Best Outdoor Kitchen Ever?

I get to visit some pretty fabulous houses as a house features writer and stylist, but I don't think I have ever seen such a covetable outdoor kitchen.

Check out the stonework and the number of appliances... and the house itself with its shingled exterior. I love the way the courtyards work together as well. Very nicely done.

Does anyone else have a great outdoor kitchen to share?

Shutter Bug

This is a place I photographed on Ill de Re in France. The whole island has strict heritage rules about shutters.

These are shutters in my beach houses at Currarong - above with ticking fabric inside and below in traditional "greek" style with white boarding.

I have a thing for shutters. Our heritage-listed farmhouse here at Sky Meadow used to have shutters before the farmers added vinyl siding (I can hear your gasps...) sometime in the 80s. God love them, they thought they were "modernising".

One of the first things we did when we bought the house was strip off the vinyl siding, which had in effect protected the old cedar weatherboards, so it wasn't all that bad.

We have tried to find these old shutters, which graced all the french windows - floor to ceiling in height - but they don't appear to be anywhere unfortunately. We have searched high and low - under the house, in the shed, even tracked down the old farmer. According to him they could still be in one old shed a few paddocks away, which is now not on our land. It looks very rustic and could well be snake infested, so I am not sure exactly how keen I am to venture in there....

Now we are working on the church hall I think we need some shutters made for it as well. The problem is they are very fiddly to make which makes them quite pricey. However, they are worth it, don't you think?

At The Auction

Last weekend the contents of a lovely old house near us went up for auction. Oh dear you can see where this story is headed...

Yes, hubby and I went along to the event held onsite in the gorgeous old garden. The auctioneer barely drew breath from 9am until 5,30 pm as he went through 400 and something lots.

We were mainly interested in the garden furniture and ornaments and bid on and bought some little beauties. A set of 5 stunning retro garden chairs, a garden fountain and a nicely mossy wall thing for me. A lawnmower and tools galore for him.

Pitch High

Inspired by Leah from The Inside Story's post on pitched ceilings, I would just like to say I agree wholeheartedly with her statement that a roof needs to be a certain pitch to look "right".

Sometimes I think that I fuss too much about such inconsequential things, but here I go again I'm afraid.

This photo of Ruthie Sommers' porch in the last issue of House Beautiful is a case in point. Great pitch, love the exposed trusses and the pale blue and white colour scheme.

When we moved the church hall to our house, the first thing I said to my husband was "that ceiling has to go". You see, the roof pitch is steep like most churches and it just had to be revealed.

After taking the ceiling down (which was a messy job) we took out some of the old trusses, after consulting an engineer at some expense. Then the boys put in some purpose built metal rods for added reinforcement. The whole ceiling now has to be insulated and re-lined with boards and painted - something my long-suffering Chilean painter Luis is no doubt looking forward to (NOT).

It's a very high ceiling and he could be up there for weeks!

Hopefully, eventually, it will start to look a bit like this: Love those wing back chairs, too.