Renovate Australia DIY Renovation Show

Do you have some dead patches in your lawn?

Have you been tempted to purchase “lawn repair” products from your local gardening or hardware store?

I’ve bought some of them, and regretted it for years after …

Choosing the right product to repair the dead or struggling patches of grass in you lawn is not as easy as buying the cheapest or prettiest product on the Bunnings shelf. I had to learn this the hard way, and spent many hours on my hands and knees trying to fix my repair

A lot of those lawn repair products include a blend of four or more different types of grass seed to encourage rapid growth of the replacement grass. While this does speed up the regrowth, chances are pretty good that at least three of the four types of grasses will not match your existing lawn.

After failed attempts at using different lawn repair seed on our lawn I was stuck using species specific herbicide to kill of two of the four types of grass, and many hours trying to pull out the third type of grass. I have also over-sown the lawn with seed that matches our existing lawn grass.

Despite still having some dead patches, we are slowly making progress with greening up our front lawn…

Best time to do it in Adelaide is in November or in Autumn (March – May)

* Core the Lawn

* Mow over the soil and turf with the catcher attached to clear off the lawn surface

* Add Gypsum or other Clay Breaker

* Add a Wetting Agent

* Quality Lawn Top Dress Compost / Soil

* Quality Lawn Fertiliser

* Grass Seed

Source: Heyne’s Garden Centre – Seasonal Lawn Maintenance

Since moving into our house here in Adelaide in December 2012 we have been overwelmed by the amount of maintenance that we have needed to do on the house. The more I look around the place and live here, the more I am convinced that the previous owners never did anything to maintain the house.

I’m not just talking about big jobs, but even small things like replacing the batteries in the smoke detectors and cleaning the filter in the range hood. I even found two dead mice in the range hood that had pretty much mummified! That really had me wondering how long it had been since they cleaned it out.

Some day I hope that we finally get on top of all the maintenance jobs on the house so that maybe we can move on to making improvements on the place and personalized it to make it our own. Right now however, after 1.5 years in the house, I feel like we are still just trying to bring the place up a level that will give us a canvas to work with.

photo credit: hanaloftus via photopin cc

Renovate Australia Podcast Episode 6

After weighing up for a long time whether to install residential solar power on our house here in South Australia we decided to go ahead and get some quotes on the costs associated with it. To start the process I visited a web-site called SolarQuotes.com.au that my brother in law recommended.

The guy who runs it is Finn Peacock and he seems to be a very up and up kind of guy, who even called my brother in law back on the phone to answer some of his questions!

His web-site will connect you with three different solar providers for quotes. After filling out the simple form I had two of the three companies contact me pretty quickly with quotes over the phone.

In addition to the three companies that I was connected to via the SolarQuotes site, I also contacted two companies that I had recently received flyers for. They were very low prices, for what looked like decent systems, so I thought I would give them a try.

SolarQuotes.com.au also has a Solar Installer Leaderboard on their site. I had a look at that page and contacted three other companies that had done a lot of work in South Australia, were either Platinum or Gold rated on SolarQuotes, and also had very few, or no negative comments on forums.

Following the advice on SolarQuotes.com.au I did the following while researching the companies:

* Checked out the reviews on SolarQuotes

* Searched for forum posts about the companies on Whirlpool

* Asked a lot of questions of the people giving the quotes (13 suggested questions from SolarQuotes)

In addition to those questions I also checked out reviews and forum posts on the inverters and panels I was quoted on.

Since moving back to Australia I have noticed a huge trend of homes installing home solar power systems. As it turns out 10% of homes actually have solar power systems installed, and they are producing about 1% of the nation’s power.

At the end of 2012 the rebate from the Australian government dropped by half of what it was. The funny thing is though that the price of systems has not changed significantly based on the flyers that I had from December 2012 and one from March 2013.

One benefit of having solar power is the electricity feed in tariff. Here in South Australia there are two feed in tariffs that you can receive; one from the government and one from your energy retailer. The one from the government though is set to be eliminated if your system is installed after September 30, 2013:

Solar customers who received approval from SA Power Networks for an upgrade prior to 1 October 2011 will be permitted to carry out and complete that upgrade before 1 October 2013 to remain in the feed-in scheme, however, they will only be entitled to receive 16c/kWh for future electricity fed into the grid for the whole of their system until 2016 …

So with that in mind, should I install a home solar power system before September 2013? I would LOVE some advice as it is a large investment, but it could have some real benefits down the track …

Injuries suffered during DIY renovations and repairs is becoming increasingly common, especially in connection with sedentary life styles. There are a few things that we can do however to lower the chance of injury.

After spending a week on crutches after I pulled my iliopsoas / hip flexor I started thinking about how common DIY injuries are and what I could do to prevent them in the future …

Below are three simple things that you can do to help prevent injuries during DIY projects:

* Stretch before starting your work

* Get help when needed

* Don’t work beyond your ability

Links from the podcast:

* Dangers in Faulty Foil Insulation Installations

* Sitting is the New Smoking

How to stretch the Iliopsoas

Like many issues that we have come up with during our home improvements there seems to be no clear cut “correct” way to do this. A lot of it comes down to personal preference.

When the kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities were installed in our house they were installed first, and then the flooring was installed. While this is a common way to do it, there are some disadvantages that are inherent to this type of cabinet and tile installation.

In our kitchen the dishwasher was installed in a cabinet space that used to be a cupboard. Because it was not tiled under the cabinet you can see the concrete sub-floor under the dishwasher. The concrete floor was also about 1.5cm lower than the tile, so I had to raise up the dishwasher so that the bottom of it would match up with the tile.

The vanity in our ensuite has unfortunately sustained some water damage. Because the vanity is grouted into the tile we don’t really have the option to replace the vanity. Instead we will need to attempt to repair the existing vanity, hopefully without damaging the existing tile or causing more damage to the already compromised vanity.

Some other thoughts about tiling under kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities can be found here:

* Home Improvement – How should I tile under kitchen cabinets?

* DIY Chat Room - Cabinets over tile, or tile around cabinets???

* Contractor Talk – Tile Under Cabinets

Music is “Do What You Can” by Lee Rosevere

Which is right, and which do you prefer? We discuss this in the latest Renovate Australia podcast …

Builders prefer to do the baseboards first and then bring the tile right up to the tile.

Home-owners generally prefer the look of doing the tile first and then installing the baseboard trim.

If it is installed with the tile up to the baseboard trim then you should leave about a 1/8″ gap that you should fill will caulking. Our gap was unfortunately filled with grout, which is now cracking because of movement of the walls and floors.

Problems I have found with doing the baseboard trim and then the tile:

* cut edge is exposed, so any imperfections in the trim is visible

* border of the room is a visible joint

* if you don’t want the visible trim you need to install some 1/4 round over the joint

* Very difficult to replace the baseboard trim with new without damaging or replacing the tile

With the cracking that we have in the gap between our flooring and baseboard trim I picked up a product called Selleys Mortar Works. From what I was told it should be the correct product to fill the gap left by the cracked grout, so we will see how it performs…

It’s probably pretty obvious after listening to my podcast that my preference is for the baseboard trim to go over top of the flooring. But how do you prefer your floors and baseboard trims to be finished?

Other sources of information:

* The Garden Web – Baseboards and Construction Sequence

* This Old House – What comes first tile or trim?

* HGTV Remodels – Tile first or last?

Music is “Do What You Can” by Lee Rosevere

Now that we are back in Australia and starting to renovate, maintain, repair, and decorate our new house in Adelaide I think it’s time to start a new podcast!

We will see where this goes but the plan is to engage in more conversations, seek and give advice, and have some fun as we settle and work on our new house.

Music is “Do What You Can” by Lee Rosevere