We were supposed to be able to move in this afternoon, but because of delays that they have had with getting the house lifted we are now having to be out of the house for an extra three nights.

This is getting to be a bit frustrating as originally we were told we would be out for three weeks by some contractors that we used to be using (but not anymore, long story but the short version is here: Bad Townsville Contractors…). Then we were told to be out for only one night, then just as they started we had to be out for four nights, and now it’s a full week.

If we aren’t able to move in by Monday then we will be in a bit of trouble as we won’t have any accomodation. Our only option might be to bunk with Tamara’s parents. But we will need to negotiate with them first. I figure since I helped them move in on Tuesday they might help us out…

Also Tamara has been told that the baby is quite large and she might come early. Since we are now less then a month from her due date that could mean that the baby comes before we can even move in, which is what we were desperately trying to avoid. Caleb is also getting unsettled with everything since we are all in the same room right now and we are also trying to get him used to the fact that he is going to be a big brother.

Although this is not really a renovation frustration, it is a bit of a frustration about this site.

Here in Townsville very few businesses seem to be very Internet friendly and it is almost impossible to find Townsville specific information, especially from the renovation and building industry. One of the things that I was hoping to do with this site was to provide at least what little information I had about contractors, renovations, etc. for people searching for it on the Internet.

Well for some reason Google has Sandboxed this site and no longer lists it under any search terms. Sandboxing is when Google for some reason just stops refering people to a site. Almost all of my traffic to this site was througg Google, up until a few weeks ago when I noticed that the traffic just stopped to where quite a few days I would get zero visitors.

Unfortunately there is no quick way to fix this and the only way that I can see if to sit back, keep writing, and wait a few months for Google to pick up the site again…

This is my second post today in my “Renovation Frustrations” category.

My frustration this time is Non-Fitted Fittings.

These are the fittings that the previous owners have placed where they are meant to go, but not actually attached them properly to where they were meant to go. In my case it was the dead bolt on one of the front French doors. While I was attaching some weatherstripping to stop drafts the heads on three of the four screws holding the dead bolt in place actually fell off!

It seems to me that when the previous owners had installed the dead bolts they much have tightened up the screws too much and “almost” broken the heads off. Then when I applied a bit of pressure, they popped off.

So now I need to somehow remove the old screws which are still in the door, minus the heads, and purchase and install some new brass screws. Anyone know the best way to actually remove what’s left of the the screws?

As I have been working on the house there are few things that really frustrate me. As such I have added a category called “Renovation Frustrations”. I’ll be writing different things that I find frustrating in doing my renovations in this category.

So the first one is “Soft Screws”.

These are the screws that you get with flat packs or in my case DIY blinds that I was mounting in the front two rooms of our house.

Because I am screwing into actual timber, not plaster or drywall, I have to apply a fair bit of force to get the screws in. I choose to do it by hand because I can usually control the force better that way but even with pre-drilling the holes I STILL managed to strip at least one of the screws that came in the packaging.

I don’t know if anyone else out there has this problem, or if it’s just an Australian thing (I don’t think so though), but let me know in the comments…