Painting the walls and restoring the floorboards

We got the keys to the cottage on Shane's birthday. He took the day off work and spent his birthday pottering around, feeling very chuffed with himself I think. It was a disaster area - the neighbours had suggested it should be torn down - but it was our disaster area. And we could see what it could become.

This is the front room (originally the verandah). We thought it had great natural light and we now plan to make it our ensuite.

This was one of the bedrooms. This was where we found most of the junk in the floorboards (not just cigarette butts but earbuds too...yech!). I think the first thing we did was push that old dodgy-looking airconditioner right out the window, listening as it made a very satisfying THUD out of our house. Forever.

In this room (currently a bedroom, soon to be a bathroom), the floorboards were much nicer. We couldn't believe tenants had been living with the manky carpet when they had such grogeous boards underneath (this photo in no way does justice to the amount of mankiness was).

One of the first things we did was paint the entire place white. As I've mentioned, the house was painted everything from purple to green to orange and it was, quite simply, hideous. And there was a HUGE amount of prep work to be done as there were nails and holes in the walls like nothing we'd ever seen.

The white paint made a huge difference. We also pulled up all the carpet and gave the floorboards in most of the rooms a quick polish. We were pretty pleased with the result!

We were able to move in to our palace after this, but the adventure had only just begun.