The History | Blue Mountains Accommodation

Bottlebrush in Flower

Until I started visiting the the Blue Mountains regularly I didn’t realise that there is always a plant species in flower all year round in the mountains. October/start of November the Rhododendrons are flowering. And mid to late November the bottlebrushes flower. The first 2 photos are the bottlebrushes in the back garden, the neighbours across the road, and finally our new bottlebrushes which will form the lawn...

Garden progress – November

There was no way I could dig the Rhododendron out to move it so the wall in this section of the front garden had to stay. I had to re-build the side wall and dig out. These are the photo’s and time-lapse from the re-build and new...

Rhododendron Flowering

The end of October, start of November is a great time to be in the Blue Mountains. The rhododendrons are flowering. The red and dark purple plants are the first to flower, followed by the rest. Our Rhododendron at Piccolo flowered this week with beautiful light purple flowers, and loads of them. It’s the first year in 3 years it has flowered after we chopped it back. Come and stay at our little blue mountains holiday cottage to experience the Rhododendrons flowering and the Blackheath Rhododendron Festival in November. Photos from Piccolo’s garden ...

New Retro Vintage Lights

Piccolo’s bedroom got a make over this week. We finally found well priced vintage lights whilst at a weekend wedding in Bowral. The vintage bulbs are from Bunnings who have a large range of these style bulbs. We are very happy with the out come once we attached them to art décor brackets. ps Bowral has loads of well priced vintage/retro antique shops and is well worth a weekend away. Photos from the bedroom...

Creating a Native Garden

Once the trees were removed we were able to start re-designing the front garden. It started with creating a flat area for the lawn at the top. This was done using pine sleeper to create a retaining wall from the old tree stump. Down and down to the fence was dug out to make it a gradual slope. Here we have planted all natives. Before After ...

Repairing the wall – 16 July 2013

Finished – 16th July 2013 Bringing the northern England art of dry stone walls to the Blue Mountains. After many years, probably close to 100 years the dry stone wall across the front of the house had finally given up. It was time to repair it. It took three goes to repair. First I completed the right side, second the left end and half the middle and finally the whole thing was complete. Since I am from Northern England, and having lived 25 years of my life in the Lake District and North Yorkshire I must have see and driven pass tens of thousands of kilometres of dry stone wall, and used a couple of hundred stiles to get through or over dry stone walls so I know what a good one should look like. I had however never built one. This is where my friends at Google helped, after watching a few ‘how to build a dry stone wall’ clips I was ready to give it a go. First section, and I think its the best section. Fresh from my youtube video I wanted to do the best job I could. It was one seriously long day, and very sore wrists by the end. The Second section, is probably not as good as I knew what I was getting into. And the final third, I had to dig some more stone from the old wall just behind the front fence, this was a task in it’s self! I still think it will now last another 100 years. This is the YouTube time-lapse video I made during the second section, and below are some photos of all sections. Before the re-build After YouTube Video – click the photo to play ...

Wonky Weatherboard – 3 Jan 2013

Finished – 3rd January 2013 We are still not sure that when we replace the roof whether it was the original roof or not. However, when they extended the house they didn’t add any eve’s and the roof flashing was over instead of under so the rain water was forced in and then down the side of the house. There was also a drip spot from the flashing of the main roof, and both of these had rotted the weatherboard on the bedroom wall. I had put this job off for about a year, but it was time. I took the door out at the same time, it was south facing and made the room colder and didn’t really need to be there. It wasn’t a hard job and we were able to add some insulation whilst we had the side of the hosue off. Check out these before and after photo’s and below them is a time-lapse of the repair (the music still makes me laugh) Before After ...

White Picket Fence

In keeping with Piccolo’s beauty from the day we bought Piccolo we knew it would need a white picket fence. We are a pet friendly property and the gardened wasn’t fence. It now is and our furry guests can now enjoy the sights, smells and sounds of Piccolos garden as much as us. I watch a few YouTube videos on what I should do, I went to work. The first task being where to get the materials from. I was amazing at the massive price difference from different suppliers for the same pickets for $1.50 to $6 a picket! 8 posts, a good guestimate of 160 pickets and a couple of bags of concrete we were ready. I think the hardest part was digging the holes for the posts. You have to big half the amount of the post sicking out. At the drive away end is solid sand stone I could only dig a foot down, but the concrete was solid and at the other end soft and boggy, easy to dig, but I couldn’t use concrete because it would never have dried. It took about 4 days in total including all the painting. Here are photos of the week....

Deed of Mortgage – 20 July 1895

Exchanged – 20th July 1895 After some searching we found the deed of mortgage from 1895 when the land was sold/sub-divided and Piccolo could start to be built – click on the photo to...