Little things make me happy

Like these new card index drawers I picked up last week. An absolute bargain, cute and great storage for weird little things. And boy do my husband and I love collecting weird little things. That's some of Kelvin's vintage hair clippers and a few of his "foot things". A couple of shoe lasts and an advertising leg. Apparently it was for displaying socks or stockings. They are in what we call our breezeway. A little enclosed space between the house and the kitchen wing. Old kitchens were built away from the house because of the fire risk. It feels a bit like a conservatory.

 

The other thing that made me happy this week was confirmation that our decision to paint the living room walls in a breathable paint seems to be the right one. We had well over a 100mm of rain in a day and the resulting puddles pooled on one side of the wall, slowly soaked through and are slowly drying out. You can see the tide marks which will fade away over the next few days. Walls will be dry again and no more mold or flaking render due to water trapped behind impermeable paint like before.

It's rare that water collects there. Maybe a couple of times a year but over the years the old paint layers kept the water trapped. Not any more. One day we will look at improving the drainage but that's a big and very expensive job. We will eventually have to take the front veranda off and rebuild it because it was badly refurbished in the 60s and a lot of the drainage problems are due to this. One day in the future we will have a beautifully restored Georgian style verandah like this old house used to have. One day.

Boot full of books

Or is that trunk full of tomes. Went to the Lifeline Bookfest in Brisbane yesterday with Glen and Grant from The Vintage Advantage and Kerrie from ES Traders. That's a Jag boot so you can just imagine how many books we bought between us. I'll admit to 9 bags of vintage Penguin books. I have a thing for Penguins in case you couldn't guess.

I need a "to do" list

Things are sliding by here at the new old house. Because funds have dried up for the moment I've conned myself into believing that there is nothing I can do. What a load of crock! So much to do. I've decided to start with something easy. I'm going to finish these drawers. Strip the remaining paint, sand smooth as silk and wax. I'll try to boil the paint off those handles too.

Second on the list is to "wallpaper" the hall. You can see part of it just past Mickey. Old books again. Big job. Need my head read. Ladders are coming and I have no excuse.

I'm also working on a 110 x 110 cm oil painting in pinks and oranges for the wall beside the surveyors stick. Need an injection of colour into the brown room. Hopefully I'll have it finished soon. Just an abstract. A lot like all the abstracts out there in blogland at the moment. Easy and fast to do and great for a colour jolt. Now that I've written this all down I'm hoping you hold me to it. I need someone to nag me out of my complacency or nothing will get done!

Nothing to do with my place

 ... just playing around with my camera. I'm a little bit proud of this shot. Taken in my friend Kerrie's shop for her blog a little while ago. (Actually I really must say Stuart's shop. It's just that I always see Kerrie there so I think of it as hers not theirs or his. Sorry Stuart! Actually I ran into Stuart moving in the most amazing rustic dresser today. Have to take a shot soon. You'll die for it!) Lee Matthews dress, Elk necklaces. The wall colour is Porter's Paints Jaguar. A seriously sexy colour.

Den glada färgskalan i passar i våra ljusa nordiska hem

Or badly translated into English "The cheerful color range of suits in bright our Nordic home." My office rug made it into the Trend Special 2012 in Allt i Hemmet. I just wish I could manufacture that rug because half the design blog world wants it. I also love how a cheeky little Aussie rug (OK she was Turkish first) made it into a Swedish magazine as a trend for Nordic homes. If any Swedish speakers out there could translate the rest of the page for me I'd be very grateful. You can find a larger size of the scan here.