One wall a weekend painting

The long weekend provided us the right impetus to clear out some of the overgrown garden and to continue painting the living/dining room. Three whole days in a row is such a decadent luxury in DIY land and we didn't want to waste it.

One wall a weekend painting. The living/dining area 

Jason got stuck into the painting. The goal is to paint one wall a weekend, so our living room is cleaner and fresher. Small bite size pieces is the method of attack. The most time consuming part is the taping up of the walls for the cutting-in as there are so many timber architraves and strips in this mid-century house.

The finished product...it's like we never painted. Ha!

Jason painting the black timber ceiling beams. Notice how he hasn't taped up. Go  steady hand Jason!

We also have lovely black timber ceiling beams which need to be repainted. Jason used a matte black chalk paint to freshen it up. It provides a crisp contrast to the Queensland maple timber ceiling. He only painted one of the beams and already it has given our living room a real lift.

The finished product...it's like we never painted. Ha!

Most of the changes we have been making to the house are very subtle. When people come to visit us, they don't actually notice if we've done anything new to the house. But that's okay. I kind of think that is the mark of a good restoration/renovation when people think it is as it should be. Hopefully the cumulative effect of all the changes will bring this house back to its former glory.

This one whole section of wall is now finito...as is that one strip of ceiling beam...

And the skip bin was a great investment for the long weekend. We cleared most of the vegetation which was covering our garden shed. It's just tidied that portion of the yard and we were able to give the rest of the garden a much needed prune. Hooray for long weekends!

Skip bin being delivered. It took us one morning to fill up!

Happenings and a house profile

Not a huge amount has been happening around here, and is the main reason for the very quiet blog...can you hear the crickets?

Plans are underway though to tackle a few jobs this coming Queen's Birthday long weekend. A skip bin is being delivered later today - a long overdue garden clean out is required and we have to prune back some of the many established bushes and trees, to bring them back to life.

A mature bottle tree and Birds of Paradise are among the treasures to be found in our garden.

We also plan to paint another living room wall in our one-wall-a-weekend method of attack 

And in other news,  if you don't already read Walk Among the Homes blog, you should! It profiles our new house. You can see the before shots of our mid-mod home HERE. The lovely Elizabeth dropped in one morning, a week or so before we moved in, and took some fab photos of the empty house. Enjoy!

Original joinery at Mid Century home in Brisbane’s south.
Photo by Elizabeth Santillan www.walkamongthehomes.com.au

Hope everyone has a happy and productive long weekend!

Vintage concrete planter and a pencil thin moustache

I received a small concrete planter from my Mum. It's very cute and I placed it at the foot of our entry stairs.

vintage concrete planter

The plan was to paint it but after I posted a picture of it on Instagram there was a public outcry to leave it alone. Who knew an old pot could draw out such emotion? Fortunately I like it the way it is too - patina over paint for me in this instance (although it would look great painted!). And leaving it, as is, obviously appealed to my lazy side!

With some left over money on a gift voucher from a hardware store, we went out to buy a plant for it. I chose a geranium variety called Big Red - apparently they are quite hardy and thrive on neglect. Win, win!

Big Red geranium...no flowers on this one just yet...

On a completely different tangent, Jason has been nurturing some facial hair growth during his Christmas break.

David Niven

He manicured it into a pencil thin moustache - think a dapper David Niven or swashbuckling Errol Flynn...rather than seedy looking petty crim or Gold Coast pimp...

pencil thin moustache

Anyway, I dared Jason to wear it to work today...not actually expecting him to go through with it. Well, he did and there were a few raised eyebrows and embarrassing silences...he's only just changed jobs recently too. Ha, ha!

Somehow, the David Niven vision was not how his work colleagues described his sartorial tastes. Very funny though. He'll be shaving off his David Niven and will revert back to being good ol' Jason.

The end.

In the jungle...

Looking at our garden bed in the backyard you would be forgiven if you thought there was a lion sleeping there tonight. Wimoweh...wimoweh...

overgrown side garden bed

I'm not joking: sometime in the past two years we've just let this part of the garden go wild. There's vines, there's tree seedlings growing which we know we did not plant and so many weeds. It actually doesn't look so bad in the photos but when you see it in real life, it's a mish mash of overgrowing neglect. (Anyone want some random loquat plants?)

Another angle of the neglected overgrown garden

Over the next few weeks we will be steadily weeding it out, removing the unwanted trees and just giving it a general old tidy up. It's a cheap and easy project while we're in between renovation projects...We really ought to have done more on the garden these past four years.

Mulched side yard and a pile of rubbish for the tip

We've mulched in around the little cubby house, as there are a few established Murrayas screening a wire fence that we would like to encourage to grow.

And the best part of all this mulching is that over the past week we've had steady rain. The rainwater tank is filling up and all our plants are singing songs of praise!

I'll keep you updated with our garden progress.

A-mulching we will go...

Heigh-ho the derry-o, a-mulching we will go.

Jason sporting a new look this summer - the akubra is his chapeau of choice this season... 

This past weekend we've concentrated on mulching the back yard garden beds at the Sow's Ear. We had some leftover sugar cane mulch from the front garden makeover and bought another few bales to make a decent start.

This part of the Sow's Ear garden has been neglected for a while...Mulching it forces us to weed it!

It's a good project to tackle, as it forces you to weed the garden beds at the same time. Yikes!

We weeded out all the unwanted little nasties, placed a few layers of newspaper down and then covered it with a thick layer of sugar cane mulch. It instantly lifts the yard - from complete neglect to looking 'cared for' after a morning's work. We'll try to finish the rest of the garden over the next few weekends.

The mulch will keep the soil around our plants nice and moist and give us bang for our buck every time it rains or when we water.

The weather has been incredibly dry and all our plants are suffering from the lack of rain. No matter how much we water, it doesn't seem to be enough to make them thrive...they are just barely existing.

Fortunately, there is rain and showers predicted for all of this week which will be the opportune time to fertilise.

Is anyone else getting into gardening this summer?

Front garden spring makeover progress

Sponsored by Masters

Our front garden spring makeover has great promise!

A before and after of the garden is a bit premature since we’ve only just planted the garden. It needs time to grow. You can however see some before shots HERE.

It might not look like much at the moment because the plants are fairly small… but, in time, with plenty of water and fertiliser we will have a beautiful screening hedge. Jason and I couldn’t be happier.

The wire fence  on the side is a bit of an eyesore, so it will be great to have a nice green and leafy screen

The plants are quite small but we know we have time on our side

It really is a great time of year to get stuck into the garden before the summer heat really stings us. We’re not looking forward to yet another hot summer - we’re glad we’ve tackled this front garden project while the weather is still relatively mild.

Nice and easy is how we like to do things around here, so shopping online with Masters Home Improvements was just the ticket. The Masters Click and Collect service is quite awesome. After I ordered and paid for all of our gardening requirements online one evening, I received an email the next day to say it was ready to pick up.

Loading all the gardening things into the car

You pretty much just go to the Masters store with your order number and within about 10 minutes everything is wheeled out to you on a trolley. And in our case a very big trolley! In and out within 25 minutes… by the time everything was strategically loaded into the back of the car, of course.

So what did we order?

We ordered 20 Murraya plants (14cm) to create a border up one side of a boundary fence. At $5 a pop, the plants are a nice tidy investment for the garden.

Twenty murrayas squeezed in the back of the Subaru

We also ordered a couple of bags of blood and bone to help condition the soil and help fertilise the plants when it came time to plant the little blighters.

Sugar can mulch from Masters

Bales of sugar cane mulch were another must-have for our garden.  I underestimated how much we would need and had to go back a few days later to get three more bales.  Masters has a ‘three bales for $30’ deal which is not bad compared to other hardware places.

Mulching all of our garden beds has really tidied up the front yard. It will keep the weeds at bay, retain the moisture in the soil and will help our new plants thrive.

A good hose makes a good gardener

We bought a new hose to replace a very badly kinked hose that annoyed me every time I used it. The old hose was thrown away and replaced with a shiny new orange hose.  Good hoses make good gardeners is our theory…let’s hope we can prove it!

We also like using a soaker hose when new plants are being established. The 15 metre soaker hose is just the right length for watering all the new Murrayas along the side fence.

Next month when the plants have settled in, I will start to fertilise them with a soluble fertiliser to give them a boost during the growing season and alternate with either a fish emulsion fertiliser or seaweed-based product.

Now all we need is plenty of rain to help our new garden grow. I hope to show you more photos in the next few months to see how everything has fared over the growing season. Stay tuned.

Front garden spring makeover

Sponsored by Masters

Spring has a certain irresistibility, drawing you outdoors to spruce up patches of garden that have been dormant over winter. Well, it has for us.

Now that we have had some of the dead and scraggly trees removed from the front yard, we can start to think about tackling the task of improving the Sow’s Ear’s garden. When we first moved here, we planted some easy-care plants like agaves and agapanthus to tide us over until we built a new front fence. Since we had the fence built last year, the front garden has been neglected somewhat…

We want to plant a green hedge to border the front and side fences. We’ve started getting the garden beds ready by weeding and removing some of the unwanted plants – there’s a bit more to do though, but we’re almost there. 

A bit more weeding to go...

If all goes to plan, we’ll be able to plant the hedge and get the job done quickly and efficiently without too much running around.

The Masters website is a practical and easy way to plan a project like this and you can purchase everything online and organise either home delivery or in-store pick-up.  I’ve gone through the Masters Garden & Outdoor Living section on the website and have started to plan all the things we will require, compiling an online wish list to make this hedge a reality.

Murraya or mock orange plants will be our plant of choice for this hedge. We already have a few established murrayas which seem to be growing well in the garden, so we will stick with that winning formula. The murrayas also produce lovely white fragrant flowers which is always a nice bonus. 

My Masters wish list

On the wish list is: murraya plants, blood and bone, sugar cane mulch, garden hose, soaker hose and garden tools like pruners and garden fork - all the practical stuff that help to make a garden grow.

I hope to buy everything on our list at Masters this week so that we can get planting on the weekend. I’ll be taking advantage of the click and collect service too, where I can pay for my items online and then collect it in-store.

If you are a DIY novice, there are also short ‘how to’ videos and articles on the Masters website to help you along the way – from how to make compost to building a retaining wall. And if you hang-out on social media, Masters’ Facebook  and Twitter page have expert advice and there are regular live-chat advice sessions with gardening and painting/colour experts who will be able to answer any of your questions.

So, what are your plans this spring? Is it all about the garden or have you got another spring project on the go?

He came, he saw, he lopped

We had a few old trees lopped today by old Bob the tree lopper. I actually just rang for a quote and Bob turned up within the hour of my first call. He gave a me a quote which seemed okay and then said he could do it straight away as he had a free moment or two.

You can see the dead grevillea. It used to be such a beauty too. 

Seriously, the guy was a complete trooper. No nonsense. Just a man and his chainsaw (and an extension ladder).

We had the large dead grevillea removed. Jason was not making much of a dent in it with his hand saw...and had lost hope! When he started toying with the idea of buying a chainsaw, I knew it was time to call in a tree lopper. As much as I tease dear Jason on the blog, I am rather fond of his limbs and would hate for him to be without them! A chainsaw is an unforgiving tool in the wrong hands.

Anyway, the poor old grevillea had apparently become too top heavy over time and had split down the middle of its main branch, according to Bob...Very sad but we needed to get rid of it sooner rather than later...as it was becoming a landmark for the Sow's Ear. ("Yes, you can't miss us. We're the white house, the one with the dead tree out the front," I'd explain to first-time visitors looking for the Sow's Ear).

Bob removing all the smaller trees first. Didn't mean to get such an unflattering shot of Bob...

Bob also removed about nine other smaller trees which were planted too close together and were really under-performing. There were also some weed trees which had started growing of their own accord (think medium Chinese Elm and umbrella trees). Good old Bob poisoned all the stumps which he had cut down to ground-level too.

We left all the mock orange trees (murrayas), the frangipani and a couple of the better established natives. So now we have a little more room to breathe down this section of the garden...and we can plan our next garden project to spruce up the joint.

Wall mural

If you had told me at the start of the weekend that I would graffiti our side fence, I would've responded BS!

For some inexplicable reason, I was compelled to go through our stockpile of spray paints and began vandalising our old fence like a mad woman. As you do on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I know, why wouldn't I just paint the valance instead? That would take all the glory from out-of-action Jason, that's why!

Anyway, I had fantastic ideas which I sketched on paper and when it came to transposing it on a larger scale onto the corrugated iron fence it did not work as well as I liked. I take my hat off to the graffiti/street artists of the world (not the tag vandals because there's no talent in that) as spray painting is not as easy as they make it look!

This is one of my favourite street art images found in Melbourne.

image from here

I also had visions of an abstract mural similar to the one found in the modernist Rose Siedler House in Sydney...

But I will need to work myself up to something as fancy as the stencil graffiti and abstract murals. So in the meantime, I'm sticking to basic spring flowers - a little bit of a nod to Orla Kiely, the great pattern reinterpreter.

The corrugated iron fence is not the prettiest thing in the world. Jason and I are happy enough to make it a blank canvas for something more interesting. We will change it every few months depending on what captures our imagination. I have hope the kids will do something cool for summer.

The painted fence will probably be the only bit of spring colour that we will see in the Sow's Ear's garden this year!

Spraying bindii and emus

Spring is on its way. I know because I have a strong compulsion to wander around the Sow's Ear's gardens...not that they are really worthy of being classified as gardens with the amount of weeds entwined through the plants!

On the weekend Jason spent most of Saturday morning attending to his valance - it needed to be sanded back slightly, the ends primed and then gap filled. He will be able to paint it next weekend if the weather is good.

bindii

I spent the weekend spraying all the bindii with herbicide - the bindii seems quite prolific as always. This year I just used a pump spray rather than the spray which hooks up to the water hose - I couldn't be bothered hand weeding either after I injured my back earlier this year. I have my fingers crossed that I got to the weeds in time before they develop their prickly spurs. Nothing worse than tiptoeing in bare feet through the minefield that is a bindii-infested lawn!

herbicide spray

I also replanted some new herbs in the laundry tub planter and sowed seeds for rocket, carrots and coriander in the other laundry tub that we have in the yard. You see we are a two laundry tub planter family. Don't be jealous.

Last of the parsley in a Midwinter pitcher. 

I'll show you the planters when they are flush with new growth  - at the moment they look so tiny. We have lots of jobs around the yard over the next month.

And to go completely off-tangent, yesterday we took the kids to the zoo to see the koalas and feed the kangaroos. We had the best day communing with the marsupials and other Australian fauna.

I will leave you with this photo of an emu...just because I can.

I have a morbid fear of emus... I did snatch a photo of one as I scurried past.

Vintage concrete planters

Love them or hate them...it seems like the concrete planter is having a renaissance of sorts with happy homemaking gardeners.

This pair was a roadside find last Christmas. The faux barrel shape design is kind of quaint but you should've seen Jason's face when he first saw them. That 'how many more plants do you want to kill?' kind of look.

We just planted some jade plant cuttings in them as, I'm afraid, succulents are the only things which I can manage to keep alive. And it helps that the cuttings came from #1 Son's terrarium science project. Recycling is the name of the game.

(It may take a good while before the measly cuttings become more impressive!)

Some of the best vintage concrete planters in Brisbane can be found via Katherine at theoldboathouse who has a shop in the Cottage Garden Nursery in East Brisbane. She finds the coolest designs.

vintage concrete planters
image from Katherine's instagram feed

And here is another fabulous example of a concrete planter I found while browsing the net. How cool is this? Deliciously perfect for a mid-century home.

Willy Guhl cement plant pot from Angelucci

Concentrating on the front garden

Over the past few weekends, we've been working on our front yard...nothing too drastic, just weeding and clearing out garden beds. It is a low-cost project as we hunker down for a Brisbane winter.

When we first moved into the Sow's Ear we planted quite a few agaves which have matured into great beauties. Now they are growing pups.

Agaves in the garden beds

Today, we transplanted some of the larger agaves into a side garden bed and and have started clearing some old sword ferns which have grown out of control. We'll spend the next few weekends getting everything up to scratch.

And in very sad news, one of our nicest flowering grevilleas is dying. Over the past month we noticed its leaves were browning off and now it is looking quite decrepit. We're going to give it a severe prune and hope that it may grow back. If it doesn't come good, it will have to be pulled out. Boo!

dying grevillea

Garden edging

So much for the big plans this Easter long weekend. Gone are the days where I put it out there on the blog about our proposed plans and magic just happens...

We pretty much just mooched around the place eating lots of chocolate Easter eggs. I'm still not 100 per cent with the dodgy back. I've been taking it very easy while Jason's been around.

Galvanised steel stakes securing the timber sleepers into place.
You can see the old timber joins which have split and no longer hold up the sleepers

We did tackle a couple of smaller jobs though, but the best thing was the discovery of galvanised steel edging stakes. Jason bought a few to repair the timber sleepers which are used as garden edging in our yard.

The sleepers used to be secured with wooden joins which have split over time and the sleepers have fallen over making things look messy.

Another view of how the stakes work.
You probably don't need the two stakes on either side - Jason's just super-cautious.
One would probably  suffice.

Steel edging

They work quite well and it has improved the overall look of the yard to have our garden edging upright again. It's not a big job, but gee it has a big impact in making a garden look neat and tidy.

We still have so much to do on our yard...it's just finding the motivation at the moment to throw ourselves into it.

Day of the triffids...kind of

I've just read Day of the Triffids for bookclub; a timely read after one of our old native trees was uprooted in the storms that hit Brisbane late last month. Trees are not as harmless as they seem... especially when they uproot themselves and try to move around!

Anyway, our tree lopper and his team came around first thing yesterday morning to remove the not-quite-felled tree. It was a pretty big job, as the tree was taller than our house and was wedged into a mango tree. It needed to be removed before it rolled over in the next storm.

If you squint you can just see the hi-vis tree guy suspended on the tree. He was swinging here, there and everywhere to cut back most of the branches. Like Tarzan!

It was an entertaining three hours for me. Before the tree was lopped I was horrified about how much it was going to cost to remove and set us back...but after watching them do their job, all the resentment had vanished.

It's definitely not a job for the DIY amateur. Each cut was carefully considered and the tree came down relatively smoothly.

Cutting up the trunk into manageable sizes

The kids can run around the backyard more freely now the tree is gone. We're also going to plant more lilly pillys to fill in the gap left by the big old tree.

Tree business

That storm that hit South East Queensland last weekend was a doozy. These 'once in a hundred years' weather events seem to be occurring biennially.

We were lucky that the Sow's Ear was unscathed by the destructive winds. We half expected to wake up after the worst of it to find a bit of the Sow's Ear in the neighbour's yard...It really was that bad.

The tree has wedged itself into another tree

What we did find the next morning was an uprooted tree which wedged itself into our Mango tree. Yikes.

Luckily the tree was leaning away from the house

We were really relieved that it didn't hurt anyone or damage anything...it's not going anywhere (unless there is another once in a hundred years storm) now that it's entwined with the other tree.

If you are out and about, you will see lots of uprooted native trees in parks and footpaths across Brisbane. It is such a strange sight to see all these massive trees lying prone on the ground (I've just finished reading Day of the Triffids - you never look at trees the same way again after reading that).

Also, I'd never want to experience the cyclones that hit Far North Queensland every summer. This storm was nothing compared to what they experience so regularly!

Neighbour's tree which was uprooted by the storm. Fortunately, it didn't damage the fence.

Anyway our falling down tree is going to be a pain in the arse to remove...Hmmm, no Jason DIY for this little project. We've called in the tree loppers and it's going to cost a motza to remove.

In many ways, it would've been better if it had just fallen on the ground, but I guess that was not in the divine plan.

Tree pulled away from the roots and splitting the corrugated iron fence

Let's hope this tree lopper is a better lopper than he is speller.

You know, we only just noticed the spelling error ourselves. Bahahaha!

 p.s Our hearts go out to everyone affected by the floods yet again. It really is a cruel world at times.