Home and away with Oprah...

I know, odd post title isn't it…. Especially when you consider its about neither the TV show nor the woman per se - but while we're on that...  I will (as usual) take you down a little side road :)  I find it fascinating that the Queen of TV induces such strong reactions in people. It's really quite amazing to behold.  Grown women cry and squeal in her presence (and at her presents!!  Hee hee) where as others cringe and spew forth a mountain of verbal disdain.  How can one woman be responsible for such strong and varied reactions?

I myself am a bit of a fence sitter when it comes to Oprah.  If the show is interesting enough, I'll watch it… but without a hot topic to hold my interest, I'm not really into watching the show just to see her.  Last year I bought a book called Living Oprah by Robyn Okrant … it’s a book about one woman's decision to accept Oprah's challenge to 'Live your best life' by pledging to do everything Oprah tells her (viewers) to do for a whole year!  I thought it sounded like a really intriguing experiment (especially because I know from experience that Oprah is always saying things like "you've got to try this" and "every woman needs a pair of these pants"!)  I wasn't expecting a lot, not being a die hard Oprah fan, but just thought it would be an interesting way to pass a few hours.  But actually, I was very pleasantly surprised!  I won't go into it too much (I'll let you read it if you're interested and form your own opinion) but I thought it was great - really easy to read and quite funny in parts.  I have since lent it to a friend of mine who is most definitely not an Oprah fan, and she also was surprised by how much she liked it - neither of us wanted the book to end!  Well, enough of the side road, time to get back on the highway :)

This post is actually really about Oprah's homes.  Some time ago, I saw a rerun of an old Oprah show with Nate Berkus and decided to go scouring her website for little tidbits of inspiration (since the only copy of the single Nate Berkus book that my library had has seemingly gone missing... if only they'd buy more!)  In the process, I somehow managed to subscribe myself to her emails about money and home.  Most of the time I don't read or click on the links from those emails (especially the money ones - way too depressing, that Suze Ormond has impossible standards in my opinion!), but in my recent week of quarantine, when Alex was momentarily engaged by Ratatouille (the movie, not the food!), I saw this...

I can't recall where, but I have seen photos of Oprah's Hawaii 'farmhouse' before and just about died of envy, so of course I clicked the link that said The perfect 21st-century Hawaiian farmhouse and the very first image I saw - well I swear it took my breath away.  I would do anything to visit this house.... (although I'm not really sure why there is a horse there... does he look out of place, or is it just me?)

Now myself, I barely need to look further - the above image is enough to sustain me for some time (isn't it just absolutely divine?) - well until I open my eyes and take in my own cluttered and half finished surrounds, at which point deep depression sets in - but its a nice bit of escapism, even if its only fleeting! :)  Moving onto some other photos from the article, the one thing that stands out with this (peeking over your shoulder through all the photos) is the view, it looks incredible.  And what better way to take it in than from the terrace off the master bedroom?  OK you can't actually see the view well in these photos... but I just loved these shots, so here they are!  The view out onto the terrace from Oprah's master bedroom

And then the terrace off the master bedroom itself

If this were her one house to get away from it all, I could grant her that - but this is just one of her many abodes... oh to have a choice!  Although if it were me, I don't think I'd ever leave this one!  But the other one that really caught my eye (and again, I've seen it before, although I can't quite recall where) is the 'Teahouse' which is located in Montecito, California...  I don't really think I could be in a place like this (I am just terrified of bees!) but it is very pretty

Apparently the Teahouse is where Oprah goes to restore her soul - no meetings, no music, just peace and quiet.  Sounds pretty good to me, and well, she's a very busy woman, even busier than me!  (Joke, people)...  So I get that she needs some rest and relaxation away from the world :)

The next house I took a look at is her Santa Barbara Guesthouse... and I have to say it didn't inspire the same emotion that the others did (for me anyway)...  Have a look at the article and tell me what you think, but it feels a bit too rich and overdone for me.  Still, it would be a boring world if we all liked the same thing!  Here are a couple of photos from this house that spoke to me....

And a couple that didn't (or had nasty things to say...)

I would appreciate your feedback here - does anyone like this study?  The whole curtains, wallpaper, lounge theme feels really overwhelming to me...  Am I alone?  With the curtains closed, that room would just be really full on!

Well, I'm told there are other houses (of course there are) owned by Ms Winfrey, and I'll probably catch up with those ones sooner or later, but I hope you've enjoyed these ones for now.

By the way, if you're a sucker for virtually touring houses (celebrity or no) then you really really need to check out the Hooked on Houses blog...  It is the most amazing blog.  Really.  Julie (blogger extraordinaire) frequently puts together such a plethora of photos and amazing houses to look at, I should only view it for short periods to avoid sensory overload (notice I said 'should'.... I don't actually practice what I preach because lets face it, how can you stop when it's sooooo much fun to look at?!)  Anyway, do yourself a favour, you won't regret it!  The very first post I read was about a house (that looked like something out of 'Hoarders') that had been staged to sell - absolutely incredible, check it out!  And while you're at it, have a look at these houses from Nancy Meyers' movies - I am going to do my own post about her one day because her movies are especially dear to my heart...  I loved her movies so much before I ever realised why... but that is a story for another day!

Thanks and bye for now :)

budget bathroom renos...

We have two bathrooms in our current house - the main one (which is tiny) and our ensuite.  We didn't want to do full on renovations as it would have probably cost us $10k or more for them both, so we decided to make the most changes we could within our budget.  In the end, the main bathroom ended up costing us around $700 and the ensuite cost us around $1300.  I'll give more explanation of what we changed below.

Here is a picture of what the main bathroom looked like before we moved in.  Be sure to notice, won't you, the peach coloured walls, gold shower frame with tinted doors, gold frame mirror, two tone (chrome and gold) tapware, raw pine shelf and wooden towel rails... 

I wasn't wild about the tile colour (being beige in the shower and vanity splashback and green on the floor (as well as a feature of green running through the shower).  The floor tiles were grouted with cement, so they looked dull also - but because of the cement, regrouting is a big job (as we found out in the ensuite) so we decided to live with those for now.  We are thinking we'll do a full reno on this bathroom in a couple of years and somehow incorporate the wasted space in the separate toilet next door.

So in the end we (and when I say we, I mean Boofy) painted the bathroom plain white to get rid of that horrible peach!  The next big thing we did was get rid of that ugly gold-framed shower screen - instead we installed a swing panel frameless one.  We had one of these at our last place and really loved it, and we loved how it opened up this room and made it look so much brighter!  We changed the old tapware with stuff we got fairly cheaply from Bunnings (fitted by my brother Mick who was here on a working visit) and replaced the old mirror with a budget silver-framed mirror.  Last to go was some horrible black plastic knobs on the vanity, which we replaced with sleek silver handles.  I then bought the bench from Ikea which gives good storage (the basket underneath holds Alex's bath toys) and a place for people to lay out their clean clothes while they're showering.

And this is the end result - so much lighter!

Now onto the ensuite (which is actually the opposite order in which we renovated them!)  This is what we started with....  features to point out are of course the same gold framed shower and mirror as the main bathroom, and same two tone tapware.  Also note the wooden toilet seat (which was also cracked) and wooden shelves, and of course lets not forget the peach walls :)

In the ensuite we did a little more than the main bathroom.  Firstly, we got the tiles regrouted.  The grout on the floor was dull (we later found out it was cement, which explained a lot) and the grout and silicone in the shower had holes and was dirty.  I found a local guy who was just starting out and agreed to do the whole bathroom for $300 (he eventually wished he'd never met us and I'm sure is considering a change in career now!)  So Shane set to work getting the old grout up only to discover, as I mentioned, that the grout on the floor was in fact cement - this posed a big problem since his tool for getting up the grout couldn't handle it, so he had to get it up out of the floor with an angle grinder.  Unfortunately for us, he didn't actually consider a lot beyond what he was doing in the bathroom, so no drop sheets, or even closing the door to the ensuite.... right outside our ensuite is our walk through wardrobe and of course the master bedroom, so I don't need to tell you what I came home to!  Luckily Mick was here and realised what was going on about 20 minutes into his angle grinding efforts, so he did his best to cover up what he could, but it was still VERY dusty and took us what felt like months to get rid of!

So regrouting finished, we powered on.  I bought a new vanity and got it delivered, only to realise the drawers were on the wrong side (and would clash with the plumbing) so had to take it back.  The store I got it from would only do credits, and all their vanities had the drawers on the wrong side for us, so what to do?  In the end, we spent our credit on a vanity top, a frameless bevelled-edge mirror and some flash tapware.  In between I also fell in love with a stone mosaic tile (same as the one in the kitchen splashback but little squares instead of stripes) which we decided could go above the existing vanity splashback.  Again, Mick the master handy man installed the vanity top, mosaic tiles, tapware and mirror.  (You'll have to excuse my photos, obviously I don't have the wide-angled lens that the photographer had!)

We bought a kit with a new cistern and toilet seat and Mick also installed those in both the ensuite toilet and the main one.  I bought some glass and chrome shelves from Bunnings and put two above the toilet, and one inside the shower (which looks great and is fantastic storage).

And the last thing we did was rip down the horrible ugly gold framed shower screen and get ourselves a new semi-frameless one...  what a huge difference!  The photo doesn't really do it justice, but you get the idea :)

So there you go!  Bathroom renos on a budget.  The tiles in the bathrooms are definitely not what I'd choose if I got to redo the whole thing again (neither are the vanities) but they look clean and much more modern now, so we're pretty happy with them for the time being!

Bye for now :)