A Paprika wall

I had to stop work on the spare bedroom before Christmas, because I needed it for a few house guests over summer..............they didn't seem to have too many objections to the fact that it was not quite finished!
All the summer guests have departed, like birds flying South, so I've been able to get back to work.

I have devised a plan of attack for the coming months.....apart from continuing with outstanding jobs inside, I'm about to start repairing and painting the roof as well as the external woodwork. This is something of a priority, because I want to get it done before the weather gets too damp and Autumnal, so I probably have until mid-April.

I've done a few small repair jobs around the house - my portable fan needed new feet, because the flimsy metal ones it came with got all bent and no longer held it up straight. It's now sporting sturdy new wooden feet! I also repaired the broken frame around a large mirror that was here in the bathroom when I bought the house. More about that later.

I decided the spare room needed a bit of pep, so I opted to paint one wall in a beautiful warm paprika shade - it goes really well with the mainly blues in the room.....

 

This is the mirror frame I repaired - sturdy enough after the repair job, but it was looking a bit grotty and tired, with a sort of dirty cream paint on it........so I went wild with a mottled painterly effect using all the colours that are in the room. It looks great and a real one-off. I'll varnish it later with a matte varnish to protect my artwork. True "designer frugal" style! I'll be putting up some shelves in the blank area of this wall, and I have a lovely old table waiting in the garage for some tlc. That along with another bentwood chair that was a gift and the room should be complete. Except for a second coat of paint on the white woodwork and another coat of oil on the floor, which will then be polished. I love this room!

 

Ready to tile!

The bathroom is all prepped and ready to go with tiling, which I'll be doing this week. Suddenly this whole bathroom renovation looks like it will be over soon. Once the tiling and grouting are done, I need to call the company that does the bath resurfacing, which will take half a day to be done. Then I can install the tapware and shower, new hand-basin and the glass shower screen  (Rick McLean Fix and Swing.........500 fixed and 400 swing). Shelf and mirror. Silicone sealing and painting and it will be done! Can't wait to have that first shower!

 

Cement sheeting underlay down.

                                        Bath surround tanked and waterproofed ready for tiling 
                                          (This was after one coat - another was added later)
 

                                   Where the door was........this will be shelving and storage.

This bathroom renovation has been a massive job - I'll probably take a month off after its done and then get back into painting (still a couple of rooms to do) and the outside jobs are always beckoning! 

Tackling The Kitchen

I love to cook. I love baking. I make my own bread. The kitchen is an important space to me, because I spend quite a lot of time in there. The kitchen I "inherited" with this house was dirty, smelly, with an oven that only worked partially, mismatched drawer and cupboard door handles and a lot of damage to cupboard doors and walls. (It looked like they had endured a few fits of temper!)

When I first moved in, the most important job was scrubbing everything down (multiple times) until I was satisfied it was at least clean, even if it still looked shabby. I had to put up with it like this while I got on with a few other more pressing things, but once I was able, I started repairing the holes in the walls, the kicked in cupboard doors and replacing broken catches (ALL of them!) I bought a new oven and had it installed by an electrician (definitely NOT a diy job!) Oh, the joy of simply being able to bake again!

Walls, ceiling and cabinets painted and the kitchen started to feel fresh and renewed.

Before - old oven on the way out!

Starting the tiling on the old/new splash back

 I could have called in a company and had all of this old kitchen ripped out and replaced with a brand spanking new *bland* one, but I really wanted to see how well an old kitchen like this could be refurbished and repurposed. These drawers are made from dove-tailed hardwood - you won't see that in your melamine-coated MDF flat-pack kitchen! And money is an issue - I'll save it wherever I can.

On ripping off various stuck-on finishes etc, I uncovered these lovely burnt orange tiles on the wall behind the stove and above one of the benches. I really wanted to keep them, but of course, the tiles could never be matched and I needed more  because the newer stoves don't have that high back like the older ones and I also had to take off an inch-thick melamine splash-back that was worse for wear. So I chose some tiles that were a contrast in both colour and texture and went to town employing my  skills as an artist to design a graphic interplay between the old orange shiny tiles and the new grey-toned matte ones. In my head I could see how it might look, but the reality, when it was done far exceeded my expectations……I LOVE it!

I chose greys and white for my kitchen colour scheme - nice and restful, but with the zing of the surprise orange. As serendipity would have it, some of my best cookware is also orange. This was meant to be.

Same view showing the tiling job completed - before and after painting the cabinets

When I bought the oven, I also bought a range-hood and because it was one you just plug into a socket, I decided I could install it myself. This was a fairly big job - I had to make an MDF box to house it, attach the box securely to the existing cabinet and wall and install the hood. (It said on the packaging, that it was a two-man job to install it, but with a bit of ingenuity, I managed it by myself……two men = one woman?) All that remained was to fill in the space with a piece of plywood and paint it to match the cabinets. Astoundingly, is is all straight and neat!

This is what I was replacing………!!

New range hood

I would have liked to have put in some new bench tops, but because what I'd like is expensive, I decided to do a refurbish job on the old tops until I can afford new ones. There is a special laminate finish that is available, so I decided to give that a try - I got it tinted to a tone the same as the cabinet doors, but a shade darker and just followed the instructions on the tins for prepping and doing the job. There was one burnt, damaged area that I had to repair before I started. 

One bench top completed

The finish is so good, you can't even see where the repair is. It remains to be seen how durable this is once I start using it, but it probably only needs to last for a year or two.

So the kitchen is now pretty much done. For now. Except that I'm going to put in a microwave cabinet and some open shelving above the refrigerator. I love my kitchen!

Next job? not such a big one…….repairing and repainting the small dining room adjacent to the kitchen.