Glacial progress

  

Who said this would be a quick re-do? I need my head read. Honestly between work and blogging and weekends trying to get a life, time passes and nothing much gets done :) The counter tops go on this week hopefully. A good friend of Kelvin's is giving us a hand and this is why the counters aren't done yet. He wanted to get a better quality plywood. LOL. He may blow the budget out by $20! Speaking of budget it has come in around $150. Doesn't include props and the little paintings but, except for the paintings, everything is from thrift stores and only a few bucks each. (Oh make that $200 because I forgot to add in the 2 industrial pendants I put up soon after I moved in.)

    

I'm experimenting with different stains and strengths as well as just finishing with coats of danish oil for the plywood. I'm leaning towards a thinned out japan black stain, oiled then waxed. That will probably change by next weekend! So these shots just have a piece of raw plywood to give you an idea. There will be tops and edge strips in 5mm ply. The matt black acrylic paint is definitely not working so I'm painting it gloss. Next weekend ... or maybe the weekend after ...

    

I popped up 2 white wooden shelves and threw up some copper and coffee pots, kettles and a colander. A smattering of West German and studio pottery and some Hornsea. I think I have too many wooden spoons. There are 2 more jars out of view. Old wooden step ladder holding a set of yellow enamel pots and my 4 small paintings I got at a recent exhibition. And look! My bookcover wall is finished! Yeah! Just wish the kitchen was as well.

   

Kitchen progress

... baby steps remember. I finished my book cover wall for now. I sanded the collage to smooth the raised edges and sealed with an oil based polyurethane in low sheen. (I normally use a water based "varnish" because it doesn't yellow but this is what my husband brought home on his trip to the hardware store. In this case the slight discolouration worked.) Decided not to "whitewash" or tea stain for now. I want to live with it and let the kitchen develop a bit more. I really liked the very graphic effect that the unsanded covers had but I needed to smooth the wall to minimise the grease trapping effect. I can still smear or dry brush a thin coloured wash over it some time in the future. The distressed look also will help minimise any further damage or scratches (a common occurrence in a "blind" house).

The fresh white trims look soooo clean and the sliding door is done too. Just not hung yet. K misplaced the screws. (Another common occurrence in a "blind" house.) We are going to be gluing 5mm plywood to the counter tops as a cheap short term fix. I couldn't justify the couple of hundred dollars on IKEA timber tops that I may never use again or may not be the right size for the next kitchen incarnation when $20 of plywood will do for a year. I need to sand it smooooooooth, stain it to blend with the floor better, then I think I will oil it over and over and over .... so soothing. Finish with wax and a good buff. I suspect that it will stain and peel and look ugly around the sink when it gets wet but it is only a temporary (and I really mean cheap) cosmetic fix. I popped up some open shelves in the spot where the suicidal cabinet once lived. Painted them white and now my copper pieces are slugging it out to see who gets to live there. Hopefully I can get some pics on the weekend when and if it is sunny. Put my kilims back in. Style the other open shelves and we are done .... until next year after we have saved up the money for a new kitchen. All up I think if we had bought everything from scratch the kitchen will cost us about $140 but it's a lot less because we had so much of it already.

The plasterers have been. That was quick! Walls look much the same just full of wet plaster holes smoothed over. Ready to paint in 10 days. Painter is here on Friday to start the final prep work. Big job even though we have done a sizable chunk of it to cut costs.

What to do with my hall and stairs

I'm happy with my colour choices for the living room and dining room (not telling yet) but they are dark and they have thrown my entry hall, stairs and landing plans into disarray. I want to paint the walls white with black trim and black doors. I have always loved black gloss doors in an old house. Having said that I mean the upstairs doors that are already painted. If they were still in their original shellac finished cedar like the downstairs doors I'd live them natural. Don't get me wrong. I don't mind painting wood but the downstairs doors and some trim have survived 150 in the original state and I get a kick out of that.

  

  

  

My problem is that you will be looking from a dark room through a bright white hall into a dark room. Solution ... paint the hall dark. Yay! Problem ... there is no real "end" to the wall. No obvious place to stop. The wall continues up the stairs and then up a double height to the floor above because I have a floating landing. Hope you understand the pictures. I've included my original video of the house as we moved in to give you another perspective.

  

If I painted the hall dark where do I stop? I had thought that I would colour block up that downstairs wall and across the ceiling while the white started at the front door wall and continued up the wall along the long flight of stairs up to the top landing and along the "Mary" wall until it met the block of colour coming up from below. Then I thought that would be just strange and contrived. I could be dark all the way up. A grey or brown or blue but that would spoil the drama of individual rooms if everything was dark dark dark. Or maybe not. My bedroom will be dark. LOL. Dark is my darling at the moment. Was thinking black but now I'm leaning towards the indigo in the previous post. Across the hall is my office/studio and this is the room I want white with a scandi boho feel.  Open the black door and bam! bright and white and colourful with art. This is the room that gets the morning sun and leads out to the front veranda. A beautiful place to create and blog. I'm so lucky I know. Don't you hate me!

  

So back to the hall and stairs. My solution at the moment is to wallpaper the bottom hall. Book wallpaper is tickling my fancy. Here are some examples.

Deborah Bowness

Seen here in Lyn Gardener's Daylesford house.

  

  

Library by Andrew Martin

Young & Battaglia's Vintage Bookshelf and White Bookshelf that I have found online here.

OK now it's your turn. Go for it. Pull no punches. Give me your two cents worth. Paint or paper? Dark or light? Where do I stop? How do I stop?

And so it begins ...

A couple of weeks ago I was in Sydney (thanks Electrolux) and while I was there I made a mad dash to Murobond paints to choose paint colours. Amazing showroom. Amazing staff. Rowena walked me through their range and Geoff helped ease my technical concerns. Those of you who have been reading this page know I have had damp problems. The house is built into a hill, ill conceived renovations in the past have created water traps and the heaviest rainfall in many, many, many years provided a major surprise when we ripped off the wallpaper. Geoff and I have come up with a solution and part of it involves Murobond's breathable Murowash. The other part is dark colours. I will most likely never eliminate the risk of water seeping into my brick house completely and I'm loathe to see discoloured stains spreading along my paint work. I'm hoping that it will be less noticeable with darker colours on the wall. I'm also drawn to darker colours because although I love white to death and it will make an appearance in my office/studio, I have been dreaming of dark, cocooning dens, cave-like cosiness and just something a little different from what I have had before.

  

  

After scooping up close to twenty colour chips I placed an order online for 7 sample pots and a couple of brush outs. (No paint allowed on the plane for my trip back.) I chose 3 browns, 3 dark blues and a bright green for a contrast idea I have.

     

                                          Society Inc. Dark and stormy      Mr Jason Grant's Faraway       Society Inc Indigo

      

Murobond brown                   Block brown                    Dark chocolate

The box arrived a few days after I ordered and so the fun began. The colours in real life of course looked nothing like the colours on the monitor when I ordered so I'm glad I had the paint chips from my visit to the showroom. And the colours in my pictures here are not quite right either but you get the idea.

  

The block brown has an almost olive green undertone, the dark chocolate has some burgundy. The indigo is gorgeous but almost black, the picture here doesn't do the dark and stormy justice and faraway is actually a lot darker than I thought. Here's what they look like in the room.

Now you see my problem. I have orangey terracotta tiles throughout my living and dining rooms. I do not have the money to take them up for now so large area rugs will be my solution. I have several kilims that will work well with whatever scheme I go for. The colours are in the same order as above. Trims will be in exactly the same colour as the walls. There are cedar doors and some architraves that have survived 150 years without painting so they will stay as is. This is in the dining room which is small and very dark to begin with. At this stage I am still deciding if the ceilings will be white, a richer off white or the same colour as the walls. I need to see the room being painted to make the final decision. Initially I thought dark brown for this room and the blue for the living room but now I think blue for this room and brown for the living room. I have fallen in love with Ilse Crawford's children's den as seen in the New York Times.

My dining room will have a mix of vintage and tribal, mismatched woods, a glass table, chrome and kilims. Eventually I'd love a Taraxacum light by Achille Castiglioni but that too will have to wait for now.

That's what I'm up to so far. I need to move my swatches around the rooms and consider the light at various times of the day. I'm thinking that the chocolate is a little too purple and the block brown a little too green. The murobond brown may be the way to go. I love the indigo but I think it will read as black most of the time and I can't make up my mind yet between faraway and dark and stormy. Trouble is the pictures you see here are not true to the colours (the sample pots come closest ... but not quite) so perhaps you can all come round to my house, file by the swatches and tell me which one you like. I'll do the coffee and the cake. Deal?

Almost forgot to show you this display piece in the dining room. It's a Red Cross cupboard from WWII and will house my glass collection. I was thinking of washing the inside a colour that would make the glass stand out a little more. I ordered a pot of Ripple, a citrony green but I think I could also go a cinnabar red colour. Just a wash on the wood inside and keep the lovely old wood patina outside. (See my really upmarket paper shade?! LOL.) What a long post! I think I have done enough for today.

Smash, crash and it wasn't me

I think the kitchen is jinxed. I tumbled down last weekend. This weekend it was a kitchen cabinet. Kelvin was in the man cave listening to the football on the radio. I was in the kitchen nearby pasting more book covers to the wall. A pot of stock was bubbling on the stove. We are having pea and ham soup with pumpkin sour dough bread for dinner and I love to start from scratch making my own chicken stock before adding the ham hocks and finishing with the peas. Our football team was loosing. Mickey was lazily barking at a passerby. Smash, crash and the cabinet came down.

Not much damage. Just a broken cannister I use to wrangle my wooden spoons. Oh and a carrot. Crushed. It couldn't be saved. Maybe the kitchen isn't jinxed. I was intending to take the ugly cabinet down anyway to make room for open shelves. It just did it by itself :) Mess to clean up. A new home to be found for tins and jars, spices and potatoes. Makes that sad, cheap fan extractor look even more sad and cheap. A stainless hood is on the "to do" list as is a fix for my counter tops ... when I get time. I never seem to have time to finish anything.

Good news bad news with the wall though. Good news is that I am almost finished pasting but the bad news is not quite finished. I have the very top to do but I'm still finding it hard to hold on to the ladder with my sore paw. Next weekend maybe? Then the final push to finish the painting. I need to wax the cupboards. I'm getting sick of the flat matt finish already. It "marks" and gets dirty so easily. I wouldn't use it again. Thinking that waxing and buffing up will provide a more wipeable surface.

I went to a couple of art exhibition openings on Thursday night. A music inspired exhibition, a black and white showing and a local homewares store was also having a birthday party. Punk band, then jazz band, champagne, cheese, cupcakes and interesting people along a top of town street. Bought these 4 little acrylic paintings. They were the inspiration for a number of CD covers for a local indie band. Cheap as chips. Cute and perfect for a corner in my office. That's all I've got for you this weekend. I have to head back and finish cleaning up. Oh and finish the soup. Yum!