the teenage room renovation

After much planning and doing - the teenage room renovation is pretty much complete.  Considering I last decorated her room just after she was born, I figure a new life stage deserved a new look room. SHe had really enough of the yellow walls.  Annika has been fairly patient with sleeping in a renovation site with hacksaws, paint trays, powertools and screws everywhere.  She is really happy with the result.  So am I.

From this:

To this:

a handy place to put her bags and bits

Love a wall sticker.  Especially one for $20 (from Ikea)

We painted chalkboard paint on her cupboard door so she can draw and.....stuff...

Sh choose this wonderful greeny blue colour for a feature wall, and she though of the idea of putting little black boxes on it.

There was a tiny bit of yellow remaining in her bed linen..

The room feels fresher and lighter and more grown up.  We re-plastered, got new fans and powerpoints, painted, put in new blinds and curtains, and a few new accessories (thanks Ikea for having matching accessories to tie in with the theme of black/white/trees/birds - does the theme or the availability of the theme at Ikea come first?.....).  We completely tidied out her built in cupboard and desk drawers, and de-cluttered.  We kept the same furniture, but Chris re-sanded and lacquered the bedside table.  So the total cost of re-doing the room was kept to budget.

Now she just has to keep it clean.

shed issues

I have been having a massive declutter at our house, kind of inspired by Jenny, and I decided to start in the shed.  I have an old cupboard that is full of boxes with toys and craft supplies.  I had carefully put in a drawer some rolls of paper  that I thought would come in handy for RE one day.  When I was pulling boxes out of the cupboard I opened the the drawer and found this.

Although I also saw a fat rat bottom and seven baby rats.

I quickly closed the drawer and hoped the problem would go away.

It didn't.

Our house is a bit of a rat party frat house, with chicken scraps freely available and beautiful drawers filled with paper to nest in.  There is even a macadamia tree next door to collect the tasty tasty nuts.

But I didn't want to live with what was potentially a dozen healthy huge rats in the shed.  So we put out rat poison.  And then some young male friends 'disposed' of the baby rats quickly and humanely (using such tools as a shovel).

But I had to gird my loins and still clean out the cupboard from the rat infestation.  So last weekend I spent five hours de-constructing rat nests, vacuuming up rat poo and cleaning our toy boxes.  As I pulled down a suitcase from the top of the cupboard, a rat that had chosen the top of the suitcase as it's final resting place decided to fall on my head.  A dead rat shower.  I screeched and leapt around the backyard.

I could not shower enough that afternoon.

Our shed is now much cleaner, and I am eagerly awaiting council pickup to throw the cupboard out onto the street.

What we need is a ratting terrior.

I will continue the de-cluttering inside for a while I think.