Sunday 25 August 2013

A Day in the Garden……
 
Hi Vintage Lovers,

We have had the most beautiful day here and I spent it out in the garden. I have been wanting to get out there for weeks but the bitterly cold weather has kept me inside next to the roaring fire.

I have so many plans for the garden. The last owners of our old lady didn't spend much time looking after her, so her garden needs a lot of TLC now. The bones of the garden are good, but I have decided to clear a lot of the other areas that have become too over grown and untidy. I would like to snap my fingers and have the whole job finished but I am afraid that it will be over a long period of time.

To start with I need to get my clivias planted that I dug up and saved from our last house. That was today's job.



 
The spot I choose for my orange clivias is under this beautiful old tree (if you look close enough you can see the spring blossoms on the tree in the photo) in our front garden.
 
My orange clivias hold a special place in my heart, they were my grandma's, Lala as we used call her. If you have been reading my blog for a while now you may remember that I have blogged about Lala before in one of my previous posts about our 1939 club lounge.

Lala, in her hay day.

Here is the link to the post if you would like to read it again -

My yellow clivias will be planted underneath the fantastic old tree that stands behind the kids basketball hoop.
 
 
 But first I need to clear the garden beds from weeds and other plants.
 A Big Big job that took most of the day.........


 
for Sally and I.


Then planted the clivias around the base of the tree. Clivias love shade and grow in mass clumping which will be perfect beneath this tree.

 
I have left the other plants (on the left in the photo) in the garden bed for now. I will move them down the track when I decide what is happening in the other garden areas.


The yellow clivias made their way under this  fantastic old tree.


We are going to be having the most fantastic weather this week and I am planning to make the most of it and be out in the garden for most of the week.
 
Hope you had a great weekend also.
 
Mel xx
 

 

 

Tuesday 20 August 2013

Let there be Light......

Hi Vintage Lovers,

Yay !!!! We now have lights! 
 
The electrician was here yesterday to put in the rest of the plugs and also the light fittings in the kitchen.
 

It certainly is good to have power and lights back.
 
 
We are really thrilled with all the light fittings.
 
We have chosen two hanging lights over the stove and sink area and then the centre light has an adjustable height pulley system. All three lights are antique bronze with timber bases.
 
There has been only one hiccup, we haven't been able to find the light shades we are after yet. We are really keen to have heritage green glass shades (my favourite colour). The staff at Old Adelaide Restoration have been fantastic and have been going out of their way to find us these shades. They have exhausted all leads in Adelaide and are now trying suppliers in Melbourne. We are keeping our fingers crossed.
 
 

They will look brilliant once the glass light shades go on and also balance the light fitting (it looks a little odd right now).


Our kitchen window is looking fantastic and is starting to take shape. Although we do have a few more hours to do on it yet. Stripping old windows with layers upon layers of paint is not a quick exercise. But well worth the effort in the long run.
 

 Our old Kraft Cheese box looks fabulous on the window sill already.


 
 
Hope you are having a great week.

Mel xx

 

 
 
 

Tuesday 13 August 2013


Battening down the Hatches

Hi Vintages Lovers,

We are having the strangest weather here at the moment. Beautiful sunshine one minute and then rain and gale force winds the next. I don't think the garden knows what it's doing.......
 
 
Some of the trees think it's still winter.............

 
and others are thinking it is spring already.

 
 Some of the roses are in full spring bloom, which I love. So I am not complaining.
 
 
It's so wonderful to see colour in the garden over winter.

 
 
Over last weekend we had the most perfect weather. We spent most the weekend outside and were able to get some garden maintenance done. After being away on holidays we haven't had a chance to get out there and the garden was overgrown with weeds and it has been bugging me. I have had my blinkers on and trying to ignore them!!!!!
 
Over night we had gale force winds. It woke the whole house and this morning as I was getting the kids ready and taking them to school we had torrential rain with gutters overflowing and flooding on our back patio. It has calmed down now but is still bitterly cold and I am thinking of lighting the fires early this afternoon..........
 

 and doing some baking.
 
Nothing better on a bitterly cold winters day.
 
 


Keep warm

Mel xx

 





 
 
 
 

Friday 2 August 2013


Plaster, Plugs and Timber
Hi Vintage Lovers,


Our kitchen is progressing well. The plasterer has now finished the major works that were needed and it looks fantastic. We need to complete the fine detail work as there are still some areas that need attention where previous jobs haven't been finished off as well as they might have been.
 
I couldn't resist trying some of my enamel collection on the bench, even though we are far from finished.
 
The sparky has begun fitting some of the power points above the kitchen bench so we are able to use some electrical items now - it is great be able to boil the kettle again inside!!! We are really happy with how it is all coming together.

There has been a bit of a delay with the light fittings but we should have them in the next week or two. It has not really been that much of a hassle as there is so much to go on with anyway.



There are quite a number of different size and style of skirting boards in our old lady that we found and it has been quite interesting to work out which ones we feel are the original ones.


After some research we decided on this skirting as we are thinking this one would have been part of the original skirting boards with the sizing and mouldings.


Yesterday, Dad and I went to Bone Timber to have a look at timber skirting and architrave mouldings. They have a huge range of timber mouldings. They have a skirting almost identically the same as the one we are after.


Bones also has a wide range of door architrave mouldings. They had exactly what I was looking for. I need to match up some door mouldings for the kitchen cupboards.


The cupboard that has been fitted into the space where the original outside window was before the extension was done. I am wanting to put wooden doors on with the same architrave moulding as the main kitchen doors.


 We have also been paint stripping the kitchen window.
Paint stripping is a horrible job but it must be done if we are to restore the window frame to its original splendour.

 
 

 
 

 
We are half way though this job and will be continuing to work on it over this weekend. 
 
Have a fantastic weekend.
Mel xx