The Chair Makeover - Magpie Monday

14 Mar 2011

This week for MapieMonday I found this great chair in my local charity shop, for some reason it was only £5, we were really surprised about this as normally the chairs sell for £10 upwards. I don't really know about different woods, but hubby thinks this is probably oak and quite a modern one judging by the chair cover. All I know is I loved the shape of the back and the legs and could just imagine how it would look once it was given a "makeover".

BEFORE

Ever impatient to get my "creation" completed I set hubby to work straight away removing the cover from the seat cushion. This was not a quick job, this chair was well made and had over 100 tacs in it holding the old cover onto the padding, once removed, the pad was in great condition so just needed to be covered. I purchased some gorgeous Rachel Ashwell material from Ebay which was perfect for the new cover, its a discontinued material in the softest white and pink rose design.

We sanded the chair and on Friday night I set to work painting. I couldn't decide whether I wanted a "distressed" or a plain chalky white finish. I decided to wait until I had painted the chair and felt sure I would "know" how it was meant to look. (apologies for the lack of photo's for the in between stages, my helper "forgot" to take them. I won't be using him again! )

AFTER

Again, apologies for the quality of the photograph, the light was going when I realised I didn't have any photographs of the end product. But I hope you will agree, it turned out pretty good. I love it, now all I have to do is decide where to put it.

Chair £5

Material £8

Paint £4

Sandpaper & Staples £1

TOTAL COST £18

(Labour - paid in kind ) ; )

Please pop over to Liz at Magpie Monday to see everyone elses great finds.

Upstairs Landing

12 Mar 2011

When we moved into our home the upstairs landing was a very unflattering shade of dirty pink. In the photo below you can see how it looked. On the left you can see an airing cupboard, (which has since made way to create more space in the teeny, tiny bathroom ) and the doorway to No 1 son's bedroom ( papered in a fetching brown flower pattern) he was not amused having to sleep in there I can tell you. Filthy carpets in all the rooms, upstairs and downstairs were immediately removed. As I said in a previous post I just couldn't bare the thought of our family sitting or playing on them !

BEFORE

Hubby spent many nights stripping the woodchip from these walls and plasterboarding the ceiling and walls smooth. He removed a really unflattering single light bulb which hung over the stairs and gave out little light. It took five years for us to be able to afford it, but we decided in the end that the luxury of carpet was a must for upstairs on the landing, in our bedroom and in the twins room. No1 Son preferred a wooden floor (cool mum, cool).

AFTER

(looking back down the hall from No 1 son's bedroom)

The glass brick wall replaced the original doorway to the bathroom and the airingcupboard doorway became the new bathroom door.

I thought it might look really good to have downlights running around the ceiling. This turned out better than we expected and gives a wonderful feeling to the landing space.

I decided to put etched window vinyl on the landing window, this meant we had maximum light into the space but still protected our privacy. I am not a lover of net curtains or blinds as they block out too much light. Light is everything to me. We even tested it at night by turning all the lights on and standing on the landing whilst my husband and I took it in turns to go outside and look up to see if we could see each other !

Etsy Shop

10 Mar 2011

It's taking a while but I am slowly stocking my new Etsy shop. Problem is, I can't decide which items to sell. I love all my gorgeous goodies but sadly I just don't have the room to keep them all. I've been collecting from boot sales, charity shops and ebay for several years now and its really starting to get out of control.

Here's a peak of some of the items for sale (please do let me know if you are interested in buying anything and I will give you a discount if you are following this blog) :