As a follow-on to the table project, I’ve finally finished sanding and painting our old chairs to match the table. I have to say, they came out really well.
Tag: diy
Yesterday’s second craft project
Katy’s always wanted a round kitchen table. We upcycled one from Facebook marketplace. Old school solid wood and extensible. Gave it a damn good sanding then two coats of mat black that, in this heat, only took 5 minutes to dry. The top is still the same color of untreated wood, that’s only a poor lighting artefact. Now we need to sand and paint the chairs to match.
Today’s craft project
Handmade wine cork memory wall hanging. Got a wine crate from the local wine merchant, some plexiglass from hornbach and just a bit of DIY bodging and voila! It’s a bit wonky in places, but has character!
We finally have room in the kitchen!
I've finally finished putting up the shelves in the pantry in the kitchen. Instead of a gaping, sloping hole that was only good to keep paint cans, we now have a fully usable space.
This means that we're reorganizing the whole kitchen so that we can finally put away the mountains of tupperware we had lying around and unpack stuff that was still in boxes because we had nowhere to put it. This makes me happy.
This also makes me want to go buy kitchen stuff, but shhhh!
Not the way I'd planned to spend a long weekend
Feeling meh at the moment. Don't really know why. I think I need sleep. I've not been sleeping well these past few days: weird dreams† and I'm waking up at like 5am. Not cool. I blame the change in the weather I've also been having annoying low-grade headaches, which I've come to associate with sudden changes in air pressure. I used to laugh about the whole concept until it started happening to me. Gotta love Karma…
We were supposed to spend a quiet weekend this weekend, but those plans, in our usual idiom, went flying out the window when we decided to invite Katy's parents over at the last minute. Katy was in a redecorating mood. In the last two days, the living room has been touched up, all the woodwork and trim done, and that bloody alcove painted (which meant that I had to unplug and replug everything electrical – again. blergh). I wasn't in the mood at all to do it, but it's done and I have to say that it looks nice and also means that I don't have to bother with it for the next little while.
We spent way too much money at B&Q to get the stuff we needed for this weekend. A large chunk of that went into a lawnmower, which is not a frivolous expense and we need to start tackling the wild kingdom in our backyard. We spent just as much though for supplies to re-grout our bathroom and get a shower curtain and rod. Again, looks nice, but I think it could have waited until we were a bit more flush.
Still in the spending-money category, I bought a new phone. Not because I wanted to, but because my motorola V3 RAZR, the one I bought just a little more than a year ago, died. After I renewed my contract and passed up the phone upgrade. After the warranty expired. Orange were totally useless about it and I spent waaay too much time on the phone with peons until I asked to speak to a supervisor that answered my question in 5 minutes. There's a lesson in there somewhere. Anyway, I could either spend £90 in “insurance” (which is a more polite way to mean “protection racket”) and get a replacement handset or spend £60 and get a new pay-as-you-go phone, ditch the SIM card and voila, instant handset.
All in all, it hasn't been the bestest weekend ever. On the plus side though, I did make a really nice stuffed chicken yesterday and there has been booze and chocolate.
Still, I think I'd have preferred to visit the Fitzwilliam and just chill with a book…
DIY – Day 3 (a.k.a. jeez, we made it!!)
It's been a looooong day, but it's over and we're done. For now. We finished what we wanted to do. The upstairs rooms are done and so is the kitchen.
We thought we were ahead of schedule this morning but then Sod's law reared its ugly head. The smallest room required the most work. The white walls required 3 coats of paint to finally cover (compared to only one coat for the blue paint). We then had to give another coat to the last wall on the bedroom when we noticed that it had streaked.
Finally, we got everything sorted out and started out on the kitchen. The first coat was scary as hell because we realized just how many bits and pieces there were to paint and we thought the paint wouldn't cover well. The second one went on smoothly though and the kitchen looks great!
So now we're back home and we need to pack the last of our things.
Tomorrow is going to be a bitch.
DIY – Day 2 (a.k.a God, I ache all over!)
We're dead on our feet. The enormity of the scope of the job we've taken on is starting to sink in. Thinking that we could ompletely repaint a 2-story 3 bedroom house in 3 days is hubris. Our schedule was particularly blown out of the water today because we realized that we'd need to give 2 coats of paint to most of the surfaces. What's not helping also is that we were supposed to have another pair of hands to help out, which has subsequently fallen off the map rather suddenly.
The house is also making its displeasure felt at being given a facelift. As I was masking walls to prep them for paint, I needed to reposition a length of tape – only to be faced with a long line of paint being stripped off the ceiling when I took it off. The paint is so old and so layered that it's falling off in chunks if you pull at it. I ended up having to cut in by hand, without taping. Results are mostly good, except for the odd oopsie that I'll need to correct. As a side note, the oopsies mostly happened at the end of the day when we both were tired, hungry and rather fed up :)
Anyway, at the end of today, we can say that the living room is done and sparkling, and we have two coats of the light shade we're putting in the bedroom and guest bedroom. What's on the menu for tomorrow is:
– putting two coats of light color in the office (2 walls)
– fixing the ceiling oopsies in all the rooms
– putting two coats of dark (1 wall)
– putting two coats of dark color in the office (2 walls)
– putting two coats of single color in the kitchen
The bathroom and the trim/baseboards have been pushed off the schedule for now, because they can be done after we've moved in with a minimum of fuss.
A long, warm shower is now called for to get rid of all the paint that has managed to make its way in the various nooks and crannies of my body.
DIY – Day 1
We have the keys, huzzah! huzzah!
Got up this morning and loaded up the car with the paints, brushes, supplies, vacuum and stereo and headed to Hinxton. We stopped by the office to photocopy some paperwork and met the agent at the house. I signed my soul away (or so it seems, that rental agreement was chock full of legalese. For all I know, I'm now Bill Gate's towel boy…) and got the keys.
The agent took an inventory and we'll be getting a copy of that shortly. The good news now though is that we can now start to paint. It's going to be a tight schedule. We need to sand, prep and paint rooms in 3 days. We got all the ceilings done today and we're going to start on the walls tomorrow. Finally, the plan is to do the trim work on friday and move on saturday (assuming that we're still alive and have more than an iota of energy).
I don't know what kind of people had the house before us, but dayum, they left it in a state. Nails and screws in the walls, when not actual holes. The place will really benefit from a slap of paint. The bedroom ceiling itself was the most in need of help.
For a while there, I thought I was back in Montreal. Untold generations of paint overlaid on top of each other until the windows won't even open anymore and a half-assed job all around. Gave me a warm feeling in the bottom of my heart.
We're back home now, complaining about our jackasses of neighbours and libreally speckled in paint and covered in dust. Going to be an early night tonight.
I quick job, but I'm insanely happy with it
A friend gave me a lift to B&Q so I was able to finally buy all the supplies I need to make my window “screens”. I wasn't able to find any wire mesh, so I'd some clean cotton muslin a while ago. It's a simple thing: cotton stapled on wood frames held on the wall with self-adhesive velcro, but I got 'em done and I'm really happy with the results. There's one for the bathroom, kitchen and living room. We'll finally be able to open some windows without having the outside come in. Oh, and I bought a new toy for myself as well (a cordless jigsaw – it was on sale).