Home Improvement

We are approaching being back in our little farmhouse here at Brindabella for 12 months, almost longer than our stint here in 2010-2011 when we believed it to be our ‘forever home’. Is it still? Who knows. And honestly I’ve moved on from the internal debate I always have with every farmhouse we’ve lived in – how much we should do to it, how to make it our home when it’s technically not our own, how to much to invest not just financially but emotionally…I am a terrible over-thinker, always trying to forecast ahead instead of just living in the now, terrible! As you might have guessed with the bedroom wardrobe construction, we’ve thrown caution to the wind and are being all cest la vie about our cosy home here on the hill. So, along with the bedroom overhauling, we’ve been doing little home improvements here and there…

Our bathroom is a little dot of a room, which is fine, you really don’t need a big space for a bathroom (although a bath would be handy for Eleanor!) But as always, storage was severely lacking. The bathroom was renovated sometime just before we moved in initially in 2010, and then again in 2012 was tiled above the picture rail and new shower added (which used to be the space for our linen press, dang it!) For an older home it’s a great bathroom, especially compared to some other original farmhouse bathrooms I’ve had! Outdoor toilets and no running water to the shower so a camp shower off a tree in the backyard, anyone?! The Ikea ‘Hemnes’ bathroom cabinet I’d had my eye on for awhile, we needed more storage for all the bathroom stuff, rather than just a mirror on the wall. I love, love, love the little shelf also, as our vanity has zero bench space.

As well as in the bathroom, we added some Ikea to our kitchen with some open shelving with the ‘Stenstorp’ shelves. Our kitchen is a Bunnings basic job, very functional but also very lacking in upper cabinets, the walls were crying out to be adorned with something. Much debate about open shelving – it looks all very pretty but having bits and bobs ‘out’ all the time means more cleaning obviously (and our house in Winter gets very dusty with the fire!) We decided just two open shelves couldn’t hurt, and these ones with handy-dandy hooks underneath have been a welcome addition as I bake. The vintage milk can holds baking supplies like cookie cutters etc. and I finally have somewhere to put my teapots!

Sitting forlornly in our storage room was the beautiful cabinet which Matt’s parents gifted us for our wedding. It once hung in their family home, in the laundry as you entered the house. It held the family’s first aid and various laundry bits and bobs for many years, I’d always loved it. When the house was sold just before our wedding Matt and I enquired as to whether it was included in the sale, we were told yes unfortunately it goes with the house…then were presented with it much to our surprise a few days after our wedding! Sneaky. A beautiful family piece to have in our home forever…

Three years later and we were yet to really find ‘home’ and had never hung it. I’d always envisaged it in a kitchen holding tea, herbs, spices and what-not. Funnily enough Matt couldn’t get out of his head that it was a laundry piece! Weirdo. Matt’s dad helped hang it in our kitchen though and I quickly filled it with wine glasses (which had previously been still in boxes in the laundry as there was nowhere to fit them in our kitchen!) as well as my pantry jars of nuts, spices, herbs, my recipe card box, jugs and vintage milk bottle and jars collection. It’s so good having it, I don’t know what we did before! It’s just above the kettle and coffee machine so it holds tea/coffee/sugar and has a wonderful ‘old’ smell that hits you when you open it’s doors.

I’m so pleased we finally hung it and use it every day, exactly as we should. Letting go of ‘what-if’s’ and ‘maybes’ is pretty liberating – and now we actually have a bit of storage on the walls of our kitchen and bathroom! Novel.

If you rent or live in homes that aren’t your own do you struggle with these things too?
Or is it just me?
Done any little things lately that made a big difference?
Hating fluorescent lighting in your kitchen which makes photos look hideous? Gah!
Stolen roses from your mums garden like me? Thanks Mum!