity to do something else. And in the meantime, quite a few projects are under way till the original project is completed.
Therefore this blog is very much a diary rather than a neat set of articles. If I refer to an ongoing project I'll include links to related posts as much as possible.
So back to the subject of steps.
I've previously mentioned that the wooden steps leading to our front door are rather rotten. Well, they haven't improved over time!
Above: our poor front steps have seen better days! It's not just aesthetic: the wooden boards are actually rotten, and supported underneath by concrete blocks.
Above: Even the strategically placed flower pots struggled to disguise the state of our front steps!
Mr Kiwi has arranged for a builder friend to rebuild the steps. And that work started last week.
The stairs have been removed, and a new set is being manufactured off site.
In the meantime, we have a big gaping hole at the front of our house!
Above: The dog is having a great time watching the builders (she loves power tools etc.)
Instead, you start one project which gives you an opportunity to do something else. And in the meantime, quite a few projects are under way till the original project is completed.
Therefore this blog is very much a diary rather than a neat set of articles. If I refer to an ongoing project I'll include links to related posts as much as possible.
So back to the subject of steps.
I've previously mentioned that the wooden steps leading to our front door are rather rotten. Well, they haven't improved over time!
Above: our poor front steps have seen better days! It's not just aesthetic: the wooden boards are actually rotten, and supported underneath by concrete blocks.
Above: Even the strategically placed flower pots struggled to disguise the state of our front steps!Mr Kiwi has arranged for a builder friend to rebuild the steps. And that work started last week.
The stairs have been removed, and a new set is being manufactured off site.
In the meantime, we have a big gaping hole at the front of our house!
Above: The dog is having a great time watching the builders (she loves power tools etc.)While the front steps are being replaced, we're also taking the opportunity to re-vamp the front of the house slightly.
Some of the weatherboards need replacing; and the joinery on the bay front tidied up. And as our villa doesn't have much fretwork or other details that villas of this era usually do, we'll be adding some.
Plus, we don't like the current colour scheme, so will be painting the front of the house in different colours. (Painting the rest of the house is a future project - it's a big job, and the front of the house is the priority at this stage!)
More on all of that will be posted here at a later date.
Some of the weatherboards need replacing; and the joinery on the bay front tidied up. And as our villa doesn't have much fretwork or other details that villas of this era usually do, we'll be adding some.
Plus, we don't like the current colour scheme, so will be painting the front of the house in different colours. (Painting the rest of the house is a future project - it's a big job, and the front of the house is the priority at this stage!)
More on all of that will be posted here at a later date.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Choosing exterior paint colours for our villa
I thought that choosing exterior paint colours for our villa would be fun.
I was wrong.
I've already been to Resene at least 5 times for test points and advice, and we still haven't finalised our choices!
I'm finding that the paler colours look far darker on the villa weatherboards than they do on the paint chart; and the dark colours (for the trim) look paler in reality than on the paint charts. And not all the test pot colours resemble the colour charts. Grrrr!
Which explains why part of our house looks a bit rainbowtastic!
Above: trying paint test pot colours. (The photo shows just how badly our poor house is in need of a lick of paint!)
In fairness, Resene do have great resources available.
For starters, they've got a guide to Heritage paint colours, for people wanting to use authentic paint colours that were in use in the era when their house was built. The eras are:
A surveyor reckoned our house was built in 1916, making it "Dominion" era, but according to the Resene information it's more likely that our house is Late Victorian/Edwardian in style... maybe our surveyor was a couple of years out.
These heritage paint colours are, um, quite strong, and not to my taste.
So for us, that's nice information, but we'll be choosing something a little more contemporary!
Above: Resene's Heritage Colour Palette.
In one Resene store I also found this A4 sheet where you can colour in a villa piccie. (I've only seen this at one Resene shop - I've never spied it at any others, so if you're wanting one it might be worth your while phoning around.)
Resene have a similar tool on their website too, where you can use your computer to "paint" a picture of your house, but personally I find that one a bit too fiddly!
Above: "Create Your Own Colour Scheme" sheet from Resene.
I was wrong.
I've already been to Resene at least 5 times for test points and advice, and we still haven't finalised our choices!
I'm finding that the paler colours look far darker on the villa weatherboards than they do on the paint chart; and the dark colours (for the trim) look paler in reality than on the paint charts. And not all the test pot colours resemble the colour charts. Grrrr!
Which explains why part of our house looks a bit rainbowtastic!
Above: trying paint test pot colours. (The photo shows just how badly our poor house is in need of a lick of paint!)In fairness, Resene do have great resources available.
For starters, they've got a guide to Heritage paint colours, for people wanting to use authentic paint colours that were in use in the era when their house was built. The eras are:
- 1840 to 1870: Early Colonial
- 1870s to 1890s: Mid Victorian
- 1890 to 1914: Late Victorian and Edwardian
- 1914 to 1945: Dominion
A surveyor reckoned our house was built in 1916, making it "Dominion" era, but according to the Resene information it's more likely that our house is Late Victorian/Edwardian in style... maybe our surveyor was a couple of years out.
These heritage paint colours are, um, quite strong, and not to my taste.
So for us, that's nice information, but we'll be choosing something a little more contemporary!
Above: Resene's Heritage Colour Palette.In one Resene store I also found this A4 sheet where you can colour in a villa piccie. (I've only seen this at one Resene shop - I've never spied it at any others, so if you're wanting one it might be worth your while phoning around.)
Resene have a similar tool on their website too, where you can use your computer to "paint" a picture of your house, but personally I find that one a bit too fiddly!
Above: "Create Your Own Colour Scheme" sheet from Resene.Notes on NZ Paint for UK Expats
Oh, the number of times I've gotten strange looks by asking for "emulsion" paint etc... and the people employed in NZ DIY stores aren't that helpful to chicks who don't use the proper (NZ) terms for things! I hope to spare you that embarrassment and belittlement!
- Resene is arguably the most popular paint brand in New Zealand (not Dulux).
- Paint here seems VERY pricey compared to the UK: both exterior and interior paint.
- Paint in NZ has to be super durable to cope with the hard UV light conditions in this part of the world. Which probably explains why it's more expensive.
- Kiwis don't understand the British terminology of "emulsion" and "gloss". Instead of "emulsion" (water-based paint) they say "acrylic". And instead of "gloss" (oil-based paint) they call it "enamel" - which is available in a variety of finishes: gloss, semi-gloss, matte, etc.
Oh, the number of times I've gotten strange looks by asking for "emulsion" paint etc... and the people employed in NZ DIY stores aren't that helpful to chicks who don't use the proper (NZ) terms for things! I hope to spare you that embarrassment and belittlement!
Villa renovations re-commence!
The villa renovations got credit crunched for a while, but are now resuming, yeahhh!
More on that later. First of all a quick update on what has been done since my last post.
As it hasn't been possible to do much work on the house itself, I shifted my focus to the garden. It's something I can tackle sporadically in nice weather, between work commitments, etc.
The Landscape Plan
I'd like the garden to look nice, but don't have the know-how or skills to figure out a "look". I don't know which plans like sun/shade/etc. and guessing at it means a lot of dead plants!!
So I got Ace Landscapes to draw up a landscape plan for me:
Above: The Landscape Plan.
It's about 95% perfect, and I now have a plan to work to. The intention is to work on it, one small area at a time.
Preparing The Canvas...
But first of all, it's been a matter of preparing the canvas, so to speak. i.e. clearing out all the stuff we don't like, to make way for the stuff we do want.
Above: the garden before the big tidy up: note the big pile of old branches etc. at the back.
Above: branches etc. have all gone! We filled up a massive skip (or "jumbo bins" as the kiwis call them).
And now, to keep the garden neat and avoid the build-up of more branches, palm leaves, etc. I've got a Sunshine Garden Bin.
It's a big wheelie bin that gets collected every 4 weeks, and it's less than $10 a month. They take away the garden waste and then recycle/mulch it, so it doesn't go to landfill. They don't take bamboo or flax, but we don't have any of that, so it's not an issue.
The challenge will be to keep the garden neat and weed-free over winter!
There's still more clearance work to be done before I can do much planting. Specifically, there are old tree stumps that need to be ground out. But that's a job for another day!
More on that later. First of all a quick update on what has been done since my last post.
As it hasn't been possible to do much work on the house itself, I shifted my focus to the garden. It's something I can tackle sporadically in nice weather, between work commitments, etc.
The Landscape Plan
I'd like the garden to look nice, but don't have the know-how or skills to figure out a "look". I don't know which plans like sun/shade/etc. and guessing at it means a lot of dead plants!!
So I got Ace Landscapes to draw up a landscape plan for me:
Above: The Landscape Plan.It's about 95% perfect, and I now have a plan to work to. The intention is to work on it, one small area at a time.
Preparing The Canvas...
But first of all, it's been a matter of preparing the canvas, so to speak. i.e. clearing out all the stuff we don't like, to make way for the stuff we do want.
Above: the garden before the big tidy up: note the big pile of old branches etc. at the back.
Above: branches etc. have all gone! We filled up a massive skip (or "jumbo bins" as the kiwis call them).And now, to keep the garden neat and avoid the build-up of more branches, palm leaves, etc. I've got a Sunshine Garden Bin.
It's a big wheelie bin that gets collected every 4 weeks, and it's less than $10 a month. They take away the garden waste and then recycle/mulch it, so it doesn't go to landfill. They don't take bamboo or flax, but we don't have any of that, so it's not an issue.
The challenge will be to keep the garden neat and weed-free over winter!
There's still more clearance work to be done before I can do much planting. Specifically, there are old tree stumps that need to be ground out. But that's a job for another day!
A gallery of villas
Choosing a look for your villa
Someone suggested that before committing to any exterior work that we should have a look around suburbs where there are lots of villas to get some ideas and inspiration.
So off we went, with camera in hand to record the ideas for a "look book".
Here are some pics I found online:
Someone suggested that before committing to any exterior work that we should have a look around suburbs where there are lots of villas to get some ideas and inspiration.
So off we went, with camera in hand to record the ideas for a "look book".
The first thing we noticed was how many different styles of villa there are! Just finding single bay fronted villas which resemble ours was trickier than we first thought.
To supplement this legwork, looking through online real estate listings or magazines (especially the Property Press) can help too.
It's certainly helped to identify some definite likes and dislikes, though I suspect there's a lot more research ahead while we renovate!
Here are some pics I found online:
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Landscaping the garden
I've decided that clearing the garden is a job for chainsaw-wielding professionals: it needs a serious blitz!
Before: this border was over-run with ladder fern and weeds.
So recently two of the team from Ace Landscapes spent a coupla days pruning, mulching and weeding the garden. They took away 3 huge truckloads of garden waste with them - and there's more to go!
This is Part 1 of re-doing our garden: getting rid of the stuff we don't want.
(Part 2 will involve getting a landscape plan drawn up so that there's a scheme to work to - and Part 3 will consist of implementing this landscape plan, which will probably be done in stages... so keep tuned for the progress!)
The guys did a great job... it would have taken Mr Kiwi and I more than a week (probably more like 2 weeks) to do the work that the Ace Landscapes team did in a day or two. Man they worked FAST!
The only problem with the much-emptier garden was that it revealed just how badly the paint on the fence along one boundary is peeling!
After: the border is looking a lot less cluttered - but it's revealed the peeling fence!
So last weekend Mr Kiwi and I made the most of the great weather and picked up a 10L tub of fence paint (British Paints - 4 Seasons) for about $130-ish from Mitre 10 Mega and blitzed the fence.
The colour we used ("Karaka") is a very dark green - it was exactly the same colour that was there before. It's a really easy-to-live with colour, as it's not too green (so that you'd be thinking, ew, that's really green) and not too dark (so as to be sombre). It makes a really nice backdrop to the lush green of the tropical plants in our garden.
After: the freshly-painted fence AND a weed-free garden. Lovely!
Above: unfortunately Minnie the dog ended up sporting a dab of "Karaka" on her (no, we didn't use her as a roller! She just has to check out everything we do very closely! And it was too nice a day to shut her away inside!).
Fortunately the paint is water-based so it washed off beautifully and she is perfectly white again :-)
Before: this border was over-run with ladder fern and weeds.
So recently two of the team from Ace Landscapes spent a coupla days pruning, mulching and weeding the garden. They took away 3 huge truckloads of garden waste with them - and there's more to go!
This is Part 1 of re-doing our garden: getting rid of the stuff we don't want.
(Part 2 will involve getting a landscape plan drawn up so that there's a scheme to work to - and Part 3 will consist of implementing this landscape plan, which will probably be done in stages... so keep tuned for the progress!)
The guys did a great job... it would have taken Mr Kiwi and I more than a week (probably more like 2 weeks) to do the work that the Ace Landscapes team did in a day or two. Man they worked FAST!
The only problem with the much-emptier garden was that it revealed just how badly the paint on the fence along one boundary is peeling!
After: the border is looking a lot less cluttered - but it's revealed the peeling fence!
So last weekend Mr Kiwi and I made the most of the great weather and picked up a 10L tub of fence paint (British Paints - 4 Seasons) for about $130-ish from Mitre 10 Mega and blitzed the fence.
The colour we used ("Karaka") is a very dark green - it was exactly the same colour that was there before. It's a really easy-to-live with colour, as it's not too green (so that you'd be thinking, ew, that's really green) and not too dark (so as to be sombre). It makes a really nice backdrop to the lush green of the tropical plants in our garden.
After: the freshly-painted fence AND a weed-free garden. Lovely!
Above: unfortunately Minnie the dog ended up sporting a dab of "Karaka" on her (no, we didn't use her as a roller! She just has to check out everything we do very closely! And it was too nice a day to shut her away inside!).
Fortunately the paint is water-based so it washed off beautifully and she is perfectly white again :-)
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