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 :)

Totally floored...

Did you think I'd chucked it in?  Surprise, I'm back!  Excuse my long absence, we've had back to back weekends of interstate visitors, which has been awesome, but means if I want to give them my undivided attention (which I do), then blogging or completing blog-worthy projects has to wait - fine with me :)  So anyways, I've enjoyed my time with our visitors immensely, but now its back to business!  Today I'm all about floors!! 

When we moved into our house, we had a mish-mash of flooring and bare concrete…  The lounge room (as I've shown before) looked like this (in all its filthy blue, ripped and snagged glory - with added bits of bare concrete for good measure).  You can also see on the right hand side the step up from the lounge into the dining room…. You guessed it!  Bare concrete :)  Really, this is a terribly flattering photo for something that was so ugly in person!

The majority of the rest of the house was tiled (including the bedrooms) in the sort of pale terracotta type colour tiles you can see in the picture below.  We don't love the colour, it doesn't really match our colour choices for walls or furniture, so we set about exploring options to cover it.  Also to contend with was a crazy teal green type tile with a lovely bare concrete strip where the front door used to be….  Sideline:  originally our lounge room was a double garage.  The previous owners turned it into a lounge room and moved the front door from next to the dining room, out to the lounge room - garage conversions seem to be very popular in Queensland, especially the area where we live - they're everywhere!  What was left behind was a patched up wall inside (outside was probably patched also, which is presumably why the previous owners rendered the front of the house, although why they didn't continue the render around the sides and back is beyond me… but a story for another day!) and this lovely patch of tiles where the entrance used to be (on the right in the photo below).  I think the concrete strip indicates that there was once a wall there also :)

In the kitchen we had a very large patch in the corner where there was once a doorway into the laundry/garage - you can't see the floor in this photo, but basically that curved line on the ceiling indicates where the doorway used to be, so picture that on the floor with bare concrete from there back.  The area under the fridge and freezer was also bare concrete.

Now you have the full before picture in your mind, lets move on!  (I must also apologise in advance for the quality of the photos that will follow... still saving for the digital SLR!)  With the colour scheme that was there, the house really had a late 80's early 90's feel about it, so I immediately set about exploring flooring options that would really bring our house into this century.  We liked the idea of a hard floor all the way through (as opposed to carpet which holds a lot of dust).  We looked at retiling the whole house… Pretty darn expensive (even if we tiled over the top of the existing ones - because apparently we could since our house is on a slab, but I have seen tile on tile 10 years later and although there are success stories, there are also definite failures - too scary!!)  I decided to head up to our mate Harvey Norman and see what they had hanging around in our price range….  I wasn't exactly sure what our price range was yet, but I knew it had to be cheap!  I looked at all the cheap laminate flooring options… nope, didn't like them.  And then this flooring started to call me from across the room….  Krrrriiisssppyyy….. Krrrriiisssppyyy..!!! 

Image from http://www.ekowood.com/

Isn't it lovely?  It's Ekowood 'Fine Winter'.  As I stood in the shop gazing at it, I was already picturing myself gliding across it from my bedroom into the kitchen to make my morning pot of tea and pouring it into my Royal Doulton cups… light streaming in airy white curtains, sitting gently on a big, soft sofa, surrounded by my tasteful modern decor (cue sound of needle being ripped across the record!  Anyone who knows me well knows that I don't glide, and I don't sit gently! Lol)  OK did I mention that I wasn't sure what my budget was yet?  Well at this point I also wasn't sure what my square meterage was either, so I grabbed a brochure from the salesman who very helpfully informed me that it was on sale at the moment (yippee!!!!  Must be fate!) and hightailed it home to get busy with the measuring tape! 

The next half hour was spent measuring, measuring, measuring… then calculating…. subtract the 5… carry the 8….. add the underlay…. and…. WHOA NELLY!  $14,000 to cover our floors in this wonderful timber?  Seriously?  I didn't recall the salesman mentioning it was made of 18 carat gold, so I did all my sums again…. And yes, it was right - and I hadn't even added the cost of labour or the edging stuff (sorry I don't recall what its called… I was too traumatised!)  Did I say fate?  I meant total and crushing disappointment :'(   I didn't know what my flooring budget was yet, but I was almost 100% sure that this would blow it significantly! 

Back to the drawing board….  And this time let's start with the budget!  Boofy and I put our heads together and figured out that we weren't going to get our dream flooring, or anything even close.... so if we could make the most of what we had rather than changing all the flooring, we would have more money to spend on other things and perhaps do a few projects that we weren't originally going to get to (like the retaining wall for the vegie patch, or extending the shade structure out the front).   So we decided that the cheapest option would be to live with our pale terracotta colour tile throughout the house and fill in all the bare cement areas, redo the area that was currently teal green, and tile the lounge room in the same tile.  But when we went to the cupboard garage, the cupboard garage was bare!  (So to speak).  We had a grand total of 4 spare tiles in the garage… I'm all about making things go further, but it definitely wasn't going to do it I'm afraid!

We picked up our friend Terry the tile and carried him all over the Gold Coast… and I mean everywhere!  If there was a person with a tile to sell, he got an introduction to Terry!  We heard the same thing over and over again from every new place - each person dated the tile bang on (around 15 years old) and said it was a generic import and we had about as much chance of finding another one as June Dally-Watkins has of shaping Julia Gillard into a well spoken lady!  But still we persevered, just in case there was some hoarder with a big pile of this tile sitting in a storage container somewhere (you never know, right?)  At this point, our enthusiasm waning, we conceded it would be best to carpet the lounge room (big bang, less bucks) so that at least we would be looking for a smaller amount, should we miraculously find some more of Terry's clan!  So as you know, we carpeted the lounge room in a cheap sisal (with a carpet square rug in front of the lounge) to get us through the next couple of 'crazy little boy in the house' years!  So to re-cap, the lounge room went from this:

To this:

Much better, right?  You can't see the whole room in this shot, but the carpet actually goes all the way to the four corners of the room - hooray!  But shame about the rest of the house.. it was still looking like some sort of odd patchwork quilt!

In between all of this, we contracted Kitchen Connection to redo our kitchen.  They moved walls and put cabinetry in different places, which covered some of the bare cement, but left gaping holes in other areas… sigh... so we were back to square one on the tiling front.  In the end, we decided we just couldn't keep up the search for Terry's family forever (especially when it seemed so fruitless)...  Terry was devastated, but reluctantly understood.  We found a tile that was a bit darker and decided we'd fill in the gaps and cover the new darker tiled areas (in the kitchen and the old entryway) with rugs of some sort.

We got ourselves a tiler - an agreeable, talented and professional young man called Ryan - who we were told specialised in small jobs, which was perfect for us.  We spoke to him about our whopping big gaps and he agreed to fill them in with our chosen tile.  I also procured a stone border tile to go on that bare concrete step between the lounge and the dining room, and decided since we were left with an odd gap underneath the dining room side of the bench, we should put it in there too (rather than cutting up our darker tile and putting a line down there - the white border tile looked more deliberate I thought).

So we arranged a time with Ryan to do all the tiling…. and he did.  And then it was done…  And it wasn't anything against Ryan, but we were underwhelmed with the result (not the tiling result, which was fantastic, but the overall look)….  Especially in the kitchen... so I promptly threw a big jute rug over the top and that was that.  I know you can see what's coming, can't you - we'd just paid all this money for a brand new kitchen, and then we put a mismatched checker board floor of crazy tiles down and covered it with a jute rug… hello!!!  I loved the way the jute rug looked with the kitchen mind you, but mismatched tiles poking out the sides?  Not a good look…..  Its hard to see in this photo, but if you look closely you'll see that the tiles poking out of the left hand side are much lighter than the ones poking out of the right hand side.

Meanwhile though, I was loving my new border step…. Awesome! 

And I think the border tile along the bench was the perfect solution also:

After a few weeks of mentally kicking myself for my stupidity (because its not as though several people hadn't suggested this to me!  But did I listen?  Nooooo.....), I called Ryan back and asked if I could pay him for another whole day or two to rip up all the tiles in the kitchen and lay a completely different tile.  And if he could get any of the existing (older) tiles up intact, then replace the dark ones in the old entryway - even better!  Again he agreed to do his best (I told you he was agreeable!)  I went shopping for tiles again.  I bought a tile that had the same sort of pattern/texture on it as our existing tiles, but a totally different colour more in keeping with the kitchen, and a different size (so lining up wasn't an issue).  I wasn't 100% but Boofy liked them, so we were also systems go.  I also bought more of the white stone border tile to put across the entry to the kitchen to separate old and new.

So Ryan came back again to rip up his previous handy work and lay my boxes and boxes of  new inconvenience tiles!  And a wonderful thing happened….  I was out of the house with Alex (I can't deal with tile dust and figured it wasn't good for Alex either) when Boofy called to tell me that Ryan had managed to get about 20 of our existing tiles up from the kitchen completely intact!  And he would be happy to rip up his previous handywork in the old entry way and re-lay them there so that all of the floor (with the exception of the kitchen of course) would now be the same tile, with no need for oddly placed rugs!!  Hooray for Ryan!!!  (By the way, if you're local and you want Ryan's number, leave me a comment and I'll get it to you!  He really is very, very good!  How many tilers do you know that would try really hard to get tiles up intact?  Not many I'm waging...)

When Ryan had worked his magic (for the 2nd time) on our floors, this is what we ended up with.  An entry way with no clue that there was ever anything other than these tiles there:

And a completely retiled kitchen that now worked in well with our new cabinetry:

But stepping into the confessional here... I won't lie...  I kind of think the tile in the kitchen is more like something my Mum might choose (case in point - she absolutely loves it!! Lol) but even though I would have loved to go way more adventurous in there, we had to make it work with what we already had, so I think we did pretty well under the circumstances....  But it does annoy me....  A tiny little bit....  Don't tell Boofy, but there is every chance he may come home one day and find the jute rug back in the kitchen (it did look good there after all!)  but at least the tiles that poke out the sides will be nice and uniform!  Bwahahahahaha!!!

Bye for now :)