The finished chest of drawers! Finally...and a bedroom tour.

I actually finished this late on Friday night. On Saturday morning, the sun came up and it just wasn't working. I tried to be clever and paint it like I did the Gustavian wine table. It looked like a slab of concrete. It might have worked in the room if I'd been prepared to paint the wall white, repaint the mirror and the bed! It took me 10 years to get round to painting the bed so I did NOT want to go there!

Here are the BEFORE shots again...

Here's the 'FIRST FINISHED' shot...(it's just a close up as the room was in total disarray.)

I was NOT digging it. So despite saying it wouldn't be white, I went for an off white, that most everything else in the room is painted in. (Porcelain by Dulux Trade Paints) Doh! Why didn't I just do that in the first place?

Here are the 'SECOND FINISHED' shots...

Flea market vintage rug

It's not what I set out to do. But it's probably what I should have set out to do! It took me another whole day to do this. So the grey was 'Cosy grey' by Wilkinsons (a lovely colour!) and the top coat, 'Porcelain' by Dulux. Just  matt emulsion. Then waxed with Liberon Antique Pine to add protection and a teeny bit of warmth to the Porcelain.

Want to see the rest of the room?
The sun is shining. Come on in.

I bought the French bed years ago when I bought my first house. The bedside table is an eBay score. (Needs painting.) Bedspread from a boot sale. I made the Union Jack cushion. Cross stitch cushion from eBay.

The lamp and shade were boot sale finds. I darkened the brass with tourmaline as I'm into tarnish.

Love my vintage religious pictures. This is the only one I have up...

Silly corner window. Car boot sale manneqin that I recovered with hessian.

Car boot sale silver plated tray. Same style as the mirror above it. The glass jars were collected from charity shops.

This little guy is next to the mirror. I had two but I smashed the other one.They were boot sale finds.

Mannequin fetish...

Just got this huge jewellery case from a charity shop the other day. I was just thinking the mirror looked messy draped in necklaces, and I had 4 jewellery boxes dotted around. I don't really wear jewellery and I sold my gold and my silver but I have some of my mums costume jewellery and some old family bits of worthless tat that I want to keep. Even my daughters teeth are in here! Everything fits as there are slide out drawers inside. I'm sure I will paint it but not yet. I need a break! The bears were from boot sales and they're married.

All finished off with a vintage lamp. (Original wiring!) The wall colour you see here is 'Hazelnut Cream' by Dulux Trade Paints. I love it. It was bought for the living room and was far too pink but it works in here.
If you're thinking there's not much male influence in here you'd be right. My husband has the master bedroom as he snores like a motorbike.

I LOVE snooping round other peoples homes in blogland so I hope you've enjoyed this peep into my boudoir.

Linking with...

                       Angie at  Knick of Time Tuesday 


                                                                                                         Faith Hope and Charity shopping

 

Secret vintage wallpaper...

I finished the chest of drawers late last night. I hate it. I have to do it again today. It's slightly depressing. As if it weren't bad enough, having to have ALL of ones summer clothing out alongside the winter clothing because it's so cold, I have nowhere to put ANYTHING! There are piles all over the upstairs and my husband and daughter are getting fed up with me.

I'm getting fed up with me too.

So, on a different subject, I bought an old picture frame from a charity shop. I thought it would be nice if my six year old painted me a picture for my future gallery wall. The frame I found was a few quid from Oxfam. It's been painted in the past and that's fine. The glass has little air bubbles in it so it's very old.

On the back someone had stuck some old wallpaper. I guess to keep thunder bugs out. That excited me!  So I took it home and carefully steamed it off, ignoring my husband saying, ''What are you DOING? It's RUBBISH! Who would want that?''

Here's where it got exciting. Under that wallpaper was another wallpaper.

 

And underneath that, was another wallpaper...

 

And under that wallpaper was another one. Probably the nicest one of all but sadly, very brittle and hard to get a big piece.

It felt a bit like pass the parcel. I like to think of someone changing their picture every now and then and re-wallpapering the back every time with leftovers of whatever was in fashion at the time. Make do and mend, indeed!

The two largest pieces are being saved for the wallpaper wall.

Right! Enough fannying around. There's work to be done...

Crates for charity...

An email came round from the PTA asking if anyone had a basket to use for a hamper for the school summer fair. Our class are to put together a gardening hamper.
I explained that I painted old crates to look like, erm, old crates and they were far too polite to refuse.

As luck would have it I had a large crate just sitting in the garage, thoroughly wood worm treated and ready to go.
Fancy that.

The colour was really quite uninspiring.

 

So I stained it darker...

 and gave it a colourwash for that 'trendy' grey weathered wood look... ta daa!

I also had a go at making a vintage sign with an old chopping board that was far too big to be practical and also split.

 

the darker one

We live opposite the rose field of Harkness Roses. We'd have a fabulous view of all the rose bushes if it weren't for a tall hedgerow that surrounds them.

According to the neighbours, our house also stands on land that was owned by Harkness Roses. (Another neighbour claims the land was a pig farm. Slightly less romantic. I choose not to believe in that one.)

Another neighbour, (ex S.A.S.) claims that everyone round here used to wait until dark and break through the hedge to get their roses in the sixties. I like to imagine him doing that with his balaclava on. 

So I thought I'd try to make a sign that looked old, perhaps something I might be lucky enough to find at the flea market. A genuine old sign that was meaningful because of our location.

I don't like how it turned out at all. I wasn't going to show you because it's not something I'm proud of but here goes...

You win some, you lose some...

I'm hard at work on my massive chest of drawers. There are piles of clothes EVERYWHERE and drawers being painted all over the landing. What my poor husband has to put up with eh?

My bedroom (a work in progress...)

I've been a bit quiet lately. Have I been wallpapering in a patchwork fashion?
No, but I think I have chosen a wall! And it's a different wall to the one I was thinking of. Which means I can have one gallery wall and one patchwork wall. I just hope it doesn't make the room feel smaller!

Here's the new wall I 'found'.

It has a door in it and is half obliterated by a huge mirror and a double chest of drawers so the impact of the patchwork wallpaper will be broken up I think. (And of course my dressing table is ALWAYS as tidy as this. I certainly haven't just shifted piles of crapola onto the floor!)

Sadly I can't start anything as this wall needs to be chased for the upstairs rewiring which hasn't yet begun. So for now, inspired by a picture on Pinterest...

...this will have to do.

But it will leave this wall...

...free for the pictures.

Speaking of pictures, I got another one!

From eBay

I love white flowers. My favourite picture is this one by Van Gogh...

Currently in the living room

Sadly I'm not a millionaire so this is a print in an old car boot sale frame. But I LOVE it.  And the new one reminded me of this one.
I had an old frame which almost fits, I just need to saw the edge off the picture. I like how it looks. Slightly grand and slightly knackered with it's missing corner.

The bedroom is very much a work in progress.

Missing door handle

  I bought this huge chest of drawers when we moved in.

 

It fits that wall perfectly. It's an old 1950's fake french number which had a dated, cracked and peeling paint job. 

 

So I've stripped the top, which appears to be solid mahogany, stained it and lightened it with a paint wash before sealing it.

 

Then I started priming the drawers. I didn't want to sand them in case the paint has lead in it so I used my beloved Zinsser primer.

Er, then I got a bit distracted and started something else. That happens a lot around here. 

But it is NOT going to be white.

And here's a close up of the mirror...

This was a gold plastic frame with a cardboard picture of a ship in it when I bought it from a charity shop for £2 long, long ago. 

 Here it is painted white in my last house...

  We're having important guests to stay in September and they will have this room so I do need to get it finished by then. Even the orange skirting boards! I wish I had a photo of this room when we moved in. Every surface was papered in 1060's abstract textured wallpaper and most of it was orange. Even the door. I can't even remember what was on the floor. I reckon I'm halfway there.

Thank you for all your ideas on my last post. The film poster is going to live on the stairs.

One last pic for today. 

Fat Freddy

A permanent fixture on my bed!