Dinning room art from an unlikely source

We have two lovely big walls in our dinning room that I've been meaning to create a gallery wall on for, well, the two years that we've live in this house. Yep, that's some of said art tucked in the corner on the floor.

We will eventually put a huge door in the back wall that leads out onto the deck ... if we ever get around to building it that it is. The good part about this plan is that Handsome Handy Hubby doesn't care how many nail/hook holes I put in the back wall.

I've got quite a stockpile of framed photos which I had planned to used to create a gallery wall. My grandmother also recently gifted me with 6 beautiful paintings of various local beaches which I thought would make a lovely arrangement all hung together. But the majority of them were in big heavy frames which is why they are tucked in the corner of the room waiting to be reframed. Or like the one peeking out of the left on top of the sideboard that has had it's frame removed.

And then one day, I found this ...

 

This canvas print is GINORMOUS! The same width as the dining table.  I ummed and I ahhed and I went back to the store where it was languishing about three times to look at it. Then I took Handsome Handy Hubby to check it out and see if he liked it ... and I needed his car as it was too big to fit in mine.

 

He liked it ... we brought it home ... he hung it for me.  I LOVE it!

 



You know what I love even more?  It cost $50!  Yep, you read that right.  Just fifty bucks. Can you believe I questioned whether I should get this for almost a week before 'splurging'?  Can you guess where it came from? Shall I tell you?  OK ... you know I couldn't possibly keep something like that to myself! The Reject Shop! They had this and two other styles when I got this a couple of weeks ago and I noticed they now have another batch of completely different styles.  It's a very light canvas and not on a supper thick frame. However, the quality of the print is excellent and I can't imagine how much it would cost to have a canvas this size printed from one of your own photos.

So, I'm very happy with my new dining room art. Gram's painting are also at the framers now so I'll have to decide where they are going in a couple of weeks.

Have you got any sources for great art bargains?

Lighting Up the Kitchen

I love great lights.  We don't have many of them, but I love them.  It's one of those décor items that I get stuck on, I don't want to commit to an expensive purchase in case I get it wrong, or don't like it once it's in.  Does that happen to you too?

I was like that with the lights for over our kitchen bench.  I wanted something that would make a statement but not be annoying.  I definitely didn't want just down lights (or can lights as they are sometimes called).  I'll tell you the story, but I just want you to know it has a happy ending.

I loved the aqua Colored Seedglass Pendant from Shades of Light, but I just couldn't find anything here in Australia that I liked at the right price.  And since I've had trouble with light shades bought from the USA before, this was one thing I really wanted to buy locally.

So, way back at the beginning of the year when we started our kitchen renovation, we agreed that we would hang 3 of the Ikea Foto pendants over our kitchen bench.  I bought them when we ordered the kitchen but I've been secretly looking for something that I love ever since.  I wanted something to fit with our coastal style, that didn't distract too much in an already busy kitchen and dining area leading out onto a deck, and that would be too low for my tall Hubby to live with as he does a lot of the cooking in our house (love that man!).

Skip forward six months and my wonderful Hubby was finally ready to do the wiring and get the Foto pendants installed.  Yeah, it's taken us that long to get this kitchen reno done, but we have done  it ourselves and sometimes that's just how long it takes. 

Anyway, Hubby was just about to pull the trigger on finally getting the lighting done when, at the 11th hour, I had another idea.  As soon as it crossed my mind I could just about hear him groaning with dread.

You see, I was browsing through one of those eclectic junk stores that sells everything from Aussie souvenirs to kitchen wares when I came across these beautiful huge clear glass jars.  They were super cheap and I loved them, but figured I didn't have a use for them so I left them behind.

The very next day, I kid you not, I was browsing Pinterst and came across this DIY for a glass pendant light made from a jar at Vintage Revivals.  I just knew would work with these fabulous jars to produce exquisite lights at fraction of the cost of something from a big lighting store.  So, I screwed up my courage and told my Hubby about it, showing him the picture of course.  Yes, he groaned a little, maybe even rolled his eyes, and I know he thought I was crazy.  But you know what, he went along with it.

And it all worked out happily for my wonderful new kitchen ...

I adore these lights!  They are unique, the clear bulbs are awesome, the light they shed is warm, inviting and beautiful to work by.  If only my photography skills were up to the task of capturing them really well.

 

They're a little wonky due to the jars not being 100% symmetrical in their making, but I can live with it.  Just adds to the not mass produced feel that I'm loving about them.

 

As for how we made them ... Hubby did it so quick that I didn't even get a chance to take photos!



 

So, instead of giving you a written blow by blow, do what I did and check out the video instructions by Vintage Revivals.

 

The scariest part of all this was drilling the holes.  I had this great idea to place the jars inside a big plastic tub and that way if it shattered the glass wouldn't go everywhere.  That turned out not so stable.  So, what did my oh so brave Hubby do.  Sat cross legged on the deck with the jar between his legs.  I was so nervous!  I mean what if a jar shattered and cut an artery or heaven forbid his man bits!  Of course, none of this happened and in about 10 minutes flat it was all over and done with.

 

What did it cost us?  Well, here's the budget breakdown.

 

Jars - $25 each - yep you read that right!

Pendant fittings - $15.90 each

Light globes - $7.50 each - we used this one from Bunnings

Total for each light = $48.40

 

All in all, that's three beautiful big pendant lights for less than $150.  Beautiful bargain!

 

  

 

Have you DIY'ed any lights?  What kind of results did you have?

 

Participating in my first link party at ...

Custom Quilt Cover

No matter what you call it ... quilt, comforter, doona ... some kind of warm bed covering is a must in winter.  As you can tell from the title up there, we call ours a quilt.  To quote a phrase from Sherry at Young House Love, I've had a "Dude, Get On That Already" morning and finally finished the quilt cover for our bed.

A year or so ago, Handsome Handy Hubby and I finally bought ourselves a custom size quilt from Aussie Wool Quilts.  We were sick of the nightly tug-o-war with a standard king size that left one of us (usually him) out in the cold.  It was the best decision ever and I can't believe it took us so long.  I can't recall exactly how much it cost us, but it wasn't a ridiculous amount and it was worth every single dollar to be warm and cozy every night.  Even when we have the added little body of our daughter sharing some cuddle time in the morning.

There was just one problem ... a custom size quilt meant a custom size cover.  I can sew, a bit.  So after searching for and failing to find somewhere online that I could order a great one, I decided to make my own.  So off we trotted to Spotlight and picked out a fabric together.  I got home and got started ... and then I stopped.

And this is what our bed has looked like for about a year.

 

 Yes, we both have kid art from Mother's and Father's day on display beside the bed.  It makes our little girl happy and gives me the warm and fuzzies.

 

It was certainly keeping us warm, but it wasn't quite as pretty as it could be.  Oh yeah, you noticed there's no throw pillows did you?  Well, my Hubby is a practical guy and just can't see why you would put little pillows on the bed that you're just going to throw on the floor and then have to pick up every day.  I'm not prepared to argue about that one, so we don't have any.

 

Back to the quilt cover.   Today, I had the house to myself so I finally decided to get on that already and finish the quilt cover that I had actually started last year.  And here it is ...

 



There's so much light coming into the room that it's difficult to get the colours right but the pattern is a soft greige, light aqua and soft white combo.  I love the way it's come up and it's soooooooo much better than that big plain quilt smacking you in the eye as soon as you even think about looking in that room.

Why did it take me so long to get around to it?  Welllllll, although it's just a big bag, working with this much fabric is hard!  Hauling it around and trying to measure it out is the first challenge.  My only option was to do that on the lounge room floor.  Of course, this meant the lounge room had to be tidy enough that I could lay the whole thing out.  I've been working on keeping my home tidier and today I finally didn't have to spend time putting everything away before I could get started.

Next project for this room ... replace the curtains that I put up two years ago thinking 'they'll do for now until I find the right ones'.  Well, I finally found the right ones, now I just have to save up the money.  My gosh curtains are expensive!  Then the bedside tables ... then creating the walk in wardrobe and ensuite which is a whole other saga.  For now, I'm just happy with my quilt cover.

My First Reupholstery Attempt

I've had three reupholstery projects on my to do this for ... oh ... about 5 years now.   Yep, I've been procrastinating big time.  Well I've finally finished the first of them.  Ironically, it's the most recently purchased item.

More than a year ago now I bought this sweet little chair with the intention of recovering it to go in Little Miss's room.  It would give me somewhere besides the floor to sit for bedtime stories and middle of the night calls.

Excuse the iPhone pics but they are all I took in it's original state.  I loved that it was little and low enough to the ground for both of us to easily use.  But it was dirty, torn, well past it's prime, and while I love vintage, this was old fashioned.

A bargain at around $20, I can't believe it has taken me more than a year to get around to finishing it.

Bye bye old fashioned and hello gorgeous!

I love how this little project turned out.  The fabric was an eBay purchase and I love it.  The graphic, colour and scale just make me smile every time I see it.

Is it perfect?  Nope.  Do I love it anyway.  Oh yes.  And bonus, Little Miss loves it as well.

I got about half way through attaching the new fabric when it became abundantly clear that my little craft staple gun just wasn't going to cut in.  In fact, it just stopped working at all.  I left that little chair sitting in my dining room unfinished for about two weeks while I agonised about what to do.  Eventually I just had to get it done and that meant parting with $40 for an Ozito Staple Nail Gun.  Best $40 bucks spent EVER!

This little thing rocks.  It packs a big punch in the staple gun arena but is so super simple to load and use.  About a dozen staples later and voila!  Our little chair that had languished in no man's land for a year was suddenly ready for use.  It saves my knees and back at bed time that's for sure and I think it adds a cute little touch to the room.

Next on my hit list for Little Miss's room - the bedside table that's a functional hand me down, but could use a little fancying up.

Inch by Inch

It's been a little quiet on the house front in the last month or so.  We had a little camping break at Easter, we've all be sick ... probably twice ... I've been looking for work.  So, generally, life got in the way and we've had to be careful with money as well.

But slowly, inch by inch we are getting closer to a totally finished kitchen.  Over the weekend Handsome Handy Hubby installed our range hood.

 

We are so happy with how this side of the kitchen has turned out.  Yes, the cook top and range hood are off centre on purpose.  We wanted as large a piece of bench as possible on the right hand side.  The alternative was two small but pretty useless pieces of bench if we centred the cook top.  So, we chose to have it set to the left.  I was hoping to put an open shelf to hold a cook book just on top of the glass splash back, but there's not quite enough room.  So I've got some ideas for artwork that will sit on the right up above the range hood.

 

On the pantry side, we' started our 'art gallery' for out little Miss.  This big bland wall seemed a perfect place for some kid art.  The two framed pieces I've been saving for ages as I love them both.  The pin board is for all the stuff she brings home from day care.  And below that we'll be installing a rail with clips that she can reach to hang her own selections.  Just need to find the right clips.

 

 

 

The top photo on the left is a flower made from a hand print, and the one on the right is Little Miss' favourite pink & purple rainbow.

 

I also deep cleaned the window and sliding door today ... boring but oh so satisfying.  I don't think they've been cleaned for at least 5 years (shudder).  But it's done and while not perfect it's a million time better.

 

Some times it feels like we'll never get this kitchen finished, but inch by inch we are getting there.

 

Kitchen: So close!

Progress hasn't sped up at all on the kitchen, but we have been making some.  Our unofficial deadline is to have it functional by the end of this week.  Deep breaths!

Handsome Handy Hubby has put in another huge week both at work and at home to get us closer to the end.  He's exhausted which doesn't make it easy to do stuff.  I have so much admiration for this man who just digs in and gets on with the job.  Last week, his day job was a bit of a nightmare and he worked late every day.  Bad enough that he starts at 5am but pulling 12 hour shifts day after day isn't fun.  Then they called him in to work on Saturday ... he could have said no, but the money will come in handy so in he went.  Sunday I thought he'd want to have a bit of a break, and we did have pancakes with friends for breakfast.  But then, as soon as we got home he was into it.  Just one more reason to love that man.

Here's what things looked like at about 5:30pm yesterday.

The pantry doors are on - and the inside is about 80% complete.  The fridge is in and working.

We had to take the sliding door on the right edge of this photo off to get the fridge in.

We didn't put the screen back on the sliding door and look at the sun coming in under the deck roof and hitting the hallway wall about 5 meters away.  This is definitely a problem at dinner time but the light flooding in is wonderful.

The range hood still has to go over the cook top, and the dishwasher in it's hole.  The oven and microwave have been getting a work out though.

All the drawers are finally in.  The plumbing is also connected for the sink. Love that we've used the floorboards for the kick plates as well.

Our beautiful bamboo floors have been re-laid and look just as stunning as the first time they went down 18 months ago. 

This photo certainly doesn't do the floors any justice but I just had to capture that sunshine hitting the hallway wall.  You can imagine at dinner time sitting here sweating it out and squinting against the sun.  Any solution we've tried to deal with it also cuts down the amount of light that comes in quite severely.  Don't know what we're going to do about it but we'll figure it out eventually.

I also made my 3rd trip for this kitchen to Ikea.  I returned all the bits and pieces that we didn't use, bought a few more things that we needed, and a few that will help finish things off.  I came out about $1,000 better off than when I walked in so that was a bonus.  My Dad came with me as I had a couple of heavy items to return and he and Mum decided to get an Expedit.  I think it was a bit of a shock to him how big it was and just how long it took us to get around.  We were bout 3 hours all up which I thought was pretty good considering we did returns and collected more kitchen items as well.  He did say the lunch (he's a fish eating vegetarian) was certainly better than he would have had at McDonalds on the way home.

We've managed to cross quite a few things off the To Do list:

• Finish painting the pantry
• Reinstall all the pantry shelving
• Reinstall the pantry doors
• Put the screws in the back of all those drawers and level everything up
• Connect the plumbing
• Put crown moulding up so that the pantry/fridge cabinet goes to the ceiling as well as the oven and small appliances cabinet.
• Relay the bamboo floor boards
• Bring in the fridge and dishwasher
• Find all the kitchen stuff stashed in various places around the house and in the garage and get it all where it belongs
• Find all the laundry stuff stashed in various places around the house and put it back in the laundry/temporary kitchen
• Add some styling and fancy accents
• Clean the rest of the house which has been descending into chaos while our time and energy are focused on the kitchen.

We're certainly not going to get everything done by the end of this week, but we should be able to get to the point where it's a functional kitchen.  We'll then have to work around that to finish it off.  CAN. NOT. WAIT!

Kitchen: Shaping Up

We've come a long way ... albeit slowly ... with our kitchen renovation.



It is shaping up into our dream kitchen and we've ticked off a lot of things on the list to get it this far.

 

The oven, microwave and induction cook top are all installed. All the Ikea cabinets are in ... we just need some extra hinges and drawers (naturally).  This involves an 3 hour round trip + instore time.  We know we'll have some items to return at the end, so we're waiting another week or so before making the trek.

 

Don't you love the composition of this photo with the step ladder in the foreground ... kidding of course.  I just like to keep it real.  If you look closely, you'll see my lunch heating up in the mircrowave while I snapped these photos today.

Under the bench there you can see cupboard doors.  We put narrow depth cupboards along here for extra storage as our house has almost none.

 

This shows a little more of our lovely benchtops, littered with construction debris of course.  We chose Ceasarstone in Oyster.  An option that's available direct from Ikea, but it was actually cheaper for us to get it through a local stone mason who just happens to be one of the best there is.  More about that later.  The hole under the bench in the top right corner above is for our dishwasher.  Yes, it's on the opposite side of the area to our sink.  No, we don't think that is a problem.  We're not 'rinse before it goes in the dishwasher' people - unless there's a load of sauce/gravy on the plate so we don't think there will be a lot of need to drip water across the floor.  On the odd occasion that there is, there are these wonderful things called dish towels or even paper towel which can mop those drips right up.  Amazing!

 

This beast of construction will eventually be our walk in panty.  The fridge goes in the hole on the right there with the (already in use) wine rack above it.  There will be bifold doors (leaning against the wall over there on the left of the hallway door) right across the front of the pantry which will allow the whole thing to open up and be easily accessible.  Inside there is lots of shelves and a couple of baskets - see some of them on the floor in the fridge hole and the rest of the shelves on the bench.

 

I haven't shown it in any photos but the left hand end of the pantry is a big blank wall.  It's just crying out for a chalk board for our Little Miss and some art, maybe it will become her area with a chalk board and rotating gallery of art sent home from day care, colouring in and sticker collages. 

 

My goal today is to finish painting the uprights so that Handsome Handy Hubby can finish the shelves and reinstall the doors.  We could have made the pantry a little shallower and still been able to step into it, but we're pretty happy with how it's turned out so far.

 

Still to do...

• Finish painting the pantry
• Reinstall all the pantry shelving
• Reinstall the pantry doors
• Put the screws in the back of all those drawers and level everything up
• Connect the plumbing
• Put crown moulding up so that the pantry/fridge cabinet goes to the ceiling as well as the oven and small appliances cabinet.
• Relay the bamboo floor boards
• Bring in the fridge and dishwasher
• Find all the kitchen stuff stashed in various places around the house and in the garage and get it all where it belongs
• Find all the laundry stuff stashed in various places around the house and put it back in the laundry/temporary kitchen
• Add some styling and fancy accents
• Clean the rest of the house which has been descending into chaos while our time and energy are focused on the kitchen.

We are hoping to be finished by the end of this month.  I think we can do it but boy is it going to be busy.  I've got until mid April to return anything we don't use to Ikea so that's my backup deadline but honestly, we're both over cooking out of the laundry, having the rest of the house in total chaos all the time and can't wait to have this project done.

Kitchen: Slow going

It's been a while since I posted about our kitchen progress.  That's because it's been a while since there has been any.  Between work, life and the weather it's been slow going for the last few weeks.  But that's all about to change.  We have definitely made some good progress and tomorrow, the stone bench tops are due to go in.  My hope is that once that is done, the rest of the work will happen quickly.  Dare I hope that we'll be finished in another 2 weeks?  And by finished I mean not only having everything functional, but moving all the kitchen stuff out of the laundry, all the laundry stuff out of the other places I have it stashed around the house, painted, styled, and photographed.  Hmmmm .... maybe three weeks.

Kitchen: Worse

Every renovation gets worse before it gets better right?  We're definitely at the worse stage.  There's plaster missing, half built cabinets stacked up, tools littering the floor.  But there is also lots of progress.  The wiring is where it needs to be, the frames for the cabinets have been built and most of the cabinets are together.

Come on in ... that's right, we have a door ... kind of.

The old tile backsplash wouldn't come off neatly ... so the plaster had to come out with it

The frames that the cabinets will sit on ... and a couple of cabinets in situ

Rather than use the legs that came with the Ikea cabinets we decided to build 30mm MDF bases for them to sit on.  It'll make things more stable, add some strength and help hold up the hugely heavy stone benchtop that will go on the island bench.

 

A close up of the chaos that will eventually become the oven and cooktop

This is where the fridge and walk in pantry will be.  That's the pantry walls there on the floor.  Oh, and we'll plaster over that sliding door of course.

Looking at the dining area ... yes, we're eating in the lounge room for the duration.

Order will emerge from the chaos ... eventually!

Most of our preparation work is done.  Handsome Handy Hubby has the plumbing to move as we are relocating both the sink and dishwasher.  The plasterer will be here to set the walls on Friday which should mean I can paint on Saturday and we can place all the cabinets on Friday.  The appliances arrive on Friday (hmmm, where on earth am I going to fit them!) and the stone bench top (a drama for another post) will be measured up once that's all done.

Deep breath ... carry on!