decked - reno part 1

I've been promising renovation pics for a while now. I was waiting for those perfectly styled 'after' shots, but who am I kidding! Heaven knows when that will ever happen, we actually have quite a lot of stuff still to do, so I'm giving you a progress post instead.

I love seeing other people's before and after renovations, so I hope you enjoy them too.

This montage of progress shots show how the back view of the house has changed, dramatically, over the course of the renovation from our initial daggy cement porch and metal stairs through to the new wooden deck and lovely blue gum stairs.

Most of the building happened last year, which explains why I've been less active as a blogger and maker than usual. Having builders in the house when you work at home is a big thing. Luckily our builders were lovely and they managed to partition off our kitchen and leave our dishwasher working for the whole time. So we were pretty lucky.

Below stairs is the part that still needs most work. Those downstairs doors were a fortuitous Ebay find for less than $200! And while they aren't actually installed yet - just propped in place so we can dream about how they will look when its finished - it won't be long.

Upstairs the deck is painted and oiled. That took us about four weekends of 8 hour days but its very satisfying to see the final product. I've bought some inexpensive furniture for the deck and we are spending lots of time out there now. Its great for catching a cool breeze on these hot muggy days and lovely to eat dinner in the outdoors.

During the day the birds and butterflies float around this space as I hoped they would and if you follow my instagram you will see that a baby dove even slept there for a day!

We are loving the extra space in our tiny kitchen too, which was doubled in size. It was tiny and its a luxury to have more room. We also have more dining room too and now it opens through bifolds to the deck.

More photos to come as more gets finished!