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Showing posts with label chic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chic. Show all posts

Monday, 2 August 2010

Extreme (or maybe more quick and dirty) Makeover: Kitchen

The kitchen was right up there as being one of the worst rooms in the house. It was a mix of Little House on the Prairie and Little Shop of Horrors. Dirty pine covered everything, making it feel dark and oppressive. While we realise we eventually need to give it a serious overhaul, we have decided we will do this when we are on the way out so that we don't have time to put our hot burny pans on the brand new surfaces. (Ahem, not that this is a, er, regular occurrence or anything.) And in the meantime we got to create this rough, fun, vintage look just with a can of white emulsion and some sandpaper. It has created the perfect canvas for some of our lovely car boot finds and has really lightened the whole space up- and all done in a couple of hours. This is my kind of makeover...

BEFORE:


AFTER:
We took the slat door off the end cupboard to create a magical little cubby hole for some knickknacks...


This is some of my Jessie Tait crockery- I am a little bit addicted to its loveliness- and you can find bits everywhere. This makes me a collector, eh?



The distressed look on the cupboards was done with just a lick or two of white paint, then I just took some sand paper to the edges and corners to pull out some of those nice curves. I'd wear gloves in the future though...

Sadly not many of the other rooms are going to have this fast a turn around, we have to, like, strip wall paper, and plaster up wonky bits and stuff like that. Bummer eh. I'm all about quick fixes/ botch jobs. He he.

Tuesday, 11 May 2010

Car boot sales rock my world

Seriously, I just can't get enough. until about 3 months ago I thought Charity Shops were heaven, but they have been massively usurped in favour of the archaic (I mean really, boot sales and the house moving process are the only two things to remain completely untouched by the internet revolution) wander- around -a -muddy -field -amongst- a- zillion -Mr Bean- VHS's- Sunday morning experience.

Tea cups for 10p, ammo boxes for two quid (I bought three, not realising their violent original purpose, eek... will plant flowers for peace in them maybe) and a A Dad's Guide to Having a Baby book for 25p. Brilliant. We also nabbed a bread maker this Sunday and have been munching hearty home backed slices non stop since. It is bargains galore; grannies who have never heard of shabby chic and young men who don't realise the beauty that rust and flaky paints adds to an item! Ha!

Of course, the other tantalising thing is that they are so rare and hard to find, precious jewels of Kentish surburbia. This also means that Charity Shops won't miss my custom too much as I need a daily browsing fix that Car Boots will never satisfy. Win Win for everyone.

Get yourself a local paper and look in the Classifieds section ASAP, there is some 1920's crockery out there for 70p with your name on it!