I want an excuse to post this picture of the mural in my bedroom:

I cannot remember if I mentioned this on the Tiffany thread on the other board, but in the end, I bought the elephant lamp. It is gorgeous. And an Edwardian end table to put him on.

Yay! I love your mural kate.

I just went to look at a house that is SO CUTE! Eighteenth century (?) and probably very unsuitable for a small baby but I think I want to move in anyway...

It’s the one squashed in the middle here:

Omigod, that is the cutest house ever!

Come on, what do you mean not suitable? They had babies in the 18th Century and not all of them perished on gin.

Inside our living room. Me mum in the front. heh.

Swanky no? I’m posh, I am.

hahahahahah

Some friends of mine who live in a cottage of a similar age have just had a baby. They seem to do all right although the house did need a lot of work doing and there was a big rush to get it all done before the baby arrived. Might not be so easy to do major fixes in a small place with a baby there.

I love that photo, Nath, it’s like something out of Country Life. So elegant!

Plus, I wanna make a shirt out of your sofa and wear it.

You’re not fooling us again, Nath. We know that you and your Mam just take these pictures after the tours have moved to the next room.

Archel, I actually thought there were just two houses in that picture until I had a closer look.

Part of front house.

Staircase.

(Stolen from Ned’s Flickr page. I hope he doesn’t mind!)

I love our house so much. It’s actually my parents house, but I hope to buy it from them one day. Maybe sooner than later: they live (permanently) in Japan anyway. It’s actually a bit too big but I prefer that over a small house.

God, my house is such a crapfest compared to everyone else’s houses.

Uh, you should see our bedroom and study. A trainwreck, really. I feel so ashamed when my dad was in our room the other day. My parents, especially my mum, has become even cleaner in Japan. It’s just... WOW. I’m not clean myself, alas, but I have returned to my anal self: I love things to be in its place.

Trish, you should have seen the state of the place before I got all the books and crap off the floor.

Oh, Argos £70 CD racks, you are a thing of beauty!

No, I don’t mean in terms of cleanliness, I mean the house itself. It looks like this from the outside:

Boring, stupid, housing estate box.

I am grumpy because my brother’s house in Essex is so beautiful.

Yes, but what does it look like on the *inside*? You can make it your own little captain’s lair inside if you like. (Not that I’m saying I did that oh no.)

You’re not fooling us again, Nath. We know that you and your Mam just take these pictures after the tours have moved to the next room.

haha! indeed nice house Nath. I’m jealous that Ned has visited you there. :(

The front of our house followed by way too many other pictures of various states of disrepair and renovation. Last night I was thinking I should actually take pictures of our nice living room furniture and decorations but it will have to wait until the contents of the kitchen cabinets have homes again.

You can make it your own little captain’s lair inside if you like.

Well, I do have a lovely print of this on my wall:

That is gorgeous! I really want to get a ship in a bottle to put in my display cabinet.

sam, you have a blue cattle dog! so cute!

i love your slate. ive had thoughts of slating the entire house before. i like a cold, hard floor.

we have two blue cattle dogs! they are sweet but a mess.

The slate is fantastic. We put it in every room but the bathrooms. We’re a bit worried that it’s too dark/modern and might be a problem when we resale, but we like it.

View from my kitchen window:

The house, from the front:

Servants quarters on the left there?

Kids playroom :)

Is that the Malvern Valley out the back?

CJ, your house is gorgeous! What C is it? The elevation must be marvellous. (Except in winter.)

Oxfordshire

(and thank you!)

no it’s gorgeous. also i LOVE the paint colour in the master bedroom.

xposts blimey cj! now i’m *really* jealous...

Sorry, CJ by C I meant Century rather than County, I should have been more specific! (Though that beautiful stone colour makes sense for Oxfordshire.)

It was originally a farmhouse + barn + outbuildings, early 1800s.

CJ, lovely.

What I’d like to do with my house is get a kind of 50s atomic feel going. I have a couple of pieces already that fit with the theme—a g-plan coffee table and a 50s sewing stool/foot stool. I’m hoping to get more as time goes by.

Here is my living room (I hope this photo shows up), complete with dogs going “excuse me, wtf r u doin?”

Blimey, what a gorgeous house! I’m VERY VERY jealous. Well, not so much, cause I don’t think I could survive outside the city. :-)

I’m jealous that Ned has visited you there. :(

If ever you come to Belgium, you know where we can have our little knitty talk. :-)

I would love to visit belgium. but with the thousands we’re pouring into our kitchen I don’t think travel is in the cards anytime soon. :(

The back of mine from the garden. It was a wreck when I bought it 7 years ago and the garden totally overgrown.

we have two blue cattle dogs! they are sweet but a mess.
The slate is fantastic. We put it in every room but the bathrooms. We’re a bit worried that it’s too dark/modern and might be a problem when we resale, but we like it.

i had a boyfriend who had a blue cattle dog named Riskum. That dog could catch and australian 5 cent piece (a little larger in diameter but the same thickness as a US dime) in his front teeth when thrown from a distance. Deaf as a post, though.

a friend’s mom slated her entire house in a dark charchol, almost black, slate except for the living room where she used white shag carpeting. it sounds like a 70s nightmare but it actually worked beautifully. ive been in love with slate and shag ever since.

And the garden from the house last summer...with daughter.

lovely garden! (and daughter)

xpost—I would love to have a big shaggy rug in my sewing room but I fear it would just be a magnet for cat vom and dog poo.

Your garden is immaculate! Do you cut the lawn with manicure scissors?

My garden is plagued with mole hills, mostly. We’ve tried everything to get rid of them (including sitting up all night with a shotgun, a la Jasper Carrot sketch) but they just keep coming back.

couldn’t resist, sorry. If you have cute cats flaunt ’em.

That garden is gorgeous, Dr. C—I was wondering what you grew on the trellis I could see in the background. Climbing roses! I’m jealous of people with proper gardens.

and lavender! you have lavender! I love all those cottage garden plants.

That’s such a perfect picture—cute daughter, cute cat, pretty garden, sunny day.

Ha! I recently bought a house... here’s what it looked like in August when I first took posession:

x-post : no moles in our part of London, CJ. But lots of SLUGS! LOTS!

I don’t take any credit for the garden—it’s a mrs dr.c thing really. I am regularly contracted in to did things up, cut things down and build things etc, but it’s brawn not brains work that I do.

but i wanted to jazz it all up inside, so now it looks like this :(

my “kitchen”

my “living room”

i love your house rob!

This is mine.

I think I know that house, Matt. You must live very near my ex boyfriend’s mum’s house, I think, if it is the house I think.

Behind the concert halls, about side streets down a big wide road?

That’s nice Rob!

Thanks Kate and CJ!! (Don’t encourage me further lest I unleash more catty cuteness). Lavender—yes, there’s about 3 or 4 bushes at various points in the garden. It always gets cut and dried and then we don’t really know what to do with it! Smells good though.

Slugs hate lavender! Sprinkle dried lavender around your garden for a natural slug deterrent!

Actually, No, Matt. Your house has a near doppelganger on the other side of the Heath, then. (But there is rather a lot of that style of architecture round those parts.)

x-post—really! Snails also? We have lots of them too.

The reason I don’t mind living in my rubbish house is because this is ten minutes walk from it:

Wait, try again:

Lovely, everyone. Arch, that is the cuetest little non-house I have ever seen, we don’t have anything so pastorally picturesque over here. Does it have enough light and/or a back garden??

This is from Christmas, obv, not Feb...but I cannae get home for pictures just now:

Bolton, I love your mess of a back garden — do you mean to say it had all those plants already growing there?? It’s ready-made!

Goddamnit! This happened to me the other day too.

Above: the dining area & where I sit to read Pants.

Below: staghorn sumac in front garden (autumn), back garden (obviously)—

an old pic but:

We haven’t got round to taking the ‘after’ shots yet, but then we haven’t finished unpacking either, the set is before and during the refurb we did on our 70’s ex-council house http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrsbrown/sets/72157594407384989/

Michael, those book cabinets are the ones i was talking about on the furniture thread. I remembered them as white for some reason. Are they 4 cabinets pushed together or is that one piece? bunny pants, indeed.

(Vicky’s house is 93 seconds’ walk from mine!)

We actually use those cabinets for CDs (about 350 in each); they’re separate units from Ikea (Leksvik, I think)(. We’ve bolted them to the wall to avoid toddler crushing incidents.

ooh..nice. thanks!

Toddler is so difficult to get out of the carpets.

This is why we have hardwood flooring. Just wipe ’em down.

SMRT

Going to see wee house again on Sat, with M this time. It’s not that dark since its smallness means all the rooms pretty much get light from both front and back windows, and there’s a tiny yard at the back. The ceilings are pretty low and the stairs stupidly steep but oh so many sweet nooks and crannies and wonderful old beams throughout:

Omigod, those beams are awesome!

Frightening beams of WANT shooting out of my eyes.

my room from the it’s door:

(> Goddamnit! This happened to me the other day too.

i think it’s a feature, two pics per post.)

This one is recent enough. Azaleas in bloom, so this would be mid April or so.

The house needs work, which I’m hoping we can get done this year, though it’ll require a loan. Siding, roofing (possibly solar panels), kitchen.

Hey, T0dd. I wish I could steal this street sign for you.

The Magnificent Ampersands

Bolton, I love your mess of a back garden — do you mean to say it had all those plants already growing there?? It’s ready-made!

yup, i inherited a full wild garden in the front and in the back! i bought the house from was an elderly lady who was an avid gardener. although everything is gone now... buried under tons of snow and ice...

PPlains, that is awesome

It follows all of the “alphabet streets”, one block over from Z Street.

it should really go x, y & z

like the song

Upper left unit.

Wow, elegant.

Not like yours!

kate, that mural at the top of thread is awesome

Is that mural actually painted on the wall, or is it a free-standing screen?

The mini house is ours! (Only renting mind.) Excited!

managed to find a FULL view of the front house. on the right there’s an extra window which is ours. it looks like it belongs to the neighbours, but strangely it’s part of our house. dunno how that happened. so below you have THREE windows.

back garden is a mess. i LOVE our endless wall at the end though.

Omigod, awesome, Archel! Hurrah for mini-house!

My mural is painted directly on the wall. The thing to the right of it is a free-standing screen.

Your house is gorgeous, Nath, it’s like you live in a fairy tale.

I was really disappointed to find out that Emsk’s endless wall is merely a block of posh flats. :-(

michael, does your wife sew much?

(i’m jealous of your house btw, so nicely decorated!)

Your house is gorgeous, Nath, it’s like you live in a fairy tale.

then why do i have a headache. roffle. it IS a nice house. looks quite big and it is, but it doesn’t really feel that way. i reallu want to get a proper staircase to the attic, that place is AWESOME with really big windows.

Congrats Archel!

Me and Mrs Coastaltown have just had an offer accepted, so fingers crossed I’ll have something to pop up here soon.

C.J.—I somehow suspected your gaff would be along those lines, think I may have to wait for a couple of houses down the line for something like that.

Congrats yourself Matt!

(Now our logistical nightmare begins—the stairs are so narrow that only flat pack furniture is really feasible for the upper storeys...)

yay archel!

Hey look, it’s some new cabinets except with no countertop or handles yet. I think I’m losing my kitchen sink tonight. :(

Sam, with all that slate you’re going to have a terrible wine-glass casualty rate! Better buy ’em by the gross.

Such great homes! And gardens!

CJ, as a landscaper, moles are one of my most intractable foes. If you try to reduce the number of grubs in the lawn it might help. Milky Spore applications take a while to kick in, about a year, but my mother’s home was free of Japanese beetles for about 20 years due to it. It’s a lot less toxic than the pesticide grub-killer. Here it’s the Japanese beetle grubs that the moles and skunks feed on, and they don’t do a very good job of eating them up, because armies of adults hatch out and decimate the garden. In one garden I took care of they even went after the Powis Castle artemisia, which has such a pungent smell—I would think it would have insecticidal properties. I put down lots of Milky Spore, so the little bastards should taper off.

As for slugs, they don’t like pelletized lime, either. And they LOVE regular showers from an in-ground irrigation system. First thing I do at a landscaping job is cycle those suckers down. Most people set them to once a day, which is slug/mildew heaven, and washes off all your deer-deterrent spray, despite manufacturers’ claims to the contrary.

Trish, do you own or rent? There are all sorts of ways you could break up the geometry of your house. A turret poking up from the roof, a bay window bellying out at the front. Not to mention wacky jungle plantings!

You better get busy with a sledgehammer right now, because someday it’ll be against Historical Preservation restrictions to do any alterations!

Today, I have bought some nematodes. DIE SLUGS, DIE!

My humble abode, with winterkilled garden. Bottom pic taken thru one of the scraggly black cherries that we have all over the place.

Yay nematodes!

the back garden and pond in its youth. It’s much more jungly now, with lots of volunteer miscanthus clumps and tons of malva. Only the front edge is tended to at all. Pick your battles.

I look at this picture and kick myself for not putting in more giant allium. It has petered out. So expensive, though!

Oh, it’s totally New England, with cladding and all! Lovely! Like a little saltbox. But more Federal style, with the columns and stuff.

Sam, with all that slate you’re going to have a terrible wine-glass casualty rate! Better buy ’em by the gross.

This is why we drink beer out of bottles! ;)

Beth, do you know much about succulents or citrus trees? My agave plant and lime tree are looking the worse for wear here at winter’s end.

My parents’ solution to things that dig up yards was cleverly disguised as a 7th-birthday present to me in the form of a 7-week old tiger kitten. Best hunter we ever had, and she just kept throwing litters of smart, smart cats.

That might work well for moles, but the only natural enemy of the skunk is the gun or the automobile!

Sam, I don’t know anything about outdoor growing in your zone. Are they house plants? I had terrible trouble with scale on my indoor grapefruit, despite all my soapy-water ministrations—hand-sponging each affected leaf. When I put it outside in the spring the problem went away, natural predators, I guess. But then the scale would come back when the plant was moved back inside, and by the end of winter things were dire, with sticky scale honeydew dripping all over. I finally euthanized the plant by putting it on the compost heap mid-winter, which was hard—I had grown it from a seed! But it was infecting other plants. The scale spread to my bay laurel and ficus, but not to such an insane degree.

As to agave—the only problem I can think of would be excess moisture?

Hah! Agave is prone to scale, too! Is there shiny sticky goop on the leaves?

I was about to start a 2007 garden thread, but maybe that should wait for nu-ilx.

there are weird white balls on the agave, no visible bugs and the balls easily are wiped off. We covered it and the lime tree both with blankets when they were freezes but don’t know if that helped. The agave seems to be leaning over and the lime tree is going yellow. :(

Urgh! Maybe it’s mealybugs. Does the agave look like this?

http://www.cactus-art.biz/note-book/Dictionary/Dictionary_M/dictionary_mealy_bugs.htm

Iron deficiency?

Iron (Fe)

The plant needs iron to produce chlorophyll. Iron deficiency causes a distinct pattern in the leaf caused by a loss of chlorophyll; only the main veins stay green. Iron does not move easily within the plant, so young leaves are the worst affected, showing the symptoms, while older leaves may remain green.

Leaves showing the effects of iron deficiency

Iron deficiency is sometimes called ‘lime-induced chlorosis’, as it is worse in calcareous (calcium rich) soils with a high pH. This makes iron unavailable. The problem is accentuated where free lime concretions are found near the surface of the soil. A high water table (which causes a low soil-oxygen supply to the roots) or a low soil temperature can further aggravate the problem.

Effective control measures include careful irrigation (avoid overwatering) and the selection of tolerant rootstocks. Do not plant Poncirus trifoliata rootstocks in problem soils, as this variety is more sensitive to iron deficiency than sweet orange, rough lemon or Troyer citrange. Cleopatra mandarin is one of the most tolerant rootstocks if there are no drainage problems. Lemons are more prone to chlorosis than oranges and grapefruit.

Foliar sprays of iron sulphate or iron chelate are ineffective. If a few trees are affected, try iron chelate applied to the soil under the trees; however, this treatment is uneconomic for a large block—management is the only option here.

blargh! maybe yes the the mealy bugs. will have to go home and check closely did see ants around. :(

the lime tree might have been overwatered. I was worried more that it froze. we only ever got one lime off it but it is still young.

I didn’t write all that! It’s from this:

http://www.ricecrc.org/reader/citrus/h2311.htm

More citrus info:

http://www.marioncountyfl.org/AC631/mastergardener/AG_mgspringfaqc.htm

One of those pages says that citrus can take a brief freeze.

I would give it a hard pruning, so the plant doesn’t have to expend so much energy trying to pump the sap out to all those sickly leaves. Stimulate some fresh growth.

I posted this once back on real ILX but what the hell:

That pic is actually about 2 years old now, I wouldn’t have noticed except the gingko tree (left) reaches higher than the chimney now.

my apartment is nothing great from the outside. here are pics of the inside from its glory days (i.e. the day we moved in 2 years ago):

note to self: clean your room, it looked great on day 1

nklshs lives inside a pizza hut.

nice walls mandee, :)

beth has the bestest house evah! (sorry everyoen else, she just does.)

Thank you! I do love my little house. It’s an 1840 Greek Revival. My mother’s house is a bigger version. There are a lot of them here—they were kits. The first modular houses! I’ll have to take some pictures when the front garden’s doing its thing.

Whoa, dude! The whole thing?

we don’t have houses where i come from

You all have such nice/huge homes and you all OWN! WTF. Are none of the renters reprazenting? How do you all afford mortgages :( I cant even get it together to get a deposit for a homeloan and I have a decent job and am in my 30s. Not fair.

Hey, I put up a picture of my parents’ house! I rent, I have two housemates, it’s the nicest place I’ve lived so far but it’s hardly anything to take photos of.

rent 4 lief

if you can see past the beautiful vespa, that is my house. the 3 houses to the left of us are shotgun houses. we are renters.

that was awhile ago, apologeez. i will put update one up soon!

i love beth’s house SO MUCH

it is the perfect size!

it makes me want to build one like it for my mom, and then one for me. i think that should happen, one day. (they will turn out a little less new england and a little more west coast though, can’t be helped)

In 18 hours we will be at a Zoning Board of Appeals meeting to see if our town will allow us to knock down our house and build a new one.

This is our house 2 years ago

The yard last summer. Seaweed on the garden beds.

I’m sorry, but where do you all live again?

We live on martha’s vineyard island, about 75 miles from Boston.

We get good windstorms here

I totally rent, Trayce. And will be for the forseeable future by the looks of it...

You all have such nice/huge homes and you all OWN! WTF.

Well, I don’t do anything, rent nor own, We just live in my parents’ house. But I’m trying to find a way to buy the house from them. As they live in Japan, and intend to stay there even when they retire, I think the bestest plan would be for me to buy the house. I mean, it doesnt really serve them any purpose. I also love the house so much. I’d cry me a river if I had to move. It’s a perfect location and, even though it doesn’t feel that way, it’s quite big. I could easily live in a smaller house, but, hey, if you get the chance to live in a big house, why not? It’ll be great with two kids.

Beth and Maria D, both of your houses are kind of exactly how I would have imagined them.

So you live in the house for free then? If they’re not planning on moving back any time soon, I wouldn’t be in any rush to buy it.

It’ll be great with two kids.

Congratz?

michael, does your wife sew much?

Not as much as she used to (or wants to)—I don’t need to explain why...

(i’m jealous of your house btw, so nicely decorated!)

Thanks! Truth is, there are five times as many things still to be hung on the walls and, a year after moving in, 30–40 boxes (of the 200 we moved with) are still to be unpacked. I was careful to only show the outside and the living/dining area because upstairs is in abject chaos. We’re slowly getting the nursery together, so Ava continues to sleep in what should be the office, walled in by boxes. There is no time...

How do you all afford mortgages :( I cant even get it together to get a deposit for a homeloan and I have a decent job and am in my 30s. Not fair.

Deposit on old flat came from savings (lucky enough to ride the IT boom in the mid-’90s and earn more than I could spend), deposit on this house came from equity in old flat. But now, having had to start from scratch at 34 when my old career went down the pan and with Pam having not had a proper income since starting her first spell of maternity leave in late ’04, we’re actually not affording our mortgage any more. Hard times...

Trayce, we couldn’t have owned here without a leg-up from family. Our house is an old home of my husband’s parents. The 3 kids assumed the mortgage a while ago, and subdivided into two lots. One sib built a house on the other lot, and we’re gradually buying out the third, who doesn’t live on the island. The initial costs were very low to my inlaws because the property abuts a Girl Scout camp. They paid only $1000 in 1957. Most of the cost was incurred in moving the house here (originally it was right next door to MY family’s house, in the next town over, but no one could find water on that land). The Girl Scouts are not terrible neighbors—I really don’t understand why that depreciated the property so radically.

wife cashed in a cert of deposit for $10000 to buy our condo, made $75,000 profit when we sold condo to use as downpayment on a house. the mortgage is actually cheaper than renting around here.

Winter

Summer

A cutie house—with a river birch!

we got zoning approval. we are free to demolish. er, after 20 days and no public outcry.

I’ve got a sledgehammer and some wine!

Holy shit, sledgehammers are F!U!N! I got to take apart some concrete post-footings a couple of years back.

i missed the whole zoning board meeting! the baby wouldn’t stay quiet, so i had to go in another room with him. i missed maria’s heartfelt plea to the jury.

Turns out they don’t really care about who you are, what you do for a living, who your grandparents are, how much you want to stay and live in this place and hand it down to your kids. All they care about are the RULES. But since we’ll be siting a house a little differently and making it “less non-conforming” (cuz the old house was here before the rules and the new house will comply with setbacks better), we’re okay.

My parents bought the house EXTREMELY cheap: now we could only afford a one bedroom rundown house as opposed to the 4 bedroom house we now pay off.

Ask your parents for a pay rise!

Oh no, I mean for the amount they bought the house, we could only get a rundown one bedroom house. I’m hoping to buy the house from them in the future.

I know where that is!

good! stop by for coffee one day!