reno life.

Woke up this morning in my kitchen.
Reno Life.
Here is a Reno Update.

It started with painting. I started with two tone walls - yellow on top and blue or green on the bottom - with really ugly wallpaper freizes around the middle, dividing the two colours.Why they had to pick these colours when they re-did the interiors, why they had to pick that wallpaper?? Really ugly 90s patterns. Not even a little bit retro cool. I'm sure there are photos somewhere but here is something I found when I Googles "ugly 90s wallpaper" to give you an idea, but instead of sunflowers there were badly drawn daisies, vines and ducks in a field of daffodils.

luckily I only had a thin strip of wallpaper to deal with...

I started ripping the wallpaper off literally the moment I first walked in. Some pieces came off easily. Maybe like, 20%. The rest was a challenge. In the first room I tackled I could not get the glue off the wall. I tried soaking it constantly with water and detergent, I tried peeling gently, I tried being rough, I tried things like vinegar and tea tree oil and sugar soap. In the end my solution was Citro Clean and steel wool.

we have a love/hate relationship.

It was just spray and scrub. Something about Citro Clean worked, and for that I love the stuff. But I can't smell it now without memories of long, angry reno days seeped in despair so if I have to use it now, it makes me feel a bit sick. A side effect of this method was that some of the paint underneath would get scrubbed off too. Mostly you can't tell but if I had known at the time I might have slapped on a thin layer of plaster over the scrubbed sections. Unfortunately, I also did a half-arsed job in some places and I can tell under the paint where there are still some little bits of glue. It's the first rule of tackling jobs like this - do it properly, do it well. At the end of the day, your the one that has to live with it.
So eventually I got this room painted. The inital effect is great, the block white  gives the walls such clean lines and really gives the room more light - important as there is only one window (very sad.) If you study my First Ever Paint Job a little more closely you can see my mistakes, the cutting is very visible in some places and I swear in some lights the darker green layer on the lower half of the wall is still visible through the paint.

The next room was a slightly different story. Most of the wallpaper tore off easily however it took huge sections of paint with it. No matter how gentle I was the paint just flaked and peeled right off and kept on peeling away. I was luckily enough then to get some help from a regular customer who does some painting around the cafe occasionally. He told me what I should do and showed me how. First I had to paint the surface the paint had peeled from with PSU (primer, sealer, undercoat). This helped to stick the edge of the paint down so no more would peel away and would also help the plaster and new paint adhere to the wall. The Paul plastered over the holes for me. He showed me how to do it for next time but was kind enough to do it for me, in exchange for some free coffees and eggs! It was good to learn but he got it done so quickly, I was so grateful. The next step was another coat of PSU, once that was dry I was ready to paint. This time I started with a layer of primer over the darker, lower half of the wall (blue in this room). It didn't take long and made all the difference when it came to covering up that blue. Also, primer or PSU seems expensive compared to paint but it actually goes a long way and makes such a difference that it's worth it. Having had some more experience I got this room painted pretty quickly. I also got my sister or friends to come and drink wine with me and keep me company while I painted and the time went so quickly I even tackled the tired looking fireplace with one of those $5 'mistake' pots of paint you can pick up at the hardware.

before shot, the midline has been plastered over, here it is quite minor, behind me it is about 20cm wide...ugly colours. 

another angle, the fireplace before.

I also did my small hallway at the same time as this room. I didn't bother doing the ceiling in there because I hate painting ceilings and you can't really tell.

Next was the bedroom and I put this off for ages because it was the same sticky-glue story as the first room. Here's where more help steps in, this time my ever suffering, ever supportive lovely boyfriend. I got home from work one day to find a collection of bits and pieces from the hardware, including my new best friend....I think it's called a window scraper? Its a razorblade with a plastic handle. It scraped the glue of real good. With this little lifesaver (and just a little Citro Clean) the walls were ready to paint in no time. And then they were painted in no time. Three rooms in, this painting game was becoming a lot easier for me. Even the ceiling wasn't too bad.
I had just finished the final layer and Oli & Alex were having a look and a wine when this happened.

see the glass of wine.

Ok, so I had looked for floorboards previously. Bit embarrassing but I think I must have just looked at the underlay and thought oo, well not sure what that is under the carpet but it's not wood. Idiot. Alex and I pulled up the carpet properly and found the wood.
This is when things got more traumatic.
So for one thing, I had already been moving all my furniture around, usually on my own, to accomodate the painting. Now I have to not only get things away from the walls but off the floor entirely. Yes, I know I could have done this before I moved in. But to be honest, I would have seen all these things as interiors I could live with, not worth changing. I had to live here for a while to know what I wanted to do.
So I'm pulling up all the carpets...and it sucks. Pulling up carpet is not as fun as I thought. Not even as satisfying. It's dirty and cubersome and frustrating. I will say this though, once you've pulled a carpet up, you will never want to live on one again...
And then I found out what terrible condition the floorboards were in.
All crumbly and horrible.
I freaked out and got Dad to come round and see the TERMITE PROBLEM but he said no, that's just rot, and I calmed down a bit but was still sad. Then our carpenter friend Glenn came round for a look and said no, it's not rot, it's borer. Borers are little wood-eating bugs that live in trees so if they live in a tree and you cut it down and make wood and make floors they will eat the wood until they die. We wouldn't be able to sand and polish because most of the boards were too flimsy - some even broke through (how had I not already fallen through the floor??) also the little borer tunnels apparently look horrible if you do try and polish over them. Like weird, webby patterns and not in a good way. Glenn was good for straight up advice. Obviously we could replace the floorboards and then polish them, but that's on the very expensive side of the scale. The better option for us would be to just cover them back up again, not with horrible carpet again, but floating floors.
I did my research after that and got some quotes and had some flooring specialists come out for a look. I thought about timber floating floor but in the end decided on laminate. Quick Step Colonial in Blackbutt, for those playing at home.

It looks good, feels good, sounds good, costs good. The only thing is you can't let it get too wet which I'm worried about but will just deal with it. (You just have to clean spills quickly and tbh if there is damage it's easy to replace, will just be an extra cost.)

So there we are. In about 10 days time the flooring guys are coming to install my new laminate floating floors and then, if my dreams are correct, I will be living in a lovely little cottage with all my nice things and it will all be swell. Until then I am camped out wherever I can fit, bascially. This is one of those times when I know I could have organised things better - like have the floor installed the day after the sander? (common sense & hindsight for the win) But this is why I'm not a Project Coordinator and never will be and another little lesson for "next time." (truthfully, dear internet, I was too worried to book in the installers until I knew the floor was all sanded and ready to go. I thought something would go wrong with one stage and I would have to cancel the next one. I guess the lesson there is yeah, dickhead, you could have just postponed the next stage. ANYWAY...)

It's not so bad living in the kitchen. It feels a bit like being on holiday?? Coffee accessibilty is amazing.

Until next time, which will hopefully be a series of proud "after" posts.... XXX

Why You Should Pose for Photos.

This is my beautiful sister and her lovely boyfriend.

She is one of the best subjects for me to photograph because she just lets me point the camera at her and she stays natural while I do.

My mum has always had this phobia of being in front of a camera but all it's resulted in is a lot of home movies of her doing that silly, face-hiding with hands gesture. My favourite is a film of her in the kitchen after a dinner party, relaxed, probably a bit drunk, talking to the camera with ease. She is beautiful.

Next time someone tries to take your photo, just relax. Think about something that makes you happy...puppies, bacon, Ryan Gosling shirtless in Crazy, Stupid, Love...If the photo doesn't turn out great, who cares?* I'm sure your grandkids will get a good laugh out of it. Most likely it will be a lovely picture and even if you don't like it now, I'm sure you will in 10 years, max.**

*unless the one taking the photo is of that rare, nasty breed that takes pleasure in posting awkward photos all over the internet. Tell them to shove off and go get yourself another wine.

**anyway it's just a good life philosophy - relax! smile! love yourself! it's hippy but you know it's true....xoxo

Tracking the Progress.

One of the reasons I have had a few blogs is that they start to....embarrass me after a while.
I will read back at old posts and cringe at things I said, wrote, thought.
So it's interesting to me that one of the reasons I have come back to this blog is that I've realised I now enjoy going back in time and seeing my own progress - in whatever small way a blog can represent that - and I suppose I want to continue documenting that...the changing ME.

Here is a list off the top of my head of my past blogs. No I am not going to try and link them...if I can even find all of them.

>>The First One. Had a name to do with Fairies. I think I posted one short story. My initial, brief foray into the blogging world.

>>My MySpace blog. Probably could still log in? Dear old MySpace. That was fun. Left behind to join Blogger.

>>My First Tumblr. Before I understood reblogging and Tumblr LYF. Only posted my own pictures, no reblogs.

>>My Main Tumblr. /icanucan . The fun one. The one that lead to hours of scrolling through my dash. Mostly reblogs.

>>This blog.

>>Silver Birch. Still exists.

"Girlfriend" Don't Work No More - A Rant.

So there's this lady at work who is one of the older ones in the crew - I guess she's mid forties - and she's the only person I know who still refers to her female friends as her "girlfriends."
- I'm having dinner with a couple of girlfriends tonight.
- I'm helping a girlfriend move house this weekend.
- Can you take over for a minute I'm just going over to say hello to my gorgeous girlfriend.
I can't remember a legit time when she actually said the first two, but they sound like things she says and I know for sure she said the last one because when I heard it was when I felt the urge to write this post.

No one says girlfriend anymore.
I know people used to say it a lot. I seem to remember hearing it a lot in the 90's and early 2000's but I just don't hear it anymore, I just don't think anyone says it and if you ask me why, I think it's because it's actually an entirely homophobic term to use.
For one thing, men don't use it. You never hear guys say "yeah just off to play golf with my boyfriends," "might pop down the pub later to meet some of my boyfriends." It's due to the greater fear among males to appear at all homosexual, women, for some reason, have always had greater boundaries for how close they can get to their same sex friends without seeming gay. The fact that men don't use boyfriend to describe their friends arises from a homophobic origin but is (unwittingly, I know) more appropriate today.
The thing is, is that to use the term to describe someone you're NOT in a relationship with goes hand in hand with a general assumption that ALL relationships are heterosexual. Because think about it, it's totally ok to call your platonic female friend your "girlfriend" because no one will think she is actually your girlfriend in a lover kind of way because that's not "normal."
This is why I think the term has fallen out of use. We live in a gradually more open and educated society and people realise I guess, whether it's a concious realisation or not, that it's a bit wrong to call someone your girlfriend if you just mean friend-that-is-a-girl when the term has a much deeper meaning for other females. Ditto boyfriend for guys-that-are-my-mates if you're a guy who ever used it that way. That's another point - no one ever says boy/girlfriend in reference to a member of the opposite sex who is a platonic friend. Don't want people thinking you're in a relationship! But it's ok with same sex because no one will assume we're together. Do you see what I mean?
I wouldn't call my friends that are girls my girlfriends because what does that mean for my lesbian friends when they call their actual girlfriends their girlfriend? It's not all on the same level.
And it's wrong that people assume when you say "girlfriend" as a female you mean "friend that is female" because behind that is an assumption that relationships on the deeper level are only heterosexual.

happy 100th post... aka WHY WAS THIS IN MY DRAFTS I NEVER POSTED IT????????

Totally irrelevant now, but I just found this in my drafts. Welcome to one of the best photos on the internet.

On Bad Days & The Bright Side.

I'm having a bad day. 

I was late for work because I forget I was meant to be covering a shift today, one of my chooks ran away, I got a bad nasty splinter & just now I took leftover pie put the oven & the glass baking dish exploded. It cut me a little, there's glass all over the kitchen. 

Yet somehow, the more worse stuff that happens the better I feel. Granted, I'll probably drink more wine than I may have but every little bad thing has made me focus on a positive, to make me feel better I suppose, and that in itself is not a bad thing. 

Look, I wouldn't say I'm happy right now, but what are you going to do when your kitchen is covered in glass & your hand is bleeding? You just have to let go. 

I'm tired of the bad things. I'm tired of bad news. I'm tired of hearing about bad things happening to good people. I keep thinking about Kate Berry & her powerful recent blog post about her girls - she is an amazing, strong woman & mother & I find than inspiring. She's not letting the bastards grind her down.

I think about my dear friend coming to visit from interstate tomorrow who has a had a truly bad time lately - and stayed strong.... I am surrounded by inspiring woman. (Men too, yes.)

I think about people who can't afford a few dollars for a bus ticket but I put $50 of petrol in my car the other day & I'll still eat & drink & pay bills. 

The worse things get, the more I feel like giving up & succumbing to all the shit. But at the end of the day, we are tiny humans on a tiny planet, living tiny, short lives and I am taking that cliche & riding with it, I am going to hug some dogs, drink some wine, hug some babies and probably sleep ok tonight. And hopefully not bleed all over the sheets. (From my cut hand...just to be clear.) 

Wedding Envy in an Event Way not a Commitment Way or I Wish I Had Been a Guest at These Weddings.

I really love stalking bash, please to see what they have been up to.
These are a couple of dreamy weddings I drooled over at Silver Birch.


http://silverbirchofwinter.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/welp-this-week-im-obsessed-with-these.html

http://silverbirchofwinter.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/im-not-most-into-weddings-kinda-gal-but.html

blog/personality crisis

First post here since Feb last year.

I have another new blog. Every blog I have started has signalled the beginning of a new stage in my life, cue silverbirchofwinter.blogspot.com .
However reading through this blog it sounds much more like me than the new one. ffs.
So now I don't know if I should abandon ship over there, keep it if I do morph into that person I thought I was becoming...enh no biggie, I was just trying to focus on nice things and swear less I think.

Funny things from old posts - I see the BDO organisers ignored my advice to downsize, having schelduled the likes of Pearl Jam, Blur. har har.
Also the little note about wanting to 'avoid getting instagram.' Thank god that foolish notion passed, #instagramaddict. Have you noticed how everyone says 'hashtag' now, no one says 'hash' like in the old days, when you punched in 'star ten hash' to check your last missed call on your landline?


I guess in the meantime I'm going to re-watch Community (any new tv show tips out there?) drink some wine, possibly succumb and smoke a guilty cigarette (wouldn't admit that over at the new blog. Lies, it's all lies!) and eat pizza made with the AMAZING dough my buddy Bridget's girlfriend sent me home with last night after a dinner/doggy playdate. It smells so fucking good. I want Amber to be my girlfriend. Did I mention her apple and mulberry pie sitting in my fridge?