Sunday, February 5, 2012

inside our house

The second of the photo challenge topics I'm taking on is 'inside your house'.

My first inclination is to show you all the crappy, broken bits since sometimes that's all I can see day to day. But that's not very interesting, is it. I'll get a little of that out of my system and then move on.
We intended to tile behind the laundry sink, you know, years back but there was the issue of smoothing it out where the sink meets the wall. And, uh, who ever goes in the laundry anyway apart from me? 'Temporary' (permanent) water spout fashioned by resourceful plumber out of some pipe. Old rainwater tap far right.
All the movement from our reactive clay soils meets at this point in the hallway. Nice, huh? Perhaps we could put a frame around it. Okay, moving on.
 A pretty feature of the old part of our house.
When we moved in the shed was full of all sorts of things, including several old wardrobes in this style. There's pretty much no built-in storage so we make do with these old wardrobes. They have a kind of charm and also stop us from accumulating too many clothes.
When we had the original floorboards polished, the floor in the study was too damaged by white ants to survive sanding. I took to it with filler and then Andy painted layers: first a flat black, then a couple of coats of a gold powder that had to be mixed in a medium, then a clear finishing coat. The idea was that it would wear gradually and the black would show through in patches. I did this frilly edge where it meets the 'good' floorboards. It has aged just as we hoped. Yay!
Most of the doors in our extension were from the fantastic Adelaide & Rural Salvage. These cut glass doors cast beautiful shadows in our kitchen in the late afternoon.

Our individual coloured towel system works really well to avoid arguments over whose soggy towel is on the floor.

 The piano is a battered old ex-pianola. It's a quarter tone out so unfortunately not conducive to Jasper/Charlie piano/guitar play-alongs.
If we ever built again I would absolutely, totally do polished concrete again. Best floor ever. The dirt just blends right in and when you bother to clean it, you get a glowing expanse. This used 'Brightonlite' cement and quartz aggregate from Angaston.
 Can you see my friend?
 Dust-catcher shelf above the kitchen cupboards. See my hilarious joke?
Witchard cape on Clem's cupboard.
 Blackboard paint was a much cheaper alternative to tiling in the kitchen and has worked a treat for shopping lists.
 Window of Jasper-made treasures, recently de-cluttered and dusted. Small hanging person-art from here.
Lastly, here are a couple of things I sit and look at a number of times each day. Guess which room?
(Kind of mezzanine shelf which is the top of a cupboard built into the room behind.)

I hope you have enjoyed a little peek into our home.

- Jane x

16 comments:

  1. I love that your home is oozing character :-)

    That cut glass door is absolutely gorgeous.

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    1. Thank you :) Even better, the old doors worked out quite a lot cheaper than buying new as far as I recall!

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  2. Love your 'new/old' doors - gorgeous!
    Typically, I spent the longest looking at the pic of your books - I love checking out other people's libraries!

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    1. Me too on the books. The criteria for the books in that photo was pretty much 'ones we won't want to get hold of in a hurry' since it's up inaccessibly high.
      One of the later photo topics is 'your favourite books' and I was thinking about that today and realised many of my absolute favourites have been lent out ("you must read this!") and never came back. Oh well, they are probably living good book-lives out there.

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  3. Replies
    1. Thank you Anne - it's quite a favourite part of the house that came out of something potentially beyond salvage. Pretty creaky but still holding up!

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  4. I'm really happy to hear you love your polished concrete floor as this is the floor we are going for in our new home. One question, was the brighton light much more expensive than plain grey concrete? And who did you get to do it? Love all your pics.

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  5. Oh Harriet I'm excited for anyone who chooses polished concrete :)
    To be honest I can't remember how much more expensive the Brightonlite was, hmm, it was a bit more but I don't think ridiculously much? What was a little odd was seeing all the 'pretty' concrete that ends up underground in the deep foundations, hah, because it all has to be the same stuff.
    I will see if I can dig up the name of the people who did the finishing on it and email you.

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  6. Oooh. We had a spot like that in our hallway that was only fixed with underpinning... huge holes were dug under each corner and some mid-wall sections of the house and then filled with concrete. That reduced it to a recurring crack 1 inch wide insead of half that house trying to fall off. Old houses are beautiful, but they really don't like clay :(

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    1. Hmm, yes... we had underpinning like that done along our northern outer wall to stop that just slowly falling into the neighbour's yard... seems to have shifted the movement to the centre of the house. Also we had a large tree removed from the front which has probably shifted everything around a bit too. I spent so long filling/patching that section in the hall some years back, I'm inclined for the time being to just leave it be and go look at some pretty fabric instead :)

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  7. I loved the tour! I am fully going to copy you with the chalkboard above the kitchen cabinets. Those concrete floors are amazing. And we have the exact same clay problem, I repair it one season only to have it crack again with the change in weather! I've decided it is just old house charm.

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  8. I love all these pictures around your house! And the windows are GORGEOUS!

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  9. great idea about the towels but I bet you still end up picking them up ! They are the nicest looking polished concrete floors I Have seen by the way.

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  10. Oh I loved having a good nosey around your home! You have quite a few areas similar to us (the last book pile shot appears all over our home, along with unfinished plaster ;) ) and I really like the floor paint idea with layers to wear down. We had old boards in our last 2 houses (all sanded my lovely husband) but as we had to practically re-build our current home it's had new oak boards laid throughout, otherwise I'd be borrowing the black/gold idea. Fabulous. Bethx

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  11. And the inside too! How beautiful! You are obviously very artistic with a great eye for detail. I WANT YOUR HOUSE!!! (please?)

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  12. I love the chalkboard! I definitely need one like that in our kitchen. ‘Crappy and broken bits’ aside, you have a nice home, though I’m kind of scared of your ‘friend’ up there. I agree with the concrete flooring, just a little swipe and clean to make it shiny and sparkle! =)
    Mary Martin

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Hey, I would really love to know what you think. Go on!

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