Spring is finally here, hurrah! We’ve had great delight in throwing open the doors and windows for the first time in months.

With that in mind, this month’s guest post on Houzz is all about sprucing up your garden.

Read the post here.

You may remember earlier in the year I told you how we removed the window film in the laundry. It’s a really small window but was an absolute PITA to remove, so it’s taken me this long to get over it and tackle the much larger windows in the kitchen.

The before shot I took doesn’t show the true cruddiness of the window, so here is a lovely shot from when we first moved in. Someone clearly thought that cleaning the window with steel wool was an awesome idea.

Before:

After:

I know there doesn’t appear to be a huge difference in the photos (especially since part of the view in the ‘before’ is overexposed) but you can definitely notice how much clearer and brighter it is in real life.

It had taken us four weekends of on-and-off attempts to scrape the film off the left window pane (I would get the size of the postage stamp done before my arm felt like it was going to fall off). The secret to removing it, as we found out last time, was elbow grease. This time, however, we learnt that there is definitely such a thing as too much elbow grease. The Man had just started working on the second pane when he heard a *CRACK*. Uh-oh!

Fortunately, since we’re in a Strata Title home, any damage to the building itself is covered by the Strata’s insurance so we didn’t have to shell out the 250 bucks (!) to have the broken pane replaced.

Unfortunately, the new pane is held in place with exposed silicone, so I’ll have to paint the outdoor trim (as you can see, it clearly needed it anyway).

Very happy with the results from inside though, and glad we don’t have any other windows with film! The view from the kitchen window is so clear now it makes me want to get outside and tidy up the garden.

For the sake of my Northern Hemisphere readers I’ll try not to rub this in too much, but Spring has well and truly arrived in my part of the world. Yesterday we took our first chance of the season to enjoy eating outside with a long Sunday lunch – life doesn’t get much better than that, right? 

Here’s a reminder of what the courtyard looked like when we finished it two years ago:

Look how it’s grown! 

I’m very happy with how it’s come along, especially since The Man and I are completely new to gardening.  The two trees in the corners (dwarf magnolia and Japanese maple) have barely grown but I’m hoping it’s just that they’re much slower growing compared to the climbing fig and bamboo.

 Speaking of how much the bamboo has grown, check out the photo above. Yes, that would be the bamboo reaching the second storey gutters!

When we purchased our townhouse, the courtyard was a sad, neglected wasteland. In a 3×4m area, it had three different fences and four different ground surfaces… and not a single living thing.

Our mission? We really wanted to make the most of the courtyard as an entertaining space, so a barbecue and big table were essentials, and we also desired a bit more privacy. Despite my shameful track record with keeping them alive, I really wanted to have a potted herb garden.

We initially hired a builder to do the hardscaping, but after he pulled out with a serious back injury mid-way through, The Man (with help from his super-handy dad) bravely took up the challenge of completing it. Didn’t they do a fantastic job on the paving and retaining wall? It was crying out for a focal point (not that the feature clothesline wasn’t soo appealing). We found the perfect thing at a local antique store and added a mirror behind it to increase the sense of space and light. I highly recommend bamboo screening for an instant and cheap disguise for ugly fences. Hardy plants were a must for a complete novice gardener in a drought-affected climate. Because it’s in such a small space, we limited the colour palette to interesting foliage rather than colourful flowers. The slab table was way out of our budget, until the shopkeeper offered us 50% off because of a small chip! I love the way the designer (read: knockoff) Panton chairs make it light and contemporary.

It was a lot of work, but it is now such a pleasant space to spend time with friends and it is so lovely to look out upon from the kitchen window.

1. Fun Housewares  2. Perpetual Kid  3. Pieter Woudt  4. Fred & Friends  5. High Cotton  6. Suck UK