Day 712: Little people and little trees

So those little cutouts in the driveway still needed to be filled with some plants. I use the term broadly as neither of us have any clue about green things growing in the ground. I checked the interweb but unlike the wide variety of entertaining and helpful DIY videos, this is a slightly underserved market to say the least. Most of the presenters in the video are 1) have about 50 years of experience in the subject and assume so do their viewers and 2) only seem to understand the on/off and upload features of their cameras. or maybe they've just managed to fit the video in between lawn bowling and bridge. A perfect example is here (17k hits, wow!)

Realising that we were a bit lost, we took a family to the local garden centre to get some help from people that knew what they were talking about. After looking at several plants that all started to look the same, we landed on Lingustrum Ovalifolium (aka Privet Hedge). The selling point was that we could plant and forget. It basically live anywhere that has oxygen, and pretty much does it's own thing. It doesn't drop leaves, doesn't need fed, doesn't need much if any pruning. Yes, it's the perfect plant.

I planted these one evening after a day out. It was getting late and I was busy digging and planting so hence no pictures; but don't worry, they wouldn't have been too exciting anyway :( 

After, we needed to put on what is called "mulch". I thought this was the clumps that came out the back of the lawnmower but apparently this is anything that goes on top of your flowerbed to keep out the weeds but let the water through.

We went with a large black slate mulch to cover over the dirt. We got a couple of 10kg bags worth of the stuff.I figured the large pieces wouldn't get blown around the driveway and pathway as much.  

This was an Ash and Care job. Ash was super helpful here, making sure the little rocks were all nicely distributed in the flower boxes. 

  

And yes, the tree is taller than Ash. But I I wasn't going to mention that at the time - she did have large rocks in her hands! 

And there you go, our venture into gardening - amazing to have a post not involving power tools or paint. We're far from experts, but the plants look to still be alive so maybe that's a good start. However, I don't think I'll be posting planting videos on YouTube any time soon.

Day 712: Not another blog about paint .....

I thought there was nothing worse than picking tiles. I was wrong.

Paint comes in even more colours and then there is the decision of matt vs satin. BTW, to save you the reading, always go with the matt.

So the front room went from plaster pink to white .. very white .. blinding when the sun comes up in the morning white. And since we didn't put back up the curtains, sunglasses are definitely needed in the morning in our lounge.

So, for the walls I had the view of some nice neutral medium grey. Care thought we'd keep it all white. And we ended up finding every shade in between to help our discussion. Also, most people who've had the dreadful experience of painting will realise that even white isn't white - paint companies have even found a way to make that difficult. Dulux has from I could find about 15 shades of "white". So in came sample, after sample after sample. This and the fun experience of saying "hmm, that white isn't quite the white I had in mind". Argh!

So since life is full of compromises, so was our colour selection. We went with white cotton for the ceiling and polished pebble (Caitlin's choice) for the walls. It was lighter than I had in mind, but at least it wasn't white. 

You'll see on the tin that the White Cotton was a silk finish. Some websites say that silk is better in a lounge as it's brighter and easier to clean. Yes, I know it's the ceiling but you don't know the capabilities of my kids to make a mess. 

Anyway, I got the paint from homebase on a 3 for 2. Good thing as the silk looked horrible. Reflected the pendant light in some funny way and showed off every single imperfection in the ceiling.

Silk was replaced with a matt finish in the same colour. So the ceiling ended up getting 4 coats of paint in the end. Oh, how my neck really hurt after looking up for so long. At least I know we've got a good coverage.

I didn't want to make the same mistake on the walls. Instead of getting just the basic matt that doesn't clean all to well, we went with the Dulux EasyCare version. This is good for muddy, shaggy dogs and kids - apparently comparable in mess potential. After it's dry, the EasyCare is wipeable with a damp cloth without messing up the finish.

So on went on the final coats of paint. Cutting in from the edges to make sure the edges are crisp, and then roller painting the rest. I'm not sure why they don't recommend using masking tape to get a clean paint edge vs cutting in. But most YouTube clips recommend the former method. It's more time consuming and takes a bit of practice but works when you get the hang of it. 

So after all the deliberation, we were happy with the colour scheme. The Polished Pebble looked really nice - good choice Caitlin!