Tales From the Box

Hello all! You might be wondering why I am suddenly contributing to this blog. Well, put simply, it was time for a little feminine influence and flavour. My loyal and hard-working husband has been, so far, the sole contributor to this blog (it really is his baby). This has made perfect sense – not only did he create this little record of our house and it’s growth over the years, but he has also been the one doing most of the physical and creative labour on the actual house itself. Until now.

The time has come, my friends, to show you what the female half of this partnership has been doing (namely interiors, planning, organising, decorating and “supervising” a lot of the outdoor stuff). So we thought it was about time that I added the odd post here and there for those of you who are interested in that sort of thing. You can expect the same pictures, explanations and whimsical meanderings that you have come to enjoy so far (we hope), just from a slightly more girly point of view (mind you, I’m not that girly – you won’t find any frills here).

So, hello, welcome, thanks for having me, and I hope you find my future posts interesting, informative, or at the very least, pretty. Jo xx

After a months of dry we have hit the wet! The last 2 months has been great for the garden – we have had over 250mms here – and another wet few days on the cards.
The north garden is going along a treat – apart from the silly wallabies who continue to eat anything that isn’t caged away. However i have turned to ‘PossOff’ and it seems to be doing the trick. One very angry wallaby wents nuts and ripped a hole in the ground after nibbling on a possOff’d sprayed-leaf (mmm chilli flavoured).

I have spent some time fixing the edges of the lush thick lawn and everything looks very nice indeed. Hopefully we can get a bit more to get us through the dry of late winter and early spring

Hopefully some of the grevillia’s and callistemons will bush up and match the growth of the native grasses which have gone nuts. Happy to see the bamboo going very well too! Will bring you some more pics of the plants when I get out there next!

The box in 70’s goodness

After many a restart we have finally fixed this silly blog. All the links should be working and hey we have updated the front graphic. Here are some funky pics of the finished house.

You might have missed us and we have missed you. The Kookas have been
at us too – so in spite of extreme laziness here are some updates of
the box. For now – the Kookas rule!

Posted via email from dann’s posterous

Well after nearly a year of non updates, we are back here to share more tales. Though we haven’t blogged our tales, they still have happened. So over the next few weeks I will relay some the tales. We freshly painted the house mid year, but didn’t finish it completely until the week before Christmas where we finally moved into our bedroom (the room that was our living/kitchen) Anyway these pics highlight a few of our gatherings over the past few months.

While we were gone some things have happened around here.

The reasons for our lengthy absence are numerous and complicated. In part they can be blamed upon our somewhat incompetent hosting company(mt), and our somewhat incompetent author (me).

The good news is that due to our thoroughly caffeinated but brilliant sysadmin (myles) we are back resuming usual transmission.

We have had rain. Lots of rain. During May and June we had a series of east coast low pressure systems that dumped nigh on 250mms of rain. That rain filled our tanks good. SO much so that one Saturday morning in June, I awoke to what sounded like a bursting pipe. It was our tank overflowing for the first time (filled from nearly empty to full in a few days). The front lawn (i.e. patch) was flooded too.

We have in the interim done lots. Dodging the rain, I have oiled our new deck about 4 times. Though it has been a thankless job, my piece of advise has been to NOT oil your deck imediately. I started and and oil just sat on top. Going contrary to the directions, the best thing was to let the decking board (our choice was merbau) weather for a few weeks then oil away. The oil then is sucked right up and gives the wood a lovely red colour.

Care of my wonderful mother and brother we completed the downstairs painting. After the primer and then three coats of paint, we were over painting white surfaces, ceiling and all. Now we have our directions pointed to the outside of the house. For the record, we have painted Dulux Whisper White on the interior (low sheen for walls and enamel for skirting/door).

Yes – we are back – more on that later…..

One of the problems with a reno that isn’t discussed (publically at least) is the casualties that stack up for every day of the reno.

For us it started with the usual. Our blinds were broken when we took them off the wall. We broke three glasses packing away the kitchen (what can i say – the wife is clumsy…) and numerous things were damaged from the bucket loads of rain that fell when all of our stuff was sitting wrapped in tarp on our front deck.

Fast forward five months of reno. The wife and I are enjoying are first morning in our new house, and I, being the model husband, rise early to make the wife some breaky. The breakfast would include toast with a smattering of butter and a milky coffee, experted brewed by yours truly. I approached the machine, turned it on and….nothing. Again, turned it on….and nothing. The constant pressing of buttons did nothing to alleviate the situation…

Yes the coffee machine is dead….the reno claims another one…

Now its personal..

For slideshow -click on image

When we moved into The Box some 39 months ago, we were beset from would be vandals who decided that our newly purchase abode would be the best place to scribble their poorly spelled thoughts and feelings. So we purchased some rather crude lightning to light up underneath and around the house to stop this; and it worked. No graffiti or vandlism since.

Fastforward 35 months to renovation when the builders had to remove the lighting to continue the renovation. Almost as soon as it was down the odd little thing started happening (bottles in the front garden, graffiti on the neighbouring lightpole). So that made us think seriously about lights and lighting our house. Its something that isn’t always thought about when doing a reno but a considered lighting scheme can really lift the nightime appearance of a house. So we went for some funky lights at the front door (up and down lights 240v) and some regular downlights under the deck upstairs. The upstairs lights really lift the colorbond which we have added on the front facade and spill out to light up the front yeard quite nicely. However its still too dark to play night cricket. Maybe some flooodlights are in order….

For slideshow -click on image

We are definitely in the home straight of our renovation race. We are at BRDAY +113 and we have only a few days until we are shipped back home.

The deck is the last hurrah, the final act of our stupendous production. And now the decking boards have been layed and the final form of the deck has taken shape.

My brain has officially entered some sort of shutdown procedure so much so that I cannot operate on any creative level, which includes writing my usually witty disarming prose. The only creative thing is the title – but since technically there is no tale (apart from my mush-like-brain), its a failed blog post.

But here are some pretty pictures…