Renovating a Queenslander: July 2014

Monday 21 July 2014

Hardwood floors

When we first bought the house we knew that there were hardwood tongue and groove (T&G) floorboards, however, they were covered by layers of vinyl and carpet (including vinyl tacted over carpet) so it was hard to gauge what condition the timber floorboards were in. The only way to gauge the condition and type of timber was looking at the floorboards from beneath the house.

While the timber looked to be in a relatively good condition it was near impossible to tell what species of timber they were until the floor coverings were lifted and samples were taken up, planed and taken to a timber supplier for identification. While we suspected the floors were Queensland Spotted Gum, it turned out that they were actually a mix of hardwoods - Spotted Gum, Black Butt and Ironbark. Interestingly, two of the rooms had Ironbark floorboards only, while the rest of the house was a blend of the three. Clearly the floorboards were intended to be covered and it was lovely that we would be the first owners in some eighty plus years to see them sanded and polished.

The floorboards were not without issues however. There were quite a few damaged boards in the old kitchen and the old verandah boards were a different width, direction and height to the T&G floorboards in the main house. While trying to preserve as much as possible, we had to be practical. Particularly as the Master bedroom was now half the old verandah and half the main house so boards on differing levels was not going to work. We therefore lifted up the salvageable boards from the kitchen and used this to finish the master bedroom, dressing room and hallway entry (which had also been part of the original verandah) so that the boards all flowed in one direction and were all the same height. We ran short of a few boards in the master bedroom but rather than use new boards for the whole room, we found a local reclamation supplier (Keber's in Murwillumbah) who were able to supply matching second hand boards to finish off the room.

Now that we had an open plan living, kitchen and dining area, we also had to decide where the old and new boards would meet keeping in mind that new in stock timbers, are a different width to the old timbers (slightly narrower) and that the old boards have shrunk and warped a little which meant wider gaps. The logical place was to keep the old boards in the kitchen and pantry and start the new boards at the entry to the kitchen (the join is under the kitchen) bench and the end of the hallway. On the advice of the builder and timber supplier we go new Qld Spotted Gum floorboards which had enough variation to best match the original floors, whilst also matching the Qld Spotted Gum decking boards. We got raw samples, put water on them to try to replicate the darkening of the timber during the polishing stage, and hoped for the best. Picking a floorboard based on one sample is not ideal as the variation in colour and grain between batches can be significant. Our timber supplier had done a great job with the decking boards, however, so we were relatively confident it would all work out!

The floor sander came and spent a few days cleaning the boards up, punching nail holes and getting the boards ready for several coats of polish before having to dash of to his wedding and honeymoon! Alas, he didn't get time to finish the boards before his wedding, so we're waiting upon his return and the installation of the cabinetry before we can finish off the boards. Final photos are still to come.

The transition from the main house to the decking boards

Raw timber samples

Raw timber samples (wet) to mimic the effect of polishing

New Spotted Gum boards

The old meet the new boards

Old boards in the kitchen run under the kitchen bench (to be installed)

Reclaimed / second hand boards were used in the dressing room to make sure we had enough timber

Downstairs hallway - new boards being laid

Old meets new at the end of the upstairs hallway

Final matte finish complete.

The old meets the new and blends very nicely

The only room that wasn't mixed hardwood. This is polished ironbark and looks lovely...

The reclaimed board in the dressing room (top of photo) are a great match to the original bedroom floors. Just a fraction narrower.

The old boards came up a treat in the master bedroom.

Monday 14 July 2014

Doing your homework...

There are no lack of pretty pictures, houses nearby, pinterest posts and glossy home magazines that can inspire the home renovator. Inspiration was never an issue for us. As someone much cleverer than I summed it up - the devil is in the detail.

Finding detailed information on what others have done before us and what feature when with what era, and or even regional area, was the information we lacked. While Brisbane and the greater south east Queensland has a relatively abundant (I use that term loosely) source of Queenslanders often clustered in regional towns or suburbs, the Gold Coast does not. Nearby northern NSW has some stunning Queenslanders (including one renovated by my parents when I was a child in Murwillumbah) these homes tend to be Federation in style. While at first glance there are different similarities, upon a closer examination, there are definite differences such as the more frequent use of horizontal T&G boards in NSW and different styles of fretwork!

So where to get started. The internet is an obvious starting place but sometimes finding the details, is like trying to see the tree through the forest. It can be overwhelming. For example, everyone has done something different, the weblink no longer works, there is limited pricing information, the photos online are such a small resolution that you can't enlarge them and make out the profile of that skirting board and no one seems to have the same shade of paint colour that your colour swatch looks like etc etc.

There are also a small, but hopefully growing, number of blogs that also have before and after shots that are really helpful to see how the fixtures looks in situ. These all help give a practical guide to renovating a Queenslander.

If you keep an eye out of house and garden type of magazines, there are examples of renovated Queenslander, colonial or federation style homes that can also give you ideas. Pinterest is another tool that I found really helpful to put all my ideas and inspiration in one place. There are also a few books on the subject. We bought one, The Queensland House, by Ian Evans and the National Trust of Qld that was a really interesting read - particularly regarding the history of this style of house.

Failing all that, for people residing in South East Queensland, a slow drive around the suburbs of Ashgrove, Paddington, Bardon, Indooroopilly etc or the towns of Toowoomba, Rosewood and Ipswich are likely to give you lots of facade and garden ideas. Looking up real-estate websites for houses in these suburbs also brings up good indoor shots.

We also signed up a builder who had done a lot of work on Queenslander renovations and this also really helped. Having that practical resource also meant having a sounding board to help narrow down selections and provide advice as needed. Lastly my suggestion would be to try and find people you know, who have had previous experience renovating a Queenslander and who have practical advice on potential pitfalls and tips. We were lucky. My parents had renovated a Queenslander in Murwillumbah, Toowoomba and Brisbane and my sister and her husband had renovated a Queenslander in Ipswich. Sometimes its not just what you know, but who you know!

Best of luck!

Mouldings - Picture rails, skirting, architraves, cornicing and hall / heritage archways

Choosing the right mouldings to match the era of the house took a bit of research - both online and in hardcopy. Both of the Finlayson and Woodworker's websites provide guides on the style's of mouldings used during the various era's and online blogs, real estate guides etc can also help with the decision making.

Personally, it wasn't a lack of inspiration that I felt was missing, but the level of detailing that I wanted to know. For example, what height is that skirting board? Is that an original hallway fretwork arch? What height should a picture rail be put? Hence, my blog may be of assistance to someone else in the same situation.

Here are a few tips I learnt along the way. There is no set height that a picture rail should sit. Our 'base' height was the top of the breezeways in the upstairs hallway. Keep in mind though, as we learnt, the fanlights above your french doors won't necessarily be the same height as the top of the breezeways so it can be difficult to establish an exact match throughout the house. But isn't it the imperfections in a Queenslander that give them their character? A few things to consider: the height of your french doors, internal doors, breezeways and fanlights plus any internal cupboards. We had 2.34m high built in wardrobes and linen cupboard so the picture rail definitely couldn't be lower than than but still had to sit a comfortable distance from the ceiling cornicing. This was particularly the case, as when we raised the house we lifted it to the maximum height possible for our council precinct. This gave us approximately 2.75m high ceilings downstairs. We therefore elected to have picture rails downstairs throughout the house as it looks so good against the timber T&G used to clad the internal walls. This lower height downstairs, however, meant that the picture rails downstairs had to be situated at the midway point of the fanlight so as to not be too close to the ceiling cornicing, but still high enough to function as an effective picture height rail. We didn't install them just to look good, they also had a function to serve!

More tips...the 140mm skirting boards looks really good. It's pretty much the standard height people associate with a Queenslander, and personally, i think anything shorter looks out of place. There are a range of skirting boards available and while I wanted to be traditional, I also didn't want to spend loads of hours cleaning skirting boards that attracted lots of dirt and grime because of their profile. In my world, traditional is best but practicality has to have a place. That said, the profile of a picture rail clearly attracts dust but it's up high and I can't see it as easily. Ok, sometimes objects that look good are worth the extra effort!

Cornicing. Again, there is no standard cornicing to fall back on. With the high skirting board and detailed architraves and picture rails, we felt a small simple cornice would best suit this house and match with the style used during the 1930's. I spent weeks scouring magazines and online sources trying to decide what looked best, but in the end, the cornice that I first saw was the one that still fitted best in my mind.

Architraves. Well we tried to match the original architrave as best as possible, but upon closer inspection of the original house, there were actually at least three different types reflective on which era that had been previously installed or renovated. Since many of the doors and windows had been changed there was not a lot of original architrave left so we chose a 68mm (again a fairly standard width) architrave that looked like it best matched the skirting board.

Cornering / Edging. I'm not sure if that is the right word, there doesn't seem to be one that I know of. The "cornering" as I tend to call it, is a small piece of timber that our builders used to wrap around the T&G timber when the wall reached a corner such as the hallway butting into the lounge room and kitchen area. This piece of dress timber hides the T&G edging, protects the timber from vacuum cleaners and children's toys etc who may bump the corner and cause it to "fray" along the edges so to speak. I think it looks pretty damn swish. I hadn't even thought of it until my builder put it up, and I'm glad he did! Its a great practical and aesthetic solution that really works.

Hallway arches. There was a single timber hallway arch left in our original house. The others were long gone and the iron garden type arch used some time long before our renovation, looked very out of place and highlighted the mismatch of styles. We used our single arch as inspiration and got the closest looking archway to match. It was a different height to the original, however, so we used the original downstairs as the only fretwork feature downstairs. It sits in front of the stair landing at the entrance to the downstairs hallway providing, hopefully, a link between upstairs and downstairs. We got the archways at a great price as part of a closing down sale, along with the bifold doors, so while they were new, they are made of solid red cedar and a faithful reproduction of the original.

Heritage archway. When we made our extension to the house we widened the lounge room by 800mm and had an overhanging bulkhead where the structural beam sat. This left an opportunity to put a room divider style archway below the bulkhead and frame the reclaimed french doors that sat just behind it. This decision was either going to work well, or fail fantastically. Basically we wouldn't know until the pieces were help up in place as to whether it would look out of place or not. Fortunately, and I hope you'll agree, it has turned out rather well and made a feature out of the bulkhead rather than a clear addition to the space.

We also used a 1.2m width hallway arch in the doorway between the bedroom and dressing room. We did this for several reasons. Firstly, this was a structural wall that had divided the room from the original pantry removing it would be a) very costly, and b) lose the traditional footprint of the house. We decided to work with the space, and use it as a dressing room, rather than have a very large master bedroom. Given that the window was in the dressing room, it made sense to have a wider doorway to allow natural night to filter through, while framing the lovely reclaimed hopscotch window we'd picked up from Gumtree in Annerley, Brisbane. Once the built-in wardrobe is installed, there will be a lovely window seat under the window, with two pull out drawers (you can never have enough storage) that will hopefully give the illusion of more space while still allowing us to make the most of the small space.

As I write this blog, the finishing touches are still being installed. Mouldings can be fiddly and time-consuming to install so fitting out an entire house has taken awhile compared to a modern home. Still, even the in progress photos give the idea on how the finished product will look.

Details on mouldings we used are: