Category Archives: Self-reliance

Sorting the Squares

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Tonight I pulled out some fabric which I have set aside for patchwork.  In one of my previous fits of organising, I decided to precut some 5 inch squares.  These are stored in bags and are sorted by colour.  Any pieces of fabric which are destined to be patchwork squares are also in the bags.  You can see them here on the third shelf.

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I am going to make a baby quilt for one of my work colleagues who is due in a couple of months.  Since she knows she is having a girl, I decided to use some of the pink fabric along with a bit of purple and green.

These are some of the squares already cut.

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Some of the other fabric waiting to be cut up.

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The pattern I will using is called Disappearing 9 patch.  It is simple yet effective in my opinion.  You can read about it in more detail here.

I am inspired to get started on it seriously and hope to do so on the weekend.  My sewing machine has been serviced and I picked it up this afternoon so now there is nothing holding me back.

 

A Chair Repair

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This was quite a minor repair in the scheme of things but it restored a damaged piece of furniture to its original state.

We bought this chair secondhand from Gumtree a couple of years ago.  My original intention was to have an occasional chair in the corner of the office/library but I found a pair of chairs and the seller was not prepared to separate them so we bought them both and managed to fit both of them into the newly re-arranged room.

I recently noticed that a piece of wood had come off an arm of one of the chairs.

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It appears that the rolled ends on the arms is actually 2 pieces of timber glued together and the glue had probably dried out allowing the curved underneath piece to become detached.

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I applied some Aquadhere wood glue to the surface and used a clamp to hold it into position until the glue dried.

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The chair now looks as good as new.

In the Garden

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After a break of almost 3 months, I finally made it back to the garden today.  I have really done nothing since before we went to the UK at the beginning of November and since we arrived home in early December my intentions have been thwarted by hot weather, Christmas preparations, another holiday and numerous social events as well as being busy at work.

However, I woke up at 5am today and decided to bite the bullet before the sun became  too intense.  2.5 hours later I came in after having made a start on some weeding in the vegetable garden enclosure.  In all honesty, you could barely see where I had been but I felt better knowing that at least I had made a start.

We went shopping this morning and as well as food we managed to buy more than a dozen plants.  Later this afternoon GMan and I weeded the area in front of the house.  This runs the full length of the house and is planted with numerous hibiscus shrubs and covered with mulch.  Where the hibiscus are well established and close together there was very little weed, however, there are still some substantial gaps and some unwelcome plants had become quite well established.  Of course, the area is almost overrun with cherry tomato plants but I am prepared to accept them as they are food.

The next job was to tackle the raised garden bed containing the sweet potatoes.  When we planted them some months ago we placed a panel of old pool fencing over the bed to keep the scrub turkeys away from it as they just dig up the potatoes and eat them and completely destroy the plants.  We had intended to remove it once the plants became established but that did not happen.  The plants had grown right through the fencing and far, far away…………  It was not easy to remove and in the process we discovered that there was a good crop waiting to be harvested.

Here is our haul.

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I can see sweet potato fries, sweet potato mash, vegetable curry and baked sweet potato in our future.

In a recent post I published a list of some of the projects we intend to tackle this year.  One of them was to create a garden outside the vegie garden.  My intention is to create a mostly native garden with a seat in the midst of it. At the moment it is just grass but that is about to change.  Today we took the first step and bought a selection of plants which will form the basis of this garden.

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This is the result of our garden shopping so I am quite keen to see my planned garden come to fruition.  Not of all the plants we bought will be for that area but we have plans for all of them.

Hopefully, I will have some more photos to share before too long.

We are planning to make an early start again tomorrow as it is really the best option during the summer months here.

A Peek Inside

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On the weekend I did a bit of organising in the cupboard opposite the office/library.  The catalyst was a Christmas gift – a set of decorated peg magnets.  The are 7 which are labelled for each day of the week as well as some extras.

I decided not to clutter up the door of the refrigerator with them.  Additionally, I felt that they would not be strong enough to withstand the breeze which can be quite strong.

Instead, I opted to mount them inside one of the doors of this cupboard.  First, I had to create a surface suitable for the magnets.

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We called in to Bunnings and bought a flat metal bar which GMan cut in half and I mounted them on the door.  The pegs were placed at intervals and it looked great.

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Perfect!!  Or so I thought until I shut the door.  I did not realise but if you take a closer look at the first photograph you will see that the vertical divider in this cupboard is not centred.  The door should sit flush against it but the metal bar prevented that.

So, it was back to the drawing board.  I removed my handiwork, trimmed a small amount off each bar, re-drilled the holes at one end and tried again.  This time I placed them almost flush with the hinged side of the door rather than centering the bar.  The final job was to fill the holes from the original screws.  These are yet to be sanded and touched up with paint.  That may be a job for the coming weekend.

Here is the second version of my handiwork.

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I am not a great fan of diaries but I do love a list so I have started fairly simply with some small notes for the coming days.  My goal is to write down all of the little things I need to do or remember and each day I can refer to them.

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The rest of the cupboard needs some work as it is the mostly the repository for the many photos accumulated over the years which have yet to be sorted, culled and scanned.  That is a a future project.  However, tonight I did tidy one file of the filing cabinet.  It was several old work diaries which I have discarded.  I ripped all of the pages out and bagged them up to take to work tomorrow and they will go in the shredding bin.  It is a small step, but definitely one in the right direction when it comes to removing unwanted stuff from your home.

 

The Home List

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Happy New Year!!

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I mentioned in my last post that I did not have any major resolutions or grand plans for 2018.  However, I have created a list of things we want to get done.  We have agreed that we will not take any major overseas holidays this year but will try get some things done around the house.  We have been overseas for each of the last 4 years and while we thoroughly enjoy the trips it does not leave much time to catch up on domestic tasks.

We are at work during the week and find that we think of jobs to do faster than we can accomplish them.  Many are things we can do but some will definitely require some professional assistance.  In those cases we still need to make the contact and arrange for the job to be done.  GMan is considering taking some annual leave during the year to try to get ahead on some projects.

Here is the initial list – in no particular order.

Make 3 more raised garden beds
Connect tank and get new outdoor taps
Make outdoor sink
Have back wall washed
Replace front steps and add handrail
Revarnish verandah
Revarnish verandah handrail
Repaint ceiling in kitchen, hall, lounge/dining room and front entry
Repaint front entry
Recoat slate floor (front entry and fireplace surround)
Refinish vinyl floors
Replace 3 security doors
Paint external door to dining room
Paint board on wardrobe in 3rd bedroom
Finish painting edges of verandah ceiling
Create garden bed outside vegie garden
Make gabion seat for above garden bed
Build lychgate
Build pergola
Remove tree near front steps and replace
Remove trees beside driveway and replace
Replace garage roller doors
Finish concreting and pebbles and verandah
Paint exterior blockwork
Assess guttering – new or repaint
Battens under the house
Make rack with pulley system in workshop
Blinds for lounge/dining room

The first step will be to assign priorities to the items on the list.  There will other things added over time that may well take priority.  If I am completely honest I really don’t think that this will all be completed in 2018 but we have to start somewhere.

I am excited to report that the board on the wardrobe has now been painted so that is one thing off the list.  It was probably the smallest and easiest task on the list but they are often the ones which are most likely to be overlooked.  The 2 horizontal boards had been removed when we painted the room years ago.  GMan bought a length of replacement board but it was not put up until a few months ago.  I was determined not to leave it for years before doing the painting.

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There will be updates during the year as we hopefully make some progress on the outstanding items on the list.

 

Mending

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Today I mended something that was not the sort of thing that normally springs to mind when you mention mending.

I decided to thoroughly clean our bedroom and began by dismantling the bed.  We bought a new mattress earlier in the year – you can read about it here.  The new mattress is on the existing ensemble base and the whole lot sits on a metal frame.

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Once I removed the ensemble base I could see how much the covering on the underside had deteriorated.  It is a paper-like fabric and has become very fragile and ripped in places as you can see in the photo below.

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After removing the ripped covering, I vacuumed it carefully and then set about replacing the covering.  I used an old flat sheet and an upholstery staple gun.

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Here is the result.  Even though it will never be on show, I feel better for having done it.

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The skirt which fits around the ensemble base was washed and before I put it back on I replaced the elastic straps which had stretched so that it did not sit neatly on the base.  Hew elastic straps and ready to reassemble.

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I was really pleased to have got these jobs done and the bed is now all back together.

The Design Phase

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Many of the projects I have shared in the past are the culmination of an extended planning and design phase that begins with a germ of an idea.

A good example is this post from 2013.  As I mentioned in the post, it was several years from my initial and somewhat vague idea until the shelving became a reality.

I have a new plan, which, as the title of this post suggests, is currently being designed.  I am optimistic that the germination of this idea will not be quite so drawn out.

We have a frame from an old day bed to which GMan attached some small mesh.  It was going to be a large sieve for soil but it is really not necessary where we live.  Instead, we have used it to store pumpkins under the house.  It is perfect because the mesh is an inch or two above the floor and allows the air to circulate.

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However, the downside is the amount of floor space which it takes up.  So, the other day I suggested to GMan that we could suspend it from the ceiling using a pulley system.  Now we just need to work out the details.  Thanks to Google and Pinterest we have got some ideas.  Something like this, perhaps?

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Once we have worked out what hardware and rope/cord we need, I think it should be relatively simple to assemble.

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This is the area that we have identified from which we could suspend the rack.  It would provide even more air circulation and not take up valuable floor space so seems like a winner.

Watch this space for the results and hopefully it will be a matter of months, not years before it becomes a reality.

 

Decluttering, Again and Again

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Have you ever met anyone, either in real life or online, who has told you that they decluttered their entire home in a weekend?  I have read these kind of stories a few times but I have a really difficult time getting my head around the concept.  Unfortunately, they usually involve a huge garbage skip and wholesale dumping of perfectly useable items.  I find this strategy a disgusting waste and totally unnecessary.

My approach is the complete antithesis – a little bit at time and I often go back to the same area multiple times.  Also, I never dump anything.  I try to find new homes for them using a variety of strategies.

The bookshelves in the study/office is the perfect example of my method.

Once upon a time this is how it looked.

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As the culling continued over several years we whittled it down to one bookcase and sold the other.

The small freezer was moved down to the workshop.

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We upgraded from our folding table.

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To this desk.

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We added a blind to the bare window.  I wanted to create a comfortable reading area/library so we sourced 2 armchairs.

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Fast forward a bit more and we have culled the books even further.  There were some non-fiction ones which have been relocated to the shelving in the living room.

This shelving unit was originally horizontal in the living room but was moved to the spare bedroom/sewing room to store some of my sewing materials and equipment.  We decided to swap it with the light-coloured bookcase which will work better for the sewing stuff and is aesthetically better in the other room.

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Here are 2 views of what I think is the final state of the office/reading room.

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It has been thoughtfully curated over a period of time as our needs and ideals changed.  I certainly could not have achieved this in a single weekend for one room, let alone a whole house.

There has been no waste as all of the items have been reused in our own home or found new homes.

A Garden Surprise

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One of the biggest threats to successful gardening in this area are scrub turkeys.  For those readers who are unfamiliar with these pesky birds you can read more about them here.  One of their favourite pastimes is digging up and eating sweet potatoes so I have resorted to placing a large panel of pool fencing over the top of the raised bed in which I am trying to grow the sweet potatoes.

However, some sweet potato runners had obviously escaped from one of the compost heaps and manged to grow in amongst the raspberry canes.  Even better, they had remained undetected by the scrub turkeys.

When GMan was doing some tidying up near the raspberry canes yesterday he noticed some errant foliage and discovered these beauties ready to be harvested.

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2kg of sweet potato that we did not know existed! I think I will need to re-arrange my menu plan and incorporate these into some upcoming meals.

Old and New

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This is a post that I have been meaning to write for a couple of months but it would be nothing without the photographs.

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Sometime ago we did yet another round of sorting and organising in the workshop.   This tall galvanised bin is now empty and I am not sure what its future will be.  It is over 50 years old and came from my parents’ place.  The bin was one that was originally supplied to householders in Brisbane by APM (Australian Paper Mills) back in the 1960’s for the purpose of collecting used newspaper for recycling.

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Most of the various outdoor and garden implements were stored in the bin using the same principle as the utensil jar on the kitchen bench.

However, it was becoming overcrowded and at times was difficult to extricate the desired item.  Also, since it was circular it took up more space than we wanted so it was time for a new solution.

We had often discussed that we felt the best option was to hang the items on the wall.  But how?

The ‘centre aisle’ at Aldi provided just what we needed.  One day when we were doing the grocery shopping GMan spied exactly what we needed so we bought 2 hanging racks.  These were duly mounted side by side and gave us the opportunity to hang 12 different items.

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We chose to hang the items which were a lighter weight and saved the heavier ones for a rack we had prepared earlier.  A few years ago we demolished the old chicken run and rebuilt it in a new location with the salvaged materials.  We left the small wood shed which was adjacent to it but tidying up we found a hanging rack screwed to the rafter at the back of the shed so GMan removed it with a view to using it elsewhere.  After having been stored for several years it has finally found a new use.  The heavier spades and garden implements are safely stored.

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