Dressing your house for sale

What a major job it is to dress your property for sale when it is to be viewed by the public. If you have a large block of land and house, its a mammoth task! I have had weeks of clearing out clutter so we could paint it again and then just when we began to enjoy living here again we made the decision to sell our home of 15 years and move more permanently to Tasmania. Well it is a practical decision since we have just spent so much time and money on this lovely old house it and of course it is looking better than ever.

One of the best things about owning a house with history and good bones is that it just does not date. The craze for double and even three-story boxes has spread on all the old (spare land carved from larger blocks) and new suburbs. I actually like contemporary houses also but there is such a sameness about this current wave of boxes.

Entrance - a bridge instead of high stairs

Our 1920’s circa ‘Bell House’ is not in fear of looking dated in another 10-15 years time. The entrance is usually flourishing with white flowering Bougainvillea but we had to cut it down for the repaint.

Setting the table for the photographer (all are my photos taken after he left)

We have looked at other houses for sale and the trend is for the owners to clear it out and bring in rented furniture. This is giving everyone an expectation that everything must look immaculate. I think the sheets are even ironed on the beds I see in these houses. It is quite a standard to live up to and I admit I had a go at ironing the side of one of the beds where the sheet was exposed. I must be going mad!

None of the furniture is rented – it is ours and how we live. No generic decor for us, it is our own quirky hotch-potch of items collected over many years. Roz

Copper cookware made in Tasmania

Measuring pots by Lara Copper

We associate hand crafted copper ware for the kitchen with France, definitely not with the little isle of Tasmania.  I bought my first Tasmania made copper frying pan many years ago at a food wholesaler in Brisbane and was surprised to learn at the time that it was made in Tasmania. It has been re-tinned once already as I get so much use from it and now it is lining up for yet another tinning.

Long handle baster - to avoid burnt wrists I have to have one

I looked through my old records to see who made it as it does not have a hallmark anywhere on the pan and discovered they are on the web and known as Lara Copper.

All purpose size saucepan

So I was able to see exactly where they are located in Tasmania and that they work out of Launceston. The product range is much wider than I thought and they even make special equipment that people commission privately. Copper in the kitchen cannot be beaten for its looks, it immediately says to anyone, ‘this kitchen is run by an avid cook’. However there are strict rules for owners of these wonderful pots, look after them carefully and do not scrape the inside base with metal implements.  The hardest part is keeping the outside looking bright. But once you have a copper pot you have it for life.

With lid

The handle on the lid on my French pot below gets so hot that I adopted a French trick – to put two corks under the handle but I can see with Ludwig’s version he has put the D handle on a plate of the same iron so it is less likely to heat up as hot and burn my fingers like my French one does. Ludwig says he will re-tin copper other than his own so this one is about to be despatched to him.

My French saute pan

When I have all my fruit trees in Tasmania established I will be getting one of Lara’s special jam funnels. Before you think Lara is the name of the maker or his wife, the maker’s name is Ludwig. I am yet to learn who Lara is. Details on how the jam funnel looks and works are on the website link I have included at the top.

Zabaglione bowl, a wonderful luxury item

On further reading of Ludwig’s Lara Copper website, I see that they also make other unusual items on request. I like the look of the covered wok/paella pan. It also reminds me of the Portuguese Cataplana, it is something that can also go straight to the table, that is if you are keeping up your polishing skills.

I was watching a reality TV programme where people signed up to live in a grand house and take on the roles of the inhabitants from the past. It followed the characters from both the class divide of Upstairs and Downstairs. The cook used a lemon and salt solution he kept in a bucket under the sink to clean copper, apparently they did this in the old days but Ludwig says that lemon leaches into the copper.

Kitchen dresser at Vaux le Vicomte chateau outside Paris

So I wonder now whether that is a good idea or not. He recommends Amway Metal Cleaner, Brasso or Never Dull).

More copper to die for at Vaux le Vicomte

So in the interest of supporting artisans who actually make beautiful products and in particular those in Tasmania do look at his site. And Ludwig gave me permission to use some of his images. Roz

Attention chefs and avid cooks

The idea of selling my sunny dream kitchen that I designed to someone else is rather difficult to swallow but if a food fanatic ends up the buyer of our house in Toowong I will be much happier. It would be a tragedy if the new owner has only ever opened a packet cake mix or worse and buys supermarket cakes and biscuits.

Chocolate tart and hazelnut ice cream

Oh well.. once I am gone I won’t be the wiser about my kitchen being put to good use.  This is a photo taken of the big stainless steel bench by aiming up at the former overhead mirror that used to be suspended from the ceiling. It is no longer there but it came in mighty handy for the food photography days and my cooking classes.

Moroccan food on the bench

My second but favourite Gas oven

This is a piglet I cooked in my large gas turbo oven. It was to cater for a large group of Slow Food members in Brisbane. We carefully put it in the car and transported it to Mt Coot-tha park. The skin was as thin and crisp as cooked filo pastry.

Pig in repose

I always have something cooking or in the process of being prepped so it is not natural for me to be worrying about kitchen mess. Once the house is officially open for inspections it will not only have to be spotless but flawless and super shiny. The stainless steel cleaner will be at the ready.

Fried Haloumi for lunch

If a family of teenagers move in then it is likely the family will lower the current position of the microwave and everyone will heat up a separate meal. That last statement is depressing to me as I still believe in everyone sitting together at least once a day and preferably at dinner to discuss each others events. I could fill this blog and many more with how easy it is to cook a meal at home rather than buy takeaway or frozen food.  The haloumi was cooked on the grill plate and only took a couple of minutes each side.

Ready for my close up

One item a family may like is the deep fryer. I designed the bench so that it did not sit up on the bench but flush with the top. I have decided that although it is not a fixture, the commercial fryer can go with the house. Most people take whatever is not bolted down or wired in but we think someone who wants this kitchen will appreciate the bonus fryer also.

Dinnerware cupboards

The cupboards where I keep my dinnerware and the kitchen pantry have stainless steel inserts in the Beech laminate frames, an idea from old meat safes that is ideal for our hot temperatures in Queensland as it gives good air flow and is pest proof. Not that we have any pests as over the years we have always had our house sprayed regularly. I was surprised on a recent trip to Darwin to see so many houses with cockroaches. They are known to live in dishwashers and our dishwasher service guy said it was unusual to see a dishwasher in Brisbane so free of roaches. You can just see the pantry cupboard in the reflection.

Sometimes people ask me what I would change about this kitchen so they can garner good ideas for the ideal kitchen for them. This query has given me plenty of time for thought about any changes but it is the ideal layout, size and couldn’t be any better. The reason I can cope with losing it is because I have a kitchen in Tasmania with great potential and the best view from its windows of the sea to keep me calm and centered! Roz

Selling our Toowong house

A view for early birds

Selling our house, now there is a line to attract unwelcome spammers to my blog. For anyone reading this outside of Australia, a Toowong house actually means the suburb of Toowong, there is no such thing as a Toowong House. But there is a Queenslander and that is what we have. After recent renovations and deliberations we have decided to sell our Brisbane Queenslander home we have lived in for over 15 years. It is odd that we stayed so long as the last house we had for 11 years and we always said we would never be in a house that long. Why you may ask…. well we think a change is good as it gives you a new perspective and outlook, and with a new possibilities of how you live your life. So it is with heavy hearts we are prepared to let it go as we have loved this home and enjoyed many good times here and so have our friends for that matter. It means just a little more too as I have worked out of my home for so long, having an office here and a kitchen I purposely designed for teaching cooking. For over 5 years I also worked alongside various photographers who came to take shots of the food I cooked here for The Sunday Mail newspaper. I also loaned the kitchen for a few film crews to shoot cooking segments and was invited to star in a few of those too.

After 15 years I am finally getting my lime tree to bear fruit and my kaffir lime tree and lemongrass give me plenty of ingredients for Thai cooking. My hedge of rosemary, oregano and marjoram, copious mint, a few chillies and a large bay tree bay help with any other type of cuisine.  My passionfruit vine has not been so reliable so I won’t be missing it. My orange tree has its first two oranges and probably after I go the grapefruit will appear.

The back deck

The next step is to choose a method of marketing. I am overwhelmed by how many real estate agencies are around us. So we will be looking at who should represent us and how to best market our house. I am biased of course but living so close to the city and having city and river views was top of my list when I began the search to find my Toowong house. I knew I could create what I wanted inside so my wish list to agents 15 years ago was find me a place set back off the street (we were almost on the road in Highgate Hill) with a north-east aspect, and a swimming pool if possible. Well we got all that and then we set about renovating and rebuilding which also included raising the house by another metre. It was already elevated but we wanted to make the downstairs guest room legal!

Its traditional but we learned to live with it, the fountain I mean

Since we last sold a house the internet has stepped up as a prime form of marketing. I remember when looking for a new house I went to agencies with my wish list.  If I were a buyer in the market today I would first be checking the internet to see what is out there rather than going to an agent who might spend a couple of full days showing me everything they have.  The agents back then did subject me to this technique, possibly to tempt me to change my wish-list or maybe the tactic was to sell me something more expensive than my budget allowed. That said the internet was not being used in the way it is today and maybe it helps the agents if people have first looked at the properties they represent on the internet so time is not wasted all round.

The long saltwater pool

When I am sitting in the pool house or cabana with a cold drink and lots of good reading material I have already put the answering machine on so I am not tempted to run to the phone or carry down a portable. I feel like I am at a resort. I have a ceiling fan to keep me cool and I can move my lounge chair around to be under the shade so I do not get sunburnt. Writing this I am already missing my lovely pool. People have asked if I ever dived off the house deck above. Certainly not!  it is the shallow end and I would not be here to tell any stories if I had. I can dive in from the pool house, that is the deep end.

I am often asked if I have a favourite place in the house, so just before the pool area have to say I love my little library, it houses our general books, not the cookbook collection as that is in the dining room on floor to ceiling shelves. The library area also hides away the CD’s and DVD’s and a deliciously decadent day bed, it has a big storage space under the bed which is ideal for blankets etc. So my reading time includes a short snooze and then I wake again refreshed to concentrate on another chapter of whatever I am reading. I am getting sentimental already.

The talented Gillian Hirst catering for me here

Now to the room everyone thinks is my favourite, the kitchen. I do admit that the kitchen is rather gorgeous, even after 15 years looking at the same one I am not bored. It has everything where I want it, well it should – it took me some time and thought to design and functions for various uses. My choice of commercial kitchen ranges has been rewarded as they do not date like all the domestic cookers on the market. When it was built I would venture to say that freestanding domestic ranges were not the in thing as they are now. It was all wall ovens and separate cooktops set into benches. Well I put one of those in too so I actually  have a four burner gas cooktop.  There is a wide and deep electric oven and I even have a turbo gas oven with a water connection so that brings it up to date with the current trend for steam ovens, giving me no less than 2 ovens and 8 gas burners for all that juggling when a big party is happening. Whether I am cooking or I bring in the caterers, who by the way thank me profusely for having deep stainless steel sinks, bench tops and good ovens.  Now there is more…I have a walk in cold room and a separate walk in wine room downstairs. I know when I leave here I will have to think about buying my supplies in a whole new way. Bulk buying has become a way of life, it saves money and time. My house painter Kevin Houston was amused when he saw me step into the cold room one day with a basket and he said it looked like I was going in there to shop!

Gillian's fab chocolate roulade

Working with photographers in my food writing days was lots of fun and plenty of hard work, neither of us had assistants and I had to cook and style the food and the photographer had to work quickly to catch the good light. We mostly photographed on the table on the rear deck with me desperately hoping he would get ‘the shot’ before the food formed a discernible film or an unhealthy looking crust.

We have renovated entirely our ensuite but earlier last year we renovated another bathroom. At that time I was sick of going downstairs to wash clothes so I decided to incorporate the laundry into the middle bathroom.

Middle bathroom with laundry incorporated

I am now dedicated to black floors in bathrooms, they seem to be the best colour and are easier to care for than my previous white floors.  I put a black granite one in this bathroom and the new ensuite also has a black floor. This bathroom has a vanity basin set into a cabinet that I bought at an interiors shop that specialises in lots of old furniture from Europe and Asia. The mirror came from Morocco, it reflects our love of travel. I think the decor overall throughout the house is contemporary with many Asian artifacts we have lugged back from Asia. I had a special marble and stainless steel table made for entertaining outside, it is actually two tables that can be placed in different positions but there is no way I am parting with it.

My bespoke extra long dining tables on back deck - not for sale

We have painted the house white inside and out so if the future owner does not ‘do’ contemporary or Asian then they can put their own stamp on it. The professional photographer is coming next week so there will be better photos soon and the real estate agents arrive tomorrow to look us over and assess the best way to go to market. Roz

The big reveal

I am waiting for warmer weather for a swim

The little back garden is as complete as we can make it for now – that is until the plants grow up.  We bought bags of silica sand and then re-potted a few of the older yellow iris plants. Our water plant advisor Darryl Mappin also told us to insert some fat pills in the pots and our new plants should appreciate the effort of giving them more room to breathe and thrive again. I can recommend going to a real water plant specialist. I would put his website in this post but it is still under construction. We had never repotted water plants before, having it done for us by the Mappin company a couple of years back and so deciding to do it ourselves we phoned a large nursery here and were given unbelievably wrong advice about how to repot them. Just as well we tracked Darryl down from his old address to the new one in West End.

We also potted some of the old but lush Liriope plants that were yanked out of the side garden so they are now in the terracotta pots you see here in the pool house.

Pool house with Liriope plants

I am feeling all the enthusiasm I felt when I first created the pond many years ago and since the weather is so beautiful here in Brisbane during winter I won’t mind spending time watering and gardening again.

Pool and garden view from deck above

The fountain on the wall behind the water plants is still working after many years so we space the plants on either side so they do not get a blast from the fountain.

I took some photos of the Brisbane River this morning whilst a City Cat was crossing the river.

City cat on Toowong reach of the river

I love to sit on the outside deck as it receives morning sun and watch the ‘cats’ (ferries) come down the river as I have breakfast outside on the back deck.

Corner of my table where I see the river

From top deck looking over pool house

I borrowed a lens from my house guest and now I want a better camera and zoom lens and even more expensive wide angle lens. Think I have to wait patiently for Christmas. Roz

The back garden update before the big ‘reveal’

We have been so busy in the garden that I nearly missed a late booking for our Tasmanian beach house – an email was sent by the Luxury Oz Stays agency that manage the bookings and the guests were about to book in when I finally hit the computer. A couple of hectic phone calls to check all was in order and so the garden had to wait.

Well at least now the little back garden is now replanted and I am now thinking, I must be conscientious and save these plants, as a few could flounder will ‘not take’. When you have the same plants in different places with the light and drainage varying there is a lot at stake, if you will forgive the pun. You can hardly see the camellias on the right side of the garden as they are quite small, the larger ones on the left are the ones I saved from the old garden.

Will I ever be able to keep this wall pristine

So you are not expecting fireworks, the planting is not radical, it is just a semi-circle of new plants as all my garden knowledge tells me to keep it simple, three varieties only, so hopefully they will make a strong statement when they grow up. Apologies to Celia who would be making use of this space for veges but the possum population devoured anything edible I have ever tried to grow. I have to be satisfied now with a few herbs that thankfully they avoid and my citrus trees.

The pool has had its cover on for so long and the painter who is now at the end of his five weeks residency here, said he is waiting for the big reveal.  In the meantime John diligently gets the water tested every weekend and all is perfect under there but with all the mess and dust it is just best to leave it covered for now. You cannot see the little pond at the back very well but it is there and we need to fill it and drop a few more water plants back in. I am a little betwixt and between about that decision as they are high maintenance and don’t let anyone tell you they aren’t. How pristine is that back wall? In the middle toward the top – that is a spout you can see and when we have visitors we turn on the fountain. Seriously who has a fountain on all the time. Once you create a ‘water feature’ more work and wasteful unless someone is there to view it.

See the large urn in the centre – it was a wedding gift from Rhyl and Rob Hinwood. Rhyl is also the Queensland sculptor who was charged with the role of creating and finishing the grotesques at the University of Queensland, a very important and grand commission, among many others she has contributed to the history of public art in Queensland.  So in a way, we have our own little piece of art from Queensland’s most commissioned artist for public works in the back garden.

The urn is decorated with a garland of Queensland’s botanic emblem, the Cooktown Orchid. But I am now wondering if we ever leave here this huge urn that is now heavy and lush with Liriope will present a doozy of a transport problem for sure. Next post the pool cover is off and new water plants are in the back pond. My hands are showing the signs of a gardener – rough dry and cracked and I am using lashings of cream from my tube of French hand moisturiser made for Gardeners. I won’t put the brand name here but if anyone wants to know the brand name of course I will let you know. Roz