Painting with bold, beautiful brown hues

Don't sit on the fence when it comes to colour. Put away your paintbrush and appreciate timber's natural hues.
Our house has timber ceilings. They're tongue and groove which was milled on the property when we cut down a shelter belt at the back.
But before you swoon and say "how wonderful", I have a confession to make. I painted it white. Friends were horrified. My brother-in-law could barely speak to me. Painting timber, evidently, is a crime.
The problem is, I'm not too fond of brown. As a small child with brown eyes and brown hair, I was often dressed in brown clothes because my mother, quite correctly, thought I suited brown (a particular pair of much-loathed brown corduroys comes to mind).
Despite its potential sartorial merits, in terms of interior or exterior design, brown has never been a favourite.
"No, don't want a wooden garden shed. Don't like brown."
"No, we can't have a wooden paling fence. Don't like brown."
"Pavers, not decking. Don't like brown."
But last week, a chap called Tim delivered 50 genuinely old railway sleepers to our place for the construction of our flood-proof wall and, as The Partner and his mate started putting it together, I began to have a tiny change of heart. By the time it was 14m long and 600mm high, I was stroking its gnarly surface, sitting on it, photographing it, planting things up against it and agreeing to buy several rather gorgeous copper bollard lights to set into it so we could admire it at night.
Now that I'm over my dislike of brown, and by association anything made of timber, some other woody projects are on the drawing board - a timber pergola over part of the courtyard, a garden shed with inset timber panels and big timber doors, and a chunky railway sleeper doorstep at the back door.
And when it comes to getting things done in my time frame (10 minutes ago, thanks), timber is perfect. If we can't find some lying around, we can either chop down a tree or drive 2km to the local hardware depot. On a good day, they may be giving away pallets. You don't generally need much more than the usual array of tools and fixings, and if you have to put in posts, rapid-set concrete means the whole thing can be done by lunchtime. Well, almost.
Not that I'm going overboard, of course. One of the very good things about timber is that it's happy to mix and match with other materials. Rustic posts look fantastic with stainless steel, while smooth, modern, dressed timber marries well with old stone or iron fittings.
Even trellis is back on the acceptable list - not the flimsy, diagonal criss-cross pattern but horizontal panels set into serious frames and used as ready-made timber screening.
I've softened on decking, too, realising that brown decking covered in fallen magnolia leaves and silk tree pods looks far better than white shell covered in anything that isn't also white.
And there are, of course, colour options, although I've come to realise that painting exterior timber is somewhat self-defeating in that as soon as you've done it, you're committed to doing it over and over again if you want it to look good. Leaving timber to weather is a much easier option.
I'm in a quandary, though, over the railway sleeper wall. Those sleepers are very brown, and since they've been outside for probably the past 20 years or more, it's unlikely they're going to go silver anytime soon. So it begs the question of whether all the other timber nearby - the garden shed, the pergola, the outdoor dining setting - will have to be stained to match.
Perhaps I should have stuck to concrete block.
Drawing the line
The great thing about timber as an exterior design material is that it gives you so many options. You can stack it up, pull it down again, mix and match it until you have exactly the look you want. Such is not the case with corrugated iron or concrete block. This fence is a case in point.
A trellis panel would have been easier, but these big macrocarpa sleepers set on their ends in concrete provide a privacy screen and windbreak with a real sculptural quality. What could have been an ordinary fence has become a piece of garden art and a conversation piece.