Trying to find some balance ...

The boys gave me a funny sign for the kitchen for Mother's Day (yes I know it was back in May... I've been reading busy) and I finally hung it up this weekend.

Of course, once it was up on one side of the range hood, the whole area looked very unbalanced which my CDO (like OCD but the letters are in alphabetical order like they should be) really couldn't handle.

I was a bit short of ready cash to just go and buy another sign or picture (as well as the fact that it is nowhere near Mother's Day so all the 'funny' kitchen signs have gone to be replaced with 'funny' garage/shed signs leftover from Father's Day) so I did what most modern women do and jumped on Pinterest to find some inspiration for a solution.

After hours and hours an appropriately short amount of time, I came across these free printables from Over the Big Moon, found some spare 8x10" frames and set the printer to work.  I think you're 'supposed' to print them out on photo paper or card but I just went with good old cheap (and available) copy paper. And now for the big reveal ... TA-DA:

I'm not sure if I like them in the wood tone frames but at least they're up on the wall helping to defuse the whole "BUT IT'S NOT BALANCED" meltdown I was this close to having.  It still bugs me .. just not quite as much.  I didn't want to paint the frames as they are part of a gallery wall set I have been hoarding saving for just the right spot but I may change my mind further down the track and paint them black or white. Opinions?

I love the smell of paint in the morning ...

The oil-based undercoat sealer/primer .. not so much.  That stuff stinks so much I'm sure we could have sold tickets to those wanting to get high!!

Trouble is, because we have brand new plaster that has never been painted before, all the painting places recommend using the oil based sealer to prevent the plaster sucking the water out of water based paint, resulting in the paint peeling off in sheets a short time after being put on.  Or something like that anyway .. I kind of tuned out once I had my first whiff of the sealer!

We are hoping to get the tiles done soon and the original plan was to tile the office as well.  In the last house, we had pillow top tiles (slightly domed finish) and the edges of the tiles and the grout lines were a fair bit lower than the centre of the tile.  Due to the profile of those tiles, the finish on the tiles was totally ruined by the office chairs rolling into and out of the grout lines.  We didn't want that to happen again as we're planning on being here a while, so we decided to buy a piece of vinyl flooring and put chair mats down instead of tiling.

(The fact that we had nowhere to put all of the furniture while everything was being tiled may have contributed to this decision too!)

Once the decision was made to bring all of the office furniture into the office, we thought it might be a good idea to paint the room first so we didn't have to move it all out again in the near future.

Peter put the sealer on while I was at work and I'm sure I could smell it from the corner of our street when I was coming home ... it's that strong!  We waited a couple of days for the smell to die down a bit before painting. 

Luckily, we actually agreed on a colour for a change.  It's called Taubmans Sheer Hose but we got it in half strength as the office is on the south side of the house and doesn't get any direct sunlight, so I thought the full-strength version would be way too dark.

As is typical, as soon as I started the cutting in process, I freaked out that I had chosen a colour that was way too dark/purple/brown/gross/etc, just because I'm so used to staring at bright white plaster walls.  Once Peter started the rollering, it didn't seem so bad after all and now I'm even thinking of painting the ensuite and toilet in the same colour.

I couldn't find the camera, so the only pictures are ones that I took with my dinosaur of a mobile phone:

 

 

It's one of those paint colours that looks completely different at different times of the day and now that I've realised that, I like it.  I haven't got any photos of the finished room yet but I'll try to get on that soon.

The decorator touch ...

Well, not quite a decorator's touch but I thought it was about time we did something to the front entry hall so I wouldn't have to stare at the blank wall every time I walked in.

Peter and the boys gave me a lovely wrought iron look candle holder for Christmas 2010 which I always had full intentions of putting up in pride of place somewhere in the new house.

The original plan for the front hall was a very big family portrait taken outside in some sort of natural setting with everyone in jeans and T-shirts but as we don't seem to be a very photogenic family (in other words, I hate photos of me and include everyone else in that to make myself feel better!), we decide to put the candle holder up instead.

First, I taped off an area on the wall using painter's tape to see how big of an area it would need and to see whether I actually liked it in that particular spot.

Then it was off to Bunnings to try and decide on a paint colour for the background.  I was leaning towards a green or blue, but Peter reckoned we already had enough of both of those and wanted a bright yellow.  This was the compromise:

A textured paint called toffee... can't remember the brand .. think it's Walpamur. (I still think it looks like baby poo yellow but I'm getting used to it).

I had originally wanted a giant picture frame with the glass removed to be attached to the wall to 'frame' the candle holder but it was very difficult to find one big enough that had the right dimensions.  We ended up buying some moulding from Bunnings, painting it matt black and just nailing it to the wall.

This is probably the truest version of the colour .. my photography/white balance skills aren't good at all.  The whole thing turned out pretty well thanks to my darling hubby's handy skills (and my patching abilities ... sssh!!)

 The background colour may change.  I promised I would give it a while to get used to it but we'll see ... stay tuned!

Our first decorating disaster ...

Even though we have the keys, we decided to do a few things to the house before moving in, like sealing all the concrete floors that aren't going to be tiled, put up curtain rods in every room, put up the sunblock curtains I bought on major sale about a year ago that have been sitting in a removalist box for ages, etc, etc, etc.

I was busily sealing the boys' bedroom floors (to keep the dust down) while Pete was busy putting up curtain rods. Off in my own little world, all of sudden I heard Pete yelling for me. Thinking he had hurt himself, I dropped the roller (into the tray of sealant splashing it everywhere, including all over myself!) and ran for the spare room, expecting blood or broken limbs, only to find him nowhere to be seen and a spray of water the size of Old Faithful spewing from the wall.


Seconds later the fountain of water stopped at which point I realised where Peter was .. out the front turning off the mains. (Thank goodness this house only has a 5 metre driveway and not a 35 metre one like the last house!) Pete came back inside and explained that he been happily drilling holes for the curtain rod brackets when all of a sudden, water just started gushing everywhere .. at full mains pressure! The little tiny 6.5mm wide hole pictured below let enough water into the room to soak the whole floor and the pressure was high enough that it hit the opposite wall 4 metres away.

The opposite wall contains the built-in robe with its lovely fibreboard sliding doors and brand new laminate shelving, all of which was thoroughly soaked. We grabbed a stack of old towels that were already at the house (must have known we'd need them!) and dried things up as best we could. Then we sat down and stressed out about how much it was going to cost to fix.

The remaining water after we mopped up

After whingeing for a while about "what a stupid place to put a water pipe" and "how are we going to fix it?", I thought it was worth a shot to call the builder and ask why there was a water pipe in the wall, right where a normal sane person would drill to install a curtain rod bracket. Surprise, surprise, the woman on the other end of the phone agreed it wasn't the brightest of things to have done and arranged for their plumber to contact us to get it fixed.

The plumber's first question when he phoned was "what have you done to my water pipe?" to which I responded "MY water pipe has a neat little hole in it because YOU put it in a very stupid place and now MY spare room has an indoor fountain that we don't want!" He arranged to come and fix it the next day with no mention of who was paying for it so we decided that we would just wait and see if we ended up with a bill in the mail. (Another example of the new mentality of refusing to get stressed over things we couldn't really control).

And, for those who just have to know these things, the curtain rod bracket still isn't in ...