Nikki and Michael took their work seriously when I asked them to help me paint the plywood that will hold their mattresses in their new bunk beds.

Vi played quietly near us. David was pretty content too, worn on my front with occasional breastfeeding breaks.

The job took us around two hours. It is easier to paint while the kids are asleep, but not nearly as memorable!

Today I am excited to share before, after, and in-progress photos of our year-long bedroom transformation.

My mum, landscaper extraordinaire, has a t-shirt that says “I fought the lawn, and the lawn won.” That sums up how I felt when I tried in October to mow the grass I planted in August.

Instructions on the grass seed packet said to wait six weeks before mowing.

The instruction manual for my push reel mower says “don’t let the grass get too tall.” The manufacturer recommends cutting the grass on a weekly basis.

Right.

I decided just to pile in, pushing the manual mower at a brisk pace. This was fine over my existing lawn, but the mower got clogged and stopped abruptly when I hit the new patch of tall grass. Fortunately, I always wear gardening gloves when I mow so I can unclog the mower. Unclogged, I rammed the mower into the tall patch again. And again. And again.

About the only result I was achieving was tearing the new grass out by the roots.

I kept trying, squaring off against this stubborn patch of lawn.

Then I looked at the lawn from a different angle, and I noticed that most of the blades of grass were lying in a generally diagonal direction.

Ready to give up, I tried one more time, this time with the direction of growth. And it worked!

I pushed the mower a few inches forward, then pulled it back toward me to quickly unclog the blades. Back and forth, inch by inch, and with all the forward momentum I could muster, I churned my way through on the diagonal.

I fought the lawn, and this time I’d call it a draw.

I’m linking this post to MaryAnne’s Learning Laboratory series.

a rough floorplan of our house, coloured to match the scheme I created

I thoroughly enjoyed looking at paint samples and creating a colour scheme for the interior of our house. Since we don’t have any plans to move, real estate beige is off the radar. I decided instead to go for colour. Lots of colour. A different colour in every room!

I chose a yellow-beige to tie everything together. One of the things I disliked about the beige colour scheme an interior decorate came up with for me was that the pinky-beige she suggested made our furniture look dull and dirty. The yellow-beige I opted for brightens the sofa instead. Amazing what a change of colour can do.

For the curious, the details of the colour scheme I have chosen are set out in the table below:

Ben hoists our heavy blackout-lined curtains from Egypt to check the length on our Perth walls

Ben took a couple days off work last week to give us a four-day weekend. We used three days for full-on home improvement, and I am pleased to report that the box room is no more.

We now have an empty shell that has been patched and plastered: floor (where the fake fireplace was), ceiling, and all four walls.

Next steps: making a pelmet, sanding the woodwork around the doors and windows, cleaning the woodwork, walls and ceiling, priming and painting, fixing new cornice and skirting boards, and moving our furniture into our new bedroom.

Removing 90 years of paint is as sticky and messy as it looks.

However, you never realise just how sticky and messy it is until you begin.

And once you begin, you have to finish.

Refinish, that is.

Spending a solid week on this one doorframe has caused us to reconsider the scope of our project. We still plan to strip the remaining doorframes ourselves, but we’ll replace the skirting throughout the house rather than stripping it back and removing the lead paint ourselves.

This revised approach will allow us to match the skirting board in the old and new parts of the house, and it will greatly reduce the amount of quality time spent with Citristrip® and scraper.

Ever since our tenth anniversary celebration, Ben and I have been looking forward to living in a house we own, with walls that stand alone – not touching another person’s house.

We moved in on Wednesday, and every morning I wake up thinking how blessed we are to be homeowners!

We are especially fortunate to be taking over beautiful mature gardens in our backyard. Pruning is a new pastime, and I am looking forward to replacing a huge amount of cactus in the front garden with a veggie patch.

Nikki will turn three in September, while her newest sibling is still a newborn. Realising this early in my pregnancy, I tried to think of a gift that would be engrossing for Nikki and make her feel very special at the same time.

Since March I have been bringing all the elements of a dollhouse together. Baba and I are providing the house (from eBay), the wooden furniture (also from eBay), and the dolls (from Etsy seller nakedpeggies). To make the house a home, generous family members have hand-crafted soft furnishings including bedspreads, rugs, and wall-hangings.

It is so much fun to think that every aspect of this gift was either pre-loved or hand-made just for Nikki. All the wonderful contributors used odds and ends of fabric, yarn, and thread they already had around the house. When everything comes together the dollhouse will have an eclectic, cosy feel far surpassing anything we could have bought off the shelf. Most especially, every item will have a name behind it: the name of someone who loves Nikki very much!

Last night, in a continuation of my nesting phase, Ben and I worked together on some finishing touches to this project. I wrapped the parcels that have come from America. Ben installed small hooks to hang the curtain Audrey sewed to go across the front of the house. I touched up the paint. Ben threaded a cord through Audrey’s curtain. I added a fusible interface backing to the wall-hangings Erin and Patrick cross-stitched, and stuck Velcro to them so they can be hung.

I sneaked the dollhouse outside for a quick photo today so you can see how far we have come with the repainting.

before (with furniture for scale)	after

Clean, dry, and snug under a large sheet, the dollhouse will soon be ready for its September début!

For our tenth wedding anniversary, Ben planned a mini holiday at a surprise location. He kept me guessing right ’til the last minute by packing our passports, but it turned out he had a road trip in mind!

We drove down Australia’s beautiful southwest coast to our destination: an amazing seaside mansion near Bunbury. As we basked in our surroundings, I began to contemplate the luxury of living in a home that is not attached to someone else’s house. This would be a first in our ten years of marriage and could be a possibility for us if we stay in Australia.

During our three-night stay, we explored the surrounding region which includes a cheese factory, award-winning winery with an excellent restaurant, an old-growth forest, and places to run and play near Busselton Jetty.

 

 

 

We enjoyed a sunset walk just outside our house and Ben took our favourite tenth anniversary photo with the sun setting over the Indian Ocean as the backdrop.

A beautiful finale to the first ten years of our marriage, brimming with promise for the decades to come!