DIY: Recovering another filing cabinet

So I recently scored a few old bits of furniture from a warehouse relocation - I'm a big fan of reusing, redesigning, saving things from the rubbish tip where possible! This filing cabinet has a file drawer and is meant to have two upper drawers, but one is missing.

 Not the most attractive for a modern home! Never mind. Just had to unscrew the rails for the missing shelf.

Bit of offcut of yellowtongue; trimming to size.

 This will form a fixed shelf where the old drawer used to be.

 Think I'll cover it in a matching silver vinyl that I used for a similar filing cabinet recover.

 Fixed into place with 4 countersunk screws - leftover from the rear deck construction.

 Recovering the outside of the cabinet too.

Finish off by covering the drawer fronts, and 99% done - just a little more to cover and the old cabinet will be updated!

There's also a matching huge desk that will get some kind of treatment - I won't cover it in vinyl, got something a little unusual up my sleeve for that one!

As for our garden design, Dave at onlinegardendesign.com.au has been great with rapid responses to our questions, and has come up with some very practical thoughts that we hadn't even thought of. We're working on getting a final layout organised, and for a bonus offer Dave is offering $100 off landscape design packages - but hurry this offer ends July 15!

t&t

Planning for Spring: Finishing up the outdoor landscaping

With today being one of Melbourne's coldest June days in a decade, it's not really the time to geting dirty outside - is it? We've left the front of our house until last to get done, but with most of the insides and backyard just about there, it's about time we pay attention to some street appeal!

At the moment things look like this... pretty bland, pretty boring. I've got a few fruit trees growing up slowly in pots - oranges, mandarins, limes etc, and have constructed a low-key raised box; where I plan to stick in a whole lot of mint and other herbs. But there's a vast expanse of black mulch that needs to be overhauled, and while I might not be getting out the garden spade just yet, there's no harm in getting some planning done!

Will definitely have to do something to cover up that eyesore of a brick wall that's on our boundary  and there's another wall right outside out kitchen window that will also need covering up! Plus something to hide the bins.

Anyway, while I'm happy enough getting on the tools and constructing stuff, neither I nor Tina have much of an idea when it comes to gardening. All we know is that we don't want to spend hours trimming and fiddling with things, we like to have a productive garden that we can chew into (hence all the fruit trees and herb patch) and we want it looking modern and upmarket at the same time.

I don't know if we'll ever get the patience, time and money to construct something like this, but I love how it looks!

As luck would have it, we were recently contacted by Dave from Online Garden Design who has offered to help us with some expertise and advice on how to select and create a landscaping layout that would suit our house. We certainly need a lot of help getting the large front area looking beautiful, plus there's already a gardemn bed area set aside at the backyard that needs some planting, and even the area behind the garage with a whole lot of empty space that could do with some brightening up.

So Dave has sent us an intro pack with all the info he needs  - things like a rough existing site plan, some information on the style and design we like, which we've sent back to him for review. Will update things as we progress further down this road!

Open disclaimer: Dave has offered his design services to us free of charge in this instance, so that we may review his services and provide a blogger's perspective on how his services work.

Clearance on door dampers

Right, so it's taken a while to figure out that our website tim-and-tina.com hasn't been working, but it's fixed now!

Anyway to celebrate, we're clearing out the last stocks of our door dampers at a special price - a special bundle enough to do all the doors in your house!

They work like this;

If you're interested in ordering, please see our website for more details. Please note that screws are NOT included in this clearance price, but are available cheap from any hardware store.

t&t

Backyard update

Wow, can't believe that it's been 5 months since I last posted on this blog! I guess once you've gone through the excitement and anguish of building your house, other things grab your attention. That said, we're still progressing very very slowly on getting our house sorted out!

The next thing we did after laying the pavers for the BBQ was to have a look at the rest of the backyard.

Right... so it's not pretty is it? Leftover builders rubble, rocks, a couple of weeds. Not really something enjoyable, and we've left it a couple of years like this!

Anyway I was driving home one afternoon and was following a bloke who was towing his bobcat behind him - I contacted him and organised for a bit of a cleanup of the backyard.  This was around the end of 2012.

Spying on him working from one of our surveillance cameras! First I poisoned all the weeds for 3 weeks, before he came in to level the backyard. Fortunately his bobcat could just fit through our garage rear access door.
 

So after a bit of cleaning up, we've got a base layer of turf underlay soil spread out with a slight fall towards the back fence. In the far corner near the unpainted fence I've left a section vacant for a shed.

Delivery of some buffalo grass waiting to be laid. While it's entirely possible to DIY turf laying now that the basic preparation has been done, I just don't have the time or energy to do it, plus the cost of turf laying is pretty cheap.

Aaaaand.... turf laid out! I had a huge water bill for that quarter, since it was in the middle of summer and you have to keep the turf wet for it to take well. Now it's early winter and the grass isn't growing so much there's only 1-2 weeds to pull out by hand.

We still have a lot of work to go of course... would love to have something done about the front landscaping, since it's nothing but a vast wasteland of black mulch right now! More to come.

On a final note for this entry, my condolences go out to those affected by the GH collapse - read more about their plight here on whirlpool.

t&t