Serious bargain of the year!
Ok so while looking for an alternative to encaustic tiles Fred found some for sale on Gumtree for $20 a sqm!!!
Now I know that I said in my last post that we’d not been too happy with the encaustic tiles in the upstairs bathroom. But anyone who knows how much encaustic tiles are per square metre knows that for $20 a sqm is a seriously good bargain.
Today we’re grouting.
I’ve gone and done it again! …
I’ve bought something online without reading the description – (dimensions) properly.
Late last year I bought a painting off Ebay and today I’m now the proud owner of an ENORMOUS old shop window. I found it for sale on Gumtree. It looked so much smaller in the photos in the advertisement.
The seller delivered it to our house this afternoon.
I’m always on the lookout for interesting pieces to decorate the house with, especially anything with a story and history. Even better if it’s local history. The seller did a bit of investigating into the window and found a listing for it a 1950s business directory.
I found these advertisements for Kaynella on Trove.
Sunday Mail – 4th December 1949
Sunday Mail – 1st August 1954
I googled 186 Adelaide Street but I couldn’t find any businesses using this address today. It might have been part of the Anzac Square building but I’m not too sure. I wish I had more time to investigate.
Despite its size I’m really happy with it. Now we’ve just got to find wall studs to hang the bugger up!
This advertisement on Gumtree just caught my eye. If you live in Brisbane and like interesting vintage pieces for your home this could be worth checking out.
The ad was listed on the 19th of December 2014, so some or many of the items listed may have gone but if you’ve got nothing planned for the weekend, it could be worth a trip to Beenleigh.
It has been quite a few months since our 14-year-old was able to move into his new bedroom that used to be a kitchen and I thought an update was long over due.
The photos aren’t the best but I hope that you’ll be able to see what we’ve done.
The photo below is what the kitchen looked like a year ago.
And this is what it looks like now. I found the old set of drawers on Gumtree. They sit in the old alcove where the oven used to be. The old slab of terrazzo has been left as a reminder of what the room once was.
The old possum house (the cupboard at the top) has been sealed off and the old pantry has been cleaned and painted inside and is now a wardrobe.
The old back door and ‘dunny’ have gone and replaced with a lovely little study nook.
The study nook is painted using Wattyl – Midnight Seas. It’s a nice contrast to the bedroom which is painted using Dulux – White on white
The table was given to us by our neighbours who were moving out and it was on its way to the dump!!! I stripped it back and painted it yellow.
The desk lamp was a bargain at Target, $35!
I found the fabric for the blinds at Fabric.com. I was looking for something that would suit a teenage boy and not look out-of-place as he grows into a young man. The fabric was $8.47 US per yard.
This is a great price as many of the fabrics that I’d looked at here in Australia were around the $30.00 mark for similar fabrics. Shipping to Australia was approximately $30.00. We needed quite a few metres for the three windows, yet the total bill (including shipping) was under $100.00!!!
Just recently, I bought some shelves for the study nook at the Freedom mid year sale. They were too hard to photograph so I’ve borrowed the image from Freedom’s website!!!
Why is it when you don’t need something eg: a tall bathroom cabinet, you see them everywhere.
I’ve been looking everywhere here in Brisbane for something suitable to use in the bathroom. We’d like it to look ‘vintage’, even better if we could actually find something ‘vintage’.
I’ve been looking online today and really like this piece from Restoration Hardware. It’s would be perfect but I don’t think they’d ship to Australia and it would probably cost ‘an arm and a leg’ to get it here. It’s also priced at $875 US.
Below is what we’re currently using to store the towels, face cloths, cats etc.. we just need something to hold all the bits and pieces. It came from an antique shop in Ipswich. The owner of the shop told us it was probably made during the Depression (1930’s). The shelves are old Shell Oil timber boxes. Rosebush likes them.
I did find a great cabinet on Gumtree. I tried to contact the seller about it but they never got back to me. Bugger!! It would’ve been perfect.
So… I couldn’t get that other mirror out of my mind. I kept seeing it painted a beautiful red and hanging near the front door. I had to go back and buy it. It’s supposedly Tasmanian from the 1890s.
We’ve always wanted a hall stand with a seat and mirror but we’ve never seen one that wasn’t going to cost us ‘an arm and a leg’ to have it transported from another state here in Australia. For example this is for sale on Gumtree, listed as Antique Edwardian Queensland Maple stand. It’s in Sydney……we’re in Brisbane!!!!!!
Until we find one we will hang this mirror by the door and below it will be this long padded bench seat. Add a few baskets for shoes and it will be just as good.
I saw this for sale at Woolloongabba Antiques Centre when I was buying the mirror. It’s not my ‘cup of tea’ but I love the colour. On closer inspection the label said it was Italian and for sale at $245.00. Any thoughts???
I’ve been looking for about a year now for a timber standard lamp base. I’ve been on eBay and Gumtree, trawled op shops and secondhand shops but had no luck.
but…
Mr F was driving home from work this week and found it sitting out for the kerbside collection. Woo hoo!!.
I wish I’d managed to take a photo of it before he started attacking it. It had two bendy lamps like tentacles coming out of the top.
I sanded all the varnish off and gave it an undercoat.
The colour I’ve used is called Marquise – Taubmans.
The velvet shade came from Freedom about five years ago. I’m not 100% sure about the shade yet. I’m thinking it might not be big enough. I’d appreciate any thoughts. should I add some pom-pom trim? .
Or am I going overboard with the pom-pom thing?? as the blinds and Beryl the Cockatoo lamp have them.
Until we decided what we’re going to be doing with this house, the boys (middle and youngest) are sharing the front main bedroom. This room actually needed a lot of attention. The plaster ceiling was quite bad and the old ‘horse hair’ walls needed replacing. The room had a really peculiar smell too. It was a strange sickly, sweet smell. Fortunately it’s gone now. We really had no clue what the smell was but this is what it might have been. As we pulled off each wall panel ‘this stuff’ was waiting behind. It was thousands and thousands of tiny pellets. We think it might have been cockroach poo but if anyone out there knows what this was, please let me know.
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Mr F also did a lovely job of replacing the ugly aluminium windows for much nice casement windows. We used Dulux White on White again. In fact this will be used throughout the whole house. Gone are the days for us, when each room was a different colour.
When we pulled off the plaster sheets from one of the walls we discovered some very nice ‘untouched’ VJ! Except they were a bit crooked, prehaps the original builder was quite keen to hide his wonky walls. It didn’t take Mr F to put things right and with a good smearing of builders bog, you’d never know the difference.
It was hard to decide what to do with the windows. We wanted to keep it really simple. We decided on ‘old fashioned’ retractable roller blinds. We had a few different quotes and Vista came in at the cheapest. To be honest, I’m not sure if I’d ever put retractable blinds in a child’s room again. They’re not that easy to put up.
We also brought a cheap chandelier from Early Settlers. We got it for a good price because someone had returned it and it was’nt in a box. It looks fine and does the job. The electrician we used for the installation would have to be one of the nicest electrician you’re ever likely to meet. He’s so incredibly honest and genuine. We’ve been using him for years now and would recommend his services to anyone. His name is Shannon Drysdale and his business is called Drysdale Electrical. He is based on the Southside of Brisbane but doesn’t venture to the Northside for work.
The boys needed a chest of drawers as the last house had them inside the wardrobes. I’d been looking on Gumtree and Ebay for something suitable for ages. When we were at Restoration Station looking for lights for the lounge, I found these drawers downstairs. The owner of the shop told us that they’d come out of a deceased estate in Paddington. Supposedly the owner of the house had never married and the house had been his parents. It’s a great story.. but the drawers were in a sorry state.
I brought the drawers and I decided that I didn’t want to strip them at all. In fact all I did was scrub them, repaint the inside and give it all a quick coat of white paint. the mint green on the drawers is the original colour. I’ve left them as they were, animal scratch marks and all. There were a few knobs missing but luckily Restoration Station sell these too
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So now the boys have some drawers. They’ll do for now! It was fun to buy a few bits and pieces for their room. I brought the whale cushion covers from a great shop called Three Two One by Kim & Judi at Coorparoo. I also enjoyed making the felt pom-pom garland. I brought the pom poms from ebay and strung them onto the thinnest red cord I could find at Spotlight. I also brought from ebay two cute lamps for each of the boys. I was just about to buy one from a shop at Fortitude Valley and decided to look online. I found them on ebay, the seller was in Holland. For the price it was going to cost me to buy one here, I brought two, plus the postage and the convertor plugs. BARGAIN!!
The Moose ‘Norbert’ came from Green Grass Home and Body at Bulimba.
Old Pearly Jenkins 
