@urj123, Cricky!!! I knew you were going to ask that, after I looked at the sample I had that was full strength ha-ha.....AND I re-read you post and you wrote quite clearly 1/4 strength!!! I will return to the store, AGAIN, ha-ha and ask for 1/4 strength. All jokes aside, I think 1/4 will probably be real nice, as I didn't dislike the full strength but too creamy for the ceiling. My daughter actually painted all her ceilings the same colour as her walls with Hog Bristle but all the experts seem to say that a ceiling should be white or at least traditionally its always been white and I like the look of that too. I won't be back in town until next week but I'll keep in touch when I have the sample in my hand. Hubby and I are hay contractors and are at our most busy time being in tractors for many long hours but we are nearing the end and then I can take a breath and turn my focus back onto the home. Actually have 80mtrs of edging or capping tiles around the veranda to do and then the same amount of concreting to do on the 1.8m wide veranda and then we can get the colourbond roof on the house and during the cooler months, we can start to lay the limestone bricks, so there's plenty to do on the home!!! I have photo's attached in an earlier post. Best get to bed, more hay baling to do tomorrow. Cheers, Barbara

The retaining walls are what I like the most. IMO you need to identify what it is you don't like. Is it the style and/or colour of the retaining walls? Is it that they are just too overwhelming for the space? Is it the proportion of hardscaping to greenery? Is it that you don't like the space but are not sure why and thought that because the retaining walls seem most conspicuous they must be the cause? I am not saying that because some of us like them you should also like them. Each to their own. I agree with the concerns that the retaining wall would have too much movement for rendering to work. You would need to remove the wall and replace it with something you like, as suggested above. But it's a big job so I think it's worth having a good think about what exactly you don't like about the space. I don't think the pavers go well with the walls. Perhaps replacing the pavers would work? (What colour is the house? I assume it is to the right of the picture?) Perhaps growing more cascading plants would soften the appearance of the walls? Perhaps growing something taller to hide the fence would make the space more pleasant? Give it some thought. If you decide it IS the walls you dislike you'll probably have to replace them.

I once picked what I thought was a soft orange red for our bed room. It turned out to be Home Depot orange. As my husband refuses to paint a room more often than every 5 years, we lived with that orange. At least I was mostly there with the lights out, and it did make our north facing bedroom more cheerful. But for some reason we found ourselves at Home Depot much more often then!

Love love love my QQ Dolce benchtop. Have now decided to go with a tiles splashback and am very happy with the result. BTW, I rejected the original QQ Polar benchtop because it was very white and the sample was a muddier white. QQ was very helpful in rectifying the issue for me.