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!

Jim Morrison Would Be Proud

So, sorry for the lack of updates, but we have been doing lots of DIY, honest!  It's the same job that seems to have been going on for years now (mostly because it has, but that's our fault for stopping and starting all the time), it's the doors.  For such a small flat we seem to have a ridiculous amount of doors.  And of course they all need stripping, sanding and repainting.  Fun.

Well, so far (as in since we moved in!) we've done the two cupboard doors in the bedroom, along with the bedroom door itself.  In progress are:

• the spare room door - stripped;
• the kitchen cupboard door - waiting to be rehung;
• the toilet door - waiting to be rehung;
• the living room to bedrooms door - stripped; and
• the hall to living room door - stripped and half sanded.

We haven't even started on the bathroom door yet, which hopefully may not need sanding, or the utility room door, which we plan to replace entirely with a nice glass-paned door to let more light into the hall.

The weather hasn't been great for sanding for the past week, so whilst I was waiting for more doors to paint I had to look around for something else to get on with that wasn't so major it needed both of us to do it.  Well, I found something.  More doors.  It. Never. Ends.

This time, they're wardrobe doors from the spare room.  There's a built in wooden wardrobe in the corner of the spare room, and while we don't love it, it is very useful, and ripping it out would just be too much of a job for no real pay off (as in we're planning on selling so we don't have any major future plans for the room).

So we decided that the best option would be to paint it, so at least it's not so obvious and orange.

So far I've done the top cupboard doors, thinking they wouldn't take more than a day or two to do.  Not so.  After taking a day to wipe down, sand, wipe down again and then paint six (yes six) coats of paint on the first door I realised that it might take longer than I anticipated.

After the six coat nightmare on the first door (only one side too, mind) I was seeing louvres in my sleep.  I hadn't bothered to use primer on the first go because I'd got a good surface for the paint to adhere to just by sanding, but I decided it was worth a shot.  It stunk to high heaven, but it saved me one coat!

 one down!

So I'm 3/4 the way through the top two small doors, which should be done by tomorrow, and then I can start on the big doors.  Not really looking forward to it, but I know it'll look so much better when it's finished, so I just keep picturing a nice white wardrobe... one day!

wardrobe circa 2025

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....