playing with piping…

Tags

apartment, diy, ikea udden, kitchen, painting, pipes

… and not the decorative kind!

… when I started renovating my apartment I thought the kitchen was passable, and I would wait a while until I would renovate it. Sure it didn’t have a cooker, but it had a sink; I splurged on my dream fridge; I had my camping stove and I could get a microwave for the year or so until I decided what I really wanted to do…

everything is temporary – except my dream fridge!

… when I moved in I quickly discovered that the plumbing had a few hiccups. Every time I washed anything in the sink I ended up standing in a puddle…

… one weekend mid October I decided I had had enough, and I went ahead and ripped out the old cabinets, the swollen, rotting work surface that made my skin crawl; the bent, dented drawers and the leaking plumbing. I cut back silicon, took apart Ikea cupboards, pulled them out from under the work surface, and managed to get it to all come crashing down! I took everything apart, sorted metal from wood, plastic in separate bags and took it all to the container park…

… when the guys redid the electricity here they really messed up the tiles, cutting channels in the tiles rather than removing a column, then patching their paths up with lumpy plaster (often mixed with brick dust, giving me “pretty” orange “features” in the walls. I knew I was going to have to replace the tiles along the way, but I thought until I decided which tiles I wanted, I could just place my kitchen cupboards in situ, and move them when it came to tiling. I had already decided I wanted the free standing Udden kitchen units from Ikea.

… when I removed the old kitchen cupboards I had a surprise… the last kitchen update had been done somewhat hastily (to be polite) – tiles on top of tiles (just like all my layers of wallpaper!), and a huge hole in the wall, down to bare brick! Plus, all the years of leaking plumbing had chronically rusted all the heating pipes.

not a pretty surprise!

… sometime in the autumn I put the Udden units together, and since then they have sat in the middle of the kitchen, semi-in use… though I haven’t had an operational kitchen sink since then. When I drew up a sketch of the kitchen I decided I wanted to move the sink, so I needed to move the taps. Not a big deal in itself, and I probably could have done it myself, but I also wanted to tidy up the piping, changing joints and making sure things ran parallel and I want to run a gas pipe to where I want to put a cooker. I don’t have to tools to cut thick old pipes, or the absolute certainty of what I am doing…

… mid-December I called the plumber I had used previously, he was about to head off on holidays, I waited a couple of weeks then called him again, his number seems to have been cut off… in the mean time a friend gave me the number of another plumber, he came round a few weeks ago, assessed the work, got down on his hands and knees, peered under the bath, told me he could do a good, tidy job… I haven’t heard from him since, he doesn’t answer his phone… this seems typical of workmen here. The painter who was doing the bulk of the work here last summer hasn’t been back since late September, he doesn’t answer my calls, he doesn’t seem to mind I have a load of his equipment still and unfinished work; the guy that came round last weekend and said begrudgingly he would finish off the one room that still needs the plaster finishing, and needs painting, the guy that said he would come back later in the week hung up on me when I called him mid-week…

… Saturday morning I decided that if I keep waiting for workmen I won’t ever have an operational kitchen… so I decided to start by attacking the rusty pipes myself. I sanded them down, brushed them down with a steel brush, then I degreased and washed them well. I switched the heating on to warm them, to ensure they dried well, and then painted them. First coat and they still looked terrible, second coat they are looking better…

… I will do a third coat during the week and try and find a plumber!

something pretty after all that ugliness!

no sheep were hurt…

Tags

chair, cushions, diy, sewing, sheepskin, thrifting

… I needed to get a yellow fever vaccination for Ghana, early morning appointment at the hospital, the route to the metro station to get to work afterwards almost passed by Berger fabrics, I decided I could make a quick detour…

… I was looking for fabric to cover my thrifted chair. I didn’t find anything, I did fall in love with some fake fur that had just come in, but decided that there was no way I could carry a bag of that discreetly into the office, so I picked up a piece of viscose for another Renfrew, and decided to come back at the weekend.

… a couple of weeks passed, I hadn’t made it back to Berger which is only open Saturday morning at the weekend, I had a few errands to run, so I took the afternoon off work. I was in the neighbourhood of Berger, I decided to have a quick look to see if they had anything new to cover my chair, before I went to the Stoffenspektakel fabric fair on the Sunday. I walked in to the shop, there was a small piece of the fur I had been dreaming of left, I picked that up and started looking for chair fabric, nothing in the decorating textiles caught my eye, there was nothing in the heavy weight cottons and canvases downstairs in the right colour, I was ready to give up…

… I decided to have a look at the fake furs. I have been wondering what I could make with the fake cows hide for years… then I spotted some fake sheepskin: fuzzy on one side and a cream “suede” on the other, it was soft, sturdy, pale and neutral – exactly what I was looking for.

… I sewed the cushion covers up a couple of weeks ago. I had bought the foam from the same shop I went to for T’s dog bed. I couldn’t find cream zips, so I went for lime green. Who would guess it was a 20€ chair!

a long list…

Tags

apartment, diy, photos, sewing, update

… of things I have been up to, of things to share, of things I need to photograph, of things still in progress, of things I need to do…

… I have been keeping busy at home, out and about, at work, travelling…

… last week I drafted my first post in forever, but somehow I blinked and missed the daylight this weekend, so I didn’t get the photos to accompany it… it will have to wait until next weekend…

… in the meantime, here are a few fragments from instagram of some of the things I have been up to in the past months…

sunny steps…

Tags

diy, ikea, ikea bekvam, paint, painting, steps, stool, yellow

… its not like I have nothing to do at the minute…

• there are still a few remnants of wallpaper to be wrestled from the closed balcony, the plasterers are approaching steadily…
• I want to take the planks out the hall cupboard and sand and repaint them…
• I have various light fitting projects flitting through my mind…
• I need to refinish a vintage cupboard I bought at the beginning of the year and that has been sitting in the corner of my bedroom since then, but I can’t lift it outside on my own to paint it, or back inside once it is painted, so I need to wait until I can rope someone into helping me move it (and make my mind up on how I want to paint it)…
• I am half way through making a new dog bed…
• I have a bunch of other sewing projects whirling through my mind, using fabric from the bloggers meet last month and earlier acquisitions…
• I need to pack up this apartment, and call the movers to fix a moving date, and then start worrying about all the other bureaucratic stuff that a move involves: services, insurance, parking permits, etc, etc…
• I need to trim the hedges as every time the landlord appears with more potential tenants he makes a point of telling me I let the hedges get out of hand…
• I need to make real progress on this consultancy contract I am working on…

… so it seemed perfectly logical I to decide to paint my classic Ikea BEKVAM stool a couple of weeks ago! I was in the DIY shop looking at doorbell covers, and came home with a pot of sunshine “lego yellow” paint…

… I deliberated painting as is, but a few of the screws were coming loose, I have had these steps for years, I bought them in Madrid when I was living in Lisbon, and before we had IKEA in Portugal, they moved from apartment to apartment there, went into storage, got shipped to Scotland and are now in Belgium, so I decided to take them apart and paint each piece individually and then put them back together. I am not sure that was the best idea as some of the pieces were really fiddly to paint and each coat took me 2 sessions with adequate drying time between…

… I ended up doing 3 coats, with about 2 weeks break between coats, life kept getting in the way, finally I finished them today. I hope the paint will last, these steps get used a lot. Maybe I should have varnished them too…

… I can’t wait to see them in my new sunny kitchen…

goodbye tobacco yellow walls…

Tags

diy, grey, kitchen, painting, transformation, walls

… when I moved into my apartment the first thing I did was repaint the living room and bedroom. Correction, before I even moved into this apartment I had repainted the living room and bedroom. That was pretty much a deal breaker for me. I loved the apartment, I couldn’t believe my luck at finding a place with a garden in the centre of Brussels, but there was no way I could live with salmon pink or baby blue walls. This is a grey country, those colors sucked any light out the air.

… so I started off my Belgian life with bright white walls – in my living room and bedroom – and tobacco stained yellow walls in the kitchen.

… I didn’t realise how bad it was at first, but even after repeat washings the walls stayed yellow, and I produced buckets and buckets of disgusting black water. The trouble was the kitchen cabinets were also stained tobacco yellow. So there was no way I could paint the walls white, the cabinets would look even more sickly. I have tried every product, concoction and recommendation I could find on the internet to try and clean those cabinets, and they continue yellow.

… grey walls seem to be a popular choice of late… that would work, as long as the grey wasn’t too dark. The kitchen doesn’t get a lot of light. A few weeks ago I went and picked up some samples and last weekend I finally put on my painting clothes and attacked the kitchen. Wow! I couldn’t believe the difference after 1 coat, now after 3 coats the room is transformed. I decided to paint the ceiling white, and the walls light grey, and that dingy room that barely gets any natural light is suddenly a bright and cheerful place!

… the cabinets are still yellowish, but suddenly I don’t mind nearly so much.

… I also changed out the landlord’s flat ceiling light fixture for a hanging stainless steel one I had stored from a previous apartment that gives off a lot more light.

… I still want to paint the exposed hot water pipes that run through the kitchen stainless steel grey, but I need to work out how to do that as the pipes are always hot, and I can’t switch the hot water off without leaving my whole building hot waterless!

face lift…

Tags

clock, diy, ikea, painting, spray painting, transformation

… I expect most homes in countries where there is an ikea have one of their plain white wall clocks. They aren’t pretty, but they aren’t especially ugly either, and they are really cheap.

… I used to have a wonderful stainless steel clock, but it got dropped once too often in one move too many, and just didn’t have the same style once it was dented. It was discarded somewhere along the line.

… since then I have had this simple white clock hanging on my wall. I suspect it was bought as an interim solution, until I found something I liked better to replace the metal clock. But while it worked I never got round to replacing it.

… I have spent hours on etsy looking at clocks, but while there were a ton of wonderful clocks, nothing ever jumped off the screen and shouted “you need me”…

… the other day perusing design sponge, a sneak peek, my eyes fell on a beautiful yellow clock. I searched for something similar, but couldn’t find anything affordable, or where the shipping wasn’t exhorbitant. I kept thinking about that clock, every time I was in the kitchen I glared at my dull white clock. It just wasn’t cheerful enough for me any more. I needed color!

… then I had a moments inspiration. Why not paint the dull clock? I had bright orange paint left over from painting the legs of my table. Perfect! I carefully taped over the face of the clock, placed it on a piece of cardboard and cleared a patch in the snow on my terrace. I primed then painted and painted and painted over 4 days, bringing the clock inside between paint layers to allow it to dry…

… now I smile every time I check the time.

quick fix…

Tags

cover, diy, iron, ironing board, sewing, update

… it has been on my to-do list for ages, but somehow I never remembered to buy the fabric, despite coming home with all sorts of unplanned projects every time I even walk past a fabric store…

… it was cheap, ridiculously cheap, and rather nasty… For some reason a friend bought me an ironing board not long after I moved to Belgium, I think I had asked her if she had a spare one when she told me she was clearing out a lot of stuff from her basement. She didn’t, but then one day she turned up at my place with a plastic wrapped ironing board, with 10€ scrawled on the plastic wrap. It wasn’t pretty, but it would do the job, and has done for the past 2 years.

… but not only was the cover swirls of red, and I really don’t like red at all, the cover was too small, so every time you ironed it would slip off. I knew it wasn’t complicated to make a cover, I planned to make a cover… I just needed some suitable fabric.

… finally, another trip to the fabric shop yesterday with another friend – who wanted advice on some future projects – and I remembered to pick up 50cm of brightly patterned heavy duty cotton. This afternoon after finally plucking up the courage and tackling a belt for a friend’s wedding dress, I needed a simple project to decompress. I followed this tutorial for dimensions, but as I didn’t have elastic in the house, I used string, and one of those squeezy toggles.

… what a difference a piece of cheerful fabric makes!

sparkle and color…

Tags

carpet, cushions, diy, home, living room, sewing

… when I bought my beautiful orange Moroccan carpet home I decided I should tone down some of the other colors in my living room. For a year I have lived with a sober palette of beige and brown, with just a dash of lime green…

… last autumn at the fabric store, in a dark and dusty corner, I came across a bolt of brown corduroy – with a pink and orange sequinned design – I knew it would be perfect to bring a bit of sparkle to my living room as a cushion cover. I brought home half a metre, whipped up a simple zipped cushion cover and there was some missing sparkle back in my living room!

… last month, accompanying a friend to the fabric shop, with no intention to buy anything, I somehow ended up purchasing a couple of metres of soft fluffy cream fleece… and then, as I was waiting to pay, I spotted some gaudy pink and gold Chinese style material. The magpie in my couldn’t resist the shininess. Fifty cm in my pile, a pink zipper, and now I have 2 bright cushions cheering up the sober browns and beiges.

counting down…

Tags

christmas sale, cowl, diy, etsy, gifts, handmade, scarf, wallet

… tomorrow is the day…

… my first attempt at a craft fair, with a couple of friends, an opportunity to sell a few of the things I have made – maybe! I hope people will come, it is informal, it is a bit last minute, but I am always the optimist.

… suddenly I wonder if I have enough “stuff” to fill a stall, whether I am going to sell out in the first hours, it would be nice, it strikes me as unlikely, but just in case, I decided I should make a few more things.

… a few more scarf/necklaces as I seem to have given away almost all of the ones I have made to date, a couple more wallets that were made, but needed fasteners, maybe later, if I manage to fuse more plastic I can make some more wallets. And a couple of key rings, to use up scraps…

Finally some paper to wrap them… and I should be set!

fighting the crowds…

Tags

brussels, christmas, crafts, diy, etsy, sale

… the weekend before Christmas, it is going to be madness out there, wherever you are…

… a group of friends (and friends of friends) who decided to avoid the masses – or create their own madness – with a weekend sale for friends (and friends of friends).

… if you are in Brussels this weekend, do come along. And if you can’t make it, you can find a lot of my items in my etsy shop…