It's Raining, It's Pouring.....It's Flooding



The Bruce Highway as seen from Aldi, near McDonalds.

The flood disaster that I've been watching unfold in the rest of Queensland has finally hit home.

It was rather ironic that for a town that so easily floods, it took this long, but from Saturday the warnings were flowing in. I and everyone else in town were frantically stocking up with groceries.

I knew that my house would be okay and I'd still be able to get to the shops, unlike others, but as all roads out of town are cut, I knew the shops would run out quickly.

I got up early Monday and spent the morning helping the staff at Best and Less clear out their store (I was thinking of you, Amos).

The afternoon was spent helping the convenience store down the road clear out everything. No one knew how high the flood was going to reach, estimations were for a peak of 20m but no one wanted to take any chances. Both places had flooded 1.5m deep in the last major flood.

Breaths were held overnight but the news was good... a peak of 19.24m.

There was flooding but not as bad as feared.

 Best and Less was fine although the water filled the carpark

Memorial Lane, and the shops along it, was a canal

and there was one huge lake stretching from the river, over the highway

through the park and pool

drowning some shops up to roof level

and through Memorial Park.

Close to home the park across the road was flooded.

You could just see the tops of the swings sticking out.

The convenience store was just spared

but my old Indoor Netball centre next door wasn't so lucky.

The Soccer fields were swamped.

All in all, I feel we've been fairly lucky, although if we get more rain it will rise again.

This has certainly paled in comparison though to the disaster that has hit Toowoomba and the surrounding areas. 9 dead and 66 missing at this time. And Ipswich and Brisbane are preparing for major flooding.

My thoughts go out to all those affected. I hope it doesn't get much worse and the missing are found safe and sound.

Rosie's Room is Done!

After long last, I put the final coats of paint on the sleepout last week and I've been painting furntiure and moving all of Rosie's things into the room. And seeing I love before and afters let me give you a short history of the sleepout.

This is what it looked like pre-cleaning and painting, when it was my sewing room. Neat, but look at those awful walls. Looking back, I can't believe that I lived with it for so long.

When we moved in, the floor was "carpeted" with fake grass. Beautiful.

That immediately went, but the floor below was painted green and covered with bumpy glue.


So in the meantime, we put down carpet from elsewhere in the house.


Rosie chose a really pretty pale spearmint for the walls. We were going to go for a shabby-chic look BUT halfway through Rosie decided that she wanted an Indian themed room instead. A darker green would have been better for this new look, but the paint was bought so we stuck with it...and it went well anyway as you'll see soon.

Walls painted...I now needed to tackle the floor. Paint stripper didn't work too well so I turned to my beloved hot air gun.

It wouldn't get all the glue off but rather spread it out, but that didn't matter too much as I just wanted it smooth enough to paint  white.

I LOVE white floors.

I painted the furniture a glossy black (which was Rosie's idea) and it holds the room together really well.

The bed was pine

The bedside table was white MDF from Aldi which was painted and papered
(I just used scrapbooking paper glued on with PVA and covered with two layers of clear varnish)

and the dresser was one I picked up for $15 from an Op shop which also got the black treatment and new glass handles.

I still have a desk to paint and paper and I'm making curtains out of saris bought online to add some more of the Indian feel, plus I was also going to add some picture frames painted black  and lined with Indian paper.

The furnishings and decorations were chosen by Rosie.

This has been such a fun project to put together and I'm amazed and so pleased by how well it turned out.

I think Rosie has an excellent eye for deisgn and has really sophisticated taste, especially for a 12 year old.

So again, before......

and after.

  

I'm joining in show and tell parties on The Shabby Nest and My Romantic Home.