Corridor Dressing

Ever since we moved into our flat a full five years ago, the corridor has been a sad and empty place. We painted it white  which was a definite improvement on the lemon and jade walls/metallic silver woodwork combo that was there before but having done that we left it. Each time I walked down it I made a mental note to find some lovely colourful finery to adorn the blank walls and then other rooms stepped in, shouted louder and assumed priority.

But it was such a perfect blank canvas eventually I just couldn't ignore it and decided it was time to dress it up.

By happy accident I had over time acquired a few prints and pictures with a red theme running through them and they have formed a cheerful little collection on one of the walls:

My mother bought me the Ballet Russes poster at the V&A exhibition of the same name. The Leyland Buses postcard (in the smallest frame) was sent to me from the North by my lovely friend Helen - Leyland is her home town. The bigger London bus screen print is actually the poster for a Flight of the Conchords gig we went to - it is very rare that I buy show merchandise but this one appealed to me and reminds me of a night involving much, much laughter. The Rob Ryan limited edition laser cut for the V&A was a Christmas present from my parents. The gorgeous fox painting is from Mir Dinara on Etsy, found via The Seventy Tree and was the final piece of the puzzle. I thought this area was finished but then spotted the gorgeous Papermash banners on Tea For Joy and the Joie De Vivre one is now winging its way to me to act as the crowning glory.

I had also wanted to do something with the wall space above our bedroom door. Books are everywhere in our flat - Mr Crafty devours them and usually has about three on the go and both of us feel strongly about buying solid paper books and holding onto them. Our dream house of the future has a library but we have no such luxury in our two bedroom flat. As the two bookcases in our sitting room were bursting at their metaphorical seams we decided to use the space for a bookcase to hold Mr Crafty's collection of classics:






He loves the display of reading matter, I love the fact they make a rainbow!

I have a funny relationship with books in that I love reading, almost more than anything, but if my head is very full of day to day stuff I sometimes find it hard to pick up a book. It's as if I forget how much I enjoy it. When I do make a start on a good book then it is all that I think about but I can go for months without reading anything. So I made this banner from scraps of Liberty fabrics to remind me to pick up a book! I adapted the design from the Nice banner in Applique Your Way by Kayte Terry.

Finally, back in 2009 we bought a pine dresser from EBay. It looked like this when we bought it:

Since then it has been standing in the corridor looking very out of place but providing useful storage for all my cake making equipment. It was always my intention to paint it and I finally got round to it. It now looks like this:





I added the slate grey painted numbers on the drawers and doors which I hope you can just about see in the picture for a bit of interest. It blends in a lot better now although it is going to need retouching soon as it has become one of Milly and Jeff's favourite scratching posts.

I now sometimes find myself pausing in the corridor. It has it's own cheery identity instead of being a blank space to simply pass through. We haven't done a huge amount but what we have done makes me smile. Hope it makes you smile too.

Our Parker Knoll wingback in its new clothes

We bought two Parker Knoll wingbacks for £10 from eBay - bargain. My intention was to reupholster them immediately. 4.5 years later and one is finally done!

Stupidly I didn't take a before shot and the other one is currently in progress and stripped back to its bones but I am sure you can imagine a dated and shabby wingback with no problems.

It now looks like this:




The upholstery job isn't perfect but as a first attempt with no prior knowledge or experience I am pretty pleased with it. I basically removed the staples (no small task) and took all the pieces of fabric off, labelled them so I knew what order they went in, used them as patterns to cut pieces from the new fabric and then stapled it all back on in reverse order - simple no? Actually it was relatively simple but very time consuming and no small task. I also used metal back tacking rather than trying to sew the back on which saved a bit of effort but is quite hard to use if you want it to look perfectly smooth (mine doesn't). I also made all the piping using an online tutorial which I now can't find but there are quite a few versions on google. Oh and I painted the feet white to match the white piping.

I now need to assemble the energy to finish number two! I have another lovely Graham and Green Gypsy Caravan cushion waiting to take up residence on it once it is finished.

Our Kitchen

Well I have been promising to do this for ages but here, finally, are the pictures of our kitchen in its (almost) finished state.

I don't have any photos of how the kitchen was when we first moved in. Basically the whole flat was painted jade green and lemon yellow with silver woodwork which may well have been the height of fashion in the early nineties but would have been quite something to try and live with so the first thing we did was to give everything a coat of brilliant white paint just to make it a bit more bearable.

The walls were originally yellow and the chimney breast was jade green but this is how our units used to look with the walls already white (there is a lot of mess in these photos as we were just embarking on doing the room up!)

We haven't made any alterations to the layout so this has been very much a facelift on a budget rather than a complete renovation but I am so pleased with the results:

Our Freecycle Danish chairs have found a temporary home
in here but will be replaced by our eBay bargain G-Plan chairs once I have done them up.

We still need to get the door on the washing machine
- one of the many finishing touches still to do!


I love these hanging plant pots from Rockett St George that I was given for Christmas.
We never had much room on the worktop for fresh herbs but now we have our own hanging herb garden!

As I say we have only given everything a facelift but it feels like a completely new room and it has been done on an absolute shoe-string. My favourite things are:

• The Ikea Docksta table which we got from Freecycle. This was serendipity at work as we were going to budget to buy one the very next month from Ikea.
  
• The lovely engineered oak flooring which was second hand from eBay (this meant Mr Crafty had his work cut out getting all the old glue off but we saved hundreds and it looks a darn sight better than the old vinyl complete with cigarette burns that we inherited from the previous occupants).
• The worktop made from reclaimed oak by Lidster and Son and sourced via eBay.
• The Cole and Son Cow Parsley wallpaper bought half price on eBay.
• Our metro tiles - half of which again were an eBay buy and the rest we bought new to match.
• The blackboard cupboard - currently covered in messages from the friends we had to stay at new year - I am loathed to rub these off!!
• The dresser unit which I used to hate but I now love thanks to removing the cornicing to give it cleaner lines, the colour (Farrow and Ball's Blackened) , the shaker handles (another eBay buy) and the wallpaper lining inside the cupboard.
  
• The hanging herb garden (as above)
  

We still have the odd bit off filling to do and the cupboard door needs to go on the washing machine once we have the right hinges. I am also amassing plates and pictures to go on the wall over the radiator by the table but for all intents and purposes it is job done.

Hope you like the pics!

Meg Gets Crafty in Print

Many, many thanks to the very lovely Huma of Her Little Place for featuring this blog in her article on Do-it-Yourself Christmas Presents in Sunday's Observer. It was a great pleasure to have the chance to speak about two of my favourite things; Christmas and crafts and very exciting to see Meg Gets Crafty in print.

Her Little Place has had had a fabulous makeover recently (although it was pretty darn fabulous before) and is brimming with lovely ideas so, if you haven't already done so, I would definitely recommend a visit.

In other news our kitchen is so close to being finished I can almost taste it! Our beautiful yellow Cole & Son Cow Parsley wallpaper is now up on the chimney breast and the floor is nearly complete. I wondered if we were really going to be able to stick to our plan of finishing before Christmas but it really looks like we might well get there! So that should mean some photos for you all very soon. It's been at the expense of Mr Crafty's poor hands which are now covered in blood blisters, cuts and scrapes from working on the floor but it looks so pretty I hope he will agree that it is worth all our hard labour in the end!

Finally I haven't forgotten my blog award from Zoe at Conversation Pieces and the promised post on personality traits will be on its way shortly.

Almost there...

I am so excited I can barely contain myself! After what seems like eons of thinking about our kitchen facelift, planning colours, chosing worktops etc., the end is finally in sight.

Our gorgeous worktop handmade from reclaimed wood arrived just over a week ago. Lidster and Son did an absolutely stunning job on it. Even though it has been joined, sanded and oiled you can really see the age of the wood and all the various markings which chart its history. I love it!

The above photo is a sneak peek of it in situ along with our new tiles. We are mid way through wallpapering the chimney breast and Mr C has a few days off to lay the engineered oak floor we bought second hand from eBay. It won't be too long before I have some before and afters for you!

P.S The lovely Zoe at Conversation Pieces has awarded me the fantastically titled Shoulda Been a Stripper award!! A post on seven personality traits is to follow....

Me Old China

Well things are moving on with our kitchen. Our reclaimed worktop is being delivered this weekend and then with any luck we have people coming in next week to fit it and do the tiling. Mr Crafty is going to fit the floor and wallpaper the chimney breast. So with any luck it should be finished by Christmas and my mind has naturally turned towards finishing touches.

There is one very empty bit of wall. A poster would be the most obvious thing to fill it but I have seen a lot of lovely displays made with china plates in magazines recently and am thinking of something similar. Given that both my grandfathers worked in the pottery industry it seems rather appropriate. Perhaps something along these lines:

Photo sourced from Glassford Hill Girl Blog

Photo sourced from E How

Photo sourced from www.countryliving.com

I better get down to a car boot sale to start collecting!

Season of Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness

Picture from www.goodhousekeeping.com

Sorry for my extended absence. It wasn't planned but rather a lot has been going on recently including a family member being taken into hospital and I have been running around like a blue arsed fly with every intention to post and not a second to spare to actually do so!

While I have been away the seasons have changed spectacularly. My last post was about my camping trip. We were using suncream and seeking out the shade that weekend. Now I am looking out of the window onto trees with yellow leaves and a bright chilly Autum day.

This is my favourite time of year full of magic and festivity. Halloween is just around the corner with bonfire night hot on its heels and (dare I say it this early) the promise of Christmas is beginning to get me all excited. It's a time for making preserves and hearty soups, for lighting candles at night, for wrapping up warm and kicking up leaves with fur lined boots.

It also means that we are on a race against time to get our kitchen finished before Christmas. We have finished painting the units and have ordered reclaimed oak worktops from Lidster and Son in Devon. We have a new sink and tap, oak flooring, new tiles and wallpaper all waiting in the wings. What we don't have is time so we have a local handyman coming round to quote for doing the rest of the work which means with any luck I should have some proper before and after pics to post. Very exciting!

Garage Booty

We recently cleared my parents garage out for them and whilst the majority of what was in there went to Freecycle or the recycling centre, there were a few gems that have now joined the queue of furniture to be revamped in our flat. My favourite two pieces are below, but I also kept an old child's school desk that used to be mine (the sort with an ink well and a flip up lid), a wooden sledge, a 1930s wooden toy theatre and a little wooden child's chair. These have gone in the attic in the hope that one day there will be a Crafty junior to make use of them!

I love the shape of this desk:

I think I am going to paint it cobalt blue and give it some new pretty handles. It will fit in just beautifully in our sitting room as a home for our laptop.

And this was my grandmother's trolley:


She used to keep her sewing machine on it and threads etc. and I may just do the same. I think this will probably end up yellow and I will probably use some wallpaper on it as well.

Goodness knows when I will find the time to finish them but I am really looking forward to seeing them revamped. I grew up with both of them so it will be lovely to have them in my own home.

Horsing Around

I discovered Skinny Laminx's fabulous fabrics on Design Sponge a while back now. I am particularly in love with her "Colts" print:
I love it most of all in the Goldenrod colourway:


I have two very battered old Parker Knoll wing backs that I bought off eBay for a tenner. How gorgeous would they look reupholstered in this fabric? The only slight drawback is that I have never upholstered anything more complicated than a seat pad before.

I have found this step by step guide which makes it look relatively within the realms of achievability and I also have a beginners upholstery book which makes it look a bit more complicated! I would love to know if anyone has given an upholstery project like this a go and how they found it. I am inclined to attempt it but it would be a shame to ruin such beautiful fabric if it turns out to be a whole lot harder than I think it's going to be.

Progress

We have been doing a bit more work on our kitchen cabinets and I am really excited about the progress. About a third of our cabinets are now painted and resplendent with new handles. It makes such a difference already. I can't wait to get on and finish them (and do the tiling, wallpaper the chimney breast, install the new worktop and flooring, ho hum...)

This is what all our cabinets used to look like (beech effect melamine):

This is what they look like painted with melamine primer and two coats of Farrow and Ball's Blackened Estate Eggshell and fitted with new shaker style handles bought v cheaply on eBay:

The photo's not great (still working out how to get the most out of my Blackberry camera) but I hope you can get a sense of the difference. Can't wait until it's finally time to post before and afters of the whole room.

Drawers Before and After

We bought these drawers from Argos when we moved in to our first rented flat together:

They were unfinished pine when we bought them and we stained them dark to go with the other furniture we had at the time. I have been wanting to give them a makeover for ages and I have now finally got round to it. A coat of Farrow&Ball's Pavillion Grey, new Minton knobs and hand painted white and pink swallows later they now look like this:

eBay rocks!

Just back from one of our regular excursions to pick up yet another eBay purchase and this one was a corker I must say. We managed to get ourself 22 square metres of really good quality engineered oak flooring for an absolute steal. It was down on the seller's floor for a couple of years but his wife fancied a change of wood so it all came up again. It's in near perfect condition and we can sand the odd scratch down and re-oil if necessary. We've saved around £700 and our kitchen will have a lovely oak floor instead of the awful wood effect vinyl complete with cigarette burn that we inherited from the previous owner - hurrah!

I'm hoping this weekend that we can do a test run on one of our cabinet doors to see how they take to being painted. I am hoping to turn some very dull beech effect doors into something vaguely resembling these with the help of some hardcore primer and Farrow and Ball's "Blackened" Eggshell:

Photo from Farrow and Ball

Possibly a tall order but I'm going to give it my best shot. I'll let you know how I get on...

DIY Art

Our little hall has been really taking shape recently but the with the white walls and white floor it was looking a little bare. We didn't have any budget for pictures and so I decided to get a bit creative. I got some old ikea frames we had lying around and painted them white. I then got a selection of different coloured pieces of pastel paper from Paperchase and used some as backgrounds overlaid with bird shapes cut from contrasting colours. Given that this was a quick fix I am rather pleased with the results.

I wish I could show a proper view of the whole hall but as I said before it is very wee and as a result it is almost impossible to take a photo on our basic digital camera that takes in all the elements. These are my best efforts:

Bookcase

I mentioned a while back that the projects were stacking up. Well, this weekend finally saw the completion of one. There was a time when, if I needed a new piece of furniture, I would have thought nothing about popping down to Ikea. The problem is you end up with something mass produced, non environmentally friendly and of questionable quality and longevity. As a result I am much more likely these days to try and find a pre-loved item on eBay and then revamp it to suit my taste. If you pick your projects right you end up with solid good quality pieces that you can give your own personal twist.

I bought this bookcase a while ago on eBay for more or less the price of an Ikea unit with a view to giving it a makeover (photo from eBay):

It now looks like this:


You can tell I have been overdosing on Living Etc by the fact I have arranged the books by colour rather than something sensible such as genre or author. Mr Crafty finds this very illogical as he is an avid reader and collector of books and now it's harder to find the book you want but it gives me a little glow every time I look at it.

I also got these lovely handles from John Lewis because I wanted a splash of colour against the Farrow and Ball All White Eggshell:

Our fine and dandy telephone table

Remember this?

Well it now looks like this..

Hope you like it as much as I do!

Mmmm Marimekko

I am very excited about the Marimekko fabric I have bought to upholster the seat on the telephone table (see previous posts):

At the risk of being a bit too matching I wanted something that would sit nicely alongside my lovely Union Jack doormat and I think this will look so pretty on the seat once I have finished painting the table white.

I have also bought a ceramic knob for the draw from Glass Doorknobs and Furniture Pulls on eBay which I am really pleased with:

I can't wait to be able to post the finished product!

Progress

Well it has been a tiring but very productive few days. Mr Crafty and I took three days off work to try to get a bit further with our many ongoing DIY projects. He was dealing with the stairs to our second bedroom in the attic conversion which needed painting and I was back on my hands and knees sanding the hall floorboards. After a lot of elbow grease I have got the first coat of floor paint down and the results are below although you can't see much detail on the pic:



I am really pleased. The hall looks airy and bright. I can't wait to get the coat hooks up and doormat down.

I have also got the primer coat on the hall table (see previous post) and it is also looking good so far. I am hoping to re-upholster the seat in some Marimekko fabric and I want to find an intersting knob for the drawer. I will post the results once it is finished and in situ.

Two day week

My husband and I decided that a little time at home was in order so we have taken the rest of the week off work and are going to spend the time working on our home. It's back to sanding floorboards tomorrow morning for me but for the time being I am feeling the same excitement I felt before half terms at school. The knowledge that I have five whole days sans work is delicious and I intend to make the most of it.

Along with the the hall floor I am hoping I might be able to start one of the many projects I have waiting:

We won this hall seat/table from eBay at the weekend and I have big plans for it! I love it's eccentricity and with some sanding, painting and re-upholstering it should look fab in the hall once it is finished. Without planning it I seem to be developing an English Eccentrics theme for the hall what with the antler coat hooks and the union jack doormat (see previous posts).

I can't wait to get cracking!

Sunday Sanding

This was a significant Sunday as I said goodbye to my beautiful Jenny Packham wedding dress:



My natural instincts are to hoard everything but it just seemed a crime to squirrel such a beautiful dress under my bed. So I sold it to a very like minded bride to be who looked absolutely stunning in it. I hope it will make her as happy as it made me and I am delighted that it is going to have a life after my wedding

After that it was back to tackling our hall:




I have made inroads with the sanding but am going to wait for a day when our downstairs neighbours are out and about to tackle it properly because it aint quiet! Nonetheless I am pleased that the boards look like they are going to come up a treat and with a coat of white floor paint our hall should finally be the welcoming space we want it to be.

Our little hall - time for a facelift

Where to begin? My husband and I moved into our two bedroom flat in South East London coming up to three years ago and are still in the process of trying to turn our dreams of a stylish and welcoming London pad into a reality. We have already invested a great deal of time in getting it to where it is now - which is basically white instead of the original jade green and yellow - but still have a long way to go.

I have a long list of projects but number one is our teeny downstairs entrance hall. As it is the first place our friends see when they come round and the first place we see after a long day at work I want it to be welcoming and hint at the wonders that lie upstairs (I am thinking forward to the day when there are wonders upstairs instead of rather a lot of mess you understand).

So we have taken up the mucky carpet to reveal decent-ish floorboards which are soon to be sanded with out new Black and Decker orbital sander (love power tools!) and painted polar white.

From there on in it is going to be fun, fun, fun and my plans involve one of these sets of coat hooks from Graham and Green given to me after much hinting by my lovely hubby for xmas:



And one of these given to me by lovely hubby's lovely sister for xmas from The Contemporary Home (also after much hinting):



I also want to attempt something like this as seen on Ikea Hacker but I plan to spray the Ikea legs with white gloss paint:



I will keep you posted as to my progress!!