Truth is stranger than fiction - the shot in the head episode

In my Liebster Award post the other day I mentioned in passing that I'd been shot in the head.

Illuminating as this may be to those of you who despair of my various quirky personality traits (thanks for putting up with me), I realized that this casual admission may have you scratching your own heads in curiosity!

In the interests of saving you sleepless nights worrying about my post-traumatic stress disorder and how so much can now be explained, I figured I would fill in the blanks:)

Backtrack to the summer of 1982 (my memory is a bit dim but I think it was the Christmas break between Year Seven and Year Eight) and I was hanging out at my best friends house which happened to be across the road from a big sporting reserve.

Down Under was a big hit for Men at Work but I have no recollection of listening to it at my friends house...in fact I seem to remember listening to Cheap Wine getting a lot of time on the turntable!  As I said, time has dimmed the specifics:)

We'd been left alone in her house, her mum from memory had gone to work.  My strong memory is that we needed some milk (for what I don't recall) and so we trundled out of her house and walked along her street (that would be the street facing the reserve) and returned about 10 minutes later with the milk and probably some sort of lollies (my memory of being partial to some form of sweet from the milk bar is still VERY strong!!!!)

She was walking on the side closest to the houses, I was on the outer side of the footpath.

Cue something whizzing past my head followed by something else hitting the side of my head really hard.  Felt like a rock and bloody hurt!

I seem to recall my first thought being that I'd been hit by a rock from a slingshot.  In those days, slingshots weren't uncommon and my own father had one that he used to scare of stray cats, dogs and probably children!

Somehow we got back to my friends house (seem to recall some scrambling a la commandos) and went inside.  Looking in the mirror I could see a bloodless disc on my left temple surrounded by a small amount of blood.  Yes folks it wasn't like the movies...no profusion of blood to speak of, just a little bit that was easily sorted out by a piece of paper towel.

By this stage my sensible friend was on the phone to 000 trying to impress upon the dubious call taker that we were indeed in a crisis and in need of an ambulance.  Times have hopefully changed because in this instance the call taker thought we were playing a joke (it was school holidays) and refused to believe we needed an ambulance.....

My head was kind of thumping by this stage and my friend decided that we needed to do a commando run down the street to a neighbor who she thought would be home.  Imagine his surprise when we showed up on his doorstep claiming we'd been attacked!!  He could see we needed help though so kindly agreed to take us to the hospital.

The triage nurse must consider this one of her strangest encounters - two 11/12 year olds with no clear understanding of what had happened and one of them with a hole in her head!!!  An x-ray established that I did indeed have a bullet lodged in my forehead, an inch from my temple and a couple of centimetres from my eye.

Funnily enough, when my friend called my house (from a pay phone of course) my brother laughed when he took the message and was still laughing when he passed it onto my mother (who was also out somewhere and got the message when she came home...no helicopter parenting going on in our neck of the woods!!!!)  As my mother departed for the hospital she apparently told him he would be in danger of losing his life if he was having her on:)

Some time later in the care of the lovely nurses and doctor at the RCH I had an air rifle slug removed from my forehead under local anaesthetic.  It felt like someone rustling around in my head for a missing key...painless but pressure.

The bullet was put in a urine sample jar and it was subsequently taken by the police as evidence.

In a follow up post I'll recount the bizarre interview we had with the police and how the culprit was nabbed!

If you look closely I do have a scar from this nefarious incident.  It's faint but it's there.  I didn't suffer any ill effects and look back with only vague humorous recollections....thankfully!!

So there you have it, truth is indeed stranger than fiction...and in this case a lot less bloody!!

Liebster Award - paying it forward

Hello!  It's a windy morning here in Sydney but my very own whirlwinds have vacated the house and I'm getting busy with my tasks of the day.

The most exciting and enjoyable one is to pay forward a lovely award that I've been gifted by Jane over at Life on Planet Baby.

Jane is what blogging is all about to me - she gives of herself through what she shares with us on her blog and she gives of herself through her thoughtful and enriching comments that she leaves on the blogs of others.  Thank you Jane for giving me this lovely award!

The Award works like this:

• Each person must post 11 facts about themselves
• Answer 11 questions the tagger has given you and provide 11 questions for the people you tag
• Choose 11 people and link them to your post (they must have 200 followers or less
• Tell the people you have tagged.

So Let's Get Started!

 

1.  I was born under the sign of the Bull

 

Love this description!

 

My friends that read my blog will agree this is a canny desciption of my positive attributes (particularly the final two lines!!!!)

 

On the other hand, the ledger also has an opposing side....

 

Equally amusing piece from here

Just realized that I'm disclosing way more than eleven facts just in these two images:)

 

2. I hate travelling cattle class (ironic given I'm a Bull)

 

 

3.  I have an aversion to touching raw or cooked chicken and keep a supply of disposable gloves on hand to deal with this OCD tendency

 

4.  Saint Mike and I eloped...getting everyone together for a wedding was just too-hard.

 

5.  I was nearly arrested by Airport Security in Fiji after arguing with a horrible airline staff member (see above personality traits)

 

6.  I can't stand people talking in movies and am the person that ALWAYS speaks up and tells them to SHUT.UP.OR.GET.OUT!!!!

 

7.  I was shot in the head when I was eleven years old (ironic the number eleven is featuring again).  Perhaps this explains my OCD/Anger Management issues???

 

8.  I had 18mths of orthodontic treatment in 2005/6 to deal with chronic overbite that was causing ongoing issues.  Two operations involved including having my jaw repositioned and a chin implant plus expander plus braces. 

 

9.  I don't like eating leftovers

 

10.  Between Middle KAT and Youngest KAT I studied Horticulture at TAFE and wanted to open my own gardening business

 

11.  I think my toenails are one of my best features!!!!

 

My Answers To Jane's Questions:

1. What 3 things would you save if your house were burning down?

My KATS, My husband and Sally

2. What is your favourite song?

Somewhere Over The Rainbow (Eva Cassidy version)

3. Do you speak any foreign languages and if so, which ones?

Unfortunately No!  Failed Italian and hated French at school (sorry Jane)

4. Have you ever met any royalty and if so, whom, when and where?

Unfortunately No!

5. What is your favourite flower?

Frangipani - the essence of a Sydney summer

6. Are you a beach person or not?

Oh yes!!!  As I age though I hate the sand more and more:)

7. What 3 adjectives would you like listed on your gravestone?

Genuine, Loving, Inclusive

8. What magical power do you wish you had?

The power to melt fat cells right out of my body!!!!

9. Which bloggy skill would you like to master?

Linking a video into my post...hopeless at it!

10. To Facebook or not to Facebook?

I do it because it helps me keep in touch with family overseas and support small businesses that I love:)

11. What is your favourite dessert?

My mums Pavlova!

 

I'm Paying it Forward to:

Jode from Life on the River

Penny at Designed by Penny, Paid by Jason

Sim at Mummy Chaos
Jenny at Still Life With Crockpot
Lisa at Pearl Meringue
Dianna from Married with a Blog
Kelly from Messy Freckle
Jody at Lemon Rhodes
Roberta at Rowantree Designs
Chantel from Bossy Mummy
Rachael at Squiggly Rainbow

Thanks again to Jane for nominating me and giving me the chance to show these lovely ladies some blogmiration!









 

 

 

The Lady Shed Gets Some Clothes

I've decided a change of vernacular is in order over here at KATcapers to describe our lovely new addition.

Calling it the Sneaky Shed was starting to make me feel like we were on the run from the law!!

Instead I'm renaming her the Lady Shed.  I feel better already.

The Lady Shed is now officially clothed.  She is still lacking her undergarments (the insulation and the internal plasterboard) and her accessories are yet to be added (timber battens on the outside plus window reveals) but she's looking pretty promising.

The weather was very kind to Saint Mike and PK on the weekend and they managed to get the new window installed on Sunday morning and then spent the remainder of the day finishing off the cement sheeting.  I did my best impression of a happy homemaker and made them a yummy lunch of baguettes which I artfully wrapped in paper and then placed in a blue Nigella tin for them to consume at their leisure.

There is only one drawback to having PK help Saint Mike and that's his ability to say "No" to me!  I politely suggested that now that the window is installed I think the cross-ventilation could be improved by adding a small highlight window on the back wall.....PK shot this down and Saint Mike then delivered the bad news to me! 

Never mind.  On the plus side Saint Mike is being quite charitable (or perhaps just his usual pragmatic self) in accepting that I have designs on this space to flex my decorating muscle and create a lovely retreat with the Lady Shed and that as soon as PK is back on his side of the neighbor divide I'll get my way on other things!!!!

For example, in return for accepting that deficiencies in cross-ventilation I have kindly offered to accommodate his "tools" and shed-type paraphernalia in an organized manner befitting my control enthusiast tendencies.  Yes, he's getting the far wall for his shelving/work-space (see below picture)

It's just a minor detail that this was ever supposed to be a shed replacement:)) I will be pedalling furiously on the Singer to sew up a nice curtain that will screen off his blokey "stuff" when the Lady Shed is being used for it's retreat-like purposes.  There is no way I'm going to staring at a wall full of boy-stuff when I'm zoning out up there with a cup of tea (or a glass of wine!)

I was planning on doing something like this one that Chez Larsson did in her basement:

As an alternative, I could do something similar to these curtains that used to hang in the Lee Matthews store in Mosman (before it relocated up the street and the curtains were banished to the back stockroom).

I love the patchworky nature of it - natural but quirky.  This is different to the Chez Larsson option though as it's a tab curtain.  Given that the Lady Shed has a raked ceiling this would mean I could (when I say "I" it probably means Mike) put up a curtain rod hung from the ceiling to string it along.  The more I think about it the more I like this option...I could have some fun with the curtain ties that attach to the rod:)

I have actually made a tab curtain once before...in our old apartment for the french doors that led out to our communal courtyard.

I'd like to think my sewing skills have improved since 2006.  Hmmmm we shall see:)

In the meantime, I'm admiring the Lady Shed in her partially clothed form and feeling very favourably inclined towards my clever husband!

Any thoughts, suggestions on the curtain options??

Operation Bench Space

With Saint Mike busily working on getting the lady shed fully clothed, I have decided to focus on my own DIY activity this weekend.

It's a DIY project that I've code-named "Operation Bench-Space".  Our newly renovated laundry is abundant in bench space compared to our previous laundry.  You see we were coming from a very low base - we had zero bench space.  If the urge ever possessed me to fold laundry it had to be done on the top of the dryer (yes I still own one!!) or removed to the lounge room or elsewhere in the house.

The laundry when we bought the house...not a selling feature!

Our laundry makeover needed to accommodate the basics (washer/dryer/sink/storage) as well as the 'Holy Grail' for a house of five people - a second loo!!

Bench space and a loo...heaven!

I am loathe to look the bench-space gift horse in the mouth, but our post-reno laundry could still do with a little bit more as our house seems to exist in a terminal state of over-flowing laundry baskets...and those suckers are taking up valuable real estate on my new bench!!

Operation Bench Space has been bouncing around in my head for a couple of months now and although I haven't gone so far as to have a mood board or anything that would indicate a level of organization and planning, I have certainly have numerous ideas percolating about it.  There's a couple of things that needed to be taken into consideration:

1. However I designed the bench it needs to be a 'fold-down' type of arrangement as it's going to be situated above the loo that's saved our sanity.
2.  The flat-pack cupboards that we went with for budget reasons are a bit on the blah side and the shelf therefore needs a bit of oomph:)

Trawling Pinterest I came across this image of a shelf made using an old shutter...

This beauty is from here

I don't normally embrace the shabby chic thing when it comes to decor, but I can take it in small doses.

I like the aged patina of the shutter and the iron brackets...it definitely got me thinking that I could incorporate a shutter into Operation Bench Space.

Our lovely neighbor PK who has been Mike's mentor and general whizz with all things 'handyman' had mentioned a recycled building materials place in our general locale, so I went on a bit of a treasure hunt to see what I could turn up that would fit my vague specifications.

This place is a treasure trove if you're into the re-use/re-cycle concept. Twenty dollars later I had scored me a louvred door that was just the right size for my project.

Now I realise this whole project may have some of you scratching your heads wondering what the hell I'm thinking...but each to our own!  My door was in desperate need of a good clean.  Who knows how many years it had sat in the shed at this place before I rescued it!! 

Out came the rubber gloves and the scrubbing brush...off came the dust, dirt and grime!

I also removed the old hinges and the old door knob and got out my trusty palm sander ready for the next stage.

In the interests of retaining some of the patina of the door I decided not to repaint it, just to sand it back and give it a coat of Porters Clearcote to freshen it up a bit.

Sanding it has taken off a nice bit of paint so it's got that 'not new' look happening.....I'm hoping it's a nice counter point to the blahness of the flat pack cabinets!!!

The next job will be to cut the door in half lengthways as I only need one half for my drop down bench...the other half will sit in line with the upper laundry cabinets above the fold-down bench as a permanent shelf (hard to explain but I will show you 'after' shots when it's done.

Saint Mike is going to help me with fixing battens to the wall and side of the existing bench and put hinges on the end of the door so it folds down.

In the meantime, the freshed up door is waiting for the next stage of Operation Bench Space.

Pulling the rug out

Image from Apartment Therapy

The house of KATcapers has a dubious record of rug purchases.  Truth be known, I've always felt that rug purchasing is my particular 'Achilles Heel' when it comes to decorating.

Not that we have an abundance of the things, they've usually been limited to one at a time parked underneath the coffee table in the lounge.  As an anchor to the lounge room, they are a lovely addition.

Our first rug was from the Natural Floorcovering Centre and was a lovely Belgian Sisal.  It sat in our apartment and witnessed our early years as parents of a young baby.  We learnt the hard way that Sisal and babies aren't a great match!  Those pesky fibres seemed to harbour every stray bit of vomit, rusk and yes I will admit the occasional flack from an ill-fitting nappy (yuck!). 



I became a master at the CSI-like extrication of 'bits' from the darned rug and although I loved the natural qualities that Sisal is blessed with I sometimes found it less than user-friendly.

As I can be a bit intransigent when it comes to "change", when Rug #1 finally showed a bit too much 'wear' I simply replaced it with an equally lovely Sisal rug with a different trim (variety is the spice of life after all). 

By this stage, Oldest KAT was rocketing around and Middle KAT was toddling after her.  Rug #2 was meted out the same level of tough love - food and a range of bodily fluids:)

When we moved to our little bungalow we ditched Rug#2 and our lounge room has been naked ever since.

Cue 2012 and our recent reno's and I had been itching to get me another rug.  Youngest KAT is now 5 and although we have a puppy, I decided to throw caution to the wind and introduce Rug#3.

This time I wanted to eschew Sisal in favour of Wool but unfortunately Saint Mike was the intransigent one this time having had sticker shock at the various rugs I was eyeing off.

I scoured Freedom and every other chain decorating store and just couldn't find anything I liked.  I was attracted to rugs from Loom and Koskela and heaven forbid Designer Rugs and I knew that was not on as far as the accountant was concerned.

Dejected I had started to consider the cheap and cheerful Sisal again.  Three times lucky perhaps?

On a "stuff" buying trip to Ikea however I made an impulse purchase that I have now had a month to regret.

I found a colourful striped rug and without checking the measurements or considering if it would push the friendship with SM in my embrace of vibrant colours, I purchased it.

Fast forward six weeks and I can honestly say that I have hated the damn thing for pretty much every single second since it was put down on the floor and the coffee table was wrestled on top of it.

As you can see, describing it as 'vibrant' is probably an understatement.  It's a veritable rainbow of colour.

It's officially a decorating disaster.  It's also been the elephant in the room.  No one, not SM, not the KATs, not MY FRIENDS (you know who you are) have said anything about it.....ie how WRONG it looks!!!!!

It sheds fluff like a fairy floss machine on overdrive. 

It shows EVERY. SPECK. OF. DIRT.

It's too big for the space and therefore makes our tiny lounge room look even smaller in comparison.

See!  See that dirt...and that fluff...and how it butts up against the entertainment unit (ignore the fact that the coffee table is a monstrosity - that's another story).

Today I'm officially OVER.IT.

Today when Saint Mike gets home from work the rug will be gone.  Youngest KAT will have to live her life a bit longer without the experience of a rug underfoot in the lounge.

Until I can justify the more expensive rug I'd rather go rugless!!!!!

I'm owning my decorating disaster and am just glad that it was the Ikea rug that didn't work out...because as with all Ikea "stuff" it was cheap even if it's not cheerful (in its current location that is).

The Swiss Cheese Approach to household jobs

I know I'm not alone here at KATcapers in having the Groundhog Day experience when it comes to household jobs.

You know the ones...where you think "how many times am I going to tidy these exact same toys/counters/bedrooms....fill in the blank!  Worse still, it's not just the cleaning to be done but the actual organizing of mountains of "stuff" that surrounds us in our house. 

Some days the amount of re-doing that I should be doing is insurmountable.  I walk around the house and feel completely overwhelmed by the immensity of simply staying on top of things.

This is particularly the case at the moment as I'm hamstrung by an aching and tender left arm which is taking its own sweet time to repair itself.

So when I returned home this morning after dropping off the oldest and middle KATs at school I decided that I would take the Swiss Cheese approach to my housekeeping.

Have you ever been taught the concept of Swiss Cheese time management???

We all know what Swiss Cheese looks like...lots of holes

I learnt this concept of time management early in my career with IBM when I was a business admin specialist (a nicer word for clerical person).  Thankfully I moved on to sales after a few years and left the admin to some other poor unsuspecting young girl (or boy).  The concept is portable though as there's always something to procrastinate about in life.

According to Dr Google, the technique was introduced by a famous time-management specialist, Alan Lakein, in his book "How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life".

We can all be guilty of postponing 'complex or unpleasant tasks' the collecive noun for anything housework related as far as I'm concerned. 

The bigger the job (or the more annoying the task of sorting it out the more this concept applies.

According to Lakein, the Swiss cheese method helps to make your global and even monumental tasks transparent and easy to complete.  Sounds good doesn't it!

According to Lakein, “the underlying assumption of the Swiss cheese approach is that it is indeed possible to get something started in five minutes or less. And once you’ve started, you’ve given yourself the opportunity to keep going…Swiss cheese is supposed to lead to involvement.”

How to use the Swiss cheese technique in real life? Just do not postpone your important tasks for better times and try to do a small part of the task even if you have 5-10 minutes of free time. Returning to the task again and again during the day, week or month, you will notice that the task is moving along. Some day you will make enough holes in your task like in Swiss cheese and you will easily 'eat' your task like a tasty cheese.

So I endeavoured to "attack" one of the holes I've been dealing with lately....my kitchen!  Despite a renovation that has made it a much more pleasant space, it still lacks a bit in the storage department.  Hence, I have become the queen of the glass jar for stuff that won't fit in the pantry and my unending supply of baskets has been useful for storing all mannner of things from tea-towels to plastic snack bags as well as kitchen utensils.

Nonetheless, there were elements that have been driving me up the wall. 

After giving the kitchen a top to bottom clean (yes this did take more than 5-10 minutes!!!) I rearranged some of the 'stuff" and I am quite pleased with the resulting orderliness (at least until the KATs get at it!).

Lest you think I'm a smug self-absorbed wanker, here's some shots of the rest of the Swiss Cheese that have still to be addressed:)

Saint Mike's business/tax paperwork sitting underneath that nice and neat set of shelves in the 1st shot!!!!  Note the useful positioning of the tissue box on top....paperwork and tears go hand in hand!

Laundry that is clean but yet to be folded!

The back room of our house...wardrobe purchased on eBay that I am yet to paint, bags hanging and assorted pictures/shelves and other crapola that needs to "go" somewhere!!!!

So, have you adopted any useful approaches to time-management that rival the famous (or not so) Swiss Cheese Approach?

asking for and accepting help

image from here

I have a problem asking for help.  In fact even if I could ask for help, I have an equally hard time accepting it when it's offered.

There.  I've said it.

One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand..............................

No.  Still don't feel any better.

I think it boils down to not feeling worthy of help. 

Deep, deep, deep shit....best not to turn over that moss-covered rock today:)

Suffice to say the last few weeks have been one endless opportunity to reject kindly offered helping hands.

Unless they've physically shown up at the door unannounced and therefore impossible to rebuff I have managed to do my level best to reject any and all offers of help that have been forthcoming.

Instead of saying "YES, it would be really great if you could .....(fill in the blank)" my knee-jerk reaction is to say "Oh no, it's okay, I'm fine".  Truth be told I've been miserably struggling on, driving one-handed and running myself even further into the ground.

As my mother has pointed out, I'd be the first one offering help to someone in my situation but I'm loathe to accept it in return.

So frustrating and I'm sure annoying for everyone else...just goes to prove to people at school that I'm a prickly pain in the neck and best given a wide berth:)

As I insisted on pushing my own trolley one-handed through the shopping center today as my mother trailed after me muttering something about this being something she could do, I felt a not uncommon urge to kick myself in my own arse! 

She has been up here for just over a week supposedly to help but unfortunately has been under the weather herself so it's only in the last day or so that she's actually been healthy enough to lend a hand.  She spent quite a few days in bed coughing up a lung so looking after me wasn't really going to happen.

Today, in an effort to "let go" I literally did exactly that.  I stopped and let her push my trolley for me.  The fact that we were almost back to the car isn't important!  I still did it!!

Something else for me to work on I suppose.  Something else for Saint Mike to toss in that overloaded basket of psychological dirty laundry that I am blessed with!!

I know I'm not alone in this particular ailment...come on, fess up:)

nurturing our babies

In our garden, winter is marked by the flowering of our Camellia hedge. 

We first started growing Camellia's in pots when we lived in our old apartment.

You can see them here in the two pots either side of the bench.  Oldest KAT was heading off to school for her orientation in this shot.  That would be seven years ago!  Such an exciting time:)

The Camellias were a burst of colour in our shared courtyard.  As you can imagine, we had limited control over the 'look and feel' of a communal courtyard but I didn't let that deter me...embracing container gardening like a woman possessed!

I cut my gardening teeth nurturing these beauties (the Camellias not the children).

I taught myself how to prune on them.  I learnt that they can handle the heavy-handed treatment meted out by a novice gardener!!

I fertilised them, I transplanted them into bigger pots when they were needing a bit more room.  Somehow the Camellias were telling us that we needed more room too!! 

Eventually we had to uproot ourselves from our apartment and find a backyard to call our own.

When we moved to our ugly blue bungalow they came along.  By that stage they were a part of the family.

In the first twelve months we were in our new house we somehow managed to find the time to transform the garden from this

to this....I will do another post on the evolution of our garden.  It's been a work in progress with me as landscape designer and sometime gardener and SM as the 'muscle' creating beds and retaining walls, digging holes and lugging plants around.  We took an overgrown and unloved garden and created order and a patch of grass that would make any bloke proud.

Knowing what hardy and special plants they were, we planted a new Camellia hedge along the boundary and inserted our two babies into the row.  It's under planted with Liriope (a plant that repays you in spades as it's easily divisible and makes loads of new plants to use in your garden).

They have flourished alongside their new brothers and sisters.  Each winter they burst forth in flower and repay us all the care we have lavished on them.

Another Winter, another bounty of blooms.

the sneaky shed gets a hat

Can you see the big smile on Saint Mikes dial?  Think this shot was taken at about 3pm Sunday arvo.  He'd been working since early in the morning getting his colorbond 'hat' on KATcapers sneaky shed. 

I love this shot.  How happy does my husband look!  Just quietly, I think he looks dead sexy with that happy smile on.  So nice to see him happy and not stressed, worried, burdened (fact of life for a bloke trying to keep his family afloat in aspirational Sydney).

The sneaky shed is proving as useful as hours of talking with my lovely psychologist does for me.  I know it will have to end eventually but each stage of the building process is such a treat to behold.

For some of the day I sat outside in one of the Muskoka chairs (some people call them Adirondacks) and just admired my husband at work.  One-armed labouring isn't much in demand at the moment:)

The insulation was a fairly straightforward affair, the fascia was a bit trickier...he won't be leaving his day job for a future as a roofing contractor (that's his assessment, not mine).

PK (SM's trusty compatriot and our neighbor) was back on the tools to assist.  Saint Mike has managed to find the one thing that he is just as much a novice at.  He freely admits that he'd never worked with Colorbond either. 

They are both such calm souls they just toiled away together for the entire day making it work. 

Cups of tea and cheese toasties kept their energy up (thanks to PK's wife who kept up that end of things...told you they're special neighbors!!!).

Check out that frame!  If I wasn't a one-armed invalid and currently had the libido of a hibernating grizzly bear I'd be jumping his bones and christening the sneaky shed (oh oh, oversharing!!!!)

Now that the sneaky shed has its jaunty hat in place, it's in need of that exterior cladding.  That will be a job for this weekend if the materials arrive as scheduled.

I can confidently say that the sliding door is never going to grow on me.  Hence I insisted that it be installed so that I cannot see it from the house...and I plan to whip some funky curtains up to make it slightly less dodgy looking. 

It did make sense to re-use it and it does provide a lovely outlook towards our Norfolk pine.  You can get a sense of the size of the space from these two shots I think...it's more summerhouse than shed just quietly!

So there you have it, the House of KATcapers crash course in construction continues. 

I can't get the grunting soundtrack to "Home Improvement" with Tim Allen out of my head as it so suits the tone of the sneaky shed...manly men making manly mess:))  Love it!

Sneaky Shed Update

Well the sneaky shed now has a frame! 

Saint Mike is now an expert in building timber frames.  He's even acquired a tool belt.

We were already aware that we are blessed in the neighbor department - we're surrounded by legends.  It just so happens that our neighbor PK is a legend in the handyman department and has kindly been acting as mentor for SM ensuring that the nail gun is pointed in the right direction.  So far the mantra "measure twice, cut once" has been paying dividends.

There is an opening for a lovely double hung sash window (on order) and in the interests of reduce/re-use/recycle SM has used our old sliding door which used to act as our front door pre-reno.

The sneaky shed is going to have a rakishly perched hat...a skillion roof (raked from front to back) to allow in lots of light.  The new colorbond roofing in Woodland Grey is now sitting ready for installation this weekend (if weather permits.  We have perused more YouTube videos to prepare for the 'roofing' phase and things are looking pretty do-able according to SM.

Skillion/Raked roof will look something like this
Image from here

 The back wall of the shed (her bottom) has also begun to be clad in cement sheeting...after deliberations re the degree of difficulty of putting up cladding, I suggested we go for more of a beach shack aesthetic and go with the Hardie-Board with timber batten approach.  I think this will give the sneaky shed a nice retro look (which we know I'm a huge fan of).

Image from here

This beauty (remember beauty is in the eye of the beholder) is a true retro shack with the sort of fibro look that I hope we can imitate.  It's down at Bundeena and thankfully has been protected, won't be bulldozed in favour of some tragic concrete beach McMansion.  I'm sure it's stinking hot in Summer and frigid in Winter though:)

Image from here

Our sneaky shed will be insulated (roof and walls).  Next job is to investigate a rainwater tank to get plumbed in...hang on, that's another thing to research on YouTube!  Surely SM is up for a bit of plumbing?

I also like the awnings over the windows of this shack - shouldn't be too tough to knock up should it SM???

So there you go.  Next week, expect to see the sneaky shed with her hat on and a demurely covered derriere.  

Thanks for all your lovely comments re my injured wing and my trip to Melbourne...will post an update later this week on how that's travelling:)