Renovation Day 6

Really good day's work done.  I have the body to prove it.  It aches in every place, even my fingers are sore!  We got a lot done today, and good preparation for tomorrows tasks.  On track to paint walls Saturday.

• Washed ceilings (that's how my shoulders got sore)
• Washed walls (arms and back this time)
• Sanded patches (didn't hurt me as Mr K did this)
• Coated patches and bare plaster with special sealer.
• Masked off light fittings, air con vents, door frames etc
• Mr K sprayed the ceilings - they turned out really well.
• Cleaned up all the spray gun stuff!  Took ages, but then cleaning up rollers and paint brushes takes longer, so I think the spray gun is better.
• Did 4 loads of washing in between jobs
• Folded washing while I cooked dinner
• Sold home gym and dismantled it and carried it out the the lads car.  If we did that everyday we wouldn't need a home gym as we would have bodies like Olympians.
• Washed air con vents in dishwasher - does them a treat and they don't fall apart!
• Crashed and burned on the lounge, body ceased and could not move, even to change the channel on the TV, so had to watch a Top Gear re-run.

Well, my verdict on the paint spray gun is positive.  I did have some doubts about it being a 'gadget' but it has done a very good job and so quick!  It took Mr K only 30 mins (at the most) to paint 3 ceilings.  Very good coverage, and no roller or brush marks.

Tomorrow we will do the door frames with the spray gun, but will paint the walls with roller and brush as the masking off will be too hard for the walls.  The lad who bought the home gym, coincidentally, is a painter (he said he could have done the painting for us as worked off the cost of the gym) said that's the way the professionals do it.  Spray ceilings, doors and door frames and roller the walls. 

I keep thinking we have so much to do, but once the walls are painted, that's it.  We will be done.  Well except for the new carpets, but we wont be doing them.  Then its the fun part, moving the furniture back in and decorating!

Repairing the cracks in the wall.  The mortar had cracked quite badly, so we had to router it out and refill it. Then paint over a sealer.

Masking off the door frames ready to spray.  They have been sanded and cleaned. 

More masking. 
Note how many patches there are on the walls!  The boys won't be getting their bond back!

View from the hallway.  We have decided to replace the solid door here with a glass panelled door.

Renovation - Day 5

Wednesday. 

New energy applied today.  Trying to put the stress of work out of our heads and just focus on the renovation work.  Things we achieved today :

• Vacuumed all the ceiling and walls
• Cleaned the window sills and surrounds
• Vacuumed the floor
• Cleaned the built-in cupboards
• Ground out cracks and holes
• Filled cracks and holes and imperfections
• Sanded door frames
• Wiped down door frames
• Made coffee and cake for Mr J and gave him some human contact
• Went to Bunnings!  (again)  Bought -

• Wall paint in half strength Fawn Beige - 15l
• Ceiling paint
• White enamel for the doors and door frames
• More Silvo ;)
• Met Cam at his place to get instructions for backhoe driver
• Made silverside, parsley sauce and mustard mashed potatoes for dinner

Not a bad day and tomorrow we will do some more prep work and get the door frames painted.  Looks like Saturday will be painting day!

Renovation Day 4

Well you know that saying, great plans of mice and men?   Seems the mice won and ate great holes in our plans.  It's now Tuesday  and we have not even started patching walls,  let alone touched a paint brush.

I was up early to prepare for Mr B to visit.  Wanted to have the house tidy (why do I keep trying to achieve this when I know its an impossible task?).  Gave up and just accepted that we were in the middle of renovations, I will just have to sit in shame in my messy house.  But I did make apple cake, so the house smelt homely. 

Had a very good, and as it turned out, timely meeting with Mr B.  Have some plans nutted out about the issues unfolding at work.  I got a very nice compliment on my apple cake - apparently Mr B is now going to look for a coffee shop for me to run and make my yummy cakes - he is such a tease!  (secretly I was chuffed to bits as all of you that know me, know that I would LOVE to cook for a living)

12noon  - we finally got to start what we have taken time off to do!  Cleared all the walls of the boys rooms of shelves, slat wall, TV's so that we are now left with great holes in the plaster where wall plugs and screws used to be.  Had an argument about the piano.  For the moment the piano won and its still sitting on the middle of the room. 

3pm and we both realised we hadn't eaten, there was no bread in the house, and we needed to go to the Dulux store to get painting stuff.  Excursion time.  Had 'dine-in' Hungry Jacks .. how they call the food they serve as 'dining' is beyond me.  Then off to the very fun Dulux shop, full of professional painting paraphernalia.  Wow.  It was like a stationery shop for house painters.  Bought a few things like masking tape (the good stuff that doesn't let paint seep underneath and peels off cleaning - apparently), professional spak filler, and a few other gadgets. 

Back home, not to get stuck in with our new gadgets, but home to have a meeting with a Enable manager.  Sigh.  So  nothing major was done today at all.  Here are some progress pics ...

Anyone see the piano elephant in the room?

The dentist!  Mr K grinding out the cracks so we can fill them properly

Mr K's 'cable' collections now rounded up and segregated - we believe in cable apartheid!

Renovation Day 3

I should rename this Frustrating Day.  The great momentum that we had accrued over the weekend, seemed to deflate somewhat this morning.  The highlight of the day was the realisation that is was Monday and we didn't have to go to work.  We were on Holidays!  What a delicious feeling.  Sad isn't it that we get excited about time off to work! 

Three rooms were almost completely emptied, with the library 80% done.  It was just a case of little niggly things to do that don't have much impact so you feel like you are not getting anything done. 

What we did achieve:

• Mr K sorted ALL his cables into plastic crates ready to put back into the shelves (as opposed to cables being in 24 different locations around the house, in plastic bags, in giant tangles stuffed in a drawer, in dusty cardboard boxes full of dead millipedes...)
• I went to Big W (again) and bought the last plastic boxes on the shelf (yes we bought out the entire shop!)  Hope they get another shipment soon.
• I polished more silver
• Mr K had 1 million phone calls about the things we had advertised in Gum Tree.  Mostly Indians calling about the computer we were selling.  It was a great deal and Mr K had priced it to sell.  $80 for a computer, 2 monitors, a router, a modem, and other bits and bobs.  After waiting around for people who did not show, we eventually had a chap turn up at 8pm and proceed to haggle again!  Mr K would not budge on price, not because he is mean, but because of the damn principle of rude people who want to rip you off.  He did however throw in an office chair, some spare mice and keyboards, a few kids books and whatever else he spied as he walked amongst our carport.  Sigh ..
• Mr K had to take and make numerous (like about 15) calls from staff and to clients - seems we are unable to take even 1 damn day away from the office before it all comes undone. 
• I polished even more silver, seems its something I now do when I feel anxious
• Cam came over for dinner and I made us all a awesome chorizo risotto which I will brag was rather good.
• I polished more silver

Tomorrow is not going to be much better.  We have a meeting at 9.30am with our business mentor. I very much like these meetings and Mr B always leaves us feeling very positive and determined.  I will make him cake to serve with my newly polished silver forks, sugar bowl and tea strainer!

Silver

This is what makes me all excited about polishing silver.  The fork on the right hasn't been cleaned yet.  Nice little diversion. 

Renovation Project - Day 2

Just had a shower to wash of years and years of dust that covered every crack and corner of our old office!  Change of plans for today's tasks.  We were going to start preparing the walls in the three end rooms, but after assessing the space we had to store stuff, it was decided that a sort out of the stuff we already had outside was in order.  The boys came over to take the things they wanted, having a nice nostalgic sort through of old toys, Action Men, Thomas the Tank Engine books, once much prized rock collections. 

Cam and I did a snatch and grab trip to Big W to buy more plastic crates and smaller boxes with lids.  I started the clear out of the old office, something we had all been putting off and dreading for literally years.  But as usual, the hardest part was actually starting, I just picked up the closest thing on the floor and put it away where it belonged.  Did this over and over and before we knew it, the room was almost emptied!

It did take all day, but I feel very confident that what we have packed in crates is all  the things we want to keep and the rest has gone into the trailer, destined for the rubbish tip tomorrow.  I also have bags of clothes and boxes of giveways for Good Sammy and books for the book exchange.  Mr K cleaned and photographed all the things we can sell on Gumtree.

Tomorrow morning we will do the drop offs, and then a trip to Bunnings for spak filler, some more crates, and any other items that Mr K might come up with.  The afternoon will be the final clear out of the library, and removing all shelves and cupboards screwed to the walls.

Tuesday is the day for wall preparation.

Renovation Project - Day 1

Well, I am giddy with glee!  Feel very energetic and happy and positive right now.  It's the end of Day 1 of the renovation project and it feels so good to have started at long last.  A few false starts and plans that got thwarted, but here we are.

Today was a clear out day.  Just the three rooms that the boys used to inhabit.  But before we could drag all the stuff out of there, we had to play a game of 'there's a hole in my bucket, dear Liza'.  First we had to pick up doggy poo's so that we could mow the lawn so that we could put the trailer camper on there so we could clear the carport so we could set up trestle tables so we had somewhere to stack the stuff so that we could clear out the furniture so that we could start to prepare the walls.  Phew.  It was a hard day but a good day.

We have an empty trailer on loan, all ready to fill with the junk and take to the tip.  That will be a GOOD day - very cleansing.

Tomorrow is preparing walls day.  It's so nice to have the time to do this at a normal pace, not rushing and squeezing it into a single weekend.  I will also go to Big W to get plastic storage boxes.

My new craft/store room - just a few bits of heavy furniture to be moved

The soon to be guest lounge - the slat wall is coming down and going into Kim's shed.  Piano will go into the lounge.

Another view of the guest lounge. 

All the stuff stacked and kind of categorised.  The boys will come and have a sort through tomorrow.

Trios of Tables and Chairs

So here is a question for you ... how many of something do you have to have before its a collection?

Here, I will help you to decide.

One? - well obviously you cant have a collection of one.  That's just silly.  Lets move on.

Two? - this is I believe whats called a pair?  Ask any man, he will tell you that two of anything is a great pair!

Three? - if you subscribe to the theory that two = a pair, then it logically stands that three of something is a trio?  Unless of course you are the queen and we are talking about castles .. yes I think 3 castles constitutes a collection! Can hardly imagine HRH saying "I have a Trio of Castles". Three cats is the start of being a crazy cat lady and therefore a collection, not a trio.

OK, so three is the number that starts a collection.  In my new uncluttered world, I don't 'collect' stuff anymore.  So how come I have collected three sets of outdoor table and chairs?  Well I know the answer to that, so no need for you to answer.  This is how it happened ...

• I read a home and garden magazine and there is this serene picture of a English cottage garden with a white wrought iron table and 2 matching chairs.  It sits in the space created by an arbour covered in tiny pink roses, blue salvia and white daisy's.  On the table is a book (Jane Austin's Emma, of course), a cup of tea in Royal Albert Old Country Roses teacup and a few sprigs of lavender.  I immediately see myself sitting here, whiling away many delicious hours in the gentle sun with no distractions.  So I bought a white wrought iron table and chairs.

The roses are there, in the background - dormant, the salvia died and the daisy's never flower.  If you look closely you can see dog poo on the lawn!

• I saw a Lifestyle show about a Tuscan garden makeover.  They made a 'focal point' at the end of a long walkway of an aged verdigris table and 2 chairs, surrounded by huge pots with an olive tree, and orange tree and smaller pots of rosemary.  On the table was a pitcher of wine, a cheese platter and a loaf of crusty bread.  I immediately saw myself sitting there, so went to Bunnings to spend my birthday voucher on a metal table and chairs that had a verdigris finish applied in the factory in India.  The olive tree in a pot got too big so its out the back, the orange tree in a pot looks very sick and the dog keeps peeing on my rosemary.

Not quite Tuscan, more like Basso.  Not sure what went wrong here !!!

• Years (and years) ago I went through a 'restoring old furniture to look like even older furniture' phase.  Crackle finish was all the rage.  I found an old table for $3 at a garage sale.  It was wonky but it had potential (in a good light, when you are drunk).  I spent $30 on a crackle finish kit, bought paint in a very uneconomical 1L which cost $25, a tin of estapol as the one we had in the shed had gone hard at a cost of $29, sourced real brass knobs at an antique store for $40; then spent days sanding, painting, applying crackle, getting it wrong, sanding again, painting, applying crackle finish right this time, estapoling, and finally standing back and admiring a wonky table that looked like it was worth $3 at a garage sale (in a good light, when you are drunk).  It now sits on our front veranda in an attempt at 'Shabby Chic' with 2 cane chairs that are not Shabby Chic and a few aged boxes that are an attempt at Shabby Chic.  I think I missed the mark in this design school.  But I saw myself sitting out there on a bright sunny Saturday morning, cup of coffee and latest Shabby Chic magazine in hand, a gentle start to my weekend.  The reality is that I try and sit there, amongst all the junk that was dumped there from the ute, the dog hair that has joined up with leaves and dirt, the old cat who has made his home on one of the cane chairs, the dying plant (I forget to water them in winter) and 17 pairs of discarded shoes.

Well this was AFTER the big clean up. 

So I have a collection of trio's of table and chairs.

Just have to find the time to play out my fantasies in them.  What will I be today?  English?  Tuscan?  Shabby? 

Or maybe I could get Dad to make one of those tables out of an old pallet that i saw on Pinterest .....

Addictions

EBay has got me hooked, again.  I knew there was a reason I stopped going there.  Last time, I ended up with Irish Wade in truckloads,  enough green transferwear to start my own shop and little teeny, tiny teacups and saucers that I have no idea why I bought.  So I went cold turkey as my new motto was to de-clutter.

I now blame 3 things for my renewed interest ...

1. Pinterest
2. High Tea has become the 'in' thing
3. Pinterest

And even scarier for a former eBay addict is a new website that 'snipes' your purchase for you.  You add the thing/s you covet to your watch list.  Then this website downloads your watch list and you add a snipe i.e the bid amount that you are happy to go up to.  Then you sit back and wait.  The sniper does all the work for you.

Once the auction is finished, without you having to even watch it, you get a little ping (that's an email popping into your inbox) to say "Congratulations, you WON!"  Its nice to WIN things, but then the next email that comes in tells you how to pay for what you have won.  This is how you know its an addiction ... the thrill of the win is overshadowed with the pain of payment.

This is what I have 'won' in the last few days ...

Royal Albert Old Country Roses Trio (1962) for $31.50

Silver (EPNS) Sandwich Server and Fork $50.00 the pair

Silver (EPNS) Cake Server and Tongs $50.00 the pair

Silver (EPNS) Tea Strainer $20.00

Silver (EPNS) Cake Forks $13.00 the set

I am a super woman. NOT!

This morning Mr K invited 2 of our senior staff members over to our house for a meeting.  At 9am.(this is EARLY in our house, I used to be a morning person but then winter and Kindle happened at the same time).   It is to become a regular event, so he can have their undivided attention without the distractions of other staff and modelling agencies near coffee shops (its ok, we had the distraction of dogs and Mr K's army helmet collection to fill the awkward pauses)

 I don't know why, but I had in my head that I would present to the meeting, a just-out-of-the-oven cake and a pot of tea for three (maybe I was still in high-tea fantasy after I found out yesterday that I have a STUNNING silver tea set coming to me!).  The vision was accompanied with the house warm and friendly - it was warm as the heater was on, but not sure that a dirty floor and cobwebs in the windows equates to 'friendly' - then again it was very 'farmhouse' so I guess that's friendly?

I, and my house, would be the vision of Mrs Bucket, except with groovier dress sense.  Not sure why I was wanting this scene for 3 men, on a mission, who could not care less about periwinkle tea cups? Am I really becoming such a recluse with working from home that I would play tea parties with work colleagues?  I had a recipe for a tea cake all ready to assemble (see below) and I had timed the cake making, tidy-up and shower to be finished by 8.50am.

Except ... one chap, lets call him Mr Eager arrived early .. and I mean like 8am early!  I was still in PJ's, as was Mr K (well Mr K does not do PJ's .. he was in daggy grey long johns with obscene flap near the groin area).  The cake making was in full swing, so the kitchen was a mess, as was I.  Mr K dives off and says he will just pop in the shower, arriving back just in time for the next guy to arrive ... Mr Not So Eager But Still Early.  I am, by this time, sweaty (I always sweat when I am stressed), desperate for a shower, but making pots of tea for staff and despondently watching my fantasy morning slip away. I was feeling much more Elizabeth than Hyacinth!

The cake was a hit however!  I even got asked for a copy of the recipe like a real tea party!  Hope you enjoyed it lads :-)

It is in this months (July 2012) Delicious ABC Magazine.  Except I have adapted it to my taste.

Apple, Pecan & NO Ginger Loaf

Set oven to 180c
Grease and line 1.5l loaf pan with baking paper

Put ..
150g unsalted butter
150g brown sugar
150g golden syrup
into a small saucepan and heat gently until combined.  Remove from the heat and add
200ml milk
set aside to cool
In a bowl, sift ..
1 2/3 cups plain flour
1 tsp ground Cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
Make a well in the centre and add cooled milk/butter/sugar mixture.
Stir with a wooden spoon until combined,
then fold in
2 eggs (beaten)
75g chopped pecans
3 green apples, chopped into 1cm pieces
Pour mixture into lined pan, dust over
Cinnamon and caster sugar
then pop in oven for 50 mins or until a skewer comes out clean.  Cool for 5 mins in tin, then turn out onto a wire rack.

Serve it warm in thick slices, on its own is lovely, but with mascarpone its divine.

The original recipe has 3 pieces of crystallised ginger, chopped, added with the apples but I left this out and added another apple.  Turns out fine.