The much anticipated before and after pics of our house

The first room that got a total overhaul was the most important in the house... the Kitchen!

This is what we started with. Thank goodness you cant see the inside of the cupboards! And yes that is the dreaded lino flooring that was hiding another layer of lino that would take us 2 days to scrape off!

And this is the much loved finished product!

We are still looking for some chairs for the new table, but they work for now.

The second room that we decided to tackle, much to Phil's dismay was our bedroom. Everyone knows that Phil's favourite colour is yellow, but let me tell you it was a bit much!

It hurt my eyes!

Phil agreed to go with a water theme so blue was the go. I am still looking for some new curtains but I think I may just have to make my own in the end.

The after!

All the bedrooms got the same colour carpet, and the flooring that runs through the kitchen is in the rest of the house.
Next we had to tackle the vaulted ceiling of the lounge/living room (to satisfy the Canadian and UK readers).The rest of the house needed to get painted before the floor could go in so that meant every room had to be done eventually. I do enjoy the concept of the feature wall so we carried that into the lounge as well. We went a bit more bold with our colour choice here but I am very happy with our final product.

White, bright and crisp.

 Trust me the carpet looks much nicer in the pics!

With a bit of adjusting of the furniture, new curtains and curtain rails, painting of the brick wall (never again) and some new art work we have...

The final product!

Sorry, this one is a bit dark.

 The last thing to do in this room is to replace the hideous chandelier, and we are still debating on getting an area rug for in front of the sofa. Stay tuned!
We have also painted the 2nd spare bedroom but nothing exciting to see in there. Phil thought it was going to be his 'Man Room' but my sewing machine has become a permanent fixture with all the projects I have been working on. But that will have to be another post on another day!
Hope you enjoyed the show!

Our New Zealand North Island Adventure - Part 1

Pondering a holiday to the sun (Thailand?) or New Zealand we decided it was definitely time to head to NZ and happened to get a good deal on a flight to Wellington, so that settled it!

The flight took us via Melbourne (another interesting blog post for another time) and then onto Wellington where we saw the Welsh rugby team (being a week before the rugby world cup of course). Then were picked up by Aled and great to see him again after about 7 years, then also got to meet Diane for the first time. Had a very tasty curry that night at Planet Spice in Newtown and then headed off to pick up the campervan (motorhome) the next morning just north of the city.

A very smart Mercedes 2 berth van that was to be our home for the next 9 days. Much easier than camping we decided, you just turn up at a camp site and plug in to the power.

We took off for one of the longer driving days up the west coast heading north, via Wanganui (where this photo was taken) with New Plymouth being the destination for the day. Driving past Mt Egmont (or Mt Taranaki) we were lucky enough for the clouds to clear while we took a great walk along the coastal path.

Later that day we headed to Waitomo to do the "black abyss" tour of the caves, which was a whole different way to see the caves and the "glow worms",  which we discovered are actually maggots with bioluminescent "poo"! Strangely enough they don't market it this way...

This was great, except for the minor detail of the water being about 8 degrees, so even with the double 5mm wetsuits, was VERY cold.....brrrrrrr!

More ramblings from the trip in post part 2....soon :).

In the meantime don't forget to check out "a few" more photos on the picasa site (not the 650 that we ended up with....)