Nearly ready to paint

It is hard to get a photo of the interior of the studio at the moment, it looks far too boring.  But Peter did the first layer of jointing compound on the gyprock on the interior walls yesterday, after he woke up from sleeping after working the night before.  I did contribute a small part by doing the holes where the screws have gone in but he did all the tape where the pieces are joined together.  He is trying very hard to get it ready for painting. We were hoping that we'd be able sand it today and put on the second coat of jointing compound but it wasn't dry enough.  I wanted it to dry in time for us to undercoat it and hopefully put on the first coat of colour on Sunday. 

I'm becoming really excited even though we haven't put the ceiling in yet and still haven't had the electrician in to wire up the power points and light - it is proving difficult to find one to come.  It will be quite a big job, because we will need to have an extra circuit added to the fuse box and cables run from the studio down the back yard underground to the house, under the house and then up to the fuse box.

I've had the paint we bought for the exterior cladding darkened a couple of shades because it just looked virtually white in the sunlight.  It is Dulux Ashville but now that the tint has been doubled it is nearly the same as the next darkest shade, which is Silver Thaw.  Here is a scan of the colour chips but they look much more blue here than they do in reality.  I knew they went well with the dark blue roof but in real life they just look grey.

 I've done the door in Dulux bilby, which is a darker grey with a touch of

brown and a touch of blue to it in some lights.  Again, this scan of the sample chip looks far more blue than it does in reality.

Still not sure whether to go an even darker shade.  The next shade is called Babbler which is appropriate because I seem to be babbling a lot about the studio at the moment ;-) 

On Sunday Peter will sand the posts so I can paint them as well.

I've also been working a bit on the garden that surrounds the jacaranda tree just outside the verandah of the studio.  For years I've been trying to grow native violets in it and they've struggled a bit on and off, with grandchildren trampling over them when they climb the jacaranda tree, or my nephew putting all sorts of things on it when he mows the lawn - he seems to regard it as a storage area for hoses, pots and whatever he wants to move out of the way.  Now it

This is what they are supposed to look like - wonder whether mine will ever get a chance to  look half as good?

has suffered badly from the menfolk again trampling over it during building no matter how I protested, and from building rubble being dumped on it.  So I've enlarged the area somewhat, rescued the few remaining bits of violet I could find, put new sugarcane mulch over the area and planted a new plant that I had growing in a pot to boost the population.  If anyone dares to walk on it now - look out!!  I've also laid down the law that my nephew is to stop emptying the birdbath that is in this garden and leaving it upturned.  He seems to have a real set against having water in it - what does he think we bought it for if it wasn't to have water for the birds?

I have also planted out a Grevillea 'Robyn Gordon' in the area near the end of the verandah.  If this one is anything like the one near our kitchen window it will grow to a good size and flower virtually all year round - it is hard to cut it back because it is always in bloom.  All sorts of birds love it, honeyeaters of various sorts, wattlebirds and rainbow lorikeets to name just a few.  I am really looking forward to watching the birds out of the studio window and  getting them so used to my presence that they'll be happy to be in the grevillea whilst I am on the verandah as well.  I've used this photo before, but here is the one near our kitchen window, with the lorikeets having a great old time.  This one is supposed to be upright but is actually a prostrate form so we have propped it up and even then it grows to about seven foot tall and spreads the same because we prune it back to that so the one we've bought for further up the back will probably grow at least that size too.

There are more plants that need to go in this area between the studio and the fence, to provide shade from the summer sun.  I am looking for some deciduous shrubs or trees that grow high enough for our purpose but don't spread too much for the area.  I also have some native iris and some grasses for lower growing plants that hopefully will help attract birds as well.   I want this area to be quite thickly planted and to be a 'no-go' zone for people traffic.

I dug out some old concrete pots that I've had for over 30 years.  Usually when I plant them up I paint them to spruce them up and I was giving them a good wash intending to do just that.  Then I thought about how in miniature settings we go to all that trouble to distress things like pots to make them look more realistic and I wondered why I was sprucing them up when I had some perfectly fine distressed pots - naturally distressed without any trouble on my part :-)  So I left them and saved myself the effort.  Mind you I might still paint them - if they look just too distressed!

So I'll stop babbling - for now at least.