Wow, this nursing chair has taken a while to complete. I was given it in late 2012, and spent much time the week before I gave birth in February 2013 on my friend’s sewing machine, reupholstering it with grey fabric – you can follow its progress here, and see it with the matching footstool here. Continue reading
Tag: white
Bed: a mini project (stage two)
Stage one of overhauling our bed was hacking the top off, opening up the lines of our bedroom again and giving me less things to bang my head on in the middle of the night.
Stage two involved sanding as long as I could be bothered (not long), inhaling yellow dust (I know because when I sneezed, it came out of my nose), wiping the sanding dust with a teatowel which really shouldn’t have been used for that purpose, all to get it ready for the paint (which I got on the carpet). There’s a reason I usually let Barry do all this. Continue reading
Nursery accessories
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.
Not so picture perfect
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.
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!
Nursery done!
The nursery’s now been painted, hurrah! In the end we went for Sorbet (Dulux) on two walls, which is a pale pink, and then B&Q’s Grey Hints for the rest of the room. When the decorator was painting the grey, I was worried it wasn’t quite grey enough and it would just look dirty white, but it seems to have dried really nicely and they’re good contrasting colours.
We’d quite like to put a shelf or two up (especially as we have nothing to put the baby monitor and temperature egg thing on), so we’re on the look out for reasonable shelving, although I could always paint a pine one white I suppose.
It’s really satisfying to have the room painted – the furniture is all finally where we want it now, so we’re just waiting for the arrival to really complete the room!
I’m expecting a few fabric samples from eBay for the nursing chair and stool and then I’ll have a go at reupholstering that – my lovely friend Charlie is going to lend me her sewing machine (thank you!). And if it turns out like a dog’s dinner, I’ll put a throw on it. Nobody need ever know…
Negative effect
We’ve finally sorted out replacing the red drawers in the Ikea unit our TV sits on. They were the only red item left in the room, and it was really getting on my nerves!
We nipped to Ikea (after the aborted attempt last bank holiday), and I got to try Krispy Kreme for the first time. It’s amazing, but I digress.
We picked up a few picture frames, and then started doing mental arithmetic, and put them all back again. We’re going to go in a month or two when we don’t have quite so much going on! We did also try the shop near to it, HomeSense, which was recommended by a neighbour, but they didn’t have a wide range of white frames, and we’re being quite particular.
They did, however, have an amazing range of mirrors, and we nearly bought a coat peg with different knobs in bright colours (before realising we had nowhere to put it), and a half corkboard/half chalkboard thing for the kitchen (but it was cream, not white). I’d definitely go back there!
Anyway, we’ve swapped the drawers out, and it looks a bit like a washed out version of the red, like a photo negative! It works with the room though, doesn’t clash like the red, and will look even better if we ever get these [insert expletive] frames in!
Procrastination
As you may have suspected from my recent posts, not much DIY/decorating’s being done at the homestead at the moment. We’re obviously very busy people, and now the bulk of it’s been done, it’s so easy to take our foot off the accelerator and be a little bit lazy.
I’m going to make a concerted effort to keep going this weekend and get a bit more done in the kitchen, like painting the skirting boards. If we can do some sanding of the kitchen ceiling and get the beading done in the living room, all the better.
I’ve noticed that the living room looks really quite empty with nothing on the walls, so come payday, we’ll hopefully be able to sort that out. Given time, I’ve completely changed my mind about having the plain frames, and am now looking at mixing them up, like these from Ikea, which is where we’ll probably end up.
I had a look at the cheapie ones from Wilkinson’s and they were all imperfect and the joins had big gaps in them, so if we’re spending so much, and putting so much time into sorting the photos, it’s worth spending a bit more to get it right. We will have to go to Ikea and see them before we buy them though. These are from Ikea’s website…
Kitchen floor announcement
Ahem. Ladies and gentlemen. I have an announcement to make. The kitchen floor is in. No more concrete crap on everything!
I’ve included photos from before (we had bits of living room carpet down to stop us walking the dust about) as well as after, and we obviously have several bits still to do (like beading), but the bulk of it is done! I came home from work and think I caught Barry seriously considering another way out, but he got there in the end.
In the meantime, I’ve continued the thankless task of painting white gloss over white gloss. No photos there then.
After this, I’m going back to trying to find superhero-themed songs for our superhero-themed night out next week. We all know we’ll end up at karaoke.
Permission to paint
As Barry is away, I’ve finally got permission to pick up a paintbrush! I’ve been left with instructions to paint a little bit of wood by the front door with wood stain, and paint the bits of skirting board and doorframes that I can reach in the living room.
While I’m proud of my progress, there’s not much point me putting up a photo of me painting something that was slightly off-white, white.
So, in the meantime, you can see a pretty picture of the kettle Barry bought last week. It’s glass and lights up. What more do you want from a kettle? Oh, it boils water too.
Hit the floor
The living room floor is in! We still have some work to do (painting skirts/painting radiators/painting doors/putting beading on/never mind the photo wall), but we can walk on it, and it looks great! I think Barry has RSI from putting it in, and he couldn’t face starting the kitchen.
A couple of things we were selling on eBay finished yesterday – the radiator with the leak went, and the kitchen trolley thing went for £102! That will cover either the photo wall, or a trip to Ikea to get some white drawers etc. I really didn’t want to leave the red ones in because they hurt my eyes now because they don’t match, but Barry won’t let me take them out, because we use them, or some such reason. Progress photos below.
