renew

My word of 2013 is renew: quite a lot of the time this will be referring to stuff going on here in the house and garden. Time to freshen things up and make some changes after living here for nearly eight years.

This won't be turning into a home renovation blog because that would be pretty boring, but I am going to post about the renewal-type projects as we change things.

These photos are significant for what you can no longer see: top photo, the feijoa tree which hardly produced any feijoas and had been planted about  30 centimetres from the house is now gone. It blocked the morning light from coming into that room - now we don't need to turn a light on in there during the day (east-facing). It was also used by all sorts of creatures ( possums and probably rats) to scamper up and have parties on and in the roof.( Do you like my strong defense for pulling the tree out - I do, too).

A word about the house: originally a two bedroom weatherboard (timber) house built in 1964. There have been at least 4, possibly 5 extensions over the last 49 years, adding on:

1. an octagonal eating area next to the kitchen. We eat all our meals here except when there are extras.
2. a bedroom, bathroom and walk-in wardrobe upstairs
3. a sun-room, with another bedroom running off it, then step down to
4. a fourth bedroom, very large.
5. a big back verandah

It sounds huge: it's not - it's a rabbit warren and the room aren't large. We love it though.

The outside was clad in western red cedar panelling at some point in the 1970s or 80s. Husband painted this charcoal a few years ago. It looks good.

Here's a photo of the dining octagon thingy, from the outside. Again, significant because there was until a few days ago a gigantic spindly garrya elliptica which looked good for about two weeks in the year and hideous all the rest of the time. Again, blocked so much light I had to have a light on when cooking dinner even in summer. Now - gone. This area faces north so the light now pours in.
Under the garrya, we used to keep our 3 compost bins. Not attractive - what were we thinking? They are now on the opposite side of the house on the south side, out of sight, near the wood pile. So now I have an entire new garden bed- yee ha! North facing, dry as a chip. Thinking about the sort of garden I want to make here....

A lot of the trim on the back verandah is painted Brunswick green and white. Husband has been painting over all the white and cleaning up all around.Now looks very fresh and clean.

So this has been what's been going on.
I have some more NY resolution type musings but they'll have to keep for another day.