Reclaimed Windows

While I'm in the mood for offering practical advice, here is another renovation post on windows.

My husband Rob collects old windows and doors. We have sheds full of them. It's quite overwhelming, particularly when I am longing to turn the old chook shed (hen house) into a Martha Stewart-style greenhouse but can't because it is stacked with old windows.

However, these old windows do come in handy with our renovation projects and if you ask me, nothing looks as elegant as an old casement window.

They also cost a fortune to get made up or to buy new and recycling an old window saves on land fill and saves trees from being cut down.

We will sometimes design a room around a fabulous set of old french doors we have found. In the old church hall we are renovating, we put some old casement windows in the laundry and scullery and they really add character to what would be fairly bland service rooms.

The pics above are some good examples of how we put old windows to good use. These beach cottages were given a new life thanks to these recycled windows.

Reclaimed Windows-Inspiration

A comment from Paula in the last post reminded me of an inspirational example of reclaimed style. Sue Southam, author of the book Velvet Pears, has a fabulous outdoor room that her husband Pete made from old windows.

Sue uses this "room", which is really just two glass walls and a roof, all year round as an outdoor dining space. The day bed is also a sunny place to curl up with a cup of tea and a good book.

I have been lucky enough to work with Sue in the early days on getting the book deal for Velvet Pears as well as on stories about her house and garden at Foxglove Spires (and here) for Country Style and South Coast Style. I am looking forward to what this talented and focussed girl does next!

Renovating Costs

A reader from Sydney is a single girl wanting to do some renovations to a typical "fixer-upper" in the inner city and is wondering how much she should have to pay.

Managing the costs can be the most stressful part of any renovation project but armed with a bit of knowledge you can tackle it and your builders with confidence.

You can get a rough idea how much your renovation should cost by the working out the size of the space in square metres.

What you can expect to pay a builder for renovations:

•An average job should cost somewhere between $2,500 and $3,000 per square metre.

Up to $3,500 per sq metre for premium finishes.

•Very small jobs or sites with difficult access can also be more expensive per square metre.

•For decks and verandas you should allow somewhere between $1,500- $2,000 per square metre.

•For bathrooms and kitchens add another $10k to $15k per kitchen and or bathroom on top of those rates.

Some of the inner city Sydney councils (such as Waverley, Leichardt, South Sydney, Sydney City) are using between $3.500-$4000 per sqm in calculating DA fees.

Why is it so expensive?

Building materials have gone up by about 30% in the last few years. Insurance and labour rates have also gone up.

Something else to consider:

Even on a small job it's really important to find a builder you can have good communication with and is someone who "gets" what you are trying to achieve.

If you are like me and want things done a certain way, it’s no use engaging a builder who is not into aesthetics or architectural detail.

The costs quoted above are a rough guide only. The photo above is from a renovation of a typical small terrace house in Erskineville my husband designed for a client some years ago.

Bold Design Personality

I must say, no one does a lifestyle feature like US Vogue magazine. I love the mix of bold personalities, fashion and interiors, often put together by Hamish Bowles and photographed by Francois Halard.

These bold and stylish individuals are:

Alexis Trinca in her striped San Franciscan hall. How about the mix up of Chinese antiques and modern graphic artwork? And the Chloe coat is just fabulous.

The Thompson family in their Russian-inspired Brooklyn brownstone. Coveting that blue Farrow & Ball wallpaper and Olya's vintage Geoffrey Beene dress.

Interior design maven Kelly Wearstler in her LA home. Who else would think to team up a Hollywood-era staircase, a zebra skin rug and mad graphic wallpaper?

Channeling Kevin

The British TV series, Grand Designs has been around for a few years now and has really raised our awareness of the quality of the spaces we inhabit and how we live.

According to series host Kevin McCloud, environmental issues are here to stay: 'Eco-building is no longer the domain of the knit-your-own-sandals brigade. Legislation and the Rio and Kyoto protocols require us to consider the environmental impact of everything we do, and clearly our homes are big producers of pollution both in their construction and in day-to-day running.

Like Kevin, I moved out of the city a few years ago to live a more balanced, in-touch-with-nature sort of life. As much as I loved the buzz of the city, the prospect of raising a toddler in a polluted inner city neighbourhood meant all that excitement began to lose its charm.

Home now is a 110 year old former dairy farm house in the middle of rolling green fields - within easy reach of a decent coffee and a handful of stylish shops. Being more eco-conscious does not have to mean going to the the trouble of building an underground house like the one on an episode of GD, however.

I like the fact that we are "recycling" an old farm house, which we have gradually updated and are extending with an old church hall which was saved from demolition and moved to the property from a local school yard just before Christmas.

I am no hippy - believe me! I'm a former Fash-Mag-Slag with a penchant for designer shoes, but I must say I take great satisfaction in the fact that we harvest all our own water supply, grow our own fruit, vegies and herbs and have huge, tumbling compost bins.

Gone are most of our incandescant lightbulbs, replaced with those energy efficient ones that take a while to kick in and give a ghostly fish and chip shop sort of light (!). When the budget will allow, we are hoping to install some wind power in the form of an old windmill as well as solar panels which will be the next step for reducing our environmental footprint.

The one thing I have yet to tackle to complete the whole tree change picture is having chickens. Everyone of my new-found country friends assures me they are no trouble but something about their beady eyes unnerves me. That and the fact they attract snakes.

I wonder if Kevin has chooks?

Through The Looking Glass

Fashion photographer Tim Walker creates amazing images that are quintessentially, eccentrically, English. When I think of his elaborate sets I think of the imagination of Lewis Carroll and Alice In Wonderland. I love the way he uses beautiful interiors as a backdrop for his models.

I met Tim way back when we were both starting out in magazine land. I was the fledgling art director at Harpers Bazaar and he was in Sydney on a sort of working holiday from England and assisted our equally talented and imaginative fashion editor, Jane Roarty who has been a mentor for many of us.

Jane Campsie: Vegie Patch Inspiration

While on the subject of living more sustainably and tree-changing, I remembered a particularly nice exmple.

Jane Campsie is a clever stylist and beauty writer (we used to work together at Marie Claire) who gave up her life in magazines to do a tree-change to a small village in Hampshire, England. Here she has created a lovely, textural home and an enviable garden, the feature of which is her vegie patch. Love her rustic potting shed, too.

Jane now has a florist and gift shop called The Garden Inn in the nearby town of Stockbridge.