Media - renovations - Page 1

A photo of our original cupboard doors, there are four of them and they're in a very white thin frame with very cheap looking wood grain as the actual door material (I honestly couldn't tell if it was the real wood or just a faux-wood covering on top).

A photo of the new cupboard doors, only three of them. They're white, in the "quaker" style, and the middle one has a mirror in, which is reflecting me in the middle of taking the photo.

Today we had our incredibly shitty built-in wardrobe in the main bedroom replaced! Looks so much nicer now, inside as well, and it's good to have a mirror that isn't the weirdly lowly-positioned one on the back of the bedroom door.

Posted on 13 September 2024, 13:45

A photo of a sunny window behind a kitchen sink, with cream-coloured vertical blinds partially open.

A photo of our box window that's in the lounge room, also with nice cream-coloured vertical blinds partially open and the sun coming in.

We FINALLY got the dingy grey vertical blinds in the kitchen and lounge room replaced with nice new light cream-coloured ones today. @yayKM had a seething hatred of the old ones, I didn't think they were _that_ bad but I'll definitely grant the new ones look much nicer, and they brighten the place up quite noticeably at night.

our house darkroom renovations

Posted on 23 August 2024, 21:38

A photo of a small Android tablet attached to the wall, showing two zones "Living" and "Beds" with separate temperature settings for each.

We've had a problem with our aircon system where it'll cool things down really quickly, the compressor turns off but the fans remains running to keep air circulating, and at that point the system starts blowing humid air and making it absolutely disgusting inside. I've got all sorts of data from our temperature sensor and power usage setup showing that that's what was going on, but when we had the people who installed the aircon out, they'd never heard of that problem before and didn't know what to do. We gave up for a year (mostly because we stopped needing the aircon because summer had finished), but earlier this year I called someone else, he came out and immediately pinpointed the issue as poor temperature control (the only temperature sensor was on the aircon panel that's directly underneath the air intake). He recommended a new control system with separate sensors and more fine-grained control, and we had it installed today. It lets us have separate temperatures set for the lounge room and office, and early signs are looking promising! The only thing I don't like is that it's basically a glorified Android tablet, but I've done the responsible thing and set up a separate isolated wireless network for it to live on. 😛

our house darkroom renovations air conditioning

Posted on 7 March 2023, 13:12

A photo of our old pergola. It's done in timber with white paint over it, and the roofing is polycarbonate. There's a vertical post in the middle of the longest span and the whole thing looks a bit shit.

A another photo taken from underneath the pergola looking out. You can see that the wood isn't very good quality and is rotting in places and the roofing has dust and mud on the top of it. It too looks awful.

A photo of the new pergola. It's done in white metal and looks clean and airy and SOLID. There's no middle vertical post for the longest span and it looks much more open now.

A photo taken from underneath the new pergola. The roofing is primarily white metal and there's two translucent fibreglass panels that provide a wonderfully soft and diffuse light.

New pergola is done! It looks SO much nicer, and it's much brighter underneath than I was expecting giving it's only got two light panels. I'm very excited about it not getting to be a gajillion degrees underneath it on sunny days, too. (Ignore the piles of dirt at the left and the lights hanging from their cables... the former we need to dump out at the back of the yard, and the latter we need to call the electrician in for because the new pergola needed to get fastened to that panel of wood that the lights were previously on.)

our house darkroom renovations pergola

Posted on 15 March 2022, 13:22

A photo looking up over the hedge the next to our house, with a street light and some trees also visible, all silhouetted again the pre-sunrise sky. There's a hint of orange in the sky at the very bottom.

Man, it's been a while since I've been up before sunrise. I think the last time was when we went to New Zealand RIGHT before COVID hit in February of 2020. We're getting our pergola redone (yes, again), this time by someone competent. Had someone in to quote just for getting it fixed, and so much had been done wrong that it made more sense to rip the whole thing down and start it over again in metal rather than timber.

our house sunrise darkroom renovations pergola

Posted on 14 March 2022, 6:53

A photo of two large bags of "Pink Batts" ceiling insulation.

It's all happening today, we're taking advantage of the fact that Beanie is over at my parents' place to get the ceiling insulation redone as well. (The people that put the ducted aircon in that was put in before we bought the place had just pulled the existing insulation back in places and not replaced it).

our house darkroom renovations

Posted on 29 October 2020, 8:07

A photo of a Tesla Powerwall 2 battery sitting in its packaging on the floor of our garage, surrounded by tradies and their equipment.

Awwww yeahhhhh!

our house darkroom new toys renovations tesla powerwall

Posted on 29 October 2020, 7:42

A photo of our home office taken from the doorway. There's two white bookcases facing each other, two desks with computers on them next to the bookshelves, and to the right of the bookshelves is a window. The downlights are nice and bright and warm.

Exactly one year to the day after we got downlights installed in the lounge room and kitchen (https://virtualwolf.org/media/posts/1415), we've had them installed in the office! It looks so much nicer and brighter now.

our house darkroom renovations

Posted on 28 October 2020, 22:44

A photo of the front of a stand-alone backyard room. The front of it is primarily glass with a painted wood frame (door in the middle, two full-length windows on either side), and the paint is peeling and the wood isn't in very good condition.

While I'm in a doing-stuff mood, my next project is attempting to at least slightly de-fuck the awfully-built back room in our backyard. It was either a DIY job or the tradies who did it should be ashamed of themselves. I'm going to try to sand and repaint the wood because it's peeling and the wood is gappy.

our house diy renovations photos.app

Posted on 4 April 2020, 18:05

A photo of our dark grey metal roof with solar panels mounted on it

A photo of a carport with dark grey guttering and a white roof and posts, with a white Toyota Yaris parked under it. The front left post is partially on the driveway and the front right one is over on the grass due to the shape of the driveway.

And we're done, and the panels look great! The carport's very handsome too. (Yes, it's misaligned compared to the driveway but it's a weird shitty driveway that we're going to need to get redone at some point anyway).

our house renovations photos.app solar

Posted on 20 February 2020, 20:28