A Dressing Table Makeover

Incredible, isn't it, the way paint and new handles can totally change the look of a piece of furniture? It always surprises and pleases me. In a parallel life I'd be a furniture restorer (wouldn't that be brilliant?) but I'm not so I get my kicks tinkering with things around the house. 

As I mentioned before, I recently painted my dressing table. I've had it for many years and didn't much like it, as I found the pine too knotty and orange, and the metal handles weren't to my taste. But it's such a good, useful, solidly built piece of furniture with nice dovetailed joints, and there was plenty of life in it yet. It just needed some attention. This is the dressing table in it's "before" state, and please try not to look at the chaos that surrounds it in the garage. Many of the wooden drawer edges had fallen off over the years and the top badly needed sanding as it was grubby and scratched.

I decided to pull all the edge pieces off to give the drawer fronts a cleaner look.  

Then I removed the handles, filled the holes with wood filler and gave it all a light sand.

Then came the painting. I wanted to try using Annie Sloan Chalk Paint* as I've heard so much about it and was curious to see what it was like. My initial preference was for the more modern looking Pure White but according to my research (google and asking my Instagram friends, extensive stuff) the coverage is poor, so I used Original, which is a kind of milky white. Chalk paint is attractive because of it's "no need to sand or prime" claims, and it's true, you can just slap it on. But this piece of furniture just drank up the paint and the one litre tin felt like it wasn't gong to be enough. In the end I left the drawer insides patchy and made sure the visible parts (top, drawer fronts and side panels) had as many coats as possible. They had four and I think one more would've made the finish better as the knots still show slightly in places. I sanded lightly between coats as the finish of the paint is pretty...chalky. Then came two coats of wax which I applied with a brush and buffed with a cloth. That was a serious arm workout. 

Honestly, I'm not sure if I'm won over. I think for the amount of time I spent on this, I could've sanded, primed and painted this with some oil based eggshell paint and the finish would've been much smoother. Perhaps if I'd painted it a darker colour that would have made my task easier. But if you like a more rustic, country look to your furniture you'll love this paint, plus the range of colours is gorgeous.

Anyway, now for the fun bits. I lined the drawers with that wallpaper I found at the tip. I love it SO much, and every time I open a drawer I catch a glimpse of it.

Then the handles. I spent hours looking at handles on pinterest and browsing online but I needed a lot, so they had to be cheap. In the end I bought a packet of ten plain wood handles from B&Q for about £10 and painted them. 

I used two coats of the same colour that we have on the bedroom wall (Princeton Blue by Valspar) followed by a quick coat of clear matt varnish. I'm so pleased with the effect of the blue against the white. And what a difference two small handles makes compared to one in the middle. 

Have you used chalk paint before? I'd be curious to know what you painted and what you thought of the finish. 

Overall I am very happy with how this project turned out. The best thing is that I feel like I've rediscovered a piece of furniture I'd really lost interest in. I mean, I've had this dressing table since I was a teenager! It left home with me and it's seen a lot of use over the last twenty years; getting ready for work, for a night out, trying to do my make-up while jiggling a griizzling baby on my knee at the same time...we're old friends, that dressing table and I. 

I'll leave you with a photo of our bedroom looking calm and tidy in the afternoon sun.

*This is not a sponsored post.

Make, Bake, Sew, Grow

The strangest thing happened to me this afternoon. It was about 3 pm and I was in the middle of doing some small jobs and sitting on the second to bottom stair (as I like to do when I am distracted by my phone) and thinking it would soon be time to set off and collect the children from school, when I heard a baby cry. My first instinct was to glance upstairs, thinking (as I did so many times in the past) that someone had woken from their nap in a grump and that I needed to get them up anyway as it was mid-afternoon. Of course the noise came through an open window from the street outside but, for a split second, I was back in the era of nap times and it was so vivid! I've been thinking that this pre-work week has felt a lot like being on maternity leave. The list making, the mild anxiety over silly little things because it's easier to worry about them than the big ones (WORK! AGH!), the feeling of a looming date, of impending change, the need to get things done because there will never be time to do anything Ever Again. It will come as no surprise that, happy as I am to be returning to work, I'm sad to be ending my time as a stay at home mum. It also closes the door gently but firmly on the prospect of baby number three which, if I'm honest, was never really a realistic option but always a little dream of mine. 

Anyway, moving on, before I well up. I want to thank you so much for all your kind words and support for my new job. For those who asked, I'll be working in the admin department of a local primary school and when I saw the advert I thought I'd be mad not to apply. It's Monday to Friday during school hours and term time only so absolutely perfect for childcare, but does mean that my days will be very full and very different, and there'll be less time for pottering and coffees. Because, you know, that's all I've been doing for the last eight years.

Anyway, on to my first Make, Bake, Sew, Grow post!

{ Make }

Making our tiny wardrobe more effiecient and organised. 

Exasperated by trying to untangle necklaces when in a rush in the morning, I spent a very pleasant hour banging picture hooks into the inside door of our wardrobe so that I had somewhere to hang them.

My friend Abigail said "It's like seeing the essence of you, all neatly laid out".

{ Bake }

A chocolate coca cola cake* for John's birthday on Monday.

This is one of his favourite cakes and he often requests it on his birthday, or any day for that matter. It's incredibly easy and you can't really taste the cola, it just makes it quite moist and caramely. It's amazing when it's still a little warm and gooey.

{ Sew }

I am ready to start my Midsummer Springs Sampler. I spent at least two very gentle, soothing hours last Sunday afternoon slowly sorting the threads onto labelled card so that I'm ready to start sewing.

There are so many colours. And you only use a tiny amount of each of them, so there will be loads left over which is a bit annoying. I just need to pluck up the courage to start that first tiny stitch now. I'm worried I might have forgotten how to cross stitch.  

{ Grow }

We have two large, beautiful rhododendron bushes in our back garden. They face each other on opposite sides of the garden; one on the right by the decking...

and one on the left by the shed. 

They are currently covered in big, blowsy, lilac coloured blooms. 

They took a real battering in that wind and rain we had at the start of the week and I gathered up handfuls of sad looking flowers which were scattered all over the grass.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. Ours will be quiet, which is good. 

* The recipe is from Nigella's How To Be A Domestic Goddess which is one of the first cookery books I ever bought myself and probably one of my favourite and most used, too. I don't think the recipe is available online exactly, but if you google "Nigella Chocolate Coca Cola Cake" I'm sure you'll find it if you want to.

*

One last thing: the BBC are looking for people to participate in the new series of BBC One's Home Away From Home. Any kind of TV where you get to nose around real people's houses is interesting to me. Details below.

HAVE YOU EVER FANCIED A HOME SWAP HOLIDAY?

BBC One's Home Away from Home is back!

And we're looking for people who want to try out a home swap holiday in the UK.

Do you live in a home you'd be happy to swap with someone elsewhere in the UK for a short break?

Would you like the chance to have a new experience and discover local cuisine, sight-seeing that goes beyond the guide book, and an authentic place to stay?

With Home Away from Home you could be enjoying a unique holiday experience in a stunning part of the UK...

For an application form or an initial chat, please get in touch right away!

Email: homeawayfromhome@bbc.co.uk

Phone: 0208 008 1468

Summer Plans

At the start of each season I like to make a mental list of things I want to do over the coming months. Do you do the same? They can be big or small, vague or specific. This spring I really wanted to go for a walk in some bluebell-filled woods, paint my pine dressing table, cook roast lamb on Easter Sunday, and spend some time in our garden. I managed the first three (a dressing table post will follow) and think I'm sort-of getting to grips with the garden. 

This summer (when it arrives - I'm sitting here with a scarf round my neck watching the rain and wind batter the garden) I want to make time to:

• Go down to the beach hut after school, eat fish and chips for tea and swim in the sea in the evening.
• Start my Midsummer Sprigs cross stitch sampler.
• Have lots of barbecues and try barbecuing some fish.
• Wear my new summer dress.
• Renovate the old garden bench my parents gave us.
• Make lemon curd.

If I do only two of these I will be a happy woman. But things are going to get busy around here as, after 8 years at home, I am about to start a new job and return to the land of work! I feel excited, terrified, empowered and overwhelmed, more by how I know life is going to change than by the actual job itself. I've been giving it a lot of thought and I've realised that if I want to continue blogging in any kind of regular way, I need a plan, and that plan is a series of posts called Make, Bake, Sew, Grow. While I want to post them fortnightly I think it's more realistic to think that they'll just happen when they happen. I like to be tidy, and this for me is a neat way to gather up my miscellaneous musings on the domestic and creative front into something a bit more coherent.

This is not me putting pressure on myself to be superwoman, but instead a way of gently reminding myself why I love to craft and cook, why pottering and gardening makes me so happy. My hope is that it will encourage me to make time for myself and for the things I enjoy.

* 

Make: In the widest sense of the word. Making plans, making changes, making a start. And not just crafting, but anything done with my hands, anything creative in the home.

Bake: This should really be Cook or Eat, but they don't rhyme with Make. Stories from my kitchen is more realistic, just a regular and seasonal look at what I'm cooking, if only to stop me falling into a fish-fingers-for-tea rut.

Sew: Embroidery, cross stitch, using my sewing machine to make things for the house...all of this. 

Grow: Not "this is what I am growing today" but more a general look at how my garden grows, at what is happening out there, what is making me happy.


I'll post my first this week. Wish me luck, with the job and the blogging!

Small Houses, Tall Towers and Old Friends

After any kind of break or holiday I relish that point when I sit down on a Sunday night and go through all my photos. Inevitably I take too many and - lucky for you - delete about 95% of them, but I like to reflect on all that has happened, all that we did and saw and experienced. 

We had such a wonderful half term break! We really did. The main part of the week was spent at home pottering, doing chores, getting stuff done, but in a relaxed way. After two months in our house (is it really only that long?) a large part of our free time is still spent doing house and garden related tasks. The garden is really starting to take shape now and I'll show you more soon. On Friday morning, our friends from Yorkshire came to stay with us for the weekend. We were pretty excited (GUESTS! Guests in our HOUSE!) as these are old, old friends - from university - and there is always a lot of laughter and reminiscing when we get together. They have two boys similar in age to Bella and Angus which makes planning what to do easier.

Once they'd arrived, after bacon sandwiches and as soon as the rain stopped, we visited Bosham, a nearby village on the Sussex coast. 

It's a very quaint and charming little village, and picturesque too. 

There's a gentle, meandering walk you can take around the harbour and I like to amuse myself by admiring the houses and having "if we won the lottery" type conversations.

It was breezy, but the sun shone and all the wildflowers were out. 

The other past time I like to indulge in here is Garden Admiring. Many of the cottages have large front gardens, some walled, and all beautifully planted. Look at this border!

Plus it's the kind of place where kids can eat ice creams and find crabs and you can finish the day in a pub beer garden, so it's something for everyone really.

Saturday - mercifully - was warm and sunny which was just as well as I was intent on showing off our local area. So much has changed since I grew up here and it's fun to rediscover it. We headed down to Southsea, a quirky, touristy neighbourhood on the south coast of Portsmouth. I dragged everyone into the Model Village which hasn't change one bit since I went there as a child - read into that what you will - but was thoroughly enjoyed by each small person present.

We had a nice time wandering around Southsea and looking in the vintage shops.

There is only so much of this wandering/browsing you can do with four children though, so we moved on to our next destination: Spinnaker Tower. (You might just be able to make out some figures abseiling down the tower in the photo below.)

Should you ever find yourself in Portsmouth on a clear day, do go up because the views over the Solent from the top are just fantastic. 

You can see the boats come in and out and it's really like looking down on another kind of model village.

A section of the tower floor is made from glass and you can walk on it. I'm afraid I just couldn't do it. Even though I know that it's as safe as the floor I was standing on, and I don't think I am especially afraid of heights, I just couldn't walk on that glass floor.

Bella could though. I was surprised by my reaction too - every part of me wanted to take her arm and lead her off that glass. The rational part of my brain knew that she was probably safer there than walking along a main road, but the mother part of my brain wanted her safe and next to me.  

Do you think you could have walked on the glass floor? 

So, a good weekend all in all, and I am now gearing myself up for the week ahead. It's going to be a busy one. 

The Colour Collaborative: May: Morning

My morning starts neon green, flashing and beeping.

It glows red and green over the top of the bedroom curtains as the sun hits the trees and cars on the drive below and sends colourful beams shooting upwards. (This always makes me think of the Northern Lights for some reason.)

My morning is the pale blue of my favourite-morning-brew-mug as I make the first (and best) cup of tea of the day. 

After showering and dressing, my morning is the red of my make-up bag as I sit at my dressing table, gathering my thoughts and readying myself for the day ahead.

Downstairs, the rush begins. My morning is the primary brights of toast and jam on melamine plates, the white of glasses of milk poured, the brown of a second cup of tea.

It is the red of strawberries on top of my cereal.

The greys and pastels of a dishwasher waiting to be emptied.

And the glaringly bright neons of lunchboxes and water bottles.

There should just be time to brush teeth and hair, check all children are dressed and ready, open the curtains and make the beds before re-grouping in the hall where the brown clock determines whether I start shouting or not.

And the day begins.

*

I've tried to give you a flavour here of my normal, slightly rushed but very colourful weekday morning. Of course, it's half term this week - otherwise there would never have been time to take some photos! - and I am not rushing about like a mad woman today, but sitting in my dressing gown enjoying my second - actually, third - cup of tea and generally feeling quite relaxed. But it's always so interesting to observe colour in our daily lives, where we notice it, where we need it, where it's too much, where it soothes us and where it makes us happy. 

*

Don't forget to visit the other Colour Collaborative blogs for more of this month's posts, just click on the links below:

Annie at Annie Cholewa

Sandra at Cherry Heart

Jennifer at Thistlebear

Claire at Above The River
Sarah at Mitenska

What is The Colour Collaborative? 

All creative bloggers make stuff, gather stuff, shape stuff, and share stuff. Mostly they work on their own, but what happens when a group of them work together? Is a creative collaboration greater than the sum of its parts? We think so and we hope you will too. We'll each be offering our own monthly take on a colour related theme, and hoping that in combination our ideas will encourage us, and perhaps you, to think about colour in new ways.