Do at least one thing each month towards making my house really fucking nice

A couple of years ago someone Freecycled us a shelving unit. It was that nasty cheap veneer beech colour – IKEA-ish, but cheaper.

I decided to paint it light grey, and now it looks like this:

Much better – it’s in the bedroom. Yes, that is a piñata on the top of it.

I also repainted the bedside tables which my uncle had passed on to me – they were that horrible ‘80s orange pine, and now they’re the same lovely restful grey. I wish I’d thought to remove the handles so I could change them. Now they’re painted on. But they look better.

I also painted the frame of the large wall mirror in the same colour, and now there’s a little bit of paint left in the tin, but not much – I might use it to paint the frame of the full-length mirror. I’m tempted to get more paint and do the bed too (damn that orange pine), but hopefully we will replace it with something larger in the foreseeable future so it’s probably not worth my while unless we transfer it to the (dreamed of, by me) guest room.

Although I’m happy with the way these pieces look from a distance, close up they are a nightmare. Don’t ever paint in a house with a very moulty cat, or with anyone with hair for that matter. Especially pubes. Painting outside didn’t help much – there is plenty of grit and several dead flies preserved for all eternity in the layers of paint. Just don’t look too closely. And because of the very smooth non-porous nature of the shelving, I had to use a good primer – I used the excellent but spendy Zinsser shellac primer – so for the amount I spent on primer and paint and the inconvenience of all the lugging and drying and covering stuff with sheets, I probably would have been better just getting new furniture. But hey ho, it’s not like I have a lot to fill my time at the moment so I might as well be homemakery.

..can transform something.

This…

..is one of three small chests of drawers that my dad rescued from his old place of work, about 20 years ago. My brother painted them grey and white and used them in his bedroom, then left them in the flat we shared when he left.

By this time they were in a crappy state, as you can see – cup-rings, tea stains, paint chipped, general filth that comes from being in a flat with a couple of stoners. Filth notwithstanding, they are very handy and have served me well, two of them holding my makeup, medications, and an assortment of general bits and bobs for a few years now.

Last weekend I decided to use some paint left over from painting the bathroom door, and transformed them into this – it’s two, stacked one on top of the other, but you’d never know.

So much better! It wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped – by the time I’d painted them, the extra paint meant that the drawers were now too fat to get back into the holes, and I had to sand some of the paint off the inside lip of the drawers, which made it less neat. I also had to put candlewax on the runners. I might add some prettier knobs (teehee).

But I am quite inspired. When I get paid, I’m going to get some decent primer and paint up a large Freecycled bookcase that’s currently in bits, and set it up in our bedroom so we can collate the piles and boxes of books, DVDs and CDs that have collected all over the flat. And there’s also our two bedside tables – inherited from my auntie and uncle, and made of that awful orange pine that was popular in the 1980s.

This was actually quite fun. The colour was mixed to match the walls, but I’m not sure it’s exact. I haven’t done the door frame yet because there are lots of cables attached to it and I’m not sure which ones are OK to cut and which aren’t – we’ve had that many phone and internet providers that it’s confusing. I’ll probably do the door frame the same colour as the door and walls when I get around to it, partly because I’ve got so much paint left. Anyway, it’s nice and smooth, and an improvement on the horrible cheap dark wood that was underneath.

Also, full props to me for taking off and reinstalling the door handle. I’m going to go and put the handle back on HA’s door now, he took it off the paint the door a year ago and hasn’t got around to refitting it. I hope he still has it.

HA and I live in da ghetto. A ghetto that the local council is trying to spruce up by offering subsidised improvements to the street frontages – nice new doors, stonework painting, new front walls and landscaping etc.

I was expecting to have to pay 20% towards the costs of getting this work done, but the man came around and means tested us today and the good (?) news is that we are poor enough to get it all done for free. Hurray! Let’s just hope the nice lad downstairs and his landlord/dad agree to take part in the scheme too, since we are missing a front wall and that part would go on their part of the land, not mine.

The bedroom is still a WIP, so no pics of that yet, but I am so pleased with this innovation that I thought I’d share it with you. I’ve been looking for a way to store all my many many hats for a while, and I found this idea courtesy of one of my favourite fashion, body-image and self-esteem blogs, the wonderful Already Pretty.

It’s nothing more than a piece of string looped and tied around a couple of picture hooks nailed to the hall wall, with the hats attached with clothes pegs – almost free, and easy. Doesn’t look that ace, but it’s quite fun and keeps my hats easily accessible and in good shape. Love it!

The article I linked to also suggests some really fun storage solutions for other accessories, like storing bangles over a nice wine bottle or a paper towel holder. The whole blog is well worth checking out.

Our friends JJ and C are recently married and expecting a baby. C has gone into that third-trimester nesting thing and insisted on the purchase of new sofas, so they have very kindly donated the old ones to us – for nothing! It only cost us (well, HA) the hire of a man-with-van. Now instead of one single sagging two-seater sofa and the funky-but-uncomfy cinema chairs (which are now a statement piece in the hall), we have a large two-seater and a three-seater. They’re only a couple of years old anyway, so still in good nick and amazingly comfy. It’s so nice to have a sofa I can lay full-length on, and now we have room for people to come over and lounge comfortably.

B+Q’s Bank Holiday sale included 15% off everything on any spend over £50, so we took advantage and bought paint and curtains for our bedroom. For a feature wall (or maybe two depending on how much paint gets used up on the one wall) we had a pot mixed up of the incongruously named Twilight Cinders 1, the darker colour in the pic.

Not sure what we’ll do with the other walls, though the expense of the paint mixing makes plain cheap white a strong contender, although B+Q’s own range has some nice neutrals which might sit well with the purple. Painting will not take place for a while yet – a beautiful but unneeded antique desk is parked in the middle of the room taking up all the space and causing multiple toe-stubbings. My parents are going to take it away and store it in their country pile until such time as we have enough space for it, so it’ll wait till that’s gone.

We also got some lined aubergine curtains which need ironing and hanging once I’ve bought or located the relevant curtain hooks. I kind of fell in love with a rather silly light fitting (but didn’t buy it) and HA bought himself a woodworking bench and some tool thing to do some man stuff with.

I’m thinking about painting some of the bedroom furniture once we’ve done the walls. The wardrobe and one of the chests of drawers are generic Ikea pine, and would probably look better painted, though I’m not sure how to get the best, most durable finish. I’ll wait till we have more of an idea of how the rest of the room is shaping up before I start slarting paint at them.

The link I put in to HA’s Twitpic didn’t work for some reason, so here’s General Askit.

Someone on the fab Freecycle was offering a cast-iron fire grate (worth about £60 from B+Q!), so I snatched it up and it gave me incentive to finish decorating the fireplace. It’s looking pretty smart, though I still need to go find some logs to put in the basket and some suitably yellow-glowy fairy lights to put around them.

In true home deco mag tradition, the pictures on the chimney breasts are (clockwise from top left): me and HA on our second/third weekend together; William Burroughs, some weird jetty thing; Richie and Eddie from Bottom; my parents’ chickens feeding; a postcard of Paperfaerie’s book sculptures; the late, great Baloo-cat reclining beautifully on the back step; a ridiculous and brilliant picture HA made of Askit photoshopped into a pic of General Sherman. Actually, that last one is worth a link of its own.

What a piece of luck. Someone on Freecycle was offering a big black Ikea desk which, on email consutlation, turned out to be exactly the same as Headapollo’s. One quick car trip later and it’s in pieces at the bottom of our stairs. While I was out running on Saturday HA sneakily assembled it next to his own, moving the pine monstrosity it replaces to the spare room where he indulges in his new hobby of carpentry.

The study is still in a complete state, and despite being the place where we spend the most time it’s probably the least attractive and comfortable room in the house, most likely cos we use it so much that decorating it would be very disruptive. But having matching desks has made a massive difference. The room looks more deliberate and put-together, and there are fewer different colours and textures to confuse the eye. This optical illusion seems to make it look tidier even if it’s still a tip.

Still. Something must be done about it.