in the night sky

Sleepy Bum!

noreply@blogger.com (In The Night Sky) — Tue, 21 Apr 2015 09:30:00 +0000

Well, hello. Been some time, hasn't it? Here's something nice to look at though to make up for it.

This new quilt cover set came courtesy of Sleepy Bum, who asked me to road test one of their quilt cover sets and let you know all about it. Sleepy Bum is an Australian company which has the most enormous range of bed linen I've come across on the one site - have a look and you'll see what I mean - loads of colours, patterns and styles to choose from, with a section of quilts for kids as well.

I was a bit overwhelmed when it came to choosing a set, but to make selecting a quilt cover easier the site allows you to filter by patterns, solid colours, size, colour, material or thread count. To keep things simple I searched by patterns and colour, knowing that I wanted something with black in it.

After going through all the options, I chose the Athens In Grid Lines Stripes set. This set comes with a quilt cover, 2 pillow cases and a flat sheet all made from 200 thread count, 100% combed cotton. The bit I liked best? Both the quilt cover and pillow cases are reversible. That means 4 different looks from the same quilt set - grid lines & grid lines, grid lines & stripes, stripes & stripes or stripes & grid lines!

The combed cotton fabric used for the cover is super soft and means that you don't end up with lots of creases in the cover or cases after washing, so everything is very easy care. I also found that the fabric was nice and warm to sleep under/on.

Stripes & stripes - my favourite combination.

I think this is great value bedding for the price. All orders over $99 receive free shipping and there is also a 30 day money back guarantee. Most items are also currently on sale, so there's no reason not to go and have a look at Sleepy Bum right now :)

Giveaway Reminder

noreply@blogger.com (In The Night Sky) — Wed, 17 Dec 2014 08:00:00 +0000

A reminder that there are still 3 days to enter the very cool Vintage LED giveaway.

There are 4 White Night pendant kits to give away to 4 winners - I was initially running this giveaway on Instagram as well as here on the blog, but nobody was interested over on Instagram (why?), so I'm just running it here on the blog now. If you would like the possibility of winning one of these kits and haven't already entered, please do so!

Each pendant kit contains the following:

* White silicon pendant with 2 metre white cord
* White baseplate and screws
* G125 space LED Edison screw 3W bulb (which lasts for 30,000 hours!)

This giveaway is open to Australian residents (these kits won't work outside of here) and all you need to do to enter is scroll down to the previous post (or click here) and follow the Rafflecopter instructions.

Vintage LED Giveaway!

noreply@blogger.com (In The Night Sky) — Sun, 14 Dec 2014 13:00:00 +0000

Vintage LED is a Melbourne-based company which specialises in LED bulbs that replicate the look of vintage style carbon filament light bulbs (aka Edison bulbs), but with the bonuses of being both wallet and environment friendly. If you've been reading the blog recently you will know that 2 new pendant lights were installed over the kitchen island and the pendants use Edison bulbs, so I have a little experience in shopping for this type of bulb. While LED bulbs may cost more than standard energy saving bulbs initially, the real bonus is that they last significantly longer and are much cheaper to run, using just 5-10% of the power of an incandescent bulb, and 30% of a CFL bulb.

Vintage LED stock not only bulbs but also a range of pendant light kits and accessories for you to create a cool lighting look in your home. You can read more about Vintage LED and see more of their range of products by visiting their website here. Vintage LED sent me some globes to test out so I put them to use in the aforementioned kitchen pendants. Below on the right is Vintage LED's bulb, and on the left, one of the Edison style bulbs we bought with the pendants. As you can see, the Vintage LED bulb has the same warm white tone and low glare as the non-LED bulb.

You can also change the look of your pendants by switching around the style of bulb you use. I changed to one of Vintage LED's round bulbs and really liked the way it looked against the square shape of the pendant.

Now to the best bit - the giveaway! Vintage LED are generously giving away 4 of their White Night pendant kits (pictured below) just in time to snag yourself a little Christmas present ;) The kits come with everything you will need (including the bulb) to create a new lighting look in a room of your home (with the help of an electrician). I will be giving away 2 of the kits here on the blog and 2 via my Instagram account. To enter here on the blog, just follow the instructions on Rafflecopter below, otherwise head on over to Instagram and enter there (feel free to enter both ways).

Giveaway ends on Saturday, 20 December 2014 and all prizes will be sent to the winners from Vintage LED.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Powder Room: Swans!

noreply@blogger.com (In The Night Sky) — Thu, 04 Dec 2014 08:55:00 +0000

So around the time the bathroom was renovated, I decided to wallpaper the walls of our second toilet which adjoins the laundry (I call it the powder room because it just sounds better, but for it to be so officially I think it has to have a basin in there?). Anyway, here it is. Of course there were issues - I didn't pay attention at one point and messed up cutting the lengths which threw the pattern out of whack necessitating another roll to be ordered, but that's just how these things sometimes go.

It's not everyone's cup of tea but I'm really pleased with how it turned out, despite how awkward a job it was - wallpapering the smallest room in the house was a challenge, that's for sure.

The wallpaper is By Lindholm from Wallpaper Direct - quick delivery too!

The Bathroom: Supplies List

noreply@blogger.com (In The Night Sky) — Wed, 05 Nov 2014 09:46:00 +0000

First things first - the black and white towels which a few people wanted to know about of course were the only thing I didn't buy here. They're from Hawaii, and bought before the bathroom renovation was planned, but at a bargain $6 each they were too good to pass up! Now we have black towels too, which I love, but they left a halo of black fluff everywhere the first few times we used them.

Here's a recap of the full bathroom renovation, which took 12 days from start to finish:

Days 1 & 2: demolition of old bathroom
Days 3 - 11: construction of new bathroom
Day 12: painting, hanging prints, etc.

Summaries of the demolition and days 1 - 4 here, and days 5- 9 here. (The first 2 days are Demo Day 1 and Demo Day 2 and then the renovation proper starts on Day 1). We sourced all the materials by driving (almost) all over Melbourne over 2 weekends and visiting more Bunnings and Masters stores than I care to ever see for a long time. Below is a list of where everything came from and some notes on how some things are faring.

Basin tapware: Phoenix Aria Lever
Very happy with these, well made, great price and Australian made.

Shaving/Medicine Cabinet: from Bunnings on sale, no longer on website.

Shaving mirror: Kmart (not on website but similar at IKEA for $6, $7 at Kmart!)

Vase: Bed Bath N'Table, old but they have similar styles available
Toothbrush holder: Freedom, on sale, no longer available

Handwash dispenser: Morgan & Finch Ritz
The marble is porous so can mark if soap is left to dry on it.

Vanity unit: Marbletrend Flinders Vanity (3 Tap Holes)
Great for an off-the-shelf vanity, good price and has soft close doors and drawers.

Black Towels: Canningvale Corduroy Rib
They're meant to be fast drying and absorbent - absorbent yes, but not so quick on the drying time.

Shower head: Brodware Neu England (we got the shower head only on special at E & S Trading, not the set which includes the taps).

Standard shower head with no fancy settings like a massage option, but the head is fully adjustable. Not super high water pressure but that's probably the plumbing, not the shower head itself. Great quality and Australian made.

Bath/Shower Mixer/Diverter: Brodware Neu England

Our splurge item. We found it really hard to find taps, shower heads and diverters which complemented each other. We'd find a range of taps we liked, then there would be no matching shower head, or no diverter option at all, and that's how we came to have a mix of Phoenix and Brodware fittings.

Bath Spout: Phoenix Aria Lever

We used just the spout from the set as we couldn't find a spout sold solo that blended with the other fittings.

Bath Mat: Peter Morrissey Plush Bath Mat

I'm going to buy another, it's so soft and dries quickly. IKEA have a very similar bath mat for half the price, but it's half the size of this one.

Toilet: Mondella Rococo

Bath: Ascot Cortex

Bath Screen: Highgrove Nova

This ended up being swapped for another screen at the last minute when the measurements were miscalculated, so not sure where the tradie got the replacement screen from, but this is the cheapest around.

Towel Rail/Hand Towel Ring/Toilet Paper Holder: Brewers Project - rail, ring and holder

One of the cheapest ranges at Masters but also one of the nicest looking. Good quality for the price.

Subway Tiles: Johnson Tiles 200 x 100 'Waringa White'

Hexagon Floor Tiles: Elegance Tiles 8cm Hex

Black and White Prints: Private Manhattan and Well Read, Leigh Viner

Toilet brush: Morgan & Finch Ritz

The brush has black bristles which should keep it looking nice for a lot longer than it's white-bristled counterparts.

Paint: Dulux Lexicon Quarter Strength

That's it!

The Bathroom: A 12 Day Renovation [Complete!]

noreply@blogger.com (In The Night Sky) — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 05:03:00 +0000

Here's the new and completely finished bathroom! It took 12 days to renovate from start to finish (the post title kinda gives that away) and for once we have a room that is 100% done. I'll do another post with a list of where everything came from soon, but before then you can see what the room looked like before we started and how we got to our new bathroom here and here.

It's been just over a month since the renovation was finished and the biggest surprise we've found so far is just how easy this room is to keep clean, despite it being mostly floor to ceiling white. I thought that the floor might be difficult to maintain, but the matte finish on the tiles seems to make keeping the floor clean much easier compared to the gloss floor tiles we previously had in here.

The bathroom turned out exactly how I thought it would and it's just so much nicer to be in this room now - it's brighter, feels more spacious thanks to the layout change and there's a bath. I LOVE baths.

A Tour Through Blogland

noreply@blogger.com (In The Night Sky) — Mon, 15 Sep 2014 10:29:00 +0000

I have been invited on A Tour through Blogland by Michelle of Jarrah Jungle - thanks, Michelle! Be sure to stop by Michelle's blog and have a read through her renovations, recipes and book reviews, she is one busy lady over there in Perth.

The tour consists of 4 questions for me to answer so here goes:

1) What am I working on?

Finishing up the toilet room/powder room, whatever you want to call it. We actually tiled the floor and painted the walls when we did our laundry renovation about a year ago (the toilet adjoins the laundry), but I decided about 6 weeks ago that the walls needed to be wallpapered (above left). There is a finishing touch or two to do before that project gets a post. I liked this wallpaper as soon as I saw it (I have no particular fondness for swans in case you are wondering). We also just finished having our bathroom renovated (not posted yet either) and that's the new bath in the pic on the right.

2) How does my work differ from others in the DIY/Decorating genre?

I don't think it does, I'm just one in a sea of DIY/Decorating blogs. I make, paint and renovate like the rest of them. I decorate my home mostly with black, white and grey, while most blogs I read tend to incorporate more colour - that's a difference I guess.

3) Why do I write what I do?

Not sure, and some days I do wonder why I blog. Maybe it is a little odd to put pictures of your house on the internet? I can't decide. I have found other blogger's posts on putting in a pool or renovating a laundry helpful though, so when I do a post on our renovations, I'm just adding my 2 cents really. I try to blog only when I have something decent to share, so maybe once a week. I did post more often a while back, but it was a bunch of nonsense so I hit the delete button on those posts.

4) How does your writing/creating process work?

I take photos and put them in the post and then write the post around the photos. I don't think too much about what I write (that's probably obvious), I just try and keep things straightforward if I'm describing how I/we did something. I include the problems and stuff ups too because it's important to show that renovating is a disaster prone endeavour at the best of times. I blog mostly on weekends, although I like to take a couple of days to write a post - it's too much work all at once. It's just a hobby after all!

So thank you for reading my A Tour through Blogland and once again, thank you Michelle for the invitation to participate.

Now, I get to nominate 2 bloggers to pass this on to. I was supposed to email my 2 bloggers to warn them but I didn't get a chance, but I am nominating KL of Eternalicons and Laura of Elsee blog (ladies, if you are happy to play along, just answer the 4 questions above in your own blog post and then nominate your own 2 bloggers to pass this on to). I was also meant to post a little about each of my 2 choices - KL embraces plenty of black like me and is in the middle of building a beautiful home, while Laura has some DIYs to covet (headboard and tufted banquette to name two) and recently renovated her kitchen which is so pretty! I think you should just click over and have a read to find out more!

The Bathroom: A 12 Day Renovation [Part 2]

noreply@blogger.com (In The Night Sky) — Sun, 07 Sep 2014 09:14:00 +0000

Following on from Part 1 of the bathroom renovation (scroll down to see or just click here), the second week rolled around and was mostly devoted to tiling. Day 5 (Monday) the tiler came and the subways were installed - I was home for this and had to keep sneaking a peak here and there, too exciting! This was a full 8am - 4pm day. Some of these photos aren't as clear as I'd like them to be, I seem to suck at photo taking lately.

This is the other side of the room, specifically the new toilet space. At this point the area looked really small to me, but the measurements were all OK and within regulations so all good.

Day 6 (Tuesday) was grouting day for the walls, and the hex floor tiles were laid. We weren't home for this so we were dying to see it after work. The excitement didn't last long as when we got home and saw the wall above the bath we just stared in disbelief - some of the tiles on the wall were a different white than the others and it just looked terrible, like we had tried to achieve some weird, subway tile feature wall (not really obvious here, but in person it was). Complete WTF moment. Another 8am - 4pm day for the tiler, and about 5 hours of swearing for us.

Day 7 (Wednesday) was supposed to be the end of the tiling but after the subway tile drama of Day 6, only the grouting of the floor tiles got done. We found a solution for the mismatched tiles above the bath - the tiler would remove the wrong tiles and replace them with the right ones. Luckily, we had a box of tiles spare which did match and which we had enough of to fix the problem, but the tiler couldn't do it until the following day (we checked with both the tiler and our project manager and this wouldn't affect the waterproofing on that particular wall). Only a couple of hours work this day.

Day 8 (Thursday) was re-tiling day, so we got the problem wall fixed and grouted, big sigh of relief. This was another almost full day.

Day 9 (Friday) - the last official day, and a step closer to being able to shower at home again. Everything was installed, fitted, caulked and whatever else done to finish the room off (except for painting). This was another full day.

Next up, a full bathroom reveal!

The Bathroom: A 12 Day Renovation [Part 1]

noreply@blogger.com (In The Night Sky) — Thu, 28 Aug 2014 10:00:00 +0000

Here's the bathroom pre-renovation. A little tired, a lot of beige. And small. We think the room was renovated by the previous owners about 20 years ago, but just a guess. I suspect that when the last renovation happened, and going from what most homes of this era had, they took out a bath in favour of a shower, or perhaps took out a bath and shower in favour of a shower and toilet.

The bathroom was functional but I didn't really like the shower right at the entrance to the room, as it felt a bit boxy. We decide to to change the layout and while it wouldn't make the 2.3m x 1.8m space any physically bigger, it would hopefully make it feel that way. To do that we would swap the positioning of the toilet and shower - shower to move to back right-hand corner, toilet to move to bottom right-hand corner - and also add in a bath. We could have removed the toilet to gain more space as we have a another toilet off the laundry room, but I like to maximise my facilities where possible.

After we did the song and dance that is obtaining quotes, we selected one and found that we had 2 weeks to get supplies before work started (we thought we'd have a month or so). We decided from the start that we wanted to supply everything ourselves, so we wouldn't be limited in choices (with taps, tiles, etc.) and could have greater control of the budget. Here's a day by day rundown of the first 6 days of the renovation:

We decided to do the demo of the old bathroom ourselves as another way to save money and also time. I think the biggest benefit of getting the demo part out of the way before official work begins is that you don't lose a day waiting for someone else to demo the room for you, and if there are any problems hidden behind your bathroom walls, they will be visible straightaway and those problems addressed quickly. On Demo Day 1 (Saturday), Paul ripped everything out. This created such a mess and there was dust everywhere.

Demo Day 2 (Sunday) was about crawling around the floor ripping out old nails, which was my job. Once I got the nails in the floor out, there were then a ton of them in the walls (what was left of them) to get rid of, so yeah, not fun. This part took a few hours.

Day 1 of the official renovation rolled around on the Monday. Day 1 was plumbing day, which meant roughing in the plumbing for the new fittings. As we were swapping the positions of the toilet and shower, this required a little extra work as the waste pipe for the shower is slightly different to that for the toilet. This took from 8am - 2.30pm.

Day 2 (Tuesday) - carpentry day. This saw the hob built for the new bath and the frame for the new shaving/medicine cabinet (depending on where you shop, names change to make things confusing for everyone). The bath was lowered into the hob and filled with water to set it in place. This was the day we could see the layout come to life. Another 8am - 2.30pm day.

Day 3 (Wednesday) - plastering day. New walls went up, floors down and the joins plastered, as were some small cracks around the room. Another 8am - 2.30pm day.

Day 4 (Friday, no work occurred on Thursday) - Waterproofing. This only took a couple of hours in the morning, and then had to be left for 24 hours. We played around with our floor and wall tiles in the room once the 24 hours were up to get an idea of how they were going to look once installed.

The first week of the renovation saw no problems and everything trucked along as it was meant to, which was a relief. Up next: Week 2 recap.

The Bathroom: Time to Renovate

noreply@blogger.com (In The Night Sky) — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 03:30:00 +0000

After the kitchen, the bathroom has been the one room in the house I've been really looking forward to renovating. Like the kitchen, modernising the bathroom would involve a bit more work than just a coat of paint to make the layout more functional. I guess the title of the post gives it away, but we're renovating our bathroom...

You can see from the above picture that we are working with the confines of what seems to be the smallest bathroom a 3 bedroom house has ever seen - a teeny 2.4 metres x 1.8 metres (approx.) I will post proper before pictures in a separate progress post to show the room off in all it's peachy-beige '90's glory as we go along.

1/2/3/4

With those small room measurements we've had to really think about everything that goes in or comes out of the room. My bathroom board on Pinterest has been the board I've pinned to the most lately, and above are my 4 favourite bathroom pins and inspiration for the new bathroom. Based on these images and our bathroom's size, my mood board is lots of white, a dash of black and plenty of subway tile for a 'modern traditional' kind of look. Plumbing fixtures will be chrome - although I did lobby for gold at one point, I think when it comes down to it, these sorts of renovations aren't cheap and you want to choose fixtures and fittings that will have some degree of longevity.

For the flooring we will be using hexagon floor tiles in a slightly larger size than in the mood board. I was really keen on getting basket weave tile in the beginning, but we went tile shopping and found out it would be about $1000 for 3 square metres of lovely marble basket weave and re-thought that idea pretty quickly. As this type of tile also tends to look better with a border tile around the edge and requires sealing and so on, it was getting more complicated than either of us wanted it to be and while we did consider the basket weave for a bit, we decided to go with the hexagon style instead and both of us are happy with that choice (I'm flipping from 'I' to 'We' in this post as I was allowed full design responsibility this time around but some decisions did require a bit of discussion).

Bespoke Tile and Stone

We're hiring the job out this time, so progress will be a lot faster and means the room will be finished in the time it would take us just to tile the floor. Back with progress posts soon.

The Lighting: New Kitchen and Bedroom Pendants

noreply@blogger.com (In The Night Sky) — Tue, 05 Aug 2014 09:30:00 +0000

When the electrician was in to install the new lighting to the 2 spare bedrooms over Easter (more on that below), we also had him install 2 new pendant lights over the kitchen island. I'd never been 100% happy with the previous lights I had selected (you can see those here) which I had bought on impulse. I was OK with them for a bit, but as time went on I felt they were too small for the space and could have been so much better. One day I was in Beacon Lighting having a look around and came across the Southampton range...

I thought about the Southampton lights for a couple of months (this Polyhedron was in the running for a bit as well but I think it works better solo as opposed to a pair), but we were doing other house things and new kitchen pendants weren't a priority until a little while later when Beacon had a sale and I thought, yep, why not? Because if something is on sale, it's clearly meant to be.

They are definitely a more dramatic look and I think an improvement. I'm really happy with how they look and the height they seem to add to the already high kitchen ceilings (what I don't love is that ugly, yellow cooling vent which I've been meaning to fix for years now. I'm also possibly going to re-paint the kitchen walls a different white for a little contrast, as the white I picked out and used here is too much the same as the cabinets).

In the bedrooms we installed the same fixture in each room, cheapies from Bunnings (the style is 'Renata' but I can't see them on the website). I've already shown the finished guest room with the ceiling rose above, but below is the other bedroom - with ceiling repairs and paint still to come (more painting, it never ends!) and another yellowed cooling vent to contend with.

By the way, if you go with a light fixture like the Southampton you'll need to invest in Edison bulbs. If you use regular light bulbs you'll need to wear sunnies every time you enter the room :)

The Guest Room: Almost Done

noreply@blogger.com (In The Night Sky) — Fri, 25 Jul 2014 09:00:00 +0000

Most of the guest room makeover was completed before our Hawaiian holiday but since then it has come to a bit of a standstill. The repairs to the cornice and ceiling, and the painting in general, took so much longer than anticipated that once the furniture was in and things were working I ran out of steam . That's not always a bad thing though, sometimes I think it helps to not look at a room for a bit and then go back with fresh eyes to finish it off (my excuse). Anyway, the bed and wardrobe are in, the light works and the cornice hasn't fallen off so all I need now is to hang another frame or two, move in some bedside tables and that should about do it.

This glass box is resting upon the current bedside tables, a not too old pair we bought to go with our old bed, in our house before this one. I'm planning on moving these tables to the master bedroom after they've had a makeover too, as it seems a waste to get rid of them as they're not that old and in perfect condition - but that brown wood just isn't doing anything for me any more. Then the bedside tables currently in the master bedroom (which are white) will come into the guest room. Follow all that?

Hopefully I'll be back before the end of the year with a completed room.

The Modern Honolulu & Waikiki

noreply@blogger.com (In The Night Sky) — Fri, 11 Jul 2014 12:00:00 +0000

Paul and I just came back from 10 days in Hawaii - so, so good! For us, the hotel is part of the holiday experience and I can say that our stay at The Modern Honolulu lived up to expectations. I like to have a peek inside hotel rooms almost as much as seeing inside other people's homes so here's a look inside The Modern (and some tourist shots too).

The Sunrise pool (above) and the Sunset (adults only) pool (below). Whichever pool you relax by, do so with a coconut mojito in hand. Each night when we came back from our day out, we'd find cookies on the bed, bottles of water & ice and slippers laid out beside the bed - sweet little touches.

We can't wait to visit Hawaii again, such a friendly place (shopping is good too!).

The DIY: How to Repair and Re-Use Old Cornice

noreply@blogger.com (In The Night Sky) — Sun, 06 Jul 2014 07:40:00 +0000

So going back a few weeks now I mentioned that we had trouble finding a match for the cornice in the guest room. It was really just dumb luck that when we removed the old built-in wardrobe in this room that we decided to remove the cornice surrounding it gently and keep it (to remove the cornice, a Google around revealed that all it needed was a bit of delicate levering with a chisel and the pieces come off). This was about 18 months ago, so we had kept the cornice in the garden shed just in case it would come in useful later. Which it did.

Even though we had the two pieces intact, all that time in the shed (and umm, a little time outside at one point...) meant the plaster hadn't fared that well. At this point we just thought we'd get new cornice but after visiting two plaster work companies and not being able to find a match, we were about to pick out a new design (which would have meant ripping out all the existing cornice in the room and replacing it), we got the assistant at the second company we visited to check out one of the pieces we had brought with us to see if re-using what we had would be OK. He said it was fine to re-use, provided we cleaned the pieces up and removed any of the old cornice cement on the back of each piece and touched up any cracks, removed any of the old flaking paint before lightly sanding and then repairing any of the cracks with plaster and leaving to dry.

Here's the smaller piece up (along with the new wall vent which were able to match). Putting the cornice up just required cornice cement (which we put generously on the back of the cornice piece and also a little on the wall) and then once the cornice was in place, we tapped in some small nails at the base to act as a bracket while the cement dried. The nails were then removed once everything was dry and secure.

We did the first piece one day, then got to work painting the picture rail and then the following day, put up the bigger of the two pieces with the same method - repaired cornice, cement on back of cornice and on wall and then used small nails as a bracket.

This is the new wall vent and the re-used cornice before being painted. It's not completely perfect as it was hard to match up edges of the existing cornice with the repaired piece as some of the plaster on each edge had chipped off, but I think it's a pretty good job and I'm so happy we didn't have to rip out all the cornice and replace the whole lot - I am also very relieved we hung onto that old cornice for as long as we did.

A little extra plaster to smooth over the edges has made the join less noticeable but it's still there if you get up real close, which unless you have a ladder, won't be happening ;) I tried to get the pictures at the same time of day but the 'after' still turned out darker as it was dark earlier today - that's winter for ya.

The Driveway: A Makeover

noreply@blogger.com (In The Night Sky) — Sun, 15 Jun 2014 11:33:00 +0000

Before Christmas we gave our driveway a makeover and I never posted about it, so here it is!

We went the DIY route with this and used Berger's Jet Dry paving and driveway paint which is specially formulated to be hard wearing on this type of surface. The great thing about this paint is, that like a lot of other paint ranges now, it's available in Colorbond colours. We had it tinted in Ironstone to match the bullnose roof and trim on our house.

It's a very simple process but time consuming, especially when you have a driveway as long as this (the driveway runs more than the length of the house, down into the carport). We had to first clean the driveway using a mild acid solution and then left the driveway to dry before applying the first coat of paint. The paint is just rolled on with a roller which didn't take too long, but any time saved there was taken up by then having to make sure the paint had gotten into each of the grooves of the brickwork pattern - the pattern looks great, but it was a complete time suck to paint. Because of the nature of this type of paint it has a 16 hour drying time, so we left it overnight before applying the next coat. Then it's a week before the driveway can be driven on, but worth all the time put into it as I'm really happy with how this turned out.

Also out the front our English box is finally catching up to the established hedge and I'm so glad we decided to plant the new plants when we first moved in. Five years ago when we moved in the front garden looked like a desert, so we've come along way (although I thought we'd be done and dusted with this renovation by now!). We still have the roof to re-do, which will now have to wait for spring/summer.

Since the driveway refresh we've also added a security light to above the garage door and removed all the plastic garden edging we had installed. The plastic edging just doesn't maintain its shape and the pegs that secure the edging would come out, so we took it all out and just used mulch and a garden edge tool to mark out the garden beds. It gives a much neater finish and is much easier to manoeuvre the lawn mower around (or so I've heard...).

P.S. The yellow stripes in the front window are our Socceroos scarves, not a new window treatment ;)

Giveaway Reminder: Tickets to Melbourne Build & Renovating Expo 2014

noreply@blogger.com (In The Night Sky) — Wed, 11 Jun 2014 03:30:00 +0000

A reminder that there are still 2 days to enter the giveaway to win a double pass to the Build & Renovating Expo 2014, to be held at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre, 4 - 6 July 2014. There are 5 double passes on offer to 5 readers, generously supplied by Build & Renovating Expo.

There are not many entries, so the odds of winning are in your favour at this point in time. Enter here via Rafflecopter (end of the post).

The Guest Room: Further Progress & A Giveaway

noreply@blogger.com (In The Night Sky) — Sun, 08 Jun 2014 12:30:00 +0000

Here's a teaser of the guest room after all the hard work but before the furniture was moved into place. This was unexpectedly a really time consuming room to repair and paint, mostly due to the issue with the cornice, but I was still really surprised at how much work went into getting this room done. I'll do a separate post on the cornice so this post isn't too long - it's long enough as it is. Anyway, I'll go into reverse now and show how we got to this point.

We ended up reusing the cornice we had so once we had decided to do that, we had to repair it and cement it back into place - as I said earlier, I'll document that separately - but we also had to repair the parts of the wall where the old built-in wardrobe was, which was mostly filling and sanding small holes.

Aside from the cornice, we also had to replace one of the wall vents and a section of picture rail. We were able to find a replacement wall vent and that was simply cemented into place with cornice cement. For the picture rail, we used a combination of new rail and an existing piece we were able to reuse, and that's the section above the ladder in this photo.

Skipping ahead now to the freshly painted room - white walls with the picture rail in black. Painting this room white has really brightened up this corner of the house a lot. Here you can see though that we still had to deal with a hole in the ceiling left behind by a fugly old light fixture. I had tried repairing the hole when our visit to the plaster store for replacement cornice presented a solution to the ceiling hole problem:

Ceiling roses - one for the guest room and one for the other bedroom. Ceiling roses aren't original to our house but they do fit in with the decorative cornices throughout and general character. We just thought they'd add a nice little feature to each of the rooms and finish off the job neatly. So out came the cornice cement again and up they went (we put both up at the same time in readiness for the electrician to come and install the new lighting in each of the bedrooms).

So more on the makeover to come and if you've made it through all that it's probably to find out what the giveaway is...well, The Build & Renovating Expo will be on again this year at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre and I have tickets to giveaway!

Pretty straightforward, 5 readers will each win a double pass valued at $40 each to attend the expo, which is being held 4 - 6 July 2014. Just enter via Rafflecopter below. The expo will showcase building and decorating trends, including sustainability options and seminars for visitors to attend. You can find out more about the expo here. The giveaway is open to all Australian readers however, please note that as the expo is being held in Melbourne, you will need to be a local or visiting Melbourne that weekend to make use of the passes. Competition runs until Friday 13 June 2014 and tickets will be mailed to the winners shortly thereafter.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The DIY: Adding Trim to Curtains

noreply@blogger.com (In The Night Sky) — Sun, 01 Jun 2014 10:28:00 +0000

I don't know that this is a tutorial as such, rather a recap of how I went about adding trim to ready made curtains, as I did to my new living room curtains. There are a few DIY tutorials out there for this project and the ones I was inspired by used IKEA's Ritva curtains, which I also intended to use. When I saw those curtains in person though, I was disappointed in the lightweight fabric - fortunately IKEA is not short on curtains and they also have a style called Merete, which are made of a weightier fabric (the only difference being that the Merete style has metal eyelets at the top and not invisible tabs like the Ritva ones do). For the trim I used 2 rolls of Sullivan's black grosgrain ribbon (3.6cm width) from Lincraft.

I measured the ribbon length for each edge of the curtain panels and decided to sew the ribbon pieces to the curtains. I've seen other methods such as using glue, but I thought sewing would give a better and neater finish. So the big tip here is that if you want to sew ribbon trim to your curtains, stitch as close to the edge of the ribbon as possible, on both edges of the ribbon. Stitching close to the edge will stop the ribbon from curling up at the sides and just gives a neater finish (it also means that if you have trouble sewing a straight line, it will be less noticeable than if you were to sew down the middle of the ribbon).

Once the trim was on, I hemmed the curtains and for this I went the quick route and used iron on hemming tape because I didn't want to sew the hem and have the stitching visible, and the last thing was to iron the panels and hang them of course. I was worried that because these curtains have eyelets that once the ribbon was on they wouldn't hang right and the ribbon might not be visible, but as you can see, they sit just right. So this is a cheap and easy way to fancy up some plain curtains and the good thing is that if you get tired of the trim down the road, you can just remove it!

Couchelo

noreply@blogger.com (In The Night Sky) — Thu, 29 May 2014 10:30:00 +0000

If you are on the lookout for unique furniture and homewares for your home, have a look at this really cool new app: Couchelo. Couchelo brings together boutique businesses, collectors and buyers on the one platform where they can browse, buy and sell furniture and homewares of the vintage, pre-loved and handcrafted variety.

The Couchelo team: Mike, Sisi, Will & Fei

Couchelo came about when co-Founder, Will Fan, realised while searching for vintage homewares for his own home that there was a gap in the market for an online marketplace in Australia for those selling bespoke and revived vintage pieces. It was rare for these types of vendors to have an online presence or any way for potential buyers to locate them, aside from physical stores, which are usually scattered over a wide area. Couchelo was born as a way to use technology to bring this niche market together and get sellers and buyers to connect easily. Some of the stores, vintage dealers and re-use organisations already working with Couchelo are From Vintage, Collectika, Mitchell Road Emporium, Reverse Garbage and The Bower. The focus is currently on Sydney based businesses, with Melbourne and Brisbane hopefully to follow soon.

The app is currently in the primary beta phase and only available (free) for iPhone, with an android version to follow soon, and the first release of the app shows the best furniture and décor items based on location. As the number of items for sale on Couchelo grows, so will the features, including a search function, categories for décor items and a recommendations feature. You can keep up to date with Couchelo’s enhancements by joining their mailing list or by following them on their blog, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest or Twitter. You can discover more for yourself by checking out Couchelo here.

To celebrate the recent launch of the app, Couchelo is giving away $250 each week for 5 weeks to one lucky winner to use on Couchelo. To enter, simply download the app, create an account and ‘favourite’ an item. Good luck!

I was asked if I would like to post a feature on Couchelo on the blog and agreed because I think this is a great Australian start-up. No product or payment was received for this feature post.

The Guest Room: A Blank Canvas

noreply@blogger.com (In The Night Sky) — Sun, 25 May 2014 03:05:00 +0000

So we began the guest room makeover about 18 months ago when we decided to remove the built-in wardrobe which took up one corner and side of the room. At first we only removed the bottom half of the wardrobe because we were getting the floors re-done and needed to store some items while that happened. At this point we still had the old window and window covering in the room, which you can see here.

Once the floors were done, we removed the remainder of the wardrobe and with it, the decorative cornice which had been used to trim the top of the wardrobe. In the other bedroom the cornice was left in place and the wardrobe built over it and I wish that had happened in this room too, it would've been so much easier to deal with. I guess we're lucky that we still had the cornice at all, but I'll come back to that in another post.

The mostly yellow space in these pictures shows where the wardrobe used to be and how much space the wardrobe took up in the room. Once the wardrobe was removed, not only did we now have to deal with the cornice situation, but also one of the wall vents which unfortunately didn't survive the demo (the intact vent can be seen in the second picture) and repairs to the ceiling.

Once all the demo was complete and everything moved out of the room we now had an empty box to paint and decorate. This room is roughly 3m x 3.5m so not huge, and it also restricts furniture placement somewhat but it's still a large enough to fit all the basics for a spare room.

Before pictures aren't that interesting without the afters but you can see some of the decorative choices for the room here.

The Living Room: Adding Curtains to Shutters

noreply@blogger.com (In The Night Sky) — Sun, 18 May 2014 08:46:00 +0000

A small update to the living room - curtains. I think shutters look great either on their own or paired with curtains but in our living room, which only has this one window and not a lot of natural light (the bullnose verandah is directly over it), the shutters looked a little bare on their own and needed curtains for some visual interest. I performed a small DIY on the curtains by adding black ribbon trim to each panel, and as these curtains are purely decorative and not designed to close, I didn't add blockout fabric (like I did to the curtains in our bedroom).

Way back before both curtains and shutters we lived with a bed sheet over the living room window for ages to provide privacy at night (with sheer curtains underneath). It took us some time to decide whether or not to go with shutters, which is why we lived with the bed sheet for so long. Not at all pretty but it did the job crack house style.

At the same time we had one of those cheap, extendable curtain rods up, so we've upgraded that to a sturdier and slightly wider rod with some pyramid finials. We've hung the rod and curtains high and wide like we did in the bedroom, although Paul still thinks 'high and wide' is something I've made up and refuses to believe it's a decorating thing.

Finding a new rug for this room is proving to be easier said than done, so we're living without one til the right one comes along. The dimensions of the room mean that so far anything I've liked is either too small, too long but not wide enough and vice versa, or just too expensive. I've come across some good options online, but am hesitant to buy one without seeing the colour in person first, so no rug for now (which is not so bad as it's one less thing to try and keep clean).

I'll post my super simple curtain DIY soon.

The Guest Room: Mood Board & Before Pictures

noreply@blogger.com (In The Night Sky) — Tue, 13 May 2014 10:30:00 +0000

1. Leopard print fabric (similar at Spotlight) 2. Wardrobe 3. Print 4. Bed 5. Cushion cover*

Another room to decorate, another mood board. This time for our guest room makeover which we began over the Easter/ANZAC Day holiday period. We've gone with white walls, a little touch of black and a framed print which I rediscovered in our garden shed...

But before we get to the decorating, let's have a look at where we started. Like any other spare room, the guest room had become a dumping ground for old furniture, cushions and anything that didn't belong somewhere else. It's also one room that I never had any set ideas about how to decorate or organise as it was going to be something we got around to 'later'. We had originally planned to renovate our bathroom over the break, but decided to do the guest room instead as we are still deciding on a bathroom layout and we knew the guest room would just mainly be a paint job. Here is how the room looked when we went to the final inspection before getting the keys back in 2009:

The room is in the back corner of the house and doesn't get much natural light, especially since the part of the deck it overlooks is now enclosed. There was nothing structurally wrong with the room (although it could be bigger), it just needed some minor wall repairs and painting.

The only feature we did need to consider was the built-in wardrobe which took up a chunk of real estate on one side of the room. We decided it had to go because it took over the room so much - when you entered the room it was the first thing you saw, floor to ceiling. I didn't think to take a full frontal of the wardrobe when we moved in, so all I have are photos like this one taken when we began work on removing it (which actually happened 18 months ago), and I don't think the wardrobe looks that imposing here (but it was). As with most homes from the same era as ours, there are no wardrobes in any of the bedrooms and these built-ins were added to bedrooms 2 and 3 by the previous owners at some point (but not in the master bedroom). We chose to remove the built-in altogether in the guest room in favour of a free-standing wardrobe so that the room layout or its use wouldn't be dictated by permanent furniture down the track.

So that's the beginning of our makeover, more to come soon including adventures in cornice repair...

* from US site - not on AU site, but available in store for $16.95

Same Same But Different

noreply@blogger.com (In The Night Sky) — Tue, 06 May 2014 09:30:00 +0000

I came across these cushions while browsing the Country Road and H&M websites. More than a passing resemblance I think. Can you guess which cushions come from which store? No? Top row are from H&M, bottom row from Country Road. Let's move on to quilt covers:

On my most recent visit to IKEA I saw the black and white check quilt cover in the top right-hand corner of the picture. I liked it, but then you would too if you had the Country Road version at home already like I do. Quality of the Country Road version is better, but if you want different colour options and a lower price, you might prefer IKEA. Now baskets:

Not as close a match as the cushions and quilt covers, but still...I guess if you can't get one and you like stripes, you can get the other? This is the second time the IKEA Maffens basket has made an appearance on this blog - I did end up getting one (that's a cat toy stuck in the plant).

It's just coincidence that all of these items are from Country Road, IKEA and H&M - I'm sure there are lots more examples out there, in lots of different stores, these just happen to be the ones I've come across and thought, hmmm, seen that somewhere before...

Cushions - H&M here and here. Country Road here and here.
Quilt covers - Country Road here. IKEA here and here.
Baskets - H&M here. IKEA here.

The Parrot Flower Power

noreply@blogger.com (In The Night Sky) — Wed, 09 Apr 2014 11:30:00 +0000

I was recently asked to review this cute little device, the Parrot Flower Power. Flower Power is a wireless device which feeds information about your plant(s) via low-energy Bluetooth to your smartphone. You can move the device around and monitor a number of plants, or you can keep it in the one position and constantly monitor the one plant.

The Flower Power runs on a AAA battery (which should last 6 months) and once that has been inserted into the device, stick the Flower Power in the ground just in front of the plant to be monitored. Then you just need to download the Flower Power app to your smartphone (currently the app is only available for iPhone, with an Android app coming shortly) and get started by choosing which plant to monitor from the plant library of 7,000 plants. Select your plant and then allow the Flower Power to monitor your plant for an initial 24 hours. We had moved a lime tree from a pot to the ground and were curious to see how well it was faring, so testing the Flower Power out on that tree seemed a good choice.

Once the Flower Power has had time to collect data, it will provide you with a summary of things that need attention. As you can see, after the first initial 24 hours of monitoring our lime tree was reported as needing more fertiliser and sunlight (cloudy days will affect the sunlight reading), but the water and temperature levels were OK. Items coloured green have a status of 'OK' while those coloured orange need attention.

After adding fertiliser and a sunnier day, you can see that all the levels for the lime tree were reported as being 'OK'. Too easy.

The Flower Power is a great device and really makes caring for a plant so easy. At first I thought it sounded quite complicated, but I'm impressed with how simple it and the app are to use, and am keen to now move it around and get health reports on some of the other plants in the garden. Overall, I think this is an awesome little gadget to have if you like having a garden but aren't so great at actually keeping it alive.

The Parrot Flower Power retails for $79.95 and a list of retailers can be found here.

I received the Parrot Flower Power in exchange for a review, but all opinions expressed above are my own.

The Lower Deck: Before The Stain

noreply@blogger.com (In The Night Sky) — Fri, 04 Apr 2014 11:25:00 +0000

I found a couple of pictures on my phone of the lower deck with the new pool edging before it was stained (again). I sometimes post projects and leave out the part that people may want to see, like how the deck looked once it was re-built, in it's raw state, so I'm trying to remember to include these details from now on. I also think this may have been what you meant Katja when you commented that you wanted to see some 'before' pictures? So although they are not super close-up, I hope this gives anyone wanting to do a deck like this an idea of how it can be done.

I should mention that we used treated pine for the edging and decking boards, which is not the norm. Merbau is by far the most popular choice of decking timber here but because we were going to be staining the deck, it made no sense to buy a beautiful timber like Merbau and cover it in stain (although you can if you want to - the upper deck has Merbau decking and we have stained that, but it is much older and will likely need replacing in a few years).

If you are interested to know how the round edging was achieved with timber, each piece of timber which formed the edging (when I say edging I mean the piece of timber between the water and the decking boards) had a series of cuts made on one side which allowed the timber piece to bend - this is known as kerfing. These pieces where then placed around the edge of the pool to form the edging. Once this was complete, the decking boards were laid on top, and then these were cut to the shape of the pool.

If you're in Melbourne and looking to build (or re-build!) a deck, I'm happy to pass on the name of the carpenter we used - just send me an email.