house painting - taking the first step

Well, I finally got started doing something productive on my holiday. Like painting the house. The outside of the house.

Ever since we moved here I've wanted to paint the house a different colour to the one it is currently. I don't particularly like that creamy yellow colour every other house seems to be painted. Like there's been a huge sale on that colour for the last 15 years...

It took me a while to pick the colour I wanted and I spent many drives dangerously paying more attention to the houses on either side than the road ahead. I'd gone for a pale grey green for my house in Fentonbury and I still love that colour, but I wanted something different this time. More grey... but a warm grey.

I found a house I absolutely loved one day and I'd found my colour! I put a note in the letterbox asking the owners if they knew the name of the colour. Surprisingly, I got an email letting me know the colour was Wattyl White Pepper. Fantastic. 

Step 1 accomplished. I had the colour of my dream home.

Of course, our house is downright ugly compared to the house of my inspiration, but with the addition of the porch and the new enclosed mud room its not quite as bad as it used to be, though there's no chance it will win any beauty contests any time soon.

So, I had my colour picked out. All I had to do was wait till my holiday to get started. 

Then I had to wait till the Christmas busy-ness was over.

Then I had to wait for the weather to get better.

I finally started working on it after the worst of the heat wave was over. First I had to evict quite a few birds from their nests. Then I got out the high pressure water cleaner and hosed down the south side of the house (the short, shady side).

First I undercoated the raw timber on the mud room and the blue aluminium window frames on the south side.

Today I started the first topcoat on the newly undercoated mudroom walls. I was doing great till the wind picked up so much it blew paint right off my brush. When it started drizzling I knew it was time to stop for the day.

Only in Tasmania can we go from 33 degrees one day to cold the next. 

The dogs, of course, were there to help me every step of the way!

More pics to come as I get more done.

z

smokin' hot

 

This was the view from our front porch 2 nights ago. The bushfire started at Lake Repulse by idiot campers who didn't put out a campfire (great name for a holiday destination huh? "Hey honey, lets go to Lake Repulse for a weekend getaway"....) spread down towards Ellendale and all the way down to Bushy Park. 

Fortunately for me, Fentonbury was spared although the fire went within 1 kilometre of the house.

The smoke has been hanging around the entire Derwent Valley and Hobart for days now, but we've been lucky. Nothing like what happened with the fires down south where a whole town burned down and thousands of people had to be evacuated by boat cause the roads were all closed. People had to stand in the sea to escape the flames which burned right down to the beach.

Its wierd. Here I am watching the news, seeing images of the fires and thinking "that doesn't look that bad, they're just small fires"... nothing like the huge fireballs in Victoria a few years ago which burned out King Lake and killed so many people. Compared to those fires, these were piddling little fires.

Seems the size of the fire doesn't have to be so BIG to do a ton of damage...

We've been fine here but it really does make you realise that there are certain things you should have when you choose to live in the country. For instance, on Wind Dancer Farm we have bore water so we have ample water to defend our house and our animals. But without power we'd be lost like everyone else. We really need to buy a generator to run the pump. Cause if there was a fire in our valley we'd have to give serious consideration to what we'd choose to do... if a fire was coming down the hill behind us and our road out was clear, we could just leave. We could take the dogs, but what about the horses?

If a fire was coming up from below us and closed off the road, we'd have no choice but to stay and fight. And to do that we'd need the pump to work.

Since we have pasture around the house and very few trees we think we could easily fight a fire around the house using our irrigation system.

We just need a generator.

Shopping list: 

1 petrol generator.

z

junk finds

Over the last few months I've quietly been adding to my collection of junk. I've been so busy, however, that I didn't have time to actually sort through it, photograph it or decide what to work on or how.

The other day, being on holidays and all that, I finally got the chance to go through my booty and take photos which I thought I'd share.

The one downside is that I bought a milk bottle carrier from the tip shop and I can't find it anywhere. I know I bought it. I remember it clearly. I was thrilled to find it cause I was picturing it on the table as a centrepiece, jam jars where the milk bottles would be, holding cutlery, napkins and lavender... or holding my blue sea glass bottles with flowers...

But its nowhere to be found. And I've searched repeatedly.

I'm holding out hope... barely. Maybe its somewhere under something, behind something in the shed...

Fingers crossed.

So, meanwhile, let me share these finds with you.

A very large wooden bowl, one of the wooden bowls I've added to my project list. This would look great painted and holding fruit on my table...

An interesting brass trivet. One of a few...

I got tons of frames of various sizes. I just adore the print in this one.

And I love the vintage photo in this one. I think I'm keeping her. I can pretend she's my mother as a little girl... She looks like my mother might have looked. Heck... she looks like me so she must be related!

I got tons of old books. Love this little booklet. Oh so many things I could do with this...

And this tin lid. No tin, just the lid, but how gorgeous is this?

A sample of the tons of miscellaneous junk I've added to my collection... I love my junk. Things to hang off my dangles... and the tape measure! They are so hard to get at a decent price around here.

I love old tools and old bits and pieces.... that old level is just gorgeous. That makes 2 old levels now. One will go in my vintage tool display, the other I have big plans for.

I see another hand sander dangle in my future... and more egg cup bird cages. I now have a substantial collection of both dangle and birdcage materials. I just need to get working.

Now how could I leave this pretty little doorstop piggy behind?

More rusty bits. I love rusty bits. No idea what they are, but I know what I'll use them for and that's what counts.

I have one word for this little silver dish: birdcage!

And I see an extra large wind chime in the future for this:

Wayne got me some of these things (the man may complain about my junk collection, but he knows me well!). He got me this little spice rack too. Now I know I can use this for something other than spices... not sure what, but it will come to me.

Love old tins. This still has the protractor in it.

A french book and an old tray. Just one of the trays I got. And just one of the many vintage books I got.

This was a gift from a friend - an old rake head. Love it.

If you think about it, I must be so easy (and cheap) to buy gifts for. Old, chippy and rusty will do it every time.

Like this tiny little wood plane - it doesn't work but who cares?

I plan to use a lot of the old tools to make another display to match my old shears display. I have two more shallow crates and it wont take me long to put them together. I think they'd look great in the mud room or on the deck with some hooks to hang often-used working tools. 

I just have to get organised.

Organised.

Easy to say. Not so easy to do!

With the heat lately I've been too wiped out to even sit in the living room in front of a fan and create. I do not cope well with the heat. I managed to strain my arm doing the tiny bit of gardening I did so even hand sewing was out of the question on the hot days.

When its not too hot I have plans on jobs to do outside that I have so far successfully managed to avoid.

For instance I've been talking about removing the bird nests from around the house so I can start washing/painting the house and porch railing... Yesterday while 'researching' and 'planning' I noticed a dead bird's head hanging out of the roof. Great. Better get that out today before it stinks up the office...

 

Better go. Its still coolish outside. Maybe I should go look over what I could be doing. Then figure out a way to avoid it.

z

i killed santa

I haven't blogged for days. I've been lazy. And busy in other ways. I did a bit of gardening work. And I mean a BIT. While mowing I killed Santa. He was a toy the dogs have had for a few years now, he was lying on the grass... I did try to mow past him but he got sucked into the mower blades and was dismembered. There were Santa guts everywhere. The dogs are in mourning.

I've also had a lot to think about... about myself, new year's resolutions, where I am in my life and what I want from my life. I'll have some more to say on that later at some stage. I've been doing a lot of thinking. For now I just wanted to touch base and let everyone know we're ok.

There are fires burning around Tasmania with the strong winds and extreme heat, but we are safe.

Its been really hot.

 

Too hot to blog.

But then again, its too hot to do anything and at least the amount of energy expended typing is less than that expended doing anything else.

I'm sitting here on a recliner, two fans and an evaporative cooler working overtime to keep the living room bareable. Occasionally dripping water I've poured over my head. Dogs flat out, panting around me. The phone is next to me. As are the tv controls. Getting off the chair uses produces too much energy and thus heat. The less I move the better.

Dinner for tonight will be fruit, cheese, dips and crackers. No cooking.

z