Summer chazzing and freebies...

Sorry for another long absence. I dropped and killed the camera and I can't function without it. My dear husband bought a new one which I'm forbidden from dropping. I'll do my best.

I promised you some of my secondhand finds from the summer so here we go.

Whilst we were in York at the beginning of the summer hols we passed a shop that was being stripped out. The builders had put a pile of junk on the footpath with a sign saying, 'Please take.'  It was a used and grubby washing up bowl and some mismatched mugs. Nothing worth having at all.

But then I spotted these...

They were the letters for the shop sign. I took C for Connie and E for Emma. I wish I'd taken the lot. Wouldn't it be just lovely having 'Cheque Cashers' on your wall? Haha. Perhaps I could have made an anagram out of that.
Anyway they're made from aluminium and have deadly sharp edges so we'll have to decoupage them or something. Anyone got any better ideas? They're hollow on the back.

The best chazzing destination all summer was Topsham in Devon. They have two Devon Air Ambulance shops and one is devoted to vintage. I found the prices very reasonable. Want to see what I found?

First of all this gold lurex 'English Lady' dress. It's a perfect fit and the third English Lady item of clothing I own. I'm a size 14 in this brand in vintage sizes but a modern day size 12.

I'm going to make it above knee length...

I'm not normally a gold lurex kinda gal but I tried it on and it was sooo flattering.

Here's my other English Lady dress. I've had it about 10 years and it's my favourite dress. Again,  it fits perfectly and is really flattering.

 

This perfect fit is why my heart skips a beat when I find this label in a 14...

I also picked up this frantic 60's maxi dress in the same shop...

 

The label in this one is 'Leygil' of London. It has a wildly voluminous skirt and I plan to chop it off above the knee and take it in so it's a lot more slinky. 

It gives me an actual bust! 

 So my almost empty sewing basket overfloweth once more...

 One more from Devon...

It has a button up belt at the back I need to adjust. 

I love this print!

And one more handmade vintage dress I found at the local car boot sale...

Again, it's too wide so needs some tweakage.

I also found china...

a little french gravy separator.

Would you believe I found the missing numbers for my Church hymn board? And they fit! 

 Yay! I plan on using this in the kitchen to hang things on.

               Over a hundred pounds worth of new pure cotton bedding for £20 at the boot sale?

                  Yes please, thank you very much. It's been years since I got new bedding!

                                               An R Whites crate for a fiver? That'll do nicely.

                                                         And last of all, my new love...

 

This was my birthday pressie. He's called bespectacled bloke and hangs on the living room wall. A boot sale buy found by me to give to my husband so he could give it to me. He's got it pretty easy hasn't he?

So, didn't she do well? 

Next time I'll be getting down and dirty, attempting to sort out our ugly kitchen window by fitting a proper sill and framing it out. Or perhaps not. I've never done it before. But I did watch someone do it once so I'm sure I'll be fine.

The timber comes tomorrow and I'm very excited. It's been a long wait to get stuck into some DIY again.

Wish me luck!

Oh one last thing before I go, if you have £50,000 to £500,000 to spend on an extension and want to be on telly, take a look at this...

Not for me sadly. I'll just plod on with my brand new kitchen for £300.

Grandads vintage wallpaper...

I'm back from trips to the Isle of Wight and Devon and no DIY has taken place. Perhaps when Connie goes back to school this week but I've hurt my back so perhaps not.

I have a whole summers worth of second hand scores to share but I want to start with a post about my late Grandads house in Devon. My Grandad passed away 13 years ago but his second wife, my step grandmother still lives in the large Edwardian house.

I stayed there earlier this month and asked her if I could share the fabulous wallpaper with you. I think there's something for everyone here. So come on in.


In the huge hallway is a pretty pink toile de jouy above the dado rail and a soft pink below. Elegant and classical.

In the sitting room things get a little bolder...

I love this design and I think it works as the room is so large so it doesn't suck all the light out of the room. This is on just one wall.

The kitchen was decorated in the 1971. I think it shows...

Again, just one wall is papered. To give you an idea of scale, that fireplace is above shoulder height.

In the drawing room you can see the oldest wallpaper in the house.

 

This was the best room for receiving guests. It's very elegant in here, if somewhat shabby chic. 

Here's the ceiling moulding at the top of the room above the door.

 

Fabulous high ceilings

On the staircase, below the dado is anaglypta with so many layers of paint on it. Very English.

See the bakelite light switches? Grandad painted everything. Perhaps I get that from him. 

In one of the bedrooms is this greek themed wallpaper. 

Here's the door to give you an idea of the scale...

 

A piece of wallpaper was used under the glass finger plate on the door too. The other walls are a soft grey.

On to the bathroom with this mustard yellow...

 another bold choice with the orange woodwork.

In the back bedroom, is this fabulous paisley design.

Some strong colour on the fireplace too.

The next landing up has this doll wallpaper. My grandmother loved dolls...

 

Isn't it amazing? Those dolls are huge!

Last of all, what was my dads attic room and what would have been the servants room originally.

I'm guessing another 1960's paper. Hopefully decorated after dad left. 

Around the same time, all the furniture in here was painted in gloss hot pink. 

So you see, the feature wallpapered wall is not a new thing. My family invented it long ago! And the desire to paint everything is clearly in my genes, even if the colours I choose are less bold. 

I hope you enjoyed a wander around this beautiful house.

The ugly dresser completed...

Hello stranger! Time has gotten away from me. I've been visiting my dad, working on an epic piece of furniture and focusing on my daughter as it's the school hols.

I'm halfway through the kitchen, so it's a perfect time to wander off and do something else. A kitchen break. I was itching to finish the ugly dresser.

So I did. Ta daa!

Let me remind you how it started out...

It didn't fit the wall, see how it cuts accross the door frame?

The top was not looking good.

I wasn't loving the plywood back or the black shelves.

But I LOVED the paintwork. (What was left of it.) It really was love at first sight with this piece. All the problems with it could be fixed.

I put a new tongue and groove back on the cupboard section. Much better than the plywood. And although it's inside the cupboard and no one sees it, I couldn't leave it looking so new.

I stained the wood with a mixture of tea and thinned down black acrylic paint. Much better.

I scraped and sanded the top, not too much as I didn't want to ruin the beaten up finish. I cut sections off the sides and top cornice so it fit my space perfectly. I sanded and stained the cut edges so it didn't look newly cut.

Halfway through, it was looking better but still needed a tongue and groove back for the top section and I needed to lose that black paint.

There was no simple way to do this. I painted all the paintwork, the black and the cream, very carefully, so that it would all be the same colour. I had to paint around each and every flaked of piece as I didn't want to lose that! This piece really was a labour of love.

 

I dark waxed it all so the new paint looked original.

wood bleached top

I used wood bleach on the top as I love the super pale look. (Did you know that using wood bleach and tongue and grooving something are two of the most fun things to do on the planet? )

The new tongue and groove back was stained darker and then also bleached to match the top.
Then I put it all together. I really wasn't sure about the wood finish behind the shelves. I thought I might paint over it.
But when the china was all in place, I loved it. I think that the china stands out more against wood than it would do against a painted surface and I'm so thrilled with the way it all matches up.

So here's the before...

And now...

Right then, better get on with that kitchen...

Link

Skip diving, birthdays and wallpaper...

Yes that's a random title but that's what's been going on around here.
First of all, I've managed to skip dive TWICE in a week and get some cool free stuff.

Ooh, a skip diving party! How fun!

The other day I spotted a skip with LOTS of bubble wrap and grabbed the lot. Yay me!
And today, I couldn't find my pollyfilla so I went to buy some more, passing a very exciting looking skip full of windows! Obviously I couldn't pass it up without stopping and investigating.
I knocked on the door of the house and the bemused gentleman said I could take his old windows. So I did.

I took five 1930's wooden windows in all. Look at the lovely old window furniture!

What will I do with them?
Perhaps more of this window art...

I think I'll put one of those catches on here.
Or I may use them to turn my raised beds into cold frames in the spring. This year I used three of our old secondary glazing panels but the frames are coming off and we broke one. These windows will be MUCH prettier.

We've also had a party for the last part of Connies First Holy Communion and  mine and Connies birthdays this week. I turned 44 and she turned 8. I think turning 8 is much more exciting. As you may know she's crazy about 'Littles Pet Shop' figures. We always look for them at boot sales and charity shops. Well on Sunday I found TONS of them and gave them to her on her birthday. She was THRILLED! A very lucky find indeed.

We thought we'd decorate her (shop bought) cake* with an LPS and we lit the candles and brought it into the room and started to sing. Connie started SCREAMING as she thought the LPS was going to burn. So that went well.

*I don't believe in baking. Plus we had my twin brothers birthday, my birthday (different day) First Holy Communion (part 3) cake and Connies birthday all in three days. I would have spent hours in the kitchen. And if I'm going to spend hours in the kitchen, I'd much rather be working on it than in it.

So leading quite neatly back to the kitchen, I have received my latest roll of wallpaper from Your4walls and I'm hoping to get on with that today. Obviously, I've been hindered by dashing out for pollyfilla, skip diving and blog writing.

As this one was too grey with the grey units...

I eventually went with this one...

...after a brief love affair with another one that didn't match the splash back at all. (Still working on that website.) This roll came super fast.

We've got one more party to go this weekend so the house has to stay relatively tidy for that, then all hell will break loose, chaos will rein once again and I can get stuck into some serious DIY. Bring it on.

And the party? We're remaking Pharells 'Happy' video on location locally with 12 little girls. Why not, if your daddy's a film maker? Wish us luck!

P.S. Apologies to anyone who watched The Auction house on my recommendation last week. It wasn't the slightest bit funny. What happened to it?