Ikea Hack Hack Hack Hack Hack

Just thought I'd throw this one in the mix too.

I was so tempted to put it on the end of the other post but that would just be toooo much for a set of eyes to read.

I found this purely by accident when cleaning out the junk spare room.

We had an old window cleaner that we bought from Ikea yonks ago and never got around to using. I decided to put it to good use and make it as a makeshift brush for the dustpan (the other brush fell to pieces from overuse Ha! Ha!) and well what do you know, it sweeps and cleans laminate flooring like a boss.

That's just the chippings of paint from the other door that I'm scraping (yes, I'm still at it) and I used my magnifisplendid new brush to shape it into a pretty good square-ish square.

In my mind that counts as an awesome ingenious Ikea hack and nothing you say can take that away from me. Hold on, the phone's ringing. I'll be right back.

"Hello. Who is this ? ... Ingvar Kamprad you say... Oh..."

Slam dunk the junk!

Well here's another post with updates to a busy DIY schedule.

Let's just say it's slacking. I've been busy with several 'projects' over the past couple of weeks, most of them are really important to the layout and 'one-ness-esses' of the flat. Here is a prime example of the arduous labour I have been exposed to:

That my friend, is a blanking plate that is covering a hole in the kitchen ceiling where the light used to be. I was looking at it and I just had to put the little bugger out of its misery. I did what any normal person would have done and bought a new one scraped it clean to its former rusty looking glory. OH C'MON! It's the scrape king (tightwad) here, what did you expect?!

Yes Cinderella, you shall go to the ball. Well I spruced it up a little bit with some white spray paint (forgot to take a picture of that) and then slotted it back into the ceiling and applied some filler around the edges and voila! The key factor to the kitchen is complete!

So here is the before and after picture

I suppose it would have looked better if I took a closer picture. But I'm sure you get the gist.


Another major project that emerged, from the cold weather we had many many weeks ago, was the cold air infiltrating our WARM fortress.

It was coming from nearly every room. So I cast aside my other DIY and focused on this just so it reduced the energy bill. There was a chill coming from the utility room, bathroom, spare room, bedroom and the living room.

Aaaaaaaaaaaand in the blue corner, Tag Team Champions: The Cold Crew!

Aaaaaaaaaaaand in the red corner, the newcomers: The Foam Fighters!

To cut to the chase, Biff! Baff! Boff!, the foam won.

Then it hit me after all the cold weather had gone and the sunshine started to roll in through the window. It ain't half hot in here. It seems I just clogged up the supply of cool air flowing through. Oh well, better open these clear doors attached to the side of the flat.


The last thing we've done recently is to clear the junk spare room of anything we didn't need. It was an epic journey to the tip. Cardboard, crap, clutter and cots of caint... err Pots of Paint!!

So it went from looking like a crapstorm had thrown a party in the room:

To something that looked like a crapstorm had a fleeting visit. Hi! Bye!:

Believe it or not, there is a system working here. I'll let you know what it is when I receive the memo....

Bits & Bobs

In the last few days we haven't really done very much (DIY or otherwise!), but I have managed to get a couple of little jobs done, which is good because it's satisfying to cross them off our DIY list and pretend that they took a lot more effort than they actually did.

First up was the bath panel.  For about two years (maybe more) our bath has been panelless (sp?).  The existing cheapo plastic bath panel fell over one too many times and was consigned to the spare room, while we ummed and aahed (and then completely forgot) about getting a new panel.  After a long while of living with this fetching view:

we thought it was about time we did something to hide the rubble/cobwebs.

Neither of us liked the look of the old panel, plus it stuck out so everytime we got out of the bath it was hard to miss hitting your leg on it, so we knew we didn't want something like that. 

We went online and found a panel that we liked the look of from Wickes, only problem being it costs £44.99, quite a bit more than we wanted to pay.

 Picture from http://www.wickes.co.uk/

So instead we decided to make our own.  We bought two moisture resistant MDF woodgrain-effect wall panels from Homebase for just under £20.

Kevin then cut them to size and over the last couple of days I've primed, painted and varnished them.  I primed them first because they're going in the bathroom, which obviously gets steamy regularly (not to mention Kevin's crazy splashing in the shower, who knows what he does in there :-\ ) and we didn't want to take any chances with the paint peeling.  I used a quick dry all purpose primer and undercoat from B&Q.

Then three coats of the satin-finish Crown paint in Milk White (the same as we've used for all the other woodwork in the flat so far):

followed by one coat of Homebase quick drying varnish for interior use.  Some of the reviews on the Homebase website had said that the varnish had discoloured paintwork, leaving it yellowed, so before varnishing our panels I did a small test piece on a left over bit of board.

Varnish on the left, just paint on the right

Luckily there was no colour difference and the finish is only a teeny bit shinier than the paint finish, so you can't really even tell it's been varnished.  Result!

Now all that's left is to leave them to dry for at least 5 days (to make sure they're completely dry) and then Kevin will attach them to the bath.  I'll almost be sad to see the cobwebs go... almost.

The other wee jobby I've managed to do is to fill and paint the bits of wall around the doorways in our living room.  The walls in the living room aren't in a very good state, so I filled and sanded them as well as I could (bear in mind I was balanced precariously on a chair for most of said sanding) and then (after the filler had dried) got to painting.

I won't post a picture because you've already seen the colours we're using, and the walls I've done are really so tiny you can hardly notice them, but it still feels good to get stuff done!

Kevin's been quite busy today using some scary heavy duty machinery, I'm sure he'll update you soon (if I have to stand over him while he types) and his post will be way  more exciting than just a bit of painting (think nearly losing fingers and setting things on fire, or at least smelling like it)...

Mo' DIY...

... if you count putting together IKEA furniture as DIY, which we do! While we've not been uber productive lately for various reasons, we're definitely getting back on track, starting with the room we'd already finished. The first room we actually completed was the utility room, probably because it was the smallest room and it mostly just involved painting it white. We did tile the floor (thanks to Kevin's dad) and the worktop as well, but it didn't take too long and once it was finished it became a bit of a dumping ground for all the stuff that we didn't have a proper place for but wasn't considered 'junky' enough to put in the spare/crazy-junk-filled room.

So, starting with a washing machine, a sewing machine, a food processor and some camping tables, things began to multiply until it was stuffed full of things:

The final impetus for getting the room properly sorted was my wanting to start sewing properly again. Half of my fabric stash had been stored on one of the shelves but it wasn't in any sort of order and was all piled up so I couldn't really tell what I had, plus it was slightly trecherous trying to remove anything from the bottom of the pile, as the shelf was above head height.

So I went looking online for a reasonably priced storage solution that wouldn't take up too much space, so I could keep all my sewing stuff in one place and vaguely organised (anything would be better than dumped on a shelf, right?).

I figured Ikea would be a good starting place, as I wanted something with drawers for under £30, and from previous experience (finding bedside tables) I knew that they had the cheapest options, and as it was for the utility room it didn't really matter if it wasn't beautiful; practical and not-hideous would do fine!

I narrowed it down to a few options:

Then Kevin had a look, and narrowed my list down to his favourite option. Can you guess what it was? That's right, the cheapest of the bunch, the £8.99 Lennart drawers. But I totally got my own back by making him buy two. And then paying for them myself. Hmm, I'm not sure I'm as clever as I thought I was...

But anyway, yay, Ikea trip! And we ended up buying a lot more than just the drawers, although in our defence, it was all stuff that we needed. I got some picture frames, mostly ex display frames from the bargain goods bit of the shop, where we also got some 'can't even tell that they are' seconds of the plain white china they do (just four side plates). We also got some lovely glasses and Kevin picked up a lovely laminated door for plastering (don't ask me what he'll use it for, I'm sure he'll explain that in his amazing plastering post... watch this space). The final thing we picked up was a Malm glass top, for a super exciting secret project (which might not get done for a few months, but we'll let you know as soon as it does). I bet you can't wait.

Anyway, back to the drawers, we didn't take any pics of us assembling them (oops), but they were very easy to do. The drawers were cool because it involved bending metal sheets to make the sides (ooooh exciting!), but then it got a bit painful having to push in the little plastic pieces to snap the fronts and backs to the rest of the drawers. A bit ouchy on our poor thumbs, but we got there in the end.

Over a couple of days I cleared out the room, cleaned it from top to bottom and painted some anti-mould paint on some of the outside walls. Our utility room is actually a glassed-in balcony so the walls aren't properly damp proofed, and while not that bad at all, after three years we had a couple of small spots of mould, so I bleached them away and got busy with the anti-mould paint (props to Kevin for doing behind the washing machine). Then I started putting things back in, starting with our shiny new drawers, newly filled with my (now organised) sewing things. I also washed all the glassware that we had been keeping in there, and lined it up all nice and purty on the shelves, now we have space.

Now our once dumping-ground utility room has gone from this to this:

Well worth the effort I think, and while not strictly DIY, I thought it still deserved a blog post since it did involve a small bit of painting and furniture assembly. Next time we'll have some 'proper' DIY to post about though, (spoiler alert) probably Kevin's amazing new plastering ability, complete with pics of all his blisters, poor baby!

 

[pic of Ikea drawers, and Malm tabletop taken from www.ikea.co.uk]