Furniture Makeovers

As part of our master bedroom reno we've also redone a few pieces of furniture in the room.

I don't have a proper before and after of the bed but I refinished that in a darker wood stain and then of course the bedside tables didn't match too well so there was a domino effect... (check the old bed colour here)

This was the before bedside table:

And this is the after (with my DIY recovered lampshades and refinished lamp! Sorry, no before on the lamps!)

 Then I had this weird wicker drawer thing and was shedding too much of the wicker and starting to go. I did a little experiment to see if I could extend the life and if not, well it was maybe going to be good laundry-room storage.

But I liked the result enough to keep it in the room. Yay!

Our big house update last week was getting heating installed! Now I know you North Americans may not understand that sentence. Yes, houses are built here with no heating solutions whatsoever. Nothing. Sometimes there will be a fireplace, sometimes a single-room gas-fired heater mounted to the wall but usually none of the above. (Even houses that are 5-10 years old may not have anything for heating!)

You see New Zealand has this misconception that they are "tropical" because they are in the South Pacific. So early migrants didn't seem to think it got cold enough for heating (and that attitude still is common!) But where we live it can get down to 2-3 degrees in the winter. I am pretty sure at some point I have mentioned this, and even posted a picture of our weather station showing a pitiful inside temperature last year. No more of that for us! Even though the walls aren't insulated, we just had to bring the house up to a standard that didn't require down jackets and toques inside. (Which sounds like an exaggeration but last year we got a down jacket for me to keep warm in the house. And a few times I had to wear a toque to bed. No this isn't a third-world country.)

So we now have gas-ducted central heating (no, nothing new and revolutionary, just the standard heating we grew up with but that many Kiwis never experience.)

People think we're a bit weird to go whole hog on the heating because most homes will just have what's called a heat pump in the lounge and maybe one other room. But those only heat single rooms and to buy one for each room adds up easily. But we promised ourselves that we would be heated before winter and it's a promise we kept to ourselves. So that's great news. We've only needed to turn it on once this week so far (we are still in autumn but have had a couple chilly mornings). But we are ready freddy for any cold snaps that come our way. Wow is it going to be awesome.

And the super duper heating company gave us a sweet deal because Dustin (and I) did the work cutting the vent holes, and installing the return air grill/exchange (as pictured above - Dustin hiding in the tiny office closet) and we poured the concrete pad for the unit (because it sits outside of our house rather than inside.)

So other than that we've been maxing out the last week of sunsets before 8pm by harvesting hops at a friend's house (and starting the inaugural Maple-Fern Brewing Hip Hop Harvest Festival), and by painting the fence and by playing frisbee in the park (or chatting with friends in my case). This weekend we turn the clocks back and we'll keep working through our little list of things we want to complete around the house before we tackle whatever the next "big" project is - possibly a top-to-bottom bathroom reno.

My weekend plans will also be making a tiramisu with homemade marscapone and some tres leche cake with homemade limoncello - we picked up our milk over the weekend and are in a flood of cream right now! But I think the story of where we get our milk is for another day... because it's bedtime here.