Decking day deux

May 17, 2013Leave a comment

We’re pretty much done with the decking already! The men started early, about 7.30, and started putting the decking boards onto the frame they’d built the day before. They also built the path back up so we didn’t fall into a deep, dark hole taking the bin out. That would have been inconvenient.

The skip that was supposed to arrive between 10am and 12pm came at around 5pm after the gents had already gone home, so they’re coming back on Saturday morning to get rid of the mound of dirt in the back garden. I did try to shame the man delivering the skip but he just asked us for money. We didn’t give him it.

The landscape guys also built a raised flowerbed at the bottom of the garden, as per Barry’s masterplan, which looks great; we just need to decide what to put in it.

After the mud has been cleared away, we need to get some grass seed stat and dig up those nasty weeds that blight our grass.

We’re also planning on getting a new shed, putting a step in between the two levels for Scarlett’s tiny legs and covering the manhole cover in some way. Then we would like to put up higher fence panels next to the decking, as we can currently see right over into next door’s garden now, and that’s just not polite. Then we’re going to stain the decking and fence so everything matches. I quite like the idea of it being a dark stain, but we’ll have to go shopping and see.

Then we need some nice garden furniture and Barry’s loving the idea of a fire pit.

After that (but way in the future), I’d like to change the paving slabs we have for nice ones instead of the utilitarian grey concrete ones that the house builders put in. We’ll need almost 40, so it won’t be cheap!

I’ll put up some more photos once the mud mound has disappeared, but I’m really happy with this result! Just hope we get a summer to go with it…

So, what do you think? Quick poll: have you ever painted one side of your fence (and not the neighbour’s side)?

A deck above

May 15, 2013Leave a comment

Day one of the decking – the frame is in, hurray! I wasn’t sure the poor men would come this morning because it was raining so hard, but turn up they did, and worked through until the sun shone later this afternoon.

I took a couple of surreptitious photos when they nipped back to the van (I thought they might feel judged if I did it while they were working!), hence the photos through the door.

They dug out a lot of mud and rubble, much more than they’d thought initially (a skip is winging its way to us tomorrow).

Then they started on the two-level frame. Because it was raining so hard, the grass section of our garden is now a muddy mess, but never mind! It wasn’t exactly manicured beforehand, but hopefully we can sort it out for summer. If it ever comes.

One of the paving slabs next to the decking is now about to collapse, so it needs building back up underneath, which apparently they’ll do tomorrow, along with putting the boards on presumably, but don’t know how long that takes.

Deck ahoy!

May 13, 2013Leave a comment

I’m a terrible blogger at the moment, my little baby is taking all my time, but I don’t mind! We’ve added a couple of bits to the nursery which I need to photograph, and in the meantime, Barry’s organised someone to do the decking! Finally!

I mentioned the decking plans back in June, and the same plans apply, only instead of Barry doing it, we have a man who can. It turns out that he was £100 more than if we just bought the bits ourselves, and that is £100 well spent. The gentleman is coming for two days this week, and then we can laze in the summer mizzle.

This is the view from our back door at the moment, kind of uninspiring. The dandelions are the only flash of colour. Barry tore the shed down this weekend – the bits are being collected for firewood and the paving slabs keeping it straight have gone on (what else?) eBay!

We’re having decking down the right hand side, extending the patio to the left, and keeping some grass. I want to change the drab paving slabs for something nicer, but that may have to wait. The fence also needs to be a bit higher on the right hand side, otherwise we’d be sunbathing looking over at our neighbours below us, a little intrusive! We’re also going to stain everything dark.

I think – I hope – everything is going to look fabulous!

Stool

February 8, 20133 Comments

Nursing stool

Well, the baby hasn’t arrived yet (only a week and a half to go to due date!). In the meantime, I’ve been finishing off the upholstery side of the rocking stool that came with our nursing chair from my lovely friend Helen. All it needed was a staple gun!

The edges aren’t the most professional, mostly because I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, but definitely fit for our purposes.

All we need to do now is wait for the weather to brighten up a bit (more snow due this week, folks!), and then set about painting the wood white – I think it really would make it.

More cushions

February 6, 20134 Comments

Chair with seat and back

I’ve just finished the back cushion for the nursing chair. I sewed it much the same as the seat cushion, except it was much thinner, so I managed to sew the fourth side closed, rather than having to use velcro like I did with the seat.

I tried to judge where the tabs were to attach it to the chair by eye, just looking at the old cushion cover. This went drastically wrong, and the velcro was hanging on by the skin of its metaphorical teeth because the tabs were in the wrong place.

When Barry then yanked the cushion off the seat (WHY?) on the day I finished it, I then burst into tears and had a bit of a paddy. Mostly baby-related, I’m sure. I’ve now taken the tabs off and reattached them, using the chair as a guide this time instead of, erm, nothing.

The arms have also now been completed. These were made from scratch with some foam I bought from eBay. The previous arm cushions had three press studs on the underside of each arm to hold them in place, so I also bought some silver coloured heavy duty studs from eBay that I hoped would fit the same studs (they did, phew!).

I sewed a pocket into the cushions (as the previous ones had them, although I’m not sure I’ll use them), and used the sewing machine to close all four sides. When the heavy duty studs arrived, it turns out they weren’t long enough to go through several layers of heavy duty upholstery fabric, so Barry tested them and it turned out they can go through two layers. I had to unpick one side of the sewing I’d done, Barry got to work in a manly fashion to hammer the studs into place, and then I resewed (is that a word?) that side closed.

Arm pocket

It’s not amazing craftsmanship, so you can’t look too closely, but I am very proud of this chair! I’m hoping when the weather brightens up a bit, Barry will take up the painting mantle and paint it white.

Just waiting now for some staples to arrive and we can do the last part – the stool.

Nursery accessories

February 4, 2013Leave a comment

Birdcage light

Had a quick shop for a couple of bits for the nursery – we’ve bought this lovely little pendant birdcage light from Argos, and I ummed and ahhed about getting the matching table lamp but we’ve decided not to for now.

Also, as I’ve been doing the nursing chair up, I thought it may be nice to get a couple of coordinating cushions to go on the chair which will henceforth be grey. I nipped into Primark on the offchance that they had some pretty pink ones, and they had these little treasures. The buttons are (hopefully) too big for a child to eat and they’ll look lovely on the new chair. And what a bargain – only £3 each.

Fixing up the chair

February 1, 20136 Comments

Fabric

Following on from my post about the nursing chair, we collected the 5m of lovely velvety grey fabric that I bought from eBay (finally, a purchase that’s gone right!), and it came in a huge roll that seems a bit overwhelming!

The books from the library were useless. Well, that’s a bit unfair – they were useless for my purposes. Lots of talk about hammers and ripping stuff up. I’m just re-covering cushions, so I’ve returned the books and I’m just muddling through.

I’ve decided not to repaint the chair’s frame right now, because the weather is appalling and we’d never get it done outside at the moment. Nor do I particularly want to be breathing in noxious fumes inside! We can always do that later if the mood strikes us – it would definitely look brilliant in white.

The chair has a seat, back, two arm cushions and a stool that need re-covering, so I thought I’d start with the most simple of them all, the seat.

I started by cutting a piece of fabric bigger than the size of the cushion I was covering, big enough to go up the sides as well. Using Charlie’s sewing machine, I stitched it inside out on three sides, stabbing myself repeatedly with pins. Quite literally, there’s been my blood, sweat and tears over these cushions.

I then cut away the excess fabric around where I’d sewn and turned the cover the right way around.

This made me happy, because it was actually starting to look like a cushion.

Because the sewing machine isn’t an upholstery one, try as I might, I could not for the life of me get it to stitch the fourth side because the cushion was too thick for it to get anywhere near the needle. I ended up stitching velcro to each side of the join (having taken the cushion out again, harder than it sounds), and velcroing it shut.

I then made two tabs for the back, to attach it to the chair frame, again with velcro on, and again, much harder than I just made that sound (it took about five attempts to get it right). Et voilà!

Not so picture perfect

January 30, 20131 Comment

I’ve been hard at work turning a couple of old pictures and mirrors into pieces that will match our shiny new nursery. I don’t want too many different colours going on, so with the pink and grey walls and white furniture, I wanted white frames for anything we put up on the walls.

These two have been hanging around for a while – visitors to our houses from the last 10 years may recognise these; I’m pretty sure they’re both Ikea’s finest. I already have a white frame for a cross-stitch I’m working on, and I wanted a group of frames like in my inspiration photo that I keep referring to for the nursery.

I sanded them both down, stuck masking tape around the edges, and just painted them with the white emulsion we used for our ceilings. After 3 coats each, they looked quite good, so I started pulling off the masking tape. The mirror was ok, just needed the edges touching up a little, but the picture had some frosting around the images which came off with the masking tape, leaving an awful edge that I couldn’t do anything about.

problem frame

We tried putting up the mirror in the nursery, but it turned out it looked a bit big and overpowering, especially as we want to put more up around it, so we’ve put that up in the spare room (where it was originally). I then had a go at painting little pink flowers all around the edge of the picture frame with the tester pot of pink paint to hide the edges. I’m still not convinced, but it’s up in the room anyway. I’ll see if it grows on me – Barry likes it, anyway!

Preparing the chair

January 23, 2013Leave a comment

OK, so I’m delaying things until I get paid, but in the meantime I’ve got one book from the library about reupholstering to look at (which I haven’t yet actually opened), I’ve ordered the foam to replace in the arm bits and I’ve been for advice from (ie, facebooked) my friend Michelle about what to do with the actual frame of the chair and stool because she’s amazing and does this kind of thing all the time. In the meantime, Charlie’s sewing machine is sneaking me little looks and making me feel guilty, but I get paid at the end of this week and I’ll order the fabric and press studs then.

Michelle’s response to my DIY SOS was that she would sand the existing varnish off, prime it if I can be bothered (I think I can) and buy a spray paint made for wood. Then seal it with a matt varnish. I’m pretty sure I’ll have to do all of this outside as well, which doesn’t help as we’ve just had a load of snow come down.

In the meantime, I’m a man with a plan – I’m in town on Friday and Monday meeting people, so thought I’d nip into Wilkos for some primer. I daren’t start sanding until I actually have the primer, so I’m basically delaying everything for another few days.

What I don’t want to do is get all the bits and then have the baby early, because, let’s face it, that fabric will be thrown over that chair in the blink of an eye and the poor chair will never see a sewing machine or a paint brush.

Chair fabrics

January 18, 2013Leave a comment

Upholstery fabrics

These are the three fabric samples I ordered for the nursing chair. The bottom one’s very much like the fabric on our sofa at the moment, a slate grey, and the top one doesn’t look as nice in real life as it appears in pictures. It just so happens (and this never happens!) that I like the cheapest one (the middle one).

It’s supposed to be grey-beige but looks like the platinum one we had our eye on when we went to the upholsterers. It’s £8.99/m and the eBay seller lives about 5 minutes from my house so I can collect it. The upholsterers thought we’d need 3.5m of material, so I think I might get 5m, just to be on the safe side.

Looking at the other items this eBay seller has, I’m wondering if I need more supplies. They seem to have upholstery nails and jute webbing, and I don’t even know what they’re for. Still awaiting these books from the library, hopefully they can shed some light on it. I know I need some more foam for the arms, but I think the other cushions are fine.

My friend Charlie’s an angel and has already brought her sewing machine around for me to use once we’ve got the fabric sorted. It’ll be a bit trial and error though because none of us can remember how to use a sewing machine. It’ll be better than the Singer though as it has a foot pedal so there’s a real chance I might be able to sew in a somewhat straight line this time.

No Space Like Home

Blogging about decorating and other homey things so I don't annoy my friends

Category: The archive (Bradford house)