Posted by Mad Violinist | Posted in General | Posted on 20-08-2010
I haven’t got as much time today as I hoped to post photos today, but here they are. These photos were taken on the morning we moved in, just before we moved in.
Things to note, we have curtains now, and the colour of the floor is a little less saturated in real life. The bathroom tiles were not what we asked for originally, but we compromised. We wanted larger black tiles. The flash of the camera makes them look more glossy than they really are, the black is not so heavy in real life. With all that in mind, below are the photos of our empty unit.
There’s some pretty wild lens distortion in the photos, but that’s wide angle lenses for ya! 
Click on the photos for a larger size
Lounge room
Looking from front door towards kitchen and bedroom
Looking from corner of lounge room to balcony door.
View from kitchen to front door.
View from bedroom door across the room to where our computer desks are now.
Another photo looking towards the balcony:
Lounge room floor:
Security door on the inside of the unit, since the balcony door opens outwards. The door feels flimsy to me, but apparently nobody can get past it when it is locked:
Balcony door and window. The window has a crimsafe security screen which can hardly be seen in this photo:
Below, the blinds are down. We have curtains now too.
Kitchen
Below are photos of the kitchen. Nothing much to explain.
Bedroom
Our new bed is still boxed up in these photos.
Bathroom
Gee that took a while with the dongle. I’m looking forward to getting my new adsl2 broadband next week!
Wow the place looks awesome, can’t wait to see the before shots to compare what youv’e done the the place but by the look of it its a HELL of a lot.
Hope you’re both happy with the end result.
Did u find chosing the different fittings / tiles / colours etc difficult ?
Thanks Craig. We didn’t have too much trouble with choosing tiles, it’s just that the wrong bathroom tiles were brought on the day and we either had to go with them, or delay the renovations further. The only tiles we added to the bathroom were the black ones which replaced the tiny grey mosaic tiles that were there originally. The white tiles looked new, so we left them. The only things we changed in the bathroom was the shower head and the mirror and added the black tiles. Fortunately the black tiles look better in real life than in these photos, but we wanted them larger, to make the bathroom look more like what you see in hotels such as the Raddison.
We chose the paint colours at the Dulux shop, and the painter complimented us on our choice. We went with the painter’s recommendation of Dulux “White on White” for the ceiling, doors and doorframes, and used “Natural White” for the walls. We couldn’t be happier with the paint.
I’ll do a post on the renovations soon, we went through some hell, but looking back we can laugh. I’m still waiting for my broadband! Hopefully it’ll be working by tomorrow!
Was the kitchen like that when you bought it ? As it looks schmick and what about the floorboards ?
The kitchen was mostly like that, we only added a laminated (couldn’t afford glass) splash back to cover the ugly tiles between the bench and the top cupboards. The walls and ceiling were painted in the kitchen as well, and that’s about it.
The floor boards are just vinyl, but look real enough. There used to be old filthy carpet, but that was taken away, and self leveling concrete was poured to bake a dead flat surface for the vinyl to be laid on.
The photos are great Mad Violinist! I’m glad we captured the photos well, they’ll work well for when we want to rent it out in future and have it on a property website
All in all I’m glad with the finished product. The curtains we bought are blockout light cream ones which are in keeping with the colours we have.
The kitchen came like that, but like Mad Violinist said, we added the splashback to brighten up the kitchen. The tiles they used originally were quite dull.
The vinyl flooring is actually more expensive than the floorboards because of the work they had to do with levelling the floor, whereas if you used floorboards, you would not have to prepare the floor beneath. The reason for using vinyl from my perspective was not the cost but for durability. Floorboards would not last as long and also would not fair well if there was water spillage or flooding in the flat.
There was a time when we came home from a weekend away to find half the water from our fish tank on the carpet in our previous unit. I had this in mind when selecting the floor, I wanted something to last and be able to cope with such things.
Everything would be perfect if we had a garage or a storage room. Everyone else in this block has either a lock up garage or a store room or both. We are the only ones with a car space only.
We already had ideas of what we wanted for the unit when we saw it. So the process was fairly easy. Choosing the finishes and seeing it come to life is fun. The not so fun part is organising trades people and watching them stuff up.
The photos were well taken. The renovation finished good. It is always difficult to organise trade men to do the work properly. With the short time to finish the renovation, I must say both of you have organised the renovation work well. Now you can enjoy the nice home.
Helena