Listing stuff on eBay

Spent the last hour making steps to rid ourselves of:

No room for this piece of imitation Chinoiserie, I'm afraid.

I do like this clock, but it doesn't go in the new kitchen

and i really don't see why we should keep any more remnants

from the previous owners than is absolutely necessary.

This hook arrangement is stupid, unwieldy and horrible and 

terribly reminiscent of the previous owners' aesthetic.

Glass doors from the dining room built it.

I wish I had a use for the glass...

No further words for this.

Can't get enough of this gilt edged goodness.  

Oh, wrong.  Apparently I can.

I don't even want to open the box to measure
the dimensions of this for the eBay description...

Watch this space in seven days...

Standing up kinder

Yesterday while I was assembling the third Billy bookcase of the four acquired at Ikea for my bedroom, Milo informed me that I'd blown out kinder.  If I was a user of the emoticon, I'd be inserting at this juncture an unsmiley face.


I'd been rostered on for two sessions at kinder this term, and it seems that yesterday was one of them.  Oops.


So, instead of staying at drop off and playing with the mini-people for a couple of hours, I shuffled off, with furrowed brow, head full of traffic jams, paediatricians, the kitchen table, eBay, cooking without kitchen and trying to decide whether to stop for coffee or go straight home and save the shekels. 


And now I think more about it, I was never going to keep that date, because if it hadn't been for my head full of crap, I'd've been rushing back home for the tree people...


I've got some explaining to do at Friday's drop off. 


Anyway, yesterday we managed to cram four Billys into my VW Polo, which in anyone's language is quite the achievement.  Also noteworthy is that I snapped the handle off my screwdriver, so vigorous was I in the assembly as I put together four Billys, and build a fire in five hours.  This also included pondering and reflecting time, watching "The Bold", having a big chat with Milo about what he did at kinder (see above) and feeding the cats.


Any day now I'll post photos of my wall of books, which even before it is dressed has had an incredibly transformative effect.


*****
Also, please note when lighting a fire, do not use Ikea instructions as newspaper, they smoulder and smoke rather than lights properly.  Who knew?

Anticipating extention

The tree people are cleft in twain, their camp ravaged by pestilence.  We are rescheduled now for Thursday.


(But it's still Debs' birthday...)

Lots of things.

Tomorrow is 17 May, a greatly anticipated and important day.  Not only is it Debski's 50th (happy happy happy, dear Debsk) but it is also when we will welcome the second coming of Greg Tree, this time with companions two.  Armed with sharp wits and sharper implements the three will be transforming our choking environs into something unrecognisable.  A place with air and light.  A place with far fewer cyprus trees.  In short, they will be uncluttering our outdoors.  And this is good.


I meant to wander about today to photograph those doomed plants for posterity, however there were no spare moments in which to undertake the task.  


You see, we were buoyed by our stellar success in the fireplace stakes yesterday, so we purchased a $40 fire grate from an eBay "Buy it Now" seller in Croydon for our mini fireplace in the kitchen, and had to pop over and pick it up.  (Croydon has ENORMOUS, suburban blocks, don't you know.)


We visited Bunnings in Eltham in search of reasonably priced fireplace accessories for the kitchen hearth and I feel it is only right to warn anyone who may be tempted to go there, and let their child play on the enormous climbing frame thingumy (Milo got stuck at the top - of course he did) while they enjoy a coffee and a scroll.  DON'T DO IT.  The muck in a cup was to coffee what Charlie Sheen is to sensitivity and restraint.  And the bun.  Well, there are no words.


Fuelled by outrage and disappointment about our morning tea, and in readiness for the chaps tomorrow and their heavy machinery and their requirement to access our nether regions, Mum and I then conceived to create a pathway from the front of the somewhat overcrowded garage to the back.  This required a great deal of shuffling, dragging, piling, folding, cutting, shredding, discarding and reorganising.  Luckily Mum has a PhD in this arena and I did a short course at the CAE in the late '80s.


We collected the tiles and slate for the kitchen, whenever the hell that decides to be finished.


And at some stage too there was grocery shopping.


Oh, and I ordered the kitchen stools from Matt Blatt online.


It's all happening at the House at Porter Street.


PS  I would've squeezed in a haircut but the salon is closed for renovations.  Probably not a bad thing.  By the time the chainsawing and mulch-fest is over tomorrow, I'll be gagging for some time out and R&R on Wednesday.  Fingers crossed for that.

Small victories.

Yesterday we picked up the set of fireplace accessories I bought on eBay on Friday.

Firewood bucket, screen and four piece tool set (alas no tongs) for $56.00.

I was a little disheartened to discover the lounge's fireplace flue to be stuffed with insulation and envisaged masses of wadding and filth coming down on a person as we tried to clear it, but bless Dad for not being dissuaded.  In the end we extracted just half a small wheelie bin's worth shoved up there to stop the draft.

After that I couldn't get under the house fast enough (a first) to retrieve logs and kindling.  It's the first time I've thought of the hoarding and haven't cursed everyone involved.  Carting wood is not my favourite thing, and I must confess, I did spend a moment conceiving of some type of automated transport option, or maybe just hitching Milo to a cart - but with visions of coal mining children emerging from the blackened pits and all that dirty clothing needing to be washed, I banished the thought...

A brief life as a girl guide in my early teens equipped me with some knowledge around open fire preparation and lighting - it's all in the prep.  And within twenty minutes we had a significant blaze with warm and toasty ambience in the formerly somewhat chilly cathedral ceiling-ed lounge.

And then, when night had fallen and Masterchef was about to start...

Possibly my most pleasing and satisfying eBay acquisition.  O happy day.


PS  Who knew?  Proper Ash Removal.

Coveting #2: Curtains

I despise the apricot / salmon vinyl blinds in my room.  Although I grudgingly admit that they do the job of keeping out sunlight, very ably


To remedy I'm going to work out how to make lined drapes.  And I'm going to use a fun and sunny print, something like these.

from duckcloth.com.au

Daisies Green on Cream Hemp Cotton by Pippijoe

@$48/m

from duckcloth.com.au

Spotcheck seaweed by Cloth Australia

@$45/m

from duckcloth.com.au

Bloom Vine Cream

@$24/m

from duckcloth.com.au

Traffic Green by Puti de Pome

@$24/m

from duckcloth.com.au

Marguerite Black on Cream Hemp/Cotton

@$80/m

I need to work out how much fabric I need.  
And what bits I need.
And then do a bit of research on how you actually make them.
As of now, I am clueless.

The Omega Man

What do you think of when you hear "Omega Man"?  A post-apocolyptic Charlton Heston with a few zombies thrown in for excitement.  

or a sharp looking fella with a snazzy watch?

The Omega man came to our door on Thursday, don't you know.

If you recall, our new oven was released from the bondage of its box when the kitchen cabinets were being installed, and we immediately noted some denting in the fascia  where the knobs and displays are.  Consequently we made ourselves a date with Omega's service department.

My expectation dial was set to resolution, and not expecting any sort of resistance from the company, I anticipated the guy entering our residence with a short greeting and perhaps fleeting eye contact, smalltalk as we made our way to the oven, a shaking of his head in acknowledgement of the issue, pondering (possibly aloud), offering some sort of thesis as to how this might've happened, a word of dismay that we'd been inconvenienced and a warm assurance that the matter would be taken care of, if not in that instant, within a briefest possible juncture.

Reality only mirrored my expectations in that I answered the knock of the door, walked to the kitchen, back to the front door again, and it was over.  And somehow in the intervening 15 seconds I gleaned that a replacement fascia would be ordered and we would wait for their call.


So I'm waiting...

I never anticipated the Omega Man being a person of such stealth and mystery.