It's all gone quiet over here.

We've just had a little holiday down the coast.  It was lovely, cold but sunny.  The kids had a great time and cried when it was time to leave.  Here's a few pics

 Ulladulla harbour

The view from our balcony

Fishing at Lake Conjola, Fish=0, Ticks=1, Hangovers=2

 Relaxing!

I even got some knitting done

and managed an hour of antique shop browsing, though was VERY good and left it all in the shop.


The builders are playing somewhere else for a couple of weeks, so no advances on the bathroom at the moment. More updates soon.

Colour

In all this rain, I need a little colour to brighten my day. I'm trying to choose a colour for the outside of the bath!  Not as easy as you'd think.

 This is the floor tile,

 These are the splash back tiles for the vanity (vintage fireplace tiles)

The walls will be white tiles (basket weave) up to 1250 high, then horizontal timber lining board painted gloss white.

 And then there's the bath!  It's an old claw foot off ebay.  The cheapest way to refurbish these is through a melbourne company, they bake on the enamel finish.  I bought this one from melbourne and they picked it up for me, when it's done, it will be sent by courier to us.  And it's still more than half the cost of having it done in Sydney.  Just imagine, Glossy white inside and a matt coloured finish on the outside and the feet. Just choosing the colour!

Here's the four options I've got!

  


      

You may say,"Why Beth, they all look the same to me!" And yes, they are very similar, and in the end probably any of them will work jut fine! But,I've changed my mind four times already today.

slow progress, but progress none the less

Just a few pics today!

A 4 m3 Skip VERY Full, and still a huge pile of timber left behind.

 Some footings in a big dirt hole.

Within minutes of the builders leaving, a certain 3 yr old had managed to poke wet cement with a big stick.  I'm not even sure how he knew it was pokeable!

At least now the roof won't fall down.  The first bit of wall framing goes in.

A pumpkin!  Grown from seed.  We had lots and lots of flowers and I spent some time being a bee and fertilising them, but this is the only one that worked.  Can't wait to taste it.

a little inspiration

Just thought I'd share some images that have inspired me, as all I have to show you still is a giant dirty hole in the ground.  The plumber comes tomorrow to disconnect and re-route old pipes, the the next day, the ground works begin.

*just a disclaimer, these images are all from pinterest and I haven't been able to credit all the sources.  But as this is just family and friends, I hope it's OK.

We're back!

I know it's been years, and I'm surprised that any of this old blog still exists.  Boy, a lot has changed since then.  Gem has started school and is almost 6, Ted is 3 and keeping me on my toes.  They are both amazing, but hard work!  Anyway, we're about to embark on a big project and a friend suggested we blog about it, so here we go.  This time I'll try to be consistent!

The big project is .... wait for it.....!  An indoor bathroom.

For the last 2 1/2 years we've been traipsing out to the back laundry, through rain and shine, to bathe.  We put in a very makeshift bathroom just before we moved in, intending it to be used for just a year! It will be almost 3 years by the time I post the finished pics of the new one! 

It's not all bad.  We built a roof between the house and the laundry that only took 11 months to complete, so for the last 6 months we've at least stayed dry on our return journey.  It doesn't have gutters yet, or proper pipes to the rain tank,so it's caused a big leak into the old laundry! But we don't get wet after we've gotten dry.

So here's a pic of the room (before the builder arrived) that is going to be our bathroom.  The toilet has been working and the rest has been a store room for all kinds of crap.  The beer fridge, wine fridge, bikes, vacuums, paint, tools, hats, sunblock, medicines etc etc.  I'll spare you a pic of our spare room!

And this is a photo taken after the builder left yesterday!  You may notice that not one stud on the right hand wall actually meets any other timber.  The base plate has completely rotted away and so have most of the studs.  And yes, that is asbestos down the bottom. The plumbing has been changed so many times over the last 80 years and follows such a circuitous route that it takes 3 minutes to get hot water in the kitchen.  It's going to be an exciting, and probably expensive, adventure!  

Its too darn hot

Sitting on the back step, it's 9.45, the kids are both asleep finally, got a shandy, the mossie coil is working, the stars are out - well for Sydney anyway, and I've got a swat in hand for swatting away the giant flying cockroaches.

Thought I'd share some pics of our living area.  It's pretty messy most of the time, I need to resign myself to that fact.  if I wait for it to be perfect, it never will be and you'll never see it.

These four pics are all the one big room.  It's great room, lots of light, good cross ventilation and 3 different areas to hang out.  The brown couch, the table and there's a couch at the end of the dining table you can just see the corner of.  We love it!  It just needs to be more organised!

We've also started to paint the back fence (see last post) three panels down - 6 large and 4 small to go.   Blue is the new colour, in case you're wondering

they call me harry...half job harry

After making yet another list of unfinished jobs, I was determined to finish something this week.

I started stripping the back door about 3 weeks ago, bought the paint after 3 attempts - Bunnings on a good day is bad enough, don't try it between Christmas and New Year, then looked at it every day until it started getting to me.  So on Tuesday I finished stripping it with my trusty SPEEDHEATER 1100, then sanded and undercoated.

Unfortunately I don't have a pic of the original, needless to say it was filthy, covered in graffiti and peeling, with about 10 coats of paint.

This pic makes it look like Slade did all the work, but he was just putting the very last piece of beading in around the glass and stealing all my glory.

And then I resigned myself to it being another 3 weeks before I could paint the top coats.  I bought a book on Thursday called "What to do about everything" - finally someone bossier than me!  She advises to make a timetable of your day and prioritise - she goes on for a few pages about how to actually do that, I won't bore you.  Anyway, I got bored with it and thought - instead of reading about making time to do the things you really want to do, just do it! So I got out my paintbrush and went for it.  It's a colour that makes me smile every time I see it.  And my little helper loves it too. - Taubmans - Opulence - had to buy 2 litres, so i'll probably have to use it in a few other places too.