Demolition delights

Firstly, can I start by saying how nice it was to hear from you all about your husbands (or other halves) and to know that many of you are being driven equally crazy by men who either have no interest or excessive interest in the small domestic details.

After reading that post (yes, it appears Legoman does read the blog), we have managed to agree on a laundry door. I'm not holding my breath yet on the rest of the list. The plans come back in two days.

In the meantime we have been dragging our children around various demolition yards and miraculously agreeing on a few other purchases. Including some wonderful huge sliding windows,

some more reclaimed floorboards, and a gorgeous set of french doors. After vacillating between a large contemporary sliding door and these old french doors, Legoman came around to my vision and has even agreed to let me paint them. A colour even. (Legoman does not like surprises so I have learnt to do all negotiating up front). These doors, (a set of french doors stacked) will fit perfectly in the corridor between our new family/tv room and the kitchen. So I will be able to stand at my new island bench, supervising the appropriateness of tv shows without having to listen to any more of that Giggle and Hoot.

So, how does a girl get her husband on the same page? Bribery of course. Except in this house we call it   "Incentives". Now because this is a G rated blog,  I had to consider other options. Some of you may remember Legoman starting to cut a huge branch off our poinciana tree, oh , about a year ago.

 Well, he has been chipping away at this goliath of a branch with a little handsaw. Whenever the kids and I were driving him bonkers he would disappear up a ladder for about 6 hours and proceed to cut off about a foot of branch. After about 36 cumulative days of this parental absenteeism, I could stand it no longer and I caved in. Over the chainsaw that is. This is a picture of a very happy man. Hopefully very happy and very agreeable when it comes to renovation decisions.

 And of course in my weaselly little mind, I was figuring this would have to give me some leverage over at least the stove choice. Given that  Legoman has not been endowed with spectacular coordination, there were safety requirements. He came home with the helmet, the ear muffs and even the chainsaw proof chaps. Who knew there was such a thing as chainsaw proof chaps? He then demolished the rest of that branch in record time as well as another small tree and every branch overhanging into the neighbours. Chain happy if you will. There were casualties. Thankfully only our back stairs. See how the bottom two collapsed under large logs and are now propped up on bricks.

Now we have a contractual agreement that he will not cut anything down while I am at work or if he is in charge of the children. Given that this is what I found when he last supervised the children.

Yep, that is the two small children up on the roof, while I am inside obliviously stuffing the roast chook. Can you see why I had reservations about allowing this man to have a chainsaw?

At least the kids are enjoying the offcuts. I did request some large chunks to turn into stools.

Incentives my friends, it's all about the incentives.

Sprucing for spring and a pigeon pair

It's fitting that it's pretty much two years to the day that we moved into Betsy and finally I have some completed white wall pictures. Painting vj's can only be done with a brush and is slow, tedious, time consuming work. This was all done by me during toddler naps and late nights after the kids are in bed. (Legoman does not paint, he is way too messy both on and off the walls).

I finished a few months ago but with all the rain and sick children it just was too hard to find time to photograph it all. Not to mention the epic tidy up required to produce shots like this. When the sun was out today I decided to counter my post illness winter slump with a good spruce up.

Just look at all the white. Remember when it looked more like this?

So much better now it's all white. Pity all my hard work on this back wall will be demolished in a few months. Not going to miss the yucky barred windows though.

I will miss having  a wall space perfect for all the kids art. This wall will be going to make room for a much bigger kitchen and it will be good riddance to that nasty faux tasmanian oak laminate pantry poking out into my dining room. See how it is covered in art as an attempt at camouflage.

And the pigeon pair?  Well look what I found at the demolition yard. Initially I only bought the green one, but then I had the guilts over separating them. When I went back today to get the blue one, the lovely man gave it to me for free.

The green one is for my sewing table, not sure where the blue one is going yet. Just having fun moving my furniture around. I might paint them one day, but right now I like them just as they are.

I love seeing this change in Betsy, she is becoming more and more our home, and much more to my taste than the custard delight we moved into two years ago. I'm getting more excited about our having a new kitchen and there is definitely a whiff of spring in the air today.

Rainy day retail therapy

So, it rained the entire first week of the school holidays. In order to stay sane we hit the shops and scoped out all the big toy sales so I could sneak back later and have it all stashed away for Christmas and birthdays. And a few little things came home with us. The crochet apple cushion I had been coveting for a while, realized it would take me all year to do myself, and it was half price at Adairs Kids.

 Would you believe that wonderful wooden tea seat complete with tray was only $12 at Kmart? Miss Liongirl traded several weeks of marbles for that one (I am happy she has moved on from trading her marbles at the Aquarium shop for extremely tacky pink fishtank ornaments).

 Roboboy is still trading for fish. Every few weeks he has enough marbles for a new guppy- I think my love of vintage is rubbing off on him, the latest fish is called "Retro" cause of his groovy colour scheme. We are pleased that four months on, this reward strategy is still highly motivating the kids to behave well.

And I was obviously inspired by that tea tray because look what came home for me. I only own two coats, hard to justify more in Brisbane but it was more than half price and it is probably the prettiest thing I own. About five years ago I tried on one of her coats in a red cherry blossom print and have regretted not buying it ever since.

Miss Liongirl was quite smitten by the ballerina lining, I think she will be borrowing this one in a few years.

And we even managed to shop up a storm for Betsy. Not quite so glamorous to get your garments from the demolition yard but every girl needs quality flooring. Betsy has original wide honey coloured pine tongue and groove flooring throughout most of the house. In a small section of our lounge room the boards change to a narrow hardwood. Below is the worst section of join in the house, yep that's the ground you can see through that hole. Gorgeous wide pine on the right, non specific pale hardwood on the left.

We would probably have left these mismatched boards except that we are extending the lounge out a further metre and would have then had three floorboard changes in the one room and new pine is a very pale yellow colour that would stand out in a dramatic and potentially very ugly way. We also don't want to stain as we love that original honey colour that you only find in very old timber floors. So the only thing to do was to find some new old floorboards to match. And of course Betsy has a very unusual width board of 138 mm when most old boards were 150mm. We were super excited to find quite a large stash at our favourite demo yard.

They don't look much now but sanded up they should be beautiful. I so love the idea that we have rescued the floors from some old girl who had been taken apart piece by piece. Can you see how each board fits together and locks the tongue into the groove? Beautiful. Now we just need to scratch up this much again and we should have enough to complete the room.

We have our eyes on some recycled windows as well and a very keen builder who could start in a few months so time to finalize our house plans. In the meantime I am now nursing another sick child. This one was off colour earlier in the week and spent alot of time in this spot.

And now miss Liongirl is battling some high fevers and no one is getting much sleep. At least we finally had some sun today so I could take some decent photos of my recent opshop treasures. Back soon with the booty.