Attic Ladders and New Windows

Phew, what a week it's been and it's only been week one of a month of crazy at our house.

Last weekend a unit we have came up for re rental. It needed a good spruce so we've been painting, organising electricians, removing old heating, patching, cleaning to name a few things. On top of that Ewan has been sick, one of the chooks has hatched 6 chicks, I've been doing the conveyancing for my sister's new house and both Roge and I have been working our day jobs in between. Oh and did I mention we installed a new window and an attic ladder. Yep, I said crazy and I meant crazy!

Upcoming we have another rental coming vacant which means a lot more of the above. My sister is doing a mini make over on her new house before she moves in and she has enlisted our expertise (ok so I may have told her I'd do it...I am a bit of a control freak!) and Roge has to work all long weekend (here in Tassie we have Monday off), DJ-ing and helping some friends with a big festival they put on in Launceston (Breath of Life, make sure you are going if you love good tunes!)

So lets talk about my new window.

Our house, as lovely as it is, is a typical old house. It faces the wrong direction to get the best natural light and it's bugged us the whole time we've lived here. Our North side of the house has zero windows except for the one in the bathroom and whilst it gets lovely morning sun in the main living/dining/kitchen area, by afternoon it is quite dark. In Summer this isn't an issue as having the back of the house dark and cool is quite good but in Winter we have no sunlight or natural light. Therefore we waste a lot of money on heating and unnecessarily turning on the million down-lights we have.

When we moved into the house two years ago we had a split heating/cooling system installed on the North wall of the lounge room. In hindsight it was the wrong place to put it as the hot air blew over us in Winter, didn't reach the bedrooms and only made the kitchen hot. So recently we had the electrician move it to a much better position (we've already noticed the difference - in a good way) which left us with the option of putting a new window in. It's been an awesome decision and for a bargain at $560, Stegbar manufactured us a cedar window that makes the most of the Northerly light and combats all the light issues we had previously. Yay!

At the same time, because Roge was on a roll and the house was already covered in plaster dust, I suggested that Roge instal the attic ladder that we had always planned to do. Bunnings Hardware have a great range of ladders but even their cheap brand was entirely suitable for our needs and at only $299 a total bargain.

All it needs now is a bit of ceiling paint to blend it into the roof and you will barely know it's there. I can't wait to lay the flooring up in the roof and finally get some of the junk that's laying around out of the way.

All up if you're handy, an attic ladder can be installed (with the help of a friend) in a few hours. Will cost you $299 plus for 20m2 of flooring at $280 approx. That's much cheaper than buying a galvanised shed and you will be using otherwise wasted space in your ceiling. Ingenious don't you think!?

Anyhoo, no time to sit around blogging today. My preggers belly and I need to go attack a list of "to do's" before I start this weekend's jobs. Seriously, sometimes I think we are crazy, surely I should be enjoying these 31 degree days at my beach shack, not demolishing fireplaces and pulling up carpet!

Also, I will have to keep an eye on this one when the ladder is down, sneaky sausage!