An enchanting house...( but not for me)

We went and had a look at this amazing house

It was in Original but very well maintained condition

The Laundry was as big as a lounge room

The internal steps painted in fantastic colours

This HUGE window open inwards on a HUGE hinge

The Back Deck painted beautifully

That same window from the inside, perhaps the area used to be an indoor garden as it is stepped down.

I was so excited to look through it and had hoped it would work for us as our next home, but no it was not right for our us. But I hope someone buys it who will embrace the quirkiness if it.

Lou xo

A 1950's Apricot Kitchen beauty

 Our house was built in the very late 1950's maybe 1959 or 1960 to be precise. When we bought it had the horrid lilac laminate kitchen which was already old and daggy however in good working order, but down stairs in the work room we found a treasure, it was the homes original kitchen. It has its original Bakelite handles and the doors are painted with a thick glossy apricot coloured enamel paint. Although we always guessed it was the homes original kitchen cabinets, it was confirmed when we gutted the lilac one to make way for our new white kithcen, we found traces of where the apricot one had been attached to the walls. 

The bench tops are made of ply wood and have been painted with a green paint effect to mimic the laminate/melamine bench tops of the day. We have enjoyed using the apricot kitchen as storage in the work room and I had planned to make it into a great cubby house kitchen one day it is too cool to not be used.

But sadly as part of my great clean out, we have decided to part with it and hope someone else will adopt it and love it like we have. 

It is for sale on Ebay at the moment, so we will see soon who its new parnets will be.

Lou x

Our Kitchen now

 We went with  gloss white draws and cupboards, white appliances, which where actually hard to get as all the sales people tried to convince us that white appliances where not trendy and that black was "in" now. Who cares about trendy, I want white and that's all there is to it. We re-polished the very orange cork floor and added a stain of chocolate brown to it to try to soften down the orange tone. After 3 trips down the coast the the Caesarstone show room and loaded with samples and many months of discussion we chose a medium toned brownish/olive/grey coloured stone rather then pure white. For many years I had wanted white stone put after the arrival of our 2 squirrels I started getting my doubts and I also did not want the kitchen to blind you with it's white-dazzling-ness when you enter. We still question if we made the right choice, but what's done is done and it's not being changed anytime in near future and the colour is extremely practical and blends in well with the black smooth cook top.

Here's hubby painting, at night after the squirrels where in bed. Even though we are exhausted, that is often the only time to do any sort of work that requires concentration.

Oh it was such fun living with no kitchen for 6 weeks!

 There are now homes for everything, the microwave is out of harms way and all new cupboards where installed up to the ceiling so now we have so much more storage. The pressed metal took us another 8 weeks of night time and weekend work to cut it all to size and spray paint it with 4 coats oft gloss "white on white" 1/2 strength by Dulux. We had our critic's of the pressed metal but now that it's in we love it and it wipes clean so easily and it's makes for an amazing feature. I add some colour every now an then with flowers or candles just to mix it up a bit and I am sure it will evolve over time but for now we are really enjoying our fresh, white kitchen.

Lou x

All fresh and clean... Our new Kitchen

BEFORE, defiantly BEFORE

We have lived in this house for about 13 years and I remember when we moved in I said to myself that the first thing I would change would be the kitchen as it was u-g-l-y. It's a big kitchen compared to the other rooms in the house, it was a pale purple or lilac as I liked to call it and it had Laura Ashley wallpaper originally on all the walls and on the "feature tiles". I don't know the name of the pattern but it was a cute tiny pink flower with green leaves. The problem with the kitchen was that although it looked outdated, it was in perfect working order. So over the years it kept getting pushed to the bottom of our "to do" list. More urgent things came up such as completely replacing the leaking fibro roof, installing a new bathroom as the floor was so rotten under the bath I was afraid to fill it with water.

BEFORE: see my hand painted green tiles, well, it was nice at the time. No proper home for the microwave or fridge.

 So after 13 years the time finally came to where we could not put it off any longer. By then we had renovated almost the rest of the inside of the house and the old kitchen stood out like a sore thumb. The oven was badly rusting, there was never an exhaust fan so cooking steak in winter with the windows closed was a no go, the cupboards where coming off the hinges and we where running out of storage space now that our 2 squirrels had come along. Many years ago we did a quick spruce up of the kitchen so we replaced the floral wallpaper with green wallpaper and painted over the feature tiles, then a few years later we got rid of the green wallpaper and painted it a much nicer white colour and this is what you see in our "before" photos. 

BEFORE: That rusty oven we placed on our footpath with a sign saying "FREE" and it was taken within 24hrs. It saved us a time consuming trip to the tip.

 So now I will give you a sneak peek of the finished product. We are loving it now, but about 6 months ago we wanted to burn the house down as the kitchen reno was a very stressful experience, but just like having a baby you tend to forget about the bad and focus on the good . We went for a very fresh white kitchen, large draws, room for everything with up the the ceiling cupboards, stone benches and a pressed metal splash back which is also a feature wall. I will show you lots more after pics soon and tell you more about what we did.

AFTER, at long last!

 After many years of dreaming, writing list's, collecting and drawing pictures of kitchen, I pretty much knew exactly everything I wanted. After lots of saving and hunting for great deals, this is what we achieved.

Bye for now Lou x