The Bathroom

So much has changed since the last post, and so much work has been done!

The last week my mother and I have been busy redoing the bathroom. After the plasterer came buy to do the bathroom walls (those look great) we found out he had splattered glue/paint all over our bath. So, true to our nature, we broke out the bath, the sink, and most of the tiles. We have been replacing them since…

The Stove Story

Our new place has a perfect place for an old fashioned stove in the living room. However the stove itself is missing. Luckily I rememberd my parents buying one second hand over a decade ago in Holland, and bringing it down to France. Once there it has been gathering dust and rust in a corner of the barn. After some negotiations we got the stove!! Now only to de-rust it, paint it, and get it back together.

The Before

The During

The After

The de-rusting took about eight hours, and has certainly shortened my life with a couple of months. But the result is great! The next step is taking it back to Belgium, painting it, and fitting it into our new house!

Restoring the well – before & after

Finally, the well is finished!. Everything has dried up perfectly, and the well is ready to be taken back into use. To our great pleasure the river-stone top turned out really pretty (as you can see below).

Restoring the well–part 2

The front of the well had a huge hole in it. It once began as a small crack but in time some of the stones have fallen out. Using metal rods we have been able to repair most of the hole.

Big parts of the top (old concrete) have been coming off. At first we wanted to cover the top with our chalk mixture, but in the end we decided to decorate it with river stones. This way we hoped to both restore it, and show that we have restored it. I know that sounds a little strange, but I hope the final pictures will show you what I mean.

DIY Hairy Buddha Bust

Remember the Medusa bust I posted about a couple of days ago? Using it as a source of inspiration, we decided to make them ourselves.

What you need:

• Hollow bust (we used a Buddha head)
• Stone drill bit
• Stone cutter
• Potting ground
• A ‘hairy’ plant
• Ear and eye protection (you’ll need it)

First of all we drilled a couple of holes in the bottom of the Buddha. Then we drew a very nip-and-tuck-ish cutting line through its hair. Tom used a stone saw to cut through the stone. I have to tell you, it really felt like preforming brain surgery on a Buddha! We then put potting ground in, and planted a pretty hairy plant. We’re so happy with the result.. it feels so zen!

Honestly, I have the bestest boyfriend ever!!

The Throne – part 2

We’re about halfway through getting the covers off the throne. My god, you won’t believe how much crap is falling out of it! All the foam has disintegrated, so that is falling out, together with grey fluff, straw, and dirt. We have already filled a vacuum cleaner bag and a couple of trash bags, but it just keeps on coming. Getting all the staples and nails out went way faster than before with our new DIYed tools!

Next on our list is getting the rest of the fabric and crap (nothing else I can call it) off, and taking a good look at what’s left.

DIY Reupholstery Tool

Now that we have The Throne to start on, we’ve been looking around for some more specialised tools. One of those was the small reupholster crowbar (it’s designed to get nails and staples out a little easier), however, at a price of 35€ it was just a little too expensive for our taste.

Essentially the reupholster crowbar looks like a screwdriver with a V-shape cut into the top. Something we could do our selves! We used two screwdrivers that were small enough to fit under a staple, but strong enough to be cut. Tom (with a little help from his dad) placed them one by one into the vice, and ground a V-shape in it using the angle grinder. All in all it cost us a lot less than 35€, and it works just as well!

P.S. If you really want to make your work easy, try using a screwdriver with a magnetic tip for this project. You'll thank me later.

The Throne

Last Saturday we went to the thrift shop (I know we shouldn't), and bought this God awful chair. For the moment we have dubbed it ‘The Throne’, just until we find a new cover and a new name. Yup, it’s our new project!

Just as a fun anecdote, the chair was priced at 35€, but after the cashier mistyped it, and we found some money between the cushions (not kidding here), we ended up with a 6€ discount. Not bad eh.

Postal Chair – before & after

The Before & After!

Have a look here if you want to see the stripping apart.
And have a look here if you want to see how we built it up again.

Postal Chair–part 2

Sunday afternoon, time to get busy with the Postal Chair, we started on last weekend. You might be wondering we we’ve called it a ‘postal chair’. Ever since a Dutch fashion designer made jackets from old postal bags I’ve been fantasising about using them too. And a project like this is perfect for it! Before we started cutting and stapling, we filled some of the holes in the wood and gave it a good bees waxing.

In Utrecht we bought the fabric (8€ a meter), and new reupholstering nails and strips. Friday I bought new foam in Brussels (2.5 cm thick). So we’re ready to go!

We cut the fabric using the old fabric as a template (just to be sure we added a couple of centimetres on either side). The first part we stapled down was the back side of the back of the chair (makes sense right?).

Tom then stapled a piece of cardboard (or singleplex?) over it. If you look closely you can see the fabric of the back of the back sticking out underneath. We used spray glue to stick a layer of foam to the back and the seat. Over that we placed the fabric, pulled it tight, and stapled it down.

Because of the thickness of the foam we had some trouble pressing it down, folding the edges and pulling it tight. Luckily we found a method that worked for us. We would fold the fabric and pin it in position, then I would push down the foam with a strong metal strip, and Tom would have little trouble stapling it down in a straight line. Over the staples we hammered the nail strips.

In our next post we’ll show the Before & After!

Framing a Canvas Painting

What seems like an awfully long time ago we bought a rolled-up canvas at the thrift shop. Ever since I’ve been meaning to contact one of my artsy friends to stretch it onto a frame. But as ever it didn’t happen. Long story short: if an artist can do it, why can’t we?

We took a close look at the other large painting we have hanging in our living room. And we found out that with a little wood and a staple gun we should be able to make it work!

First we measured the canvas and bought a strip of wood (cheapest one I could find) that was long enough for all four sides. Then we cut it up into pieces making sure we had a 45 degree angle on all ends. It’s easiest to use one of those 45 degree sawing help thingies (ours is from an Ikea package I think). Then we put our to be frame in the right shape.



Then Tom stapled the corners together (note the 45 degree angle). The staples needed another whack with the hammer to secure them. Because we have quite a large frame we turned it over so Tom could also staple the corners on other side.



We then brought the whole frame inside and placed it on the canvas. Tom started stapling the canvas to the frame while I pulled the canvas tight. This project definitely is a two man job. To be sure the painting was on straight (and tight enough), Tom first put in a staple on the left side, then the right side, the top and the bottom. Doing this we noticed that the frame (probably because of the cheep wood) would bend inward a little when we pulled the canvas. We used this to really get it tight! Finally we stapled the whole canvas to the frame and hung it up in our hall!




(sorry, the lighting is pretty poor in our hallway)

DIY Striped Tote

A couple of months ago I stumbled upon the Reversible Bag DIY from Verypurpleperson, since then it has been on my to do list. I won’t give you my whole process (you should check out the original DIY post for that – and for downloads and patterns), but I’ll try to give you an idea.

First of all I wanted my bag to have a broader entrance (a carry a lot of big stuff with me), a pocket on the inside (for my phone and small crap) and I wanted to be able to close it with a button on the front.
For the most part I followed the original tutorial. Except before sewing the large parts together I sewed in a pocket, and pinned on a strap to go around my button.



The project took about one hour (not counting the blog posting, snacking and the phone calls). In the original tutorial Novita used Ikea fabrics (yes I recognize them). So I felt confident that my sewing machine would be capable of handling the layers of Ikea canvas. The button comes from a package I bought at Xenos (in The Netherlands). To be honest, I’m in love with the result!!!



Ps. The striped fabric is still a left over from when we reupholstered that wing chair!!

Saturday back home & more measuring tape chairs!

It has been ages since I’ve been back in The Netherlands, except for my trip to Tajikistan (flew through Amsterdam) I haven’t been home for more than a year I think. So when my best friend invited us for a living room folk ball we just had to go!
We got up at six just to make it in time to Utrecht. We had some great fun, some good drinks (see below.. that’s me!), and pizza from Mario’s!

In the early morning we went to the lapjesmarkt in Utrecht to get 11 m of fabric for the inner tent we have to make for our folding tent (this one). We succeeded to find a bright orange stripe for just 1 euro a meter (yaay). And we even found a nice fabric for our new chair project (keeping that one a secret for now).
The afternoon we spent at my friends place. She had four old chairs that resembled the one we re-did with those Ikea measuring tapes (link), and wanted to redo them just like we did. So we spent a couple of hours cutting measuring tapes and stapling them to her chairs. Note that Ginny’s (check her out here) chairs do have a grid pattern!

Postal Chair–part 1

After buying what Tom calls an ‘atrocious chair’, we decided to give it a new look (to make it a little less atrocious in Tom’s eyes. This is the first time we’re trying a chair with nails, so don’t judge if we fail miserably.
We got the nails out with a screwdriver and a pair of pliers, but we didn’t manage to salvage a single nail! We’ll have to find a way to get them out a little more carefully. Anyway, we got the nails out, and the staples that were beneath the nails. We ended up with a pretty clean chair. Along the way it became clear that the chair had been reupholstered before, we think the original was a reed chair. You can see the reed holes in the last picture.
Now it’s off to the Lapjesmarkt in Utrecht to get some supplies!

Dyeing Fabric With Food

Last night when I was soaking a blue stained white shirt in chlorine, it occurred to me that I should give dyeing fabric another shot. After the debacle of trying to dye the couch green – I ended up replacing the covers all together, I should really give it another shot. However I was not prepared to lay down another 9 euro’s for a package of dye. So, I hit google in search of natural dyes. My mother used to dye wool in her hippy years, meaning it should be possible. I found a couple of recipes using either vinegar or salt as a fixing agent, and various types of food and herbs as dyes. I even found a pretty good chart of what (easy) foodstuffs give which result (from Anjou).

 

This morning I pulled an old cotton pillowcase from the closet to give it a try. Since it had been used before I decided only to hand wash it briefly. Than I brought 1 cup of vinegar (the cheep one), 1/2 cup of sea salt, and four cups of water to a boil and added the pillowcase. Every recipe I encountered said to let the fabric boil for an hour.. I’m still waiting for that now. By the way, vinegar really stinks when boiled.

After thoroughly rinsing the pillowcase, I brought some more water to a boil and added about 1/2 cup of tumeric. I put in the pillowcase and stirred it through for about ten minutes. After that I rinsed it and dried it inside.

The color is really amazing! However I’m still unsure if the color will keep. I’ve been scouring the internet to find a way to fix the color, but no luck so far. We’ll be testing it out over the next couple of weeks, and if the color sticks we’ll have a winner method!