ross gardam oak light

Oh hello wonderful lights. Available in three finishes with black cord at Ross Gardam. Is August too early to send wishes to Santa?

prints charming at spotlight

The very lovely Cath and Kirsten of Prints Charming have just launched their new collection at Spotlight stores in Australia. You can read more about their new drill fabrics in their beautiful designs here.

timber wall hooks

Have just ordered 5 grey and 2 yellow wall hooks from the very clever Margarita at Chocolate Creative for the new hall in the old house. Looking forward to the little parcel in the mail.

pretty pegs

As the project nears the end... and money is so very, very tight, I will need to compromise on a 3 seater sofa and IKEA will do the trick.

Pretty Pegs provide an alternative to the big lumps of timber (that IKEA offer as legs) and replace them with Pretty Pegs. Yay, instant update.

touching base

It's been crazy and I can't believe how long it's been between posts, and just how much we've done. We worked like lunatics through June-July and finally moved into the completed section (new kitchen / dining / living / outdoor) at the end of July. The weather through that period was cold and miserable and at many points in the process we felt physically broken ... but just had to keep going and now it's all worth it.  It's absolutely beautiful and working so well. The Babes still keep saying "I love our new house" and we've even had a few lunches with friends and family to celebrate and enjoy the new space.

It's simple, un-precious, spacious and easy. We're within budget (maybe even a smidge under... but of course we're not finished yet) and feeling so happy with all the decisions along the way. "Beautiful on a budget" was our mantra and whilst it does look a little homemade in parts - we're hoping that it adds character (?!).

Still lots of little bits to finish from Stage 1 but we're cracking on with Stage 2 (as of last week). The old house now looks like demolition site, the old kitchen floor down to bare dirt and all the new openings cut through brick walls with new brick walls filling the old ones. All sleeping in one room with mattresses all over the floor, it's dusty and horrible and chaos again but I LOVE the reconfiguration. Making a central hall down the middle of the old cottage looks better than I even imagined, it's given our dinky little dark house a sense of grandeur (grandeur in a relative kind of way!) and the new bedrooms still feel generous in size. I didn't think I could be happy in so much dust... but maybe we're just getting used to it.

Time remains scarce so I won't wax lyrical about it all now but I promise, promise, promise to post some photos soon. Thank you lovely friends and sister overseas for your lovely emails of support and encouragement... and yes... photos when it's not so filthy and still resembling a storage unit!

the white choice

"The first of all single colours is white ... We shall set down white for the representative of light, without which no color can be seen; yellow for the earth; green for water; blue for air; red for fire; and black for total darkness." Leonardo Da Vinci

At long last we are putting white paint on the walls... the days of decorating have finally arrived and just in time for my sanity.

It has been lovely talking through the subtleties of white with the Babes. When we were down to the final 3 white swatches on the walls Babe 2 pointed to one and immediately decided "Not that one. It looks like it's been dropped in a muddy puddle and then rinsed off" - so it was out with the grey-white, she was right.

Babe 1 pointed to the yellow-white swatch and decided "Not that one". When I asked why she replied, in that 9-going-on-10-you-have-no-idea-mum-tone "It's called Princess Bling". I still forget that overnight all things princess have gone out of style. It was obviously no reflection on the quality of the colour though as I suspect had I changed the name to One Direction Denim it would have won hands down.

postcript... I have gone with Resene Alabaster - a bit Nordic snowy landscape, a bit art gallery white - and I love it. Just love it.

light at the end of the tunnel

It's been night and day renovating these past weeks. Plastering, painting, tiling and preparing the floors for the engineered boards. We're at that point in Grand Designs when Kevin McCloud ponders "I just can't believe that they're going to get it done on time and on budget"... and the truth is, neither can we!

The Lovely One has been doing 16 hour shifts on Saturday and Sunday and I work the 5 hours that the Babes are at school and then try for a 7.30-10.30pm session after they go to bed. My sweet mum has offered her services as labourer - sweeping and cleaning everything a couple of times a week (and a clean building site is so much better for our sanity... she seems to sneak in a bit of time in the laundry as well which is also so, so helpful, and of course it means the girls have clean school uniforms).

Other than the food parcels - which mum, my sister and mother in law have all delivered - we're eating pretty badly and the old house is actually now disgusting it's so dusty and full of boxes and fixtures that keep being delivered but can't yet be fitted, so they sit in the living room in more boxes.

However... we're hoping to finish Stage One (kitchen, living, dining) in 4 weeks and we can endure the mess until then. The light at the end of the tunnel seems to be shining brightly enough now that it can blur out the chaos in it's glare.

just plain busy

Flat out now. Any time spent not working or child minding is spent building. The Lovely One is putting up the Gyprock sheets and I'm following close behind plastering - and like most things in a renovation - it's taking longer than we hoped. We're trying to finish the kitchen/living/dining by July 1 (the start of the next school holidays) and leaving everything else to the latter 6 months of the year.

We're both very focussed and when we're in the thick of it we still seem to be able to laugh about it all... so I think we're still on track. However I am constantly reminded that a self-build is never as romantic as you think it will be. Just have to keep the overall vision and then do the hard work, it's all just hard work in the end.

prints charming workshops at koskela

I did a screen printing course with the gorgeous girls at Prints Charming about 3 years ago and have never looked back - I've been addicted ever since. They're now running workshops at Koskela in Sydney throughout June.

If you're interested in paper cut screen printing, embroidery or kids classes, you can email Koskela at info@koskela.com.au or Prints Charming at info@printscharming.com.au for more info on dates and times. Their classes are incredibly popular... so hurry!

crossing the ocean

'You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.' Christopher Columbus

I think for the first time I can see the new shore! This weekend we started plaster-boarding the walls - and now we can see some of the walls in place for the first time.

Survival through this journey has meant I've needed to be incredibly detail and task focussed, because if I ever looked too closely at the big picture I became entirely overwhelmed and quickly got back to 'one step at a time' mode. So it's been a big leap for me to finally step back and take it all in - to really see just what a big project it has been for a tight-budget mostly DIY - and I feel really, really amazed, really surprised, really happy and really quite courageous.