Colour. Now there is something novel. Although I am of course a fan of all things monochrome I didn’t want my baby to think there are only two colours (shades?) in the world. So I made a colourful mobile to hang above the bassinet. I cut out random shapes from plywood with the jigsaw, primed them and spraypainted them. The priming is an important step because spraypaint tends to slide right off plywood. I’m not gonna […]
Changing the curtains immediately improved the feel of my space. The existing curtains were heavy grey curtains in some unnatural (gasp) fabric that sat low over the windows. As my place was a serviced apartment I kept imagining the breath of various interstate visitors hanging in the poly blend… Ok, perhaps I am being a bit melodramatic, but it is not an exaggeration to say that, along with the carpet, I was particularly happy to […]
Bunting. It seems that no baby may be born after 2011 without some form of bunting hanging in its nursery. It turns out my baby is no different. Such is also the fate of each of the babies of my friends who have received my felt mountain peaks as a gift. At least these frosty felt bunting peaks are inverted–ok so not that unique, but it’s something. I handmade the felt peaks one productive crafternoon. I had to search through the craft […]
There are so many cheap looking plastic baby toys around. So plastic-y. So many primary colours. I wanted something from real wood so I got the jigsaw out and made a plywood baby gym (yes, google tells me that is a thing). Apparently babies can only see in black and white for the first few months (don’t quote me on that): black and white it was. It wasn’t too hard to make – designing the main structure […]
What to do with the floors? The floors were the first thing I wanted to change. I was faced with brown(ish) stained carpet and cream(ish) nothing tiles. The carpet and tiles were specifically combined to meet in an arbitrary line that split the living area in two, halving the feeling of space. Why? Why? So I researched many different flooring options. The floors (a) had to fit within the budget, and (b) had to have a certain […]
Gin and tonic in a vintage blue glass. Enough said?
Standing in a junk yard outside a shed in the industrial zone of C-town I awkwardly called out to the person making industrial sounds inside. I had purchased four sixties patio chairs (patio, what a great word); but they needed some attention. They had an excellent recline and a perfect grid-frame. But they were rusty and the white plastic coating was peeling off like insect skins. The ‘before’ pictures below are not of the actual chairs (I […]
There was a moment when I was going to shell out some clams for a plywood plant stand and I thought, ‘I could make this’. I have this thought often. I usually ignore it. Reality usually hits that there is no way I would be able to make something that other people are able to exchange for cash money. But I figured that this project involved plywood — and, well, that’s it. I purchased a […]
The door was the beginning: it was first to turn black. In its previous life my space was a serviced apartment—and the door made this abundantly clear. It had a no-smoking sticker, an automatic door closer and (no doubt) hundreds of fingerprints from travelling strangers. Having removed the tiles and polished the concrete floor (more on that later), I was left with a decent gap under the door. I found a brass door seal that matched the brass switches. […]
The seventies. I grew up in a house that was decked out with hand-made macrame, cane furniture, maidenhair ferns and, yes, wood paneling. Eventually the fern greens were replaced with the peachy pastels of the eighties. But I still love seventies delights. Perhaps, like my dining table, it reminds me of home? It turns out the seventies was easy enough to recreate in my noughties space. I found a pile of long wood strips (cedar?) […]
space scout 