jayneandmarty.com

Even though we asked the question before Christmas and decided to keep this blog going, we’ve decided it needs a bit of a change. I’ve lost the motivation to write stuff. For now.

So from this weekend expect to see only photo posts here. But not the way we’ve done it in the past, with albums of our trips posted to Picasa. Instead, we’ll be posting one photo per day for the next 365 days. A visual diary instead of a written one, I guess.

There’ll be some variety, as we have six seven cameras (a Polaroid SX-70, a Polaroid 645CL, a Nikon D40 DSLR, a waterproof Pentax W20, a Lomo ActionSampler, my Sony Ericsson T650i mobile and Jayne’s Nokia E65 mobile).

I’ll post each photo to the martinjy Flickr account, which automagically tells my Facebook newsfeed that there’s something new and also creates a new post here. If you want to comment you can on Flickr, Facebook or here.

Starts tomorrow – Saturday 24th.

These photos show that I’m starting to make progress in the front yard. Finding the time is the hard thing.

Before

Not quite so before

Today

Before

Not quite so before

Today

Jayne’s painting everything cream to match the window frames. It makes a big difference to the house (front and back). Looks quieter, calmer, more set back. No idea why.

I’ve been removing fenceposts at the rate of one a weekend. Slow going. With three to go I’ll be done later this month. Anyway, here are some more photos of the front garden with the fence removed.

I just entered myself for the Melbourne Half-Marathon on 12 October. I’ve never previously run more than 8km in one go, but I’m running The Tan in 18 minutes (best time four years ago was 15.30), so I figure with a bit of training I’ll make the distance OK.

Stay tuned … but note that most of the updates will be on martinjy.com.

(P.S. If you read martinjy.com and this blog sorry for the double post. I decided it was relevant to both blogs!)

Ages since we’ve written anything. Did you miss us?

We’ve been working, sleeping, working, sleeping during the week, and gardening most weekends. I’ve started on the front garden, while Jayne has been concentrating on planting out the side part of the back garden now that the balcony’s done.

The plan with the front garden is to preserve all our beautiful shrubs, trees, bulbs and groundcover whilst completely remodelling the whole thing to create a more welcoming streetscape and an obvious entry. As you can imagine, those two goals are at odds with one another, so some of the plants have gone to the big skip in the sky, and we’ve moved others to the back garden.

I’ve almost finished removing the weird half-fence but I still have 4 fenceposts to pull out and they’re like icebergs: 2/3rds of them are underground. It takes about an hour to get each one out with the sledgehammer and the shovel. Last weekend I seriously considered hiring a mini digger to ram them instead. Anyway, when that’s done I’ll move some earth and put in some simple retaining walls to create some levels, put up a new fence that follows our boundary, and probably remove some lawn and replace it with shrubs and paths. Haven’t decided for sure on that last bit though.

It looks much better without the half-fence, and it’s easier to picture it finished. Glad I decided to take that out first before putting in the new one. It means we can’t let Maxy out there to do his business but he goes in the backyard instead. That’s not ideal because he tends to go find a bone and forgets all about going to the toilet. But never mind.

More pics when we’ve made more progress ….. but here are a few to be going on with.

…I’m fiddling with the jayneandmarty.com site theme, so watch out for big orange blocks of content this evening.

* 7.47pm: All done. Hope you like it.

** 7.52 Correction: Have to fix some stupid Internet Explorer bugs. Expect more orange blocks for a few minutes.

*** 7.56: Done.

This weekend marked the official completion of the balcony. Peter, Christine and Jayne have put a huge amount of effort in over the last five months and they are justifiably very proud of the result. They’ve lifted, painted, nailed, sawed, measured, balanced, hammered, oiled and puttied their way to a sensational 2.5m wide x 18m long merbau-deck balcony with a retro late 80s balustrade that will still be solid in 2030. (And me? I was chief designer so can take some credit for the final outcome but not as much as the real workers.)

It’s hard to believe that I first ripped up the boards in August 2006 and we’ve only just finished it now, but there you go.

Here are a few more photos … the entire set from start to finish is on our Picasa page.

Me removing the filthy green mesh – (a) to annoy the possum and (b) so we could paint the beams to tidy things up a bit

Halfway through painting the beams. We’re completely removing the red from the house and going with a single colour. It looks much calmer one colour, strangely enough

I fixed up the garden lights around the bricked area this weekend

Looking out from the kitchen window. It’ll be sensational when we have some pots, plants and furniture out there

Peter cut two angles on each end of each slat for the steps – one at 45 and again at 25 to match the pitch of the steps. He mucked it up a few times, he reckons!

Already it looks like it’s been there forever – It blends in with the house perfectly. We were close to installing a stainless steel wire / timber posts balustrade but I’m very pleased we decided to be faithful to the house’s 80s heritage and go retro.

Last night we celebrated with a superb homecooked beef and mushroom pot pie and Peter even cracked one of his good bottles of wine to mark the occasion – a 1992 Penfolds bin 407 Cab Sav.

So that’s it. Project finished. Hooray.

Sorry to disappoint, but although we took some anti-possum steps this weekend I can’t be bothered writing about them right now. It’s been a tiring few days. I’ll get motivated to post something about it tomorrow.

I don’t have photos but trust me, he’s back.

Next weekend … it’s on. Project Alan, phase II.

So. I haven’t sprayed any more Poss Off since the first time I used it, but we’ve been leaving the spotlights on, the sensor light is still up there working, and we’ve had tarps down for a week to protect the boards.

The good news is that, for whatever reason, he hasn’t been back for six days. Well, I suppose he might have been back but he’s not wizzed all over the boards, and that’s all that matters.

However, today Jayne sanded back the stains and oiled the boards (one of the MANY jobs we’re trying to get done over Easter), so I decided I’d put some flat head nails up there too. I can’t see that they’d hurt him, which obviously we want to avoid, they’re just designed to be uncomfortable and make him decide to stay in the tree.

Fingers crossed. Jayne will be so disappointed if he comes back tonight.