Paint fumes and garden shed for Lavender Hill

The painter woman's been at it again, this time the "paint" was a mix of bitumen and kerocene, black sticky gunk stirred and thined down with a little kero. I pinched the Blond One's plastic gloves, she only washes dishes when we away in anycase so she would not find out until the weekend. Why paint bitumen, cause it is used by builders as waterproofing on outside walls before they shovel dirt against house/retaining walls. Termites don't like it either. So let's hope it is going to save my new wooden garden shed from being eaten up by termites. A slap of bitumen to the underside of the base/floor, and now it's ready to be transported to the farm. the walls are in large panels (Plywood on 2X4's), them I need to paint a light colour (white) to lighten the inside of the shed. Assembly and clad with weatherboards........add one roof.

If you haven't noticed yet I was born with a paintbrush in one hand and a tin of paint in the other, LOL Don't stand still for to long or ya will get painted!

Now I am sure you going to expect this shed to come out of a box all nicely cut to size with instruction ... my dear husband sure wishes the same thing but no. It's a very large wooden box 2.5 X 3.5 sq mts with a VERY SOLID floor weighing a ton, yep it comes from work totally free, just waiting to be recycled into a shed. I can see it painted a sage green or lavender with a little white accent. Some guttering to attach my fairylights come christmas. I got great plans for that box!

Have you bought any paint lately? if you have you would have noticed how dear it is. But sometimes you can get a bargain by looking in their mismatch section, there they keep tins of paint that haven't come out quite the right colour, normally they paint a little spot on the lid to see the colour. These paints get discounted very cheaply. I found a huge 20ltr tin exterior weathershield paint with a grey marker for $65 same price as a 4 ltr can. But upon closer inspection found it to be lavender after stirring for 5 mins, what a bonus!!!

Maybe by the weekend you will have the first glimps of my "awesome" garden shed (Don't ya love kids expressions it's either cool, sick or awesome that your pick)
We leave Friday morning early for the weekend.
I'll be back with a colour sample soon,
see ya
Rina

Recycle recycle ...

Sonday turned out to be a beautiful sunny day here in Sydney, we got up early with intentions of getting a heap of work done around the place. The wheel barrow's wheel was bunkled and made a heck of a racket when you pushed it. We had bought two new wheels at the hardware store the day before (without measuring them of cause) and yep you guessed it they did not fit. Never mind we think of another project for them later, George hates returning things. He panelbeated the old wheel and now it's as good as new.


Rat lending a paw ....


Then we tackled the builder wheelbarrow that I resued from the skip at work, first getting the boys at work to remove the bin part. I cleaned all the mortor off with a anglegrinder (dusty job) sanded the wood handles, and painted them.
The metal parts got cleaned up with the anglegrinder too and then painted them with kill rust paint.That's as far I had got. George then removed the rest of the bolts that I struggled with. We found some old weathered pieces of hardword, and sanded that back with the angled grinder, taking off the grey weathered layer leaving it like new timber underneath. Cut them to size and skrewed them onto the handles. And then gave them 2 coats of varnish. It is a little heavy but a bale of hay on top on the veranda should look good as a backdrop to some pumpkins or other display.



This has been a great week for finds on the curb. Just happened to drive past and saw a water tank, those nice new ones you find at Bunnings atm, well it was broken. All I needed was the top bit anyway, stopped and loaded it in. Today I cut the bottom bit off and filled it up with soil. The tap on the tank was working well so that will get fitted on another 200lt barrel I had that needed a tap of some sorts.






Remember the 1/2 45gallon drum, here are my beans growing in them, I picked the first of them this afternoon. Fresh from the garden yum.
It's been a long day, time for a shower and bed, work tomorrow
Until nexttime
Rina

A little scrapbooking ... recycle your old dairy

Are you a scrapbooker? I do not claim to be any good at it but I do try come up with a few good ideas. Like this project below. It started it's life as a dairy, then as always happens at the end of each year it just lays around , no good for anything. But wait I got a plan. I removed 1/4 of the pages, glued every second one together. Painted them black, yep it's another messy project. I used Jo Sonya paint after lightly sanding the pages. When they dried (overnight), I started blocking up the pages, carrying over the same white embossed paper or matching paper, sort of keeping to a theme if you know what I mean. Now I could add my pics and journalling. Why not punch small holes around the edge of the pages, then thread a few strings of fluffy yarn through the holes.

I bet a teenager would love to make one of these photo books to brag to her friends.

The ZigZag railway is in the Blue Mountains, about 1hr drive away. With these photo's I tried to bring in the smokey soot effect by smudging the edges of the background paper, using a black stamping ink. Anf where I cropped the photo's I smudge the edge to ... Bit messy

DiL and Cobi, I had so many pics it was hard chosing which ones to use.

DiL2 with Luke ... These were taken when we spent a long weekend at Bunya Mountains, Queensland. We went on a wagon drawn by 2 beautiful horses. We had billy tea with damper yum. (I did this page on my one and only lesson)

My Dear friends Rosie, Roy and William on their last visit to Australia. I blogged about Rosie in my other blog, if you would like to read more. We had a lovely day at the Everglades Gardens at Leura, Blue Mountains before retiring to a nice hot meal and quite evening in front of the fire place with good friends.

Until Nexttime

Rina

Composting with sheep poo and hay

Our Gardening Friend Mr Pete Cundle, who was the presenter on ABC Gardening was a great inspiration to many gardeners in Australia. He used to love using Sheep poo in his garden beds and boy everything just seemed to be twice the size.

So having all these sheep here, made me think I needed a open compost bin just for their used bedding hay and poop. So my very helpful son constructed one for me with star pickets and colourbond sheet.




And has it worked a treat so far, a place to dispose of the bedding and boy can it get out of hand cause the shed got cleaned out every 3rd day. Then limed and new hay put down, yeh they ate the new hay the first day but lucky not all of it.





Now check out the compost, it's getting there, nearly ready to use. The pile has shrunk down by 1/4 and it's only been 3 months since I started filling the bin up.







Miss Bella is nearly as big as her mum. And Proud Father Nelson needs a Cigar for his efforts.



Miss Daisy and Miss Stella having a game.




Can't believe how they differ in size, the baby of the family has finally been named. And Stella it will be. So we got Bella, Stella, Molly and Polly. the boys are Lamb and Chop, sorry Boys.

Until nexttime
Rina

Open compost bay ... update on the chooks ...

One good thing about having the sheep is having lots of droppings to add to the compost. After cleaning out the sheep shed every few days, there was a mountain of bedding hay to add to the compost. My very helpfull son helped knock 4 star pickets/posts in and tied 4 sheets of colourbond to them. This will be our first raised bed at Mulgoa farm at Sydney, the bin is filling up fast and so we going to have to knock another bay together soon.

The chookhouse got a good clean out as well this weekend, all the lovely poop and sugarcane mulch joined the hay.The girls are still laying well, The leghorn Isabella, donated by a lovely Italian couple, lays beautifull large white eggs. Silkies and Ginger are laying well too. The 2 black Austolopes are only 18 weeks old I think,so not long to wait. Going with Henny and Penny, finally decided they needed a name so it got to do.Yeh not very original I know.

One thing you will find out about me is, If it stands still long enough, It's going to get painted. My favorite colours are Brunswick green, purple(painted caravan, agapanthus, and pine cones) and hint of orange (honeysuckle,oranges, clivia and bird of paradise) All colours from the bird of paradise flower, add to tie all these colours together a lighter green for (water tanks and colourbond/corragate).The sheep shed got painted today with Brunswick Green for all the woodwork and light green for the colourbond sheets.Amazing what a slap of paint can hide,using recycled materials you sometimes end up with a few different materials but just paint them and it looks wonderfull. Will post a photo soon.

It's been a very busy weekend, and tomorrow is the start of another week. I wish you a great week. Thanks for stopping by.
Until next time
Rina .....Chester

Composting and Recycling.

Ever wondered how much we contribute to the Landfill Site around the world?



How many more holes are we going to dig to throw away "Stuff" mostly made out of recycleable materials?



Every item you buy has some sort of wrapping or box, but it's what we do with it that counts. Protesting to manufactures about the usesage would be great. But they only hear what they want to anyway. We can help sort out our own waste into recycle bins provided by Councils and Recycle Centre. Food scraps,teabags and peels all compostable so investing in a worm farm and some chooks are just one way of dealing with this problem. The weekly bin is only half full aand still working on reducing the waste. My worm farm has been going for 10 years with very little effort. In return I get worm juice which I dilute for my plants and eventually castings to mix with a little soil or potting mix.



Our local recycle centre turns green garden waste into lovely rich black compost or gold as I call it ... a 10/10 for them. I have bought tons of it, had a few loads delivered to spread around the garden. The plant are just loving it, giving me heaps of great healthy crops.



Here in Australia the local Vinnies or Salvos are only to happy to take stuff you no longer want or need.





Just a few simply ideas I use to reuse or recycle.



Plastic 2lt ice cream tubes - Great for freezing, packs nicely into the freezer saving space - I make my own dog food, saving money and halving the cost to feed them. No more tin cans.



Carboard inside the toilet rolls - is great to plant a few seeds, no need to remove them either as them will break up eventually. Great for art projects for school and pre primary schools.



Egg boxes get painted with poster paint, decorated or used to hide easter eggs in. We have a painting session during holidays.



Old bathroom towels get cut into small hand towels which I love to dollie up with bit of material strips and loops to hang them up by - great in the laundry, kitchen or garden.







Plastic 2 ltr milk bottles got cut away leaving the handle bit - used to soak paint brushes in or for scoops for the chook food.



Blue Jeans just don't get thrown away even if they got holes - see Craft Corner.



Sure you could think of a couple of uses other than memtioned.

Happy recycling