WOYWW

Hi there - I've been busy recently, re-vamping my sewing table and an old utility desk, and I'm very happy with the results.

The first phase was to paint both with white primer. Once it was dry, I mixed a match pot of mid-blue into some white emulsion, until it was the right shade of baby blue. That went all over the outsides, but I left the insides, partly because the table has lift out drawers and looks nice as it it, but also they would get a bit too shabby with frequent use.

Once the blue was dry, I cut out motifs from a couple of paper napkins, peeled off the backing and stuck the flowers in place with slightly watered down PVA. Once they were dry, I painted all over with more slightly diluted PVA, to seal the paint and paper, and give a soft sheen. This is a great way to get a fresh new look for pennies - left over primer & emulsion, £1 for the tester pot, I already had the napkins - so, both for just over £1.00!!

I ran out of blue before finishing the desk, so the inside of the shelves is white emulsion but, even though I say so myself, it looks intentional! Oops, just noticed this pic was taken before the shelves had their second coat of white. The actual colour is half way between the table above and the desk below.

The atrocious weather has died down a bit here, and I even had the garden doors opened for a while today - so lovely to have fresh air blowing through. And I was very glad it was dry and sunny on Sunday, when my sister, her husband and three girls came up to visit Mum and us for the day, and we were able to go out for a carvery lunch which was great. There's frantic activity in the birdhouse, as the blue tits look ready to take up residence. I've asked a friend to make two more houses, and hope to get them up in time to have a little colony of these sweet birds this Spring.

Mr Flutterby is off work this week, for half term, and we're clearing everything (and I mean everything) from the front room, in time for the plasterer arriving to skim the walls and ceiling on Monday, before we decorate and carpet it as a downstairs bedroom for Mum. Thank goodness this is the final phase of our renovations - not sure how much more of it I could take - the problem in a tiny house is finding places for the stuff meantime! With visiting DH's sister tomorrow and spending time together during his holiday, it means there won't be much crafting happening the rest of the week.

Hope you're having a good week, and look forward to seeing you over at Julia's here, having a nosey at what everyone else has been up to this week.

Love for now xx

A Bit of This, A Little of That WOYWW

Not a lot to show at the moment, but plans hatching in my little grey cells for things to come.  I've got two of these lovely boxes I picked up a year ago (cough) from our recycling centre, thinking they'd make great jewelry boxes. So far, I've tried to decoupage over the stamp, using paper napkin offcuts as I did here 

It hasn't worked this time, because you could see the writing through the tissue when it was dry. Back to the drawing board with this one. Once my crafting stuff is altogether (again) when Mum moves into her new bedroom, I'll be able to look for a suitable paper. It's sooooo frustrating living with my hoard spread between several places - grr!

Anyway, enough whining - I'm playing in my head with several ideas for the rest of the box(es). At the moment, I'm thinking of covering the insides with a black silky fabric, lined with batting, and am puzzling the best way to tackle it - watch this space. The little compartments will be ideal for trinkets and other goodies,

and there's a great little bottom drawer with a long section that would be great to hold rings.

Before Christmas I picked up two sets of three red, plastic frames from  the pound shop. I'm toning them down to a bright pink, with torn tissue paper (several layers to go on this one yet) and will seal them with watered down PVA, giving them a nice, but not glare-y, shine. I'll show you the finished results.

I've started a long-term project, sorting Mum's photo's. I think she's forgotten we brought them here when she came to live, and I plan to make them into (probably) about 10 albums, and give them to her as a surprise, for her 90th birthday, in August. It's quite a task because it has to be done on the dining table, when she's not around.

Other than that, I'm still battling with knitting a jumper for DH, which is taking forever, partly because it's so big but, really that, in true flutterby fashion, I'm just bored with it!

Anyway, pop over to Julia's place to see what everyone else is up to.

I've also posted across the pond, over at Treasure Hunt Thursday, so why not go over there and take a look see at some more great ideas?

Have a great week. xx

More Haste, Less Speed!

Whoops, posted the last two out of order! Sorry for confusion x

... During ...

... but, in practice, we then lived like this

 for four months, while the builder (with occasional help from a friend) did the work. There were days I thought it would never end, and quite a few tears were shed. I have to say that, during it all, Mum and DH were fantastic, just making the best of things, with us all sitting with elbows almost touching, in a 12'x12' room, watching Mum's TV choice.

Temp sitting room, including all my craft stuff, PC station, etc, etc ...

... After

So finally, in December, I was able to put up the tree and we enjoyed a wonderful Christmas holiday, with most of the work done, and not a builder in sight.

I even enjoy washing up now, with my new sink



The washing machine had come in from the cold, outside, lean-to shed - no more frozen pipes in winter!


We chose a touch-control hob - so easy to clean, with no knobs!


The shades came from Dunelm, and the builder made the shelf for my pots and pans


He also routed MDF to look like tongue and groove panelling, with Grandad's retirement clock in pride of place



and a shelf above holds my cottage collection

I made a chandelier/hang-y type thing for over the dining table, to match the new gypsy chandelier in the sitting area. My gypsy chandelier is totally wacky and OTT but I love it - makes me smile every time I look at it. Fortunately, Mr Flutterby approves, too!



I also spray-painted the two, old wall lights. Maybe I'll get round to replacing the odd bulb, too!! LOL

FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The builder moved out, the floors were laid and the walls painted, just in time for the Christmas tree and decorations to go up

and this is what the whole thing now looks like -

The table under the shelf is temp, until we put up a fold-down worktop, giving more floor space when not in use.

The shelf trim is a piece of lace I pinned on, and covered the pins with pearl buttons, blu-tac'd on

I shabby-chic'd this box last year, and am delighted how well it fits in (holds some of fabric stash)

You can see my taste hasn't changed much - made 20 yrs ago, before I was married!

I love this fabric from Dunelm (only £8.99pm!) which is a good, heavy cotton (Note Poppy's tail, below!)

The aim of the exercise was to provide Mum with a shower and loo downstairs, and this is how it ended up

It's turned out even better than I'd hoped, with lots of room for me to be in there, helping her shower, etc., and the new hard flooring here and throughout the downstairs mean that she can walk safely - I can go out and leave her with a peaceful mind and, if ever she needed her wheelchair indoors, that should work, too.

The next (and last phase) is to change the front room into her bedroom, and the plasterer will be here next month, to start that.

Anyway, you're probably heartily sick of this makeover (if you even managed to read this far LOL!!) so I'll sign off and leave you in peace. Have a great week. xx

Before ...

Some of you know my Mum (90 this year) came to live with us last May. It brought quite a lot of change for all of us, not least the work we had to do on the house. We needed to give Mum a downstairs loo and shower, as well as a ground floor bedsitter for when the stairs become a problem. We only have a small semi-detached house (originally two double bedrooms and a small single - now two double en suites), which meant a lot of planning needed.

So, we decided to split the long galley style kitchen

The view from the hall

View from the conservatory into the kitchen

into two. The front end (from the window) would become the new kitchen, while the back would become a wet room.

Work would include taking down the wall separating the kitchen and conservatory, and replacing the flat, kitchen roof and see-through conservatory one, with one high, sloping roof with two skylights.

The doors between the conservatory and sitting room, in the pic above were to go as well, to give a large L-shaped kitchen diner with sitting area.

It seemed straightforward in theory ...

Hanging without the heartache - WOYWW

... pictures, that is!!

I had four pretty nautical prints of Tenby that I wanted to put in Mum's shower room

but the frames were dated and a bit naff.

I gave them a first coat of white emulsion and, when dry, a second coat of 'soft stone' by Dulux. It took just one match pot - £1!! Then, to protect the finish, a coat of PVA adhesive and water (3:1)

The aim was to put them together, two above the others - but then slept on the problem of positioning them correctly. The one thing I didn't want was to sit on the loo looking at them out of line!  Brainwave - I cut four pieces of paper to size, numbering them and the pictures so they went up in the right order, and marked an X through the paper where the hanger should be.

Then I moved the papers around the wall (blu-tak) until happy. I wanted them central, but needed to avoid the light pull and making too many holes in the newly plastered wall!

After nailing the pins in and removing the papers, the pics went up

and I'm quite happy with the result (if you don't look too closely!)

Why not put your feet up with a cuppa, and pop over to Julia's - http://stamping-ground.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/whats-on-your-workdesk-wednesday-240.html - to see what everyone else has been up to.

I've also posted over at http://www.frommyfrontporchtoyours.com/2014/01/treasure-hunt-thursday-138-highlights.html for the first time, so why not visit across the pond, to see what's happening there, too?

Another link from the good old US of A - http://bec4-beyondthepicketfence.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/under-100-link-party_15.html, so pop over and take a look see at all the goodies there.

Have a great week, wherever you are. Lots of love xx