Oil Me Up!

So it's that time of year again when the sun comes out for three days in a row, and I bake outside on the balcony with a good book while Kevin stays inside swearing at his X-Box.  Yay summer!

Our balcony flooring survived the long winter and rainy (so rainy!) spring, but was looking a bit duller than this time last year. 

We popped to Homebase to look for some oil suitable for outdoor use and the cheapest they had was their own brand Teak Oil, less than a fiver.  This made us very happy, because a few weeks ago we spent about £15 on oil for the kitchen worktop (post coming soon!) and we were expecting to pay a lot more for the outdoor stuff.  Anyway, this Teak Oil says it's suitable for using on outdoor furniture, and we sit on the floor all the time so it totally counts.

It said to apply it on a day when it wouldn't be raining (hah, why are they selling it here then?!) so after a week or so we had fine weather forecast for a couple of days, but it wasn't so sunny that we'd be missing precious outdoor time too much. 

I whacked some of the oil in a jug, grabbed probably the only clean paintbrush we have, and got to work.

Check out my giant thumb, it's like the size of three fingers!

You can see the difference it made immediately:

The oil smelt delicious to me, but I do really like fumey smells, and Kevin didn't like the smell so I shut the door while I was working until I got to the last bit.  It only took about half an hour, if that, and then it looked all lovely and slick and shiny.

I do still need to do a small patch where I put the plant pots out of the way, but other than that, behold now the oil has soaked in and done its job:

This will hopefully last another year.  It does say to do it every six months, but our balcony is quite sheltered and I'm quite lazy.

Also, after the passion flower we had on the trellis got frosted to death, I bought a shiny new clematis, and it's still alive and growing strong! 

It keeps trying to grow towards the door, and I think it wants to eat us, but that might just be be my imagination after reading this Kenneth Ireland book as a child...

A Mini Update or Two

Just a couple of mini updates for you (mum!)...

Numero uno, we've rearranged the living room.  Well, technically I rearranged the living room and Kevin approved so we've now got a better layout that makes the room seem much bigger (no pics, sorry, you'll just have to take my word for it).  However, with the good comes the bad, and in this case it's some lovely dents in our carpet where the sofa used to be.  I looked online for a solution and the most popular suggestion seemed to be leaving ice cubes on the carpet overnight.  Now this, weirdly, I do have pictures of...

Before

During 

(I'm not sure why I think this needs a during picture, as it's essentially just some ice cubes on carpet, but I took the picture, so I'm gonna make you look at it!)

After

Well, it sort of worked, but not really.  I think this may possibly be because it's not a wool carpet, it's some kind of poly-something-or-other I think.  I know for sure it melts when you drop an iron on it, anyway.

The carpet is definitely a bit fluffier, but still obviously flattened.  I've been fluffing up the pile with a wire brush twice a day for a few days now, and it seems to be helping a little bit, but the dents are still there if you look closely.  I'm hoping they'll eventually disappear, or I'll find some other clever solution.  Or more likely we'll just stop noticing them and live with it!



Mini update number two... the kitchen!

Kevin's brother recently posted some pictures on Facebook of him tiling his kitchen with some gorgeous black subway tiles.  I mentioned to Kevin that they were exactly what I had been dreaming of for our kitchen, only in white, but the only nice ones I'd found had been quite expensive.  He asked his brother where he got the tiles from and they're from Homebase and only £6.99 for a pack of 25.  So obviously we rushed out to get them.  And then we didn't get them because we had a boot full of other stuff and would be back the next day.  Well, we went back the next day and they were totally sold out, as were all the other Homebase stores in the whole flippin' city.  Luckily, it was Mothers' Day and Kevin had planned to visit his parents' house, and the Homebase near them had like a million of them in stock, so he was able to pick some up.  Hooray for mothers!  And Kevins! 

We bought some gorgeous stainless steel edging from B&Q, which was twice the price of a pack of tiles for less than two metres, but totally worth it for the look.  We were originally going to get the silver finish, but in the shop we saw the stainless steel, and as our hob, oven and sink are all stainless steel, we thought it might be nice to match.

Before we started we mocked up a (very!) rough picture on Photoshop to see if what we were planning would look okay.  We wanted to do three tiles high the length of the worktop, with maybe a five tile high splashback behind the hob.

This is the most before-y pic I have, the tiles are just resting against the wall.

As you can see, I'm amazing at Photoshop, what can I say, it's a gift...  Anyway, we decided against going five tiles high behind the hob, as we didn't really need to and it looked cleaner with a long line of straight tiles.

Kevin has been sawing the edging to fit, and I've been doing the tiling, and so far this is what we've got (bear in mind it's not grouted yet, we're going with white):

So, we're not done yet, we have an extra section of worktop to add, along with the wine rack (which we use as a tea towel holder, 'cause we're cool like that) and a space for baking trays, but so far I think we've made good progress.

Well, that's it for a mini update.  I've also been painting various boring items of furniture but nothing else blogworthy has been happening around here.  We're planning on doing loads more to the kitchen over the next couple of weeks so who knows, there may be another post in the near future... no promises though!

Painting Things, Building Things and Making a Mess Again

Last time we spoke I had messed up the spare room again.  Well, fear not, t'was not in vain, for now we have... some painted drawers! 

Ahem.  Okay, they're probably not worth a round of applause, but they do look better than before, honest!  Except I forgot to take any before pictures, but they were just plain, uninteresting pine.  They're the cheapy-cheap Rast drawers from Ikea, which we bought so we had somewhere other than the floor to store our tools, and they do the job.

But wait, that's not all.  You may look at the picture of the drawers above and think "wow, wouldn't that look much better if it had five nice planks of wood across the top, that way you could use it as a desk?".  Well, we're obviously on the same wavelength, because that's what I thought too!  And after Kevin agreeing and me mocking up some photoshop pics to decide on the colour, I took my dad on a nice outing to B&Q to get some wood.  This turned out to be a good move, because we went on a Wednesday and he's over 60 (only just, and you'd totally never tell!) he got a super-duper-magic diamond card and I got a super-duper magic 10% off!  So instead of costing £44 all that lovely timber was only £40.  Huzzah!

 

The cashier did ask if either of us had a diamond card though, and you can only get one if you're over 60, so either she was being polite to my dad or I look about 30 years older than I actually am.  Obviously all this work is ageing me and giving me greys.  Or I had paint in my hair.  Which I actually did, but still, it was definitely more on the ends, and I still don't think grey hairs would make me look that much older.  We'll stick with her being polite, I think.

Anyway, the paint in my hair was from painting the two spare dining chairs that we've got.  I just gave them a couple of coats of matt white and one of satin finish Milk White Crown paint, so they match the drawers on the chests, which, incidentally, are varnished with Homebase Walnut wood stain, which I used before to stain our bedside cabinets.

Back to the desk, when I got home I laid out the wood and selected the prettiest sides of each plank.  Then I got Kevin's power sander and sanded each plank just to get rid of a few rough bits.  After a couple of days of varnishing (don't worry, most of that time was spent waiting for it to dry and recovering from all the fumes) they looked all beautiful and lovely like this:

Once we'd decided which order the planks were going to go in (a very important decision, I'm sure you'll agree) I flipped them all over and used all my amazing brute strength to screw them together using some old shelves to brace them.  I did have to put all my weight on each screw to get them in, despite having drilled pilot holes in the shelves beforehand, and there was one stubborn screw that wouldn't go in, but I was doubling up screws for extra strength anyway, so I just took it out and threw it in the bin in protest.  That'll learn it!  Well, it made me feel better anyway.

I didn't want the underside of the desk to look unfinished, but I didn't want to spend another two days varnishing either, so as a compromise I used some dark blue paint we had left over from the fireplace insert (blog post coming soon! 2014 at the latest!) to paint where it would show.  2 coats later and it was super dark navy blue and very purty.

Then I tried manhandling it into place on my own at 10 o'clock at night so it would be ready for Kevin to see when he got home, but it was just too heavy to lift high enough by myself, so I had to give up.  But we did it first thing the next morning, and we had this!

The drawers are still open because I'm waiting for the paint and varnish to completely dry before screwing the drawer knobs on fully, because we're quite possibly going to change them and I don't want them to leave marks.  But look at the shiny...

Don't you just want to smoosh your face on it and stroke it?  Just me?

In the true spirit of never having a tidy spare room, one day after the desk was finished, it looked like this:

But it's okay, because 2 hours, 2 bacon sandwiches, 45 arguments and 3 temper tantrums later, we'd managed to put my old bed back together so now it can actually be called a bedroom!  Just gotta buy some bedding now...

Now the only extra stuff we have is all propped up against one wall, but at least three of those doors are getting rehung this week, and then hopefully it'll be warm enough to strip the remaining doors outside with the heat gun. 

Here's to some decent weather for once!

No Mo' Au-bergine!

Well, Mum & Dad, it's the update you've been waiting for (almost)... the spare room is clear and decorated!  Although we don't want the bed yet, still got all those doors to plane/strip/paint/rehang, and our new free space is just the place to do all this!  Next week, I promise!

Anyway, I'm sure you remember the state of our spare room:

And how we tidied it and blogged about tidying it more than once...

Well, now we've not only tidied it, but we've cleared out all the rubbish and painted it and hung actual curtains in the windows that have been curtainless for almost 6 years.  We threw a ton of crap out and are still sorting through some stuff (why is it so hard to get rid of stuff even though you haven't even thought about it for years?) but hopefully with a big push this week and next we should be all sorted.

And now, the moment you've been waiting for...

Tadaaaa!

I told you the wardrobe would eventually be painted too!

We were decorating using the curtains as inspiration, so after looking through a lot of taupey-grey paints we settled on Skimming Stone from Farrow & Ball, and we love it.  No more shiny aubergine wall.  No more badly painted shiny yellowing walls.  I also found a new passion for filling when patching all the dents in the walls.  So relaxing and rewarding and thinking about it now I had probably breathed in too much dust and it addled my brain but still, patching walls is fun!  I may or may not have run around the house shouting for Kevin to point out more places that needed to be filled, and he may or may not have told me that I'm crazy, but pointed out places anyway.

The skirting boards got a new coat of Crown Milk White silk paint after we pried off the floor edging and scraped all the old paint off it.  Apparently the people we bought the flat from were very slapdash in their decorating.  Although, we sort of can't blame them, because we found more evidence of the previous colour scheme in that room.  The walls were bright pinky-red, the carpet (some is still in the wardrobe) was dark pink, and the skirting boards were... bright blue-green.  Lovely.

Once the skirting was painted I glued the edging back on, which was trickier than you might think.  We have a nice cartridge of Serious Stuff glue, which had managed to glue itself shut at the bottom end so that it's impossible to squeeze anymore.  But I didn't let that stop me, oh no!  I got the longest skinniest screwdriver we own and used that to jam in the nozzle of the tube and use as a spatula once it was nice and covered in glue.  Which was a bit time consuming, but hey, it worked, and the edging is still stuck down.  I also gave the radiator a couple of coats of Hammerite, and now it's not yellowed anymore!  I did spend about 5 minutes just staring at it once it was done, but I blame at least three of those minutes on the fumes.  I blame a lot on fumes, you may have noticed.

Anyway, remember that lovely picture above of all that lovely floor and space and openness and joy?  Well, about two hours after that was taken, this happened:

You didn't think I was gonna waste the opportunity to make a mess, did you?  Hah!  In all seriousness though, it's awesome to have that space to work in instead of painting things in the living room and worrying about the carpet and breathing in the fumes all day.  So, here's what happened in the hour or so after that pic: 

 

 

The plan is to get the drawers done, then use them as the base for a desk to go next to the wardrobe (which we'll hopefully get done next week).  But more on that in another post, I'm off for my dinner followed by another round of painting and varnishing and trying to avoid flicking varnish all over the walls.  Wish me luck!

Happy 2013!

To celebrate, we've decided to return to blogging!  Also, we actually got off our arses and have stuff to blog about!  Only one of those statements is true!  And now I have to stop putting exclamation marks at the end of my sentences!  Or not!  Haha!  Okay, enough now really.

So, I have a multitude of things to update you about, but I don't think there are any that are amazingly spectacular, so don't get too excited.  I misled  you with all the exclamation marks, didn't I?  Sorry.

Anywho...  here is a list of things we've been doing:

• The living room mantelpiece has been put back together and screwed back to the wall, but no pics yet because we haven't hung the mirror.  There'll be a post coming shortly.  Here's a nice before shot for you though:
  
  
  
  
  

  The cardboard was taped to the brick to keep the draught out while we built a nice wooden insert to do that job permanently.  

• The hall has been painted, but I don't have any pictures of it newly done yet, so there may be a post about that in a week or so;

• The bathroom and toilet have been painted, panelled and prettified and are almost finished apart from the missing doors (bathroom cupboard and toilet), which are likely to be missing for a little while longer, so that's another future post.  Here are a couple of before pics for you to see what we were dealing with (warning, they're not pretty!):
  
  
  
  
  This is where the sink goes... I like that it looks like some kind of alien trying to break through with his little wavy arms.
  
  
  
  
  

  This is the toilet, obviously, with its beautifully stained/painted concrete floor.  I bet this went well with the dark purple walls and bright green door that we found underneath layers of paint.  Ahem.
  
  

  

  
  No, this is not carpet in the bathroom, this is coving in the living room.  To go in the bathroom.  Which it did.  And you will see photos that prove this.  Eventually.

  
  

• Kevin has bought a nice shiny plane to use on various doors to make them fit, but still has yet to use it due to lack of space, which will be solved once we finish the spare room.  I'm sure once he's used it he'll want to tell you all about it.  I'm very sorry, but I don't have a picture of the plane (I know you're just dying to see it) and I'm not about to go searching for it in the disorganisation that is our spare room.  It's very pretty, you'll just have to take my word for it.
  

• Way back in the summertime, when the weather was fine, Kevin screwed this lovely piece of trellis to our balcony wall.  There is currently a passion flower growing all over it (thanks Kevin's dad!) and so far it has survived all that winter has had to throw at it.  Except that this week we're half a foot deep in snow, and now that I've jinxed it it definitely won't make it, but still, 6 months is a looooong time for a plant in this place! 
  
  Here's a mildly amusing story; when we bought the trellis we forgot that we only have a tiny little car and struggle to fit anything larger than a couple of shopping bags in it at a time.  So we bought the (fairly large) trellis, and then had to ring my uber-generous mum to come and get it from us in the Homebase car park and drive it all the way to our flat in her not so tiny car.  I hope you think it was worth it Mum, you've helped us keep a plant alive!
  
  

• The spare room is a lot clearer and will be painted this week(!) so expect that post in a couple of years days, but until then, here's a before picture from ages ago.  It was even worse when we decided to clear it out.
  
  
  
  
  This is the before pic, obviously.
  
  
  
  
  And this is the what it looks like after moving a shedload of stuff to the shed (haha) and driving three car loads to the tip.  Still not amazing, but waaaaaay better than before, and only full of stuff we need now!  Soon to have my old bed in it.  (I promise Mum and Dad, we will get it from you in the next two weeks.  Your six years of waiting is finally over!!!!)
  
  And now, for your viewing pleasure, the AMAZING colour that the former owners decided would look good in a bedroom.  I have to add this wasn't a child's bedroom, and to top it off, the paint is insanely shiny.  It's migraine inducing, I swear.  Also, note how they didn't bother to do anything about the clashing former wallpaper behind the radiator, so this is the view when you walk into the room.  Stunning.  It's gone now though; as soon as the room was clear enough two coats of white paint went over that hideousness, and we're off out tomorrow, weather permitting, to pick up the new paint colour, woo!
  
  

So that's seven months' worth of work, which really doesn't seem to amount to much when you put it all in one blog post.  Best get back to it, I suppose!

We're Still Here!

Just to confirm, we are still alive!  We've been tackling lots of little jobs lately, so here's a quick look at various bits and bobs we've been up to.

• Covering the gas meter.

For five years we've been looking at this delightful sight in the corner of our living room.  Even with the TV stand in front of it it's still obviously there and taunting us.  We need easy access to it for meter readings, and didn't want to get complicated building a cupboard around it, so I designed a three sided cover that could just be placed over the top and leant against the walls, and Kevin built it.  So from the awfulness above we have this invisibleness (almost) instead:

You can't see it at all behind the TV stand now, woohoo!  Speaking of TV stands, I have plans... but they're for another day.

• Curtain making.

When our living room was painted brown my mum made these wonderful coordinating curtains for us, but now that the room is painted blue the curtains were too dark.  So they're being moved to the spare room (which will be cream/white so they'll go perfectly) and I've been making new pale cream curtains for the living room.  They're almost done, just one hem to go, so now we see this:

It feels much brighter in here now, and although you can't see it on camera, they do have a subtle texture that catches the sunlight (when we get some!!).

• Toilet Storage

Our toilet is in a separate room to our bathroom.  I would much prefer it to be just one big room, but that involves knocking walls down, which would just be too much expense and hassle for little or no added value, so we have to make do.  I've painted the toilet room and we're about to start on the bathroom, but in the meantime I asked Kevin to make a little shelf to go over the door in the toilet to store our toilet paper out of sight.  We got a free piece of wood from Homebase which Kevin cut to size, I painted white and Kevin hung and filled with rolls and rolls of toilet paper.  Ta dah!

I love it so much already.  You don't notice it when you're in there at all, but it means never having to shout for each other when we've forgotten to put an extra roll in the toilet room.  It's the little things!

• Plants

Our plants are still alive and blooming!  We've killed our fair share of aphids, and only one plant this year.  Look how pretty:

I'm so proud of not killing these plants!  Maybe we'll try some veg again next year...

• Kitchen Shelves

We have needed some extra kitchen storage for sooo long.  Seriously, half of the kitchen equipment was in the utility room and half on the kitchen floor.  So we took a little trip to Ikea, originally to look at these Grundtal shelves, but while we were there we found these beauties instead.  So we've gone from bare wall to full shelves, huzzah!

• In progress:

I'm just about to start painting our front hall to match the living room.  It has a dado rail and leads into the white utility room, the white kitchen, and the blue/cream living room, so I thought painting it in the living room colour scheme was a safe bet.  It's currently white on top of the dado, and a bright apple green underneath.  Here's a before shot, and there'll be some after pics up soon, I promise!