January Junky Gems Transform to Fashionable Furniture!

Ok, so January is swiftly departing, can you believe how quickly it went? If you are like me then it flashed by and boy was it a cash strapped month. So it was even more important to make every penny count.

So I got my thinking hat on and my gloves and braved the icy depths of the garden shed to see what paint and other bits I had stashed that I could get to grips with. I struck it lucky! I had 15 year old emulsion paint all stacked in the back behind the lawnmower and the BBQ. What joy! Only one of the cans contained a colour that I had used myself the others had been donated as leftovers over the years by my family after house moves and decor changes. So with  hope and trepidation I hauled the cans up to the kitchen and pried the rusty cans open. And joy again! Yes they had certainly thickened over the decade or so they when out there in the shed with the spiders and bugs but with some water added and a good mix they returned to a fluid, usable state pretty quickly. So a small fortune saved right there! I also raked out my collection of wicker baskets I had built up over the years (and a couple from Mum too), I had always found them a little hard to place in the flat before but inspiration was firing on all cylinders so they made their way upstairs too.

The baskets after a bit of a dust.

 I decided quite early on that I what I wanted was a clean fresh look for my redecoration plans, no matter which room I went into I needed to lighten and whiten and with that thought in mind I mixed up some white chalk paint with a half a can of white emulsion that had come up from the shed. Whoop! I was back in action with a brush :)!

So much cleaner and a uniform colour makes then look like a set, rather than a raggedy collection, I'm very happy with these so far!

So what else could I get up too with my freshly mixed chalk paint? Well I turned my attention to a little wooden trolley table that I had stashed in the kitchen to use for breakfast. It's really a handy wee item but had really seen better days and it travelled up from Mums to mine to be used much as it had been at her home, everything from a potting table, painting surface and somewhere to stack tools amongst others. I'm sorry but I forgot to take a before pic I just got stuck in!

It came up a complete treat! Pleased as punch but really needed to give it a bit of a colour boost so I made up some little tester pot sized coloured chalk paints and after struggling with the 'should it be stripes/should it plaid' thing in my head, I decided it should be stripes as it would make the table top look bigger and longer. I masked it off with frog tape and away I went....

The first stripe! A lovely coral/peachy tone.....but wait that wasn't all! More taping and more chalk paint followed. I have to say its a satisfying thing peeling off the tape to reveal nice sharp lines, I think that was my favourite decorating moment because basically painting is a messy job.

 

And so I reached the zenith of stripes for my small table,for not another stripe could be placed on its little top.

Optimum Stripe Level A

This is where it will live for a short while until I get started on the kitchen when it will return home to be used at breakfast and lunch times once more :)

So no pennies spent at all on these little up-do's and there's my Mums' rabbit from her garden which found its ears repaired and chalk painted white and now it lives indoors and spooks the cat out.

There's more to come, the baskets aren't finished yet, I want to make some fabric liners and some ceramic content  plaques for them and I'll certainly share my efforts with that little project too

Other than that I no longer have a sofa, well to cut a long story short after Mum came home from hospital it was decided by the occupational therapist that a riser/recliner would be more useful so I broke the sofa into two parts and ditched the larger three-seater part to make room but the new chair didn't arrive in time :(. So now I have masses of space and the corner where the sofa was has been completely freed up so I did this (see below). The storage boxes were £2.99 each from B&M and they hold so much of fabric stash and crafty bits, they were the cheapest on the market and I think they look great, it certainly makes a big difference to the room. The unit was a cheap pine thing bought from B&Q years back just to fill the alcove and create some shelves behind the sofa.

Other things that I completed but didn't get a chance to post because of everything that was happening with Mum, were the large MCM (Mid Century Modern) cupboards and shelves that I already had but that needed some tlc to get them back to good nick. So after a light sand with a very fine grain sandpaper, this removed all the old dirt and any oils previously used, I then gave it two coats of Danish Oil and chalk painted selected areas to give them just the lightest of 're-style's :) They came up so beautifully and they really glow.

I'm such a nerdy, I colour coordinated my cd's!

I also used the very last scraps of MDF from my shelving project to create a little U shaped TV stand that runs the same length as the cabinet, which gave me somewhere to stash the DVD player and the Sky box and freed up counter space.

 This little success gave me the confidence to get stuck into the vintage dining table and chairs using the same techniques and style. 

The Danish Oil was around £5 from B&Q and made such a difference to the teak wood. Its a pleasure to polish!

WOW, this is the longest post I've put out in a while!

So I have been embroidering quietly in the evenings too. It just seems to relax me :) so that can be no bad thing. Seeing as I no longer have a sofa I can't really go any further with my living room, it will have to wait until I am able to afford it, unless I strike it mega lucky and find the perfect vintage sofa and armchairs! Who knows? In the meantime I'm moving on to the kitchen because I have all that old paint and I know that I can pull it off on a shoe string budget, I'll show you how I'm  doing on that really soon.

Have a look at my embroidery in the meantime, this pretty little piece is to be made into a lavender pillow,lavender is used therapeutically to aid restful sleep it also happens to be a gorgeous, clean, floral scent and my favourite besides jasmine! I'll be sure to blog the finished piece for you :)

I hope you enjoyed this one, lol! That's everything up to date now, but as always there's so much more to come,

lots of love,
Samantha x

Happy 2015, and the saddest news.

Yes it's 2015 and here we are ready to get to it once again!

The sad news is, and I'm just going to be very quick here, is that my much, much loved mum Joyce passed away on the 3rd of January. She had rallied before Christmas and came home to me from a prolonged hospital stay but there was such a dramatic decline and although everyone tried so hard to make things right for us both, there was nothing that could be done. I'll miss her in far too many ways to say here but all my love and my heart go with her. I love you Joyce Evans, my mum.

So to get myself back on track I'm going to move on pronto and get busy with my diy! I have some pretty embroidery I've been working on and a few indoor plant ideas because I'm feeling an urge to get all green fingered! Spring is definitely on its way folks. There are daffodils and crocuses already taking at peek at us!
But while there is still a mighty chance of frost and snow I'm going to share my indoor garden ideas by creating some Terrariums! So stay tuned.

Unsurprisingly not posting any pics of WIP's today, it was tough just getting the words out about mum. So I'll leave you with a happy picture of my gorgeous mum taken last summer in her garden. It shows her feeling happy and that is how she was nearly always. A truly wonderful,creative, nuturing, fun, woman and mother.

Joyce Evans, my lovely mum. 1935 - 2015