2009 July — A Beach Cottage

G'day all, thanks for the lovely positive comments yesterday on our oh-so-perfect outdoor campfire.

Right, I think I've mentioned, just a few times, how much I detest the windows to the back of the cottage, the new extended bit? And how, if only, I had a huge budget I might splash out and refit every window in the house and use my exquisite taste to invest, pah! in some decent ones that I'd seen on the pages of a magazine.

Sadly that was never gonna happen anytime soon.

So the one thing I've learnt on this journey is to improvise and make the best of what I've got or more appropriately not got (you can read the story here) and so I've been looking out for shutters on my rounds. Not a sausage. I have never seen a shutter while out hunting.

Then I saw a very inspiring picture of a shutter (you can see it at my Inspiration Board, here) and then I surfed on into Thrifty Decor Chick who had the brainwave of making shutters out of fence posts. I read her post in amazement, ooh yeah.

How fast do you think I headed to the DIY store? ;-)

I scooped up the fence posts, a couple of dollars each and a few tubes of Liquid Nails and baby I was on a mission to get the Beach Cottage shuttered-up.

It was easy. I mean really very easy.

All I did was, taking Sarah's lead, paint each fence post with some outdoor paint, then glued them together to make a 'panel', then cut another post to the width of the 'panel' and then glued this to the front giving the look of a shutter for about $15 a window.

paint the fence posts with two coats of exterior paint

run Liquid Nails down the sides and butt together

Cut two pieces from an additional post, the width of your glued together posts and adhere one to the top and one to the bottom of the front of the 'panel'

leave to dry and then touch up the ends

Then I used Liquid Nails to glue the shutters to either side of those b e a u t i f u l windows.

I may have the ugliest windows in the world but I do have the loveliest teenage helper in the world…

We had such a laugh doing this and as we walked away the whole thing promptly fell down so we stuck up some masking tape and kept that on overnight…

Although this is stupidly simple, there are quite a lot of windows to get dressed up in shutters here in this tatty old cottage – I thought I would start with the back and the laundry window as this is the one that annoys me the most and is about to get new roof trim and lighting and the one that is the most difficult to photograph, I'm good like that.

To be totally honest (and I tell you this after I've put written a post about putting faux shutters on the wall with Liquid Nails) I am not a lover of shutters unless they are on the windows overlooking a square deep down in Toulouse with a window box of red geraniums …not quite the same on a 1980's aluminium window on the back of an old cottage in Australia. Non.

Though my opinion is that it looks better than what I started with, which is always a bonus when you use Liquid Nails…

Well, what do you think? I'd love to know your opinion.

Now I'm off to get some geraniums. In white

Sarah

blogged for Kimba's Do It Yourself Day, thanks!

Beach Cottage Bush Walk & Waterfalls

Hey!

So, here we all are again, Wednesday nearly already. Not long til the weekend, I'm planning something to enjoy and distinguish it from the drudge of the week.

Last weekend, on Sunday, we had plans to go down the beach in the morning, have a coffee and just hang. However it was a rare totally grey sky in Australia and rather than just fester inside all day Mr BC said he fancied going for a bush walk.

We packed up some bacon and eggs and the picnic baskets and headed up to the lake & waterfall with plans to build a fire and cook some brunch. Yep beach one way, lake the other. Love Australia.

Look, I know the brunch is nothing fancy, just grabbed a pack of bacon and half a dozen eggs and threw in a plastic sliced white loaf & HP Sauce. But sometimes that's just what you need at the weekend isn't it? I find it easier to just lose any ideas of fancy and follow a simple works for me procedure.

And it worked so well. What is it about boys (and big girls like me) and fire? They got all boy-scoutish and built it, they cooked on it, I sat by it and then we all poked sticks in it…

I'm not pretending this was no work, it took a bit of effort to pack it in the back of the car (and simply had to throw in my new vintage $6 crochet blanket, mmm mmmm)…but in terms of reward versus hard labour. No brainer.

And the walking was good for my white bits.