A gallery of villas

Choosing a look for your villa

Someone suggested that before committing to any exterior work that we should have a look around suburbs where there are lots of villas to get some ideas and inspiration.

So off we went, with camera in hand to record the ideas for a "look book".

The first thing we noticed was how many different styles of villa there are! Just finding single bay fronted villas which resemble ours was trickier than we first thought.

To supplement this legwork, looking through online real estate listings or magazines (especially the Property Press) can help too.

It's certainly helped to identify some definite likes and dislikes, though I suspect there's a lot more research ahead while we renovate!

Here are some pics I found online:

Landscaping the garden

I've decided that clearing the garden is a job for chainsaw-wielding professionals: it needs a serious blitz!


Before: this border was over-run with ladder fern and weeds.

So recently two of the team from Ace Landscapes spent a coupla days pruning, mulching and weeding the garden. They took away 3 huge truckloads of garden waste with them - and there's more to go!

This is Part 1 of re-doing our garden: getting rid of the stuff we don't want.

(Part 2 will involve getting a landscape plan drawn up so that there's a scheme to work to - and Part 3 will consist of implementing this landscape plan, which will probably be done in stages... so keep tuned for the progress!)

The guys did a great job... it would have taken Mr Kiwi and I more than a week (probably more like 2 weeks) to do the work that the Ace Landscapes team did in a day or two. Man they worked FAST!

The only problem with the much-emptier garden was that it revealed just how badly the paint on the fence along one boundary is peeling!


After: the border is looking a lot less cluttered - but it's revealed the peeling fence!
So last weekend Mr Kiwi and I made the most of the great weather and picked up a 10L tub of fence paint (British Paints - 4 Seasons) for about $130-ish from Mitre 10 Mega and blitzed the fence.

The colour we used ("Karaka") is a very dark green - it was exactly the same colour that was there before. It's a really easy-to-live with colour, as it's not too green (so that you'd be thinking, ew, that's really green) and not too dark (so as to be sombre). It makes a really nice backdrop to the lush green of the tropical plants in our garden.


After: the freshly-painted fence AND a weed-free garden. Lovely!



Above: unfortunately Minnie the dog ended up sporting a dab of "Karaka" on her (no, we didn't use her as a roller! She just has to check out everything we do very closely! And it was too nice a day to shut her away inside!).

Fortunately the paint is water-based so it washed off beautifully and she is perfectly white again :-)

Auckland Autumn Home Show

I've just been for a nosey round the Autumn Home Show - I won free tickets from http://www.interiorsonline.co.nz/ (thanks guys!).

So how was it? To be honest - disappointing...

For one thing, coming from the UK I'm used to hugely vast exhibitions - the NZ expos are much, much smaller and I still haven't gotten used to that.

But more importantly, it astounds me that companies make such a huge investment to be there (the stand, setting it up, the labour costs -it all adds up to a very significant sum) yet make little attempt to engage the public and/or build their database. (The marketing consultant in me can't switch off, even on a Sunday!)

Make an exhibition of yourself!

At most stands, the stall holders stood there with their arms crossed looking unhappy. It doesn't really make you want to go up to them and enquire - it's quite off-putting.

Expos aren't the time to be introverted, shy or quiet - so if the staff or owners are suitably extrovert, then hire some outgoing people to engage the public!

And it's such a great opportunity to build a database (with a competition or something) and maybe even do some market research (what do the visitors think of your industry/product/service?). If a company isn't going to interact, they may as well not be there.

The most interactive stand? The Miracle Shammy. They put on such a good demo (and handed out freebies at the beginning) that I handed over $30 for a bunch of super-absorbent cleaning cloths. Great demo, fellas! (And hopefully the cloths will be handy for mopping water out of the bilges on the boat.)

A brochure I picked up that could be interesting for the future is from Granite Transformations (http://www.granitetransformations.co.nz/) - they put a real granite surface over existing bench tops. Could be good for us, as our kitchen is solidly constructed but looks dated, so it'll be interesting to see how much this option would be. (Though re-doing our kitchen is a few years away yet!)

I also saw a client there whom I'd recently done some copywriting work for - http://www.fishtanks.co.nz/ - he has very funky fish tanks!


Photo: the Miracle Shammy!

Summertime is garden time...

It's been a quiet few months on the villa renovation front: too busy enjoying the New Zealand summer, and also earning the money for all the renovations I want to make!

At this time of year, it's nice to spend any spare time in the garden. Now I must admit, I'm not much of a gardener - I just don't have the required green fingers. I do appreciate a well-tended, nicely planted garden, but alas I'm just not skilled or motivated enough to do much about it. I give my plants some basic care, and after that the choice to live or die is all their own!

So imagine my surprise when last year's chillie plant not only came back to life, but is sprouting a fine crop of chillies! They're just about ready to pick, and I'll be freezing them for warming curries and casseroles in winter. Yum!

Another crop that's doing really well are my grapes: about 3 years ago I planted a vine of table grapes, and this is the first year they've really performed. In fact, I have so many grapes I'm not quite sure what to do with them all!!! Other than giving them away to friends!

They're very tasty - and have a strong, distinctive flavour. The variety is "Niagra" and I grew up eating these. In my native Switzerland we called them "Katzenseicher" which means "cat's pee" because of their strong flavour!

Though I'm a lazy gardener, I do always make sure that my two tubs outside the front door are looking smart: I just love coming home to some pretty flowers welcoming me! For summer, I've been enjoying big blue flowers with little white ones around them (I have no idea what they're called). The garden centre is a scary place when you don't know what you need, so I chose these 'cos I liked the colours. And as I was really busy with work, Mr Kiwi planted them up for me: he knows just how much I enjoy coming home to flowers. Aaaaah!

Here's Minnie keeping an eye on me while I'm taking photos!

(And a larger photo would reveal that our front steps are in need of re-building - the wood is just about rotten... the tubs are strategically placed to hide the worst of it!)

Looking for inspiration?

I just found a fabulous blog with heaps of cool photos: http://desiretoinspire.blogspot.com/

If only I knew where to buy all the nice bits and pieces!

Picture this

Cheer up your walls

Changing the artwork on your walls is a great way of updating the look of your home, and having pictures which are meaningful provides real fulfillment and enjoyment.

Being a keen photographer, I like to display some of my favourite photos on the walls.

The Warehouse currently has a great range of cost-effective frames in store, some complete with mounting boards (I always use mounts... having the photo sit directly up against the frame doesn't look so good in my view). I bought the wooden ones pictured for $7.99 each (the photos in the frame are my own!).

I use FrogPrints for printing my digital photos. It's so easy, you just upload the photos online, choose the sizes etc. and they mail it to you. I've always found their service to be extremely quick, and most importantly of all the print quality is superb.

Project cost: $

Twice as many flowers

Only got a few flower stems?

Put the vase in front of a mirror and it'll look like you've got twice as many.