The Plants, the Bag and the Wardrobe (not necessarily in that order)

On Tuesday it finally stopped showering for long enough for me to plant up the rest of our new plants, and today I've finally stopped procrastinating for long enough to actually write a post about it.

It took a lot less time than I expected, primarily because I didn't actually have to replant the lavender or the pieris, as the plastic pots they were in fitted perfectly into the decorative pots we already had, so that took all of five minutes.  I did plant the sweet peas in a new pot, complete with trellis jammed in the back for them to climb up.  I've put them all together in one large plant pot, I'm not sure if that's a good idea or not, but I can always move some of them to another pot if it gets too crowded.  Anyway, without further ado, les plants:

Sorry for the close-up-ness of the picture, our balcony's only just over a metre wide so it's the best I could manage.

Progress on the wardrobe is slooooow, mostly due to me.  I thought I was being really clever in painting the back of the doors first so that the front wouldn't be subject to drips coming through when I painted the back.  Except while I was painting the back first, I wasn't checking for drips on the front.  Cue a tonne of drips.  So many I nearly wept, but instead I thought maybe painting over them might make them less obvious.

Long story short, it didn't, so yesterday morning I first tried sanding them down and then when that didn't work I got Kevin's amazing razor scraper and scraped them all off.   Luckily repainting over the bare patches where drips used to be looks way less obvious than the drips did, but it's taken a long time (waiting for coats to dry properly so I don't mess it up again) and I'm a couple of days behind on my plan.  Oh well, I foresee a lot of sanding and painting in the spare room this weekend, and perhaps sometime next week a white wardrobe?  I really hope so!

I also did a little bit of sewing this week, made myself a nice new tote bag using this pattern, from some on sale, super cheap Ikea bed linen (not actual linen, poly cotton, but still).  So that's another thing from my Things to Make and Do board that I've done.  That's two in one week!  Woo!

I'm going to use the rest of the fabric to make some covers for our enormous outdoor cushions, and we're going to Ikea this weekend (Kevin doesn't know this yet, I bet it makes his day, haha) to look at some possible decking for the balcony floor.  All we'll need then is for summer to arrive, and hopefully last longer than two weeks!

I Like My Women Like I Like My Coffee... Covered In Bees!

Now that summer is nearly here we've decided to go gardening crazy!  If only we had a garden *sigh*.  We do have our balcony though, on which many a plant has succumbed to lack of watering / aphids that just won't die.  We were out enjoying the sun a couple of weeks ago (remember that sun... where did it go?) when a lovely fat bumble bee came to visit us.  It was love at first sight for Kevin, who now wants as many as possible to come and enjoy our balcony with us.

To say I'm not very good with plants would be a huge understatement.  Everything that's been out on our balcony has died, and at the moment we have four houseplants, two of which are succulents, and they're only all alive because they're indoors so we notice when they need watering.  So whenever I get all excited and suggest to Kevin that we should get loads of pretty flowers for our balcony he just flat out refuses, which is probably a good thing.  However, now he's all excited about bees, he's the one doing the suggesting, and I'm not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth, so on Saturday we spent a couple of hours at our local garden centre looking for some bee friendly plants.

We'd done some highly scientific research beforehand into what would attract bees (i.e. looked on the internet a bit and asked my mum, thanks Mum!) and apparently they like blue flowers, because they can mainly see colours at the blue end of the spectrum.

Anyway, after about an hour-and-a-half wandering around the plant section we came home with these beauties:

• 10 trailing light blue Lobelias
• 6 F1 blue Petunias
• 1 blue Scabiosa
• 1 white and pink Campanula
• 1 purple Sweet Pea
• 1 pink Sweet Pea
• 1 Pieris (forest flame)

The garden centre had very helpfully put some 'Bee Friendly' stickers on some of the plants, and the others we bought because we saw bees landing on them while we were there.

I am madly in love with the Forest Flame (the tall one at the back with the pink leaves).  It's my new favourite thing in the whole flat, so I'm gonna be uber-careful not to kill it!

I planted half of the plants today in two lots of tiered planters.  Space is at a premium on our balcony, so when I saw the idea of making your own tiered planters on this website I pinned it on my things to make and do board, and it's the first thing on there that I've actually done (woo, go me! haha).

I still have the sweet peas and the pieris to plant up tomorrow, along with a gorgeous lavender plant that my mum got us (thanks again Mum!), but without further ado, our new tiered planters:

Bee's-Eye View

The lobelias are in the bottom tier, petunias in the middle and then the scabiosa and campanula in each top pot.  The lobelias are trailing, so hopefully they'll spread out and down over the pot, I'm really excited to see what they look like when the plants are blooming.

I shall post pics of the rest of the plants tomorrow when they're all nicely potted up and I've swept the balcony a bit (compost gets everywhere), and hopefully, possibly, maybe, by the end of this week there may be a white wardrobe in the spare room.  Maybe. 

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....

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]