New Sinks

Hello:)

When we purchased our house in August, it had been on the market for over 6 months. It was on the market for a good price and they had an open house almost every 2nd weekend. No one seemed to be interested and let's face it, it was not exactly appealing to the eye. If you were someone who wanted to buy a house that had no work to do, then this was not the house for you. But for us, our goal was a little different. We wanted a house that had 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a double garage, in walking distance to school and church and in a culd-a-sac (i grew up in one & loved it).  This house fitted all that we had wanted in a house. Did it have some work to do? Yes, but we love a good makeover, so it wasn't something that scared us. Having done a major renovation on our last house, we were able to look at this house and straight away know the sort of money that we would need to put into it and if that's something we were willing to do. We knew that even if we replaced the kitchen, both bathrooms & all of the flooring, that we would still spend less than a house that was finished. Plus it would be exactly to our taste. Now all that doesn't need to be done in our house but that shows me that its a good buy. Plus I HATE debt, so a good bargain excites me.

  Although major renovations don't need to be done, there are a few gross things that i have never seen in another house and couldn't believe that they didn't change before they put it on the market. The bathroom vanity sinks were the worst of these. Disgusting doesn't even come close to describing what they were like. They were plastic sinks that had obviously had something abrasive used on them, which had removed all the coating on the sink. Therefore the sink wasn't shiny anymore, they were powdery. Being powdery meant that everything stained them. Every time we looked in the sink, we were greeted with foundation, hair dye who knows what other stains, all over it. Even grosser, if by accident your finger ever touched the sink, you would get a chunk of powdered sink under your nail (that would explain the gouges out of the sink)!  Yuk Yuk Yuk!!!!!

                                    Before...Ewww...this was as clean as you get it!

We ended up finding porcelain sinks that were a similar size as the current ones at bunnings for $29! The taps needed to be replaced too. We got them for $60 a set. Hubby had to saw back each bench a little to fit the new sinks in. So happy with our new ones and what an amazing change for $89 each!


                                                                            After:)

Thats it for today. Enjoy the rest of your afternoon, 
Kylie xo

Bringing an old buffet to life

With moving into our new home (in August), we finally had room for some more furniture:):)! 

I have wanted a buffet for a while now. This used to be my Grandma's and had been sitting in my sisters garage for a while and she was now keen to get rid of it. Perfect!! Just what i needed. Plus she only lives across the road, so it was even easier to get here. 

Obviously it's pretty dated, but nothing a coat of paint can't fix!

This is what it looked like when i got it. It also had a hutch, which we got rid of at the time but i'm now regretting doing that. It would have been perfect to house my crazy tea set that i have just started collecting....yes I'm an old lady at heart:)

Seeing as the buffet was lacquered, i had to use a primer/stain killer so that the lacquer wouldn't seep through the paint. I used Zinsser's 1 2 3 Interior & Exterior primer, sealer & stain killer. Cost was $24.90 and after 2 coats on the entire buffet, there was still plenty left in the tin. I removed the doors before applying the primer.

After the primer, i painted 3 coats of white gloss enamel paint. I used Taubmans Tradex White enamel paint. Cost is $49.90 for 4 litres. After doing this, another project and architraves/skirtings in 3 rooms, we still have plenty left in the tin! 

We kept all the same hinges, so the only other thing that needed to be purchased were the 3 door handles. This was actually the biggest cost in the whole project. They were $6 each, which only seems expensive cause it's a tiny little handle!

We already had the 2 tins of paint, so this whole project only cost an extra $18! That's my type of furniture! Love a good bargain:) 

Kylie xo

How we got to where we are now

My hubby Pete and I got married in 2003.In the middle of 2005, we bought our 1^st home. We had to wait for the house that fitted our price range. So when a little 3 bedroom house in town (when I say town, I mean the centre of Nowra!) came up at the right price and we jumped on it straight away. It had a lot of work to do but it was totally liveable and most of all it was ours. Over the next 8 years, we gradually renovated it, extending our mortgage to do the majority of it. This was fine at the time as we had the finances to back it up. During this time, we also had 2 gorgeous little people, Katie & Jack.

Towards the end of 2013, an unexpected tragedy happened which would result in me making a massive financial decision for our family. At this time I was working 4 long days a week in a job that I no longer enjoyed and found incredibly stressful. On top of that, I was travelling between 1.5-2 hours per day for work. At the time hubby was working 5 days a week & studying fulltime. We had a fairly decent income at the time but needless to say our family life was not fantastic. When our tragedy happened, I made the decision immediately (literally) that I would not be returning to work. Taking my wage out of the equation was a very big deal for us, especially given that only half hubby’s income was permanent, the rest was casual. Financially our life become harder, but in every other way, it become so much better. We had planned to finish our house, as we wanted to sell it and buy a bigger one in a suburb 5 minutes away. So we used everything we had and we completed the last few things on the house. At the start of 2014 it up for sale. It took 5 months for someone to make an offer and we accepted it that day. We bought the house that we had had our eye on in the suburb that we wanted. We got it for a steal because it had been rented to terrible tenants and let’s just say it wasn't very appealing to walk thru, so it had been on the market for over 6 months(at an already good price).  In August 2014, we moved into our new home. We sold our 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom, no garage home and bought a 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom, double garage home. After paying out the $25K in fees (so much money straight down the loo), we still came out $20K less in debt. How awesome is that?!!! Bigger house in the area that we wanted and less debt! 

Due to studying and different work arrangements, there had never been a time that we had been on 2 full time incomes, so we had to often been on a small budget. Last year was definitely our hardest year and we would not have gotten thru in the way that we did, had it not been for the help of our beautiful family and friends. 

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When things are tough, there is normally light at the end of the tunnel. At the end of last year, Pete graduated from University as a teacher. We also welcomed our precious little rainbow baby Mia to our family. She is seriously Beautiful (Just like her older brother & sister)!!!

For now, we are still on a fairly small budget. However over the last year, i have come to realise how much you can do on a small budget. I’ve been forced to become more money savvy than I have ever been and I actually now enjoy trying to do things on a budget.  I love a good bargain, DIY reno’s & projects and trying to keep my grocery bill to $100 a week.  I had wanted to start blogging but hadn’t quite found my niche, but now here it is, the birthing of “A Happy Frugal life”(Thanks to my big sis for coming up with the name), doing life on a budget. Seeing as I’m really keen on making my house homely, there will probably be alot on the blog revolving around renovations and DIY house projects, but there will still be other things too. If you want to follow along with me, hit like on the Facebook page and subscribe at the bottom of the blog page.

Promise the next blog won’t be an essay (I know one friend who will be really happy about that!)

Kylie xx