Great advice!

" How wonderful it is online that now we can all see what amazing ppl are creating. We always have had amazing ppl making such things, but usually reserved for family keepsakes, or nanas specialty. Put down the iPhone and pick up a craft I say!" ~mldesign0401 Indeed. I'm often gobsmacked at what people can do. And it's great to see the process in pictures. I do spend a lot more time looking at others creations the actually doing something myself! One of the traps of everything shared online. I do love seeing the creations that didn't go as planned too! So funny. It's great that people have the sense of humour to still share their "failures". At the end of the day, there's more benefit in the process of creating right? At least they had a go.

an old house in an area that you want to live in while you do all the work of a very carefully planned renovation staged to minimise big loans will add value only if everyone who lives with you can either contribute financially or physically and has the time and energy to at least make dinner while you paint. Building new is much cheaper than renovating but old places are often in better locations. Provided the old place is liveable you can save rent while you save for the next stage of the reno but there'll always be unexpected costs of both time and money eg for our latest reno: about $4000 to remove asbestos from an old laundry and bathroom, $8000 to remove trees, weeks of back breaking labour to remove old plasterboards and carpet, ripping thousands of nails from timber floors to discover the boards were beyond restoration, collecting rubbish and rubble from demolished brick walls and loading at least 20 loads into the ute and driving to the tip and paying to unload it ....but the old stove, doors and windows sold on Gumtree and Ebay and redundant electrical wiring and metal taken to the scrap dealer paid for quite a few take away dinners and didn't we have fun together?

Well now after reading all these posts, I have a dilemma. We would like to maximize the practicality of the deep and soft closing drawers. Corner drawers, the under sink u-shaped drawers etc. Thirty five years ago (yep that's right 35 yrs) when our budget did not allow us to buy new, we bought a dismantled u-shaped show-room demonstration timber kitchen. For years it was blonde pine. Solid pine benchtops, re-sanded and stained a couple of times. Then my husband painted all the solid timber doors with antique white USA marine paint which has worn well. New satin knobs (that have not worn as well) Now it's becoming a little 'shabby chic'. We thought of a complete reno. But we have no space to enlarge on the 3x3 metres. and new 'plastic' kitchens somehow seem less durable than our existing old one. Sink, stove and fridge in the recommended triangle floorplan. So what to do? Our pantry is in the corner with shelves that items at the back of are inaccessible. The microwave is the perfect shoulder level. The cabinets allow me to display favourite tins, crockery and vintage scales. Being a split level house I need the broom cupboard and ironing board stored close at hand.