house tour: front verandah

I've shown bits and pieces of our house, but thought I would do a little series of house tour posts. Our photos are currently stuck on our wet computer while we sort out what to do-is it worth fixing it? Get a new one? See if we can buy parts on ebay and get a non apple company to fix it for cheaper… Decisions, decisions.

First up is the front verandah in its entirety.

Since we've been here we've painted the railings white, painted the french door white, sanded and oiled the floorboards, and fixed a small but long term and persistent leak in the eaves, and replace the rotted boards (caused by the leak).

Still to do

· recover cushions on the lounge in a white/natural fabric (or maybe navy?)

· replace the hardware on the doors-it's a bit worse for wear in the harsh, salty conditions

· change lights to non rusted out versions

· replace the missing posts from the railing (they are painted and ready to go, we just need to putty up the existing railings)

· get a small table for the lounge area

· repot the magnolias into a nicer pots

· possibly an indoor outdoor rug under the sitting area

· freshen the windows and front door with a new coat of paint (they look a little tired now the doors and railings are bright white

Plus we are looking at painting the whole exterior this year, so the blue will be changing-probably to a grey or grey blue. When we paint we will also get rid of the yellow facia and eaves (and paint the replaced boards). They will be either white or navy.

For most things we will wait until we have painted. Partly to save up for the expensive paint job coming up, and partly so we are decorating for the finished product.

This is one of my favourite places in the house. It gets gorgeous morning sun, and I love having breakfast out here, or reading and having a tea in the morning. It’s also shady and cool in the afternoon, Great for a nap, reading or drinks with friends.

What do you think?

hallway art

After 18+ months of living here, we have finally hung some artwork. And we hung not 1, not 2, not 5 but 8 pieces of art. Late in 2012 I found a beautiful Rifle Paper Co calendar with gorgeous images of foreign cities. L and I have travelled fairly widely through Europe and a little beyond, and straight away I realised I had a pretty amazing wedding present with the framed prints that helped to tell our story. And then Young House Love went and copied me...

Anyway, on our wedding day I gave L my surprise gift and the watch we had chosen. He loved them luckily. I hadn't framed them yet-I didn't make it to Ikea before the wedding, but I convinced L to drop in on our way back from Yamba, where we picked up some Ribba frames (YHL did give me that tip!).

A quick before for you. Nothing too exciting to see. 

We have been to 7 of the cities together, L has been to 8, so those were the ones we used. After a bit of a play around we fit all 8 and I love them! We used Command Velcro strips on the rec of a friend, and they are amazing! I used 4 on each, it probably didn't need 4, but I wasn't sure and didn't want them falling down. They are very secure. All the wall sections were a bit different in widths, so I had to do a bit of tongue poking out, head on side measuring and sketching, but I'm so happy with how they turned out.

I walk out of our bedroom and see London and Paris multiple times a day.

I walk from the lounge room to our front door and see Istanbul and Rome.

I leave the study and see Cairo and Amsterdam.

When I walk down the hallway I see New York. L has been, I have not, and it is high up on my travel wish list (it is a long list, with new and repeated visits!) It's like it's my vision board (although I'm hopeful it being at the end of a long hallway isn't too symbolic...).

We also put Sydney up, it's closest to the front door, and is behind the door when it is open. It's more there for balance I guess. It gives us an excuse to go to Rio, Tokyo,  Bankok or Moscow so we can swap it out.

These were some of our favourite cities, we lived in London, I visited Paris and Rome twice (with L once), Istanbul is an incredible city, (and Turkey is one of our favourite countries), Amsterdam is so fun and crazy and beautiful, Cairo is so full of history-the pyramids blow my mind, and we have so many amazing memories linked to these cities. Plus the artwork is gorgeous.

it's alwhite: part 2

The french doors are done (well one of the five sets of french doors), but we've also had the white paint out on the front verandah railings. It has to be the most frustrating of painting jobs, fiddly, time consuming and boring, but now it is done I love it, and kind of want to start on the other verandahs too!

Don't mind the few missing posts-they wont be missing for much longer

I love gardinias-I will be so sad when ours finishes flowering-one of my
favourite smells

A few befores to remind you of the creamy, pinky yellow that is no longer

Painting on the other railings won't be happening for the next few weeks though due to a crazy end of year coming up at work (reports, finishing up and moving classrooms) and a few things on over the weekends.

Do you hate railings? Any tips to make it less painful?

it's alwhite: part 1

I've said it before, and I'll say it again-It's amazing what white paint can do. I was a bit negative on painting last weekend, but every time I've caught a glimpse of the finished product I've felt re-energised-even for the other railings!!

Starting the doors that day ended up being a fairly spur of the moment decision-what do you want to do tomorrow? I might start on the doors, and apart from the sanding dust in the house was fairly pain free. We took them off their hinges, sanded them and the door frame back, taped the glass, 1 coat of primer, 2 coats of white paint and rehanging all in a day. We started pretty early-no daylight savings in Queensland is good for getting started first thing in the morning.

Sunday was touch ups, removing the tape, scraping the glass, and a few more touch ups when needed. Every time I look I find another bit I missed with the razor!

Here are some before to remind you of what it used to look like.

And an after to leave you with. Thanks for all of your opinions when I asked whether we should varnish or paint. They look amazing, and I am so glad we decided to go white. I just needed to make sure other people didn't think I was making a mistake!

The front verandah is certainly not done, but a few hours and a bit of paint over the last few weeks have made such a difference.

garage storage

We are really lucky to have a big garage, but it was one big mess. We had one set of shelves we bought from Bunnings, but they weren't organised, and everything else was on the floor. At times it was tricky to get the car in there, or get out of, and around the car. For awhile we actually gave up trying. I wish I was kidding. It totally stressed me out-even though it's a boy zone primarily, I hated knowing what it was like!

Well, that's all changed. L has DIYed three storage solutions that have made such a difference! We aren't quite done yet, and have some more big plans for down here (not these ones!) that I'll tell you about in the next post.

First was a surfboard rack. L got a length of wood, screwed some dowel into it, and covered the dowel with pipe insulation. There are eyelet hooks to link the jockey strap through.

A massive improvement on this... 

Where our camping and beach stuff
used to live

Next was some wall hooks for tools. Again, he screwed a long piece of wood into the wall (so the hook placement could be where we wanted, rather than in the studs). The hooks are from Bunnings. 

Next we will be put a work bench next to the door (where the lawnmower is) with a peg board on the wall behind for tools. We will probably look on Gumtree for some kitchen benches, so we can have cupboards underneath, or L might DIY something. 

I'll give you our shameful befores, so you can really see the difference. This was at it's worst, when we were midway through building our side fence. Sorry for the crappy iphone pictures. There was no car getting in there. 

But now-shelves! Made entirely by L, with my help to hold things steady. 

It has meant we can get almost everything up off the floor. They aren't properly organised yet, I want some more storage boxes so that everything has a place, and all the paint tools are together, all the sanding stuff is together etc. But we will get there. Not only do the shelves have all our DIY type stuff up there, they also contain our camping gear, our fold up chairs, L's fishing stuff, beach stuff-like cricket sets and umbrellas. 

Don't mind the empty paint tin drying out-the car still fit, and the tin has now
 been disposed of

It's made such a difference!

terranium

Hi guys,
I took a bit of a social media break. I was tired and run down after the wedding, and the crazy lead up, and just needed to simplify everything for a few weeks. I've literally not been sick for over 2 and a half years (one of the benefits of working in special ed-super strong immunity!) but I entirely lost my voice for a week! So lots of sleep, yoga, beach, walks, reading, outside time, Homeland and greens has hopefully put me back on track!

Now the wedding is over, we have a heap of house plans that are ready to go! The paintbrushes and the drill have been going overtime! You might have seen over on instagram that I've started the mammoth job of painting our verandah railings.  So time consuming and fiddly! I'll keep going when the wind dies down.

I've been a little in love with terrariums at the moments, so made one yesterday afternoon. It was super easy and quick.
I bought a glass container from a cheap-shop. This one actually had a lid originally.


I added rocks for drainage-I just used the white rocks we have on hand (we have trailer loads of them in all of our garden beds!), and potting mix. I visited a local market and picked up some cheap succulents. I tried to pick a few different colours, and leaf shapes, and heights. Some of the little pots I bought had some rocks on top, so I scattered them around the top of the terrarium too.

I'm not entirely happy with it, and may actually re-do it. I think I needed smaller rocks on the base, as the layers between the rock and the soil isn't as defined as I would like, but I might not too.

I ticked something off my pinterest to do list-yay!

we have a gate

Thanks for the wedding love! I thought I would break it up a bit (while I wait for my professional photos) and get back to the side area we have been working on.

Our fence is finally finished-we have a gate!

 I'm actually really happy with how this area is coming along, especially because we still have quite a bit to do to it.

**

Despite the carpets of rocks down there it is feeling quite green at the moment, now that spring has definitely sprung.

Our next steps down here are 

-build some raised garden beds down near the bottom of the garden for some veggie patches

-hire a jackhammer to break up and remove the big rocks

-remove the small white rocks (we will use some to fill out the bottom of our garden beds to provide drainage, but might put an ad on gumtree giving them away if someone else removes them!!)

-lay grass

-plant out the gap between the rock retaining wall and the fence **see photo above

Currently our veggie patch is a pot setup, until we get around to building our beds. Most of the pots you see in the photos are fruit trees-a chilli bush, a lemon tree, a lime tree, and lots of smaller pots, but we were given a climbing jasmine, and L put in some eyelets and wires for it so it can grow. 

Here is a quick before, so you can really appreciate the difference down in this little area. I didn't even photograph this area in all of it's original glory-I must have been too horrified!

This is the closest we came to having a photo  of the green lamandra. It is also the only photo we have that shows the monstrous fig tree we had growing within meters of our house, and the neighbours'. We removed it within a week of getting the keys.  The below photo is when it was all dying off with the help of a considerable amount of roundup.

I'll leave you with one more after to remove that image from your memory! Have you been getting out into the garden lately??

DIY lace bunting

Remember how I posted about about facing my sewing fears, and sewing lengths of lace bunting for reception decorations?
Here is a visual reminder:

The more I looked at it, the more I realised I wasn't entirely happy with how the ribbon was hanging-it kind of puckered a bit, and just didn't hang quite as well as I had hoped. What to do, what to do?

I unpicked it all, and started again! This time I researched it a bit more, and discovered biased binding was more appropriate. 18 meters of unpicking.... 

But.... it looked fantastic on the night, and I was much happier with it! You may even catch a back view of the bride... (excude the blurring of the faces...)