Back Porch

I have a tiny porch outside the back door, which opens off the kitchen - it shelters the back door from the worst of the weather and that's about it! I decided to paint is as the last outside painting job before the colder, wetter weather of winter. The rest of it - the back windows and soffits can wait until spring.
The porch looks very much refreshed with a few minor repairs, holes filled and the paint job!

Here's an update on the frog pond...….with everything growing nicely. No evidence of new permanent residents yet, but I'm hearing them often at night.

Back Into It Again!

Well, Christmas has come and gone (first one in the new house.........complete with Christmas tree, as promised to my grand-daughter, Leila!) I've had a busy time with other things, including the "Images" exhibition in Hobart that opened in mid-December during which I sold eight of twelve works (which is pretty good these days!) and the annual music camp down at Camp Clayton on the north-west coast. Renovations have been at a standstill because there has been no time, but I'm just starting to get right back into it.
Yesterday I ripped up the old, stinky carpet in the second bedroom to get it ready for re-finishing the floor and refurbishing the windows. It's a nice sunny room - the middle-sized of three bedrooms in the house, and the one I have been using since I moved into the house.......despite occasional wheezy problems because of the horrible carpet. Here's what I pulled out: dusty, dirty stained carpet full of animal smells and disintegrating underlay.

 

Then I had the rather horrible job of removing the strips of spiky timber around the perimeter - the ones that hold the carpet in place. They have a name, but I can't remember it. I removed all the staples that had been holding the underlay in place and any left-behind nails. Scrubbed the floor with water and bleach to remove lingering odours and started stripping the paintwork on the window. There is a dated, but serviceable built-in wardrobe and cupboards in this room and I think I can make it fresh and new with a decent paint-job and some new hardware (I've seen some brilliant ceramic knobs in Ishka - might get some of those) The room is now ready to go with paint and floor finishing.

 

Of course, I had to move everything out of the room, so I can work on it unimpeded, so I've moved into the first bedroom that was renovated and which Leila had most of last year. (She moved into a share house a few minutes walk away from here in late November)

I'm not sure if this move is permanent - I like the room, but waking up to your own reflected image in a wall of mirrors is a little confronting!

 

The garden continues to improve and be a delight. I'm harvesting home-grown vegetables: potatoes, zucchini and herbs so far, but I have tomatoes, capsicums, cucumbers, beans and beetroot which will be ready soon. I have created a lovely spot to eat down the back with a big market umbrella to provide shade.........had some friends to lunch last week to "christen" it. I'm loving having this sweet alfresco spot - something I always yearned for......it was always too windy and exposed at my previous house, so it just wasn't practical.

I'm really glad I  didn't stint on expense with my new oven - it bakes so well that cooking is a joy. If I'd settled for a cheaper option, I think I would have regretted it!

 

And finally........I'm using the lavender bounty from the front garden to create small gifts like these lavender bottles. I'm going to make some lavender bath salts and some sachets as well.

 

 

 

 

 

Leila's Room

Leila is one of my grand-daughters. She works as a paralegal at a law firm in the city…….she couldn't wait for me to move into town so that she could become my housemate. This meant that the first room we had to make habitable and presentable was her bedroom. When I took possession, this bedroom (the biggest) had deep fuchsia walls with a flowery frieze below the cornice. It had several layers of rotting net curtains and some heavy floral drapes with swags and tie-backs. Half the old carpet had been ripped up and what was left stank of dog pee……..charming! The lovely large windows had never been cleaned and moisture had been allowed to ruin the paintwork on them. The general look was what I would describe as "tired bordello"!
The positives were:
*Good size
*No major structural problems
*Morning sun
*Huge built-in wardrobe with floor to ceiling mirror doors

It looked like this, but the picture is flattering and all that stuff in there is hiding a multitude of sins:

So we set to and ripped up the remains of the carpet, tore down the curtains, cleaned the black crap off the window-frames, removed the floral frieze and scrubbed, scrubbed, scrubbed. We then had a blank canvas to work with. All the choices in this room are Leila's - I am grateful that she has a classic and restrained sense of design and her preference is for the calm and uncluttered. 

The room didn't require any major repairs, just a lot of cleaning and a bit of patching and I removed a zillion tacks and staples from the floor.

Grey carpet and drapes

What a difference! When she first moved in, the room looked like this, now it looks like this with a bit more furniture and a touch more colour:

It's now a lovely calm space for a busy young woman to retreat to after a busy day.

The carpet was professionally laid, which was an expense, but all up, this room was about $1100 to transform.