Gone fishin' ...

We are waiting for the contract to go unconditional and then just a few more weeks after that and we move.  (Time frame is sometime in November.) In the meantime I'm doing what I always do when I have downtime. I shop. Here are my recent finds.

Yes that really is a fish diorama. Yes it is quite large and no I'm not stark raving mad. It's for Kelvin's office. I'm going for a gentleman's club meets vintage industrial meets artist look.This will add just a little kitsch to the mix. Really dark walls ... thinking inky blue, Oreo biscuit brown or even black (although I want the bedroom to be black), vintage metal desk, leather wing chair, divan upholstered in old kilims, big old silky oak and glass bookcase, lots of found objects, art and the fish. I need a name for him I think. I found him in my new favourite shop a few weeks ago. If I tell you it is called The Vintage Advantage and is owned by Glen Smith who is a worse hoarder collector than I am then you have to promise me that you won't rush to 185 Brisbane St, Ipswich and plunder all the good stuff before I can get back. Kelvin goes there a couple of times a week to keep me up to date on what's in. A few shots to whet your appetite. It's stuffed full of treasure and junk and must haves and oddities and don't get me started on the prices ... so cheap compared to Brisbane. OK I'm going to have to kill you now that I've let the secret out.

  

  

Love my new Bay Keramik viking boat vase from Glen and how about that West German pottery floor vase?! Still salivating over it weeks later.  I also won an old bench/pew on ebay from the lovely Katherine. A good clean, sand, oil and wax and it is waiting for its new home as a book bench/shelf/seat/lamp table along a long wall in either my office or the living room or perhaps the sunroom. Don't know yet. (OMG my grass is dead after winter. No sun in that part of the courtyard.)

  

  

before                                                                                     after

  

  

Thrift shops have been a bit hit and miss lately. Actually more miss than anything. A Wegdewood Pennine coffee pot for $4 and a Crown Lynn (New Zealand) dinner set for not a lot more. I'm hoping to do a rustic aged timber, black, brick and white kitchen and I'm on the hunt for crockery etc in rustic browns, wood and creamware for the open shelves. A pretty Italian handpainted vase. Unusual shape. Picked up a couple of iron and glass lanterns at Lifeline for a few dollars and they will be great for the outdoor area. My other great find lately was a set of 6 beaten brass bowls. Beautiful patina. Lovely footed Indian silver bowl too. Oh the purple West German vase is from Glen. He knows now that I'm a sucker for vintage WG pottery.  Help me! I already have over 50 pieces. I'm an addict! Last but not least my spy Ron (Hi Ron!) found me a metal medical cabinet. Beaten up, rusty and just perfect! Mickey likes it too.

Time to go. My latest eBay buy has been delivered (seller's pic above) and I have a lot of sanding ahead of me. I paid too much for this old stationery cupboard but it will make a great linen cupboard for my new bathroom ... in the house I haven't settled on yet. Wait till I'm done with it. You won't recognise it!

The chair gods were smiling ... or why a middle aged woman did a happy dance

My new chairs! Oh my new chairs!!! Can a chair give you an orgasm? What a silly question. Of course it can! Anita from Fun and VJs emailed me to let me know that a well known Brisbane retro collector was selling a few pieces to finance a new acquisition. The list was just too tempting. I gave in and bought 2 pairs of chairs. The first pair are Tanderra chairs from the Studio Line by Robert Dunlop. 70s, chunky and downright sexy. Pine, leather and anodised aluminium. I am in serious love with these. I told Kelvin they were for his man cave but I think they may have to live in my office. You can read more about Robert Dunlop here.

The second pair are Viking Chairs by Danish Quality Furniture (DQF). DQF was founded in 1958 by Eric Peterson, a Dane who immigrated to Brisbane. It bears an uncanny resemblance to Finn Juhl's Model 137 and is from the early 70s. Naughty Eric! But now I have two leather and blackbean chairs for a fraction of the cost of a vintage Danish piece. These will go in my new living room. The leather is divine. So soft. In case you didn't realised I'm actually purring as I write this.

I am so excited to share these that I didn't style anything, didn't try to snap at an angle to avoid the dead patches in the grass or the dog's tennis balls or the church pew up on carpenter's horses waiting to be restored. This is my "furniture workshop" where I tinker, restore and meditate while waxing or sanding. One day I'll have a real shed not a patio. Thanks again to Anita and many thanks to Chris. I'm off to do another happy dance and stroke my chairs :)

Got my eye ball on you

While we are waiting for the house contract to go unconditional I'm filling my time with the usual activities ... thrifting, secondhand shops and ebay. Just won these cool vintage eyeball table lamps for a bargain price. (Photos are from the seller's site.) Great I thought. I have had a couple of these over the years and thought this pair would be great as bedside lamps. I have, of course, had the small versions, no more than 30cm high. These are huge. 70cm. Who was the dumb bunny who didn't read the dimensions on ebay? I never do. What a pleasant surprise when I realised my mistake. I love them and they will be perfect either side of the bed. Thinking I might have them sprayed another colour but I'll wait till we move in. I have a suzani in earthy tones for a bedspread and the beige might just be OK.

     

Meet the neighbours

Just some of the beautiful old homes within a block or so of my new old house. (This one is 2 doors down.) This is such an historic part of town. Convicts arrived in the area in 1827 calling it Limestone because of the soft white stone they came to mine and the settlement was renamed Ipswich in 1843. I grew up in this town but left when I was 17 to head off to university and a new life in Brisbane. Now many many years later I'm returning.

This last house was built about 20 years later than ours and shows the much simpler lines around the verandahs that have been replaced on our house with metal lace. Up until a month or two ago the house also had a slate roof like this one but it was in dire need of repair and the owners opted for the cheaper option of corrugated iron. A sad but completely understandable decision. Slate is prohibitively expensive. I can't wait to explore "my hill" more after we move in. Camera in hand and water bottle swinging I'll rediscover my roots and hopefully drop a few kilos! :)

My new house ....

 

... if the building and pest inspection comes back OK and nothing nasty happens because it hasn't gone unconditional yet. Did I just write that? Am I jinxing myself by even revealing all this? No. I have a really good feeling about this one. The house was built in 1860 ... it says so in leadlight over the front door :) The front railings are not original, probably late Victorian so eventually we'll change them to something closer to the original and of course we'll have to paint some of it. Definitely not the brick. Brick is so rare in old homes in this part of the world.

The kitchen is in a separate brick wing. Common in those days because of the open fires used in cooking. The picture below is of part of the small attached stables. Hard to tell now but more obvious when you're inside. There's even a small fireplace where that the farrier used to shoe the horses. That's the chimney stack. Look at the huge Norfolk pines next door.

Looking down the cedar staircase from the second floor. Below is a shot of the wide cedar planks used for floor boards. You can just see the tip of my shoe. So many of my photos are slightly out of focus but I was just point and shooting as well as measuring, measuring, measuring. I was going to photoshop the pics but then I thought hang it. You get the idea :)

The main living room. It's actually a large room (by my standards) and this is just the fireplace end. Once again more cedar. Hate the terracotta tile floors but I can live with those for quite some time. Painting and a new bathroom (of the horrors of the original!) come first. Don't you just love the wallpaper and border trend of the 70s and 80s? NOT. The blurry photo below is of one of the colonial cedar shield door built in cabinets either side of the fireplace.

Look at those original cedar doors! The ones upstairs have been painted burgundy! Talk about "red" timber. What were they thinking? The ones on the bottom floor are all original thank god. The view is across the entry towards the dining room. Past the dining room is a breezeway and then the separate kitchen wing. Speaking of the kitchen ....

So much potential! I'll do minor changes to begin with. Maybe new timber counter tops and lots of painting, remove some things and throw in some open shelves but nothing too major. We'll live with this for a year and then refurb. Other things to do first!

That's the tour. I have lots more photos but they can wait till other posts. There is a lot of work to do but I am so excited. Just have to wait till it goes unconditional and hopefully in about 70 days it will be all ours!