I’ve Got Paint And I’m Not Afraid To Use It!

Suddenly it is such a beautiful spring weather here, sunshine, flowers, kids playing in the garden without their hats on, windows left open, clothes hung out to dry…

Suddenly I feel the inspiration and the need to create… to do something around the house, to clean up very nice, to dress up the rooms… It has been a long winter, and I have realised, that my craftiness was limited to sewing warm clothes and crocheting heavy blankets during these months. Now it is time to return to home decorating.

I have a lot of thing up my sleeves these days, but today I managed to take some time to spraypaint and paint a few things that have been waiting for a redo since last summer… shame on me 🙂

First of all I took some of the mason jars I am using to keep different things in them around the house.

Then I took the cute little shelf I found last August in a local charity shop and bought it literally for a few pennies. Poor thing was a little dusty, shabby and miscoloured. All it needed was some dusting, cleaning, sandpapering, a few layers of painting and some love 🙂

So I took my tools, and went into war.

I gave the jars a few layer of spraypaint and they got a lovely metallic silver colour. They look very cool on my kitchen counter, holding some pencils and straws.

Or in my office, trying to organise my crochet hook among others…

And here is a reborn shelf, in the colour of turquoise, enjoying a sunbath, drying.

 

It is going to bring a nice pop of colour to my office, which is due to a major redo very soon!

 

A little sunshine in the rain

 

 

We were very lucky with our house. Not just because we found our dream-house in a nice community, but also because of the previous owners.

This couple were living here for 40 years, all their adult lifes, and now they decided to move closer to their grown up children, and bought a house in Sweden. We had the pleasure to meet them personally: after the first papers were signed, they simply invited us over for a coffee. They turned out to be very nice people, and provided us a lot of useful information about the house, tips regarding the garden. Jonna, the wife, she is amazing, and full of energy, she decorated everything with the finest taste, up to the smallest details. Actually, all these small little things were the final push in our decision of buying, because it all just looked so lovely, you know? 🙂

Also, since they moved from 155 square meters to 70, we had a part in the contract, saying that for the price we pay, they leave some of their furniture behind. And since we moved from 83 square meters to 155, we were very happy for the extra chairs, tables, mirrors, lamps, etc.

Among the leftover furniture we discovered many beautiful things, a few things we didn’t want to keep, and another few that had some promises in them.

 

Like this little commode, we found in their master bedroom (now divided into two children rooms) and what reminded my husband of the entrance furniture they used to have in his childhood home. We thought it looked very nice, however, bit shabby and dusty, the top part of it covered with fungus stains, and all the drawers coated with some old, ugly paper. I also found some traces of the once probably white painting.

Nothing a little love, sandpaper and paint cannot cure, he? 🙂

So, after about 3 months of procrastinating (or simply because I prioritised other things then this little piece of furniture waiting patiently in the kitchen, under the staircase), I went to war. I dragged poor thing out of the house, into the carport, put up my mask, and started sandpapering. After that it got a layer of white wood paint, leftover from the renovation. The next day, after the white paint got completely dry, things went crazy and colourful 🙂

After living thirty years in the faith that I am not a fan of the colour yellow (I have always been the pink-and-blue type of girl), this summer I was struck by the recognition: I love yellow!!! I don’t know why, but it came very suddenly: when we were planning the decorations and colours for the house, I realised, that I can picture many things in a nice, summer yellow. For example this commode. So I went down to the local paint shop and chose 3 cans of a pretty yellow autolack (which turned out to be just enough for two layers of paint).

The old, shabby little furniture got a new, happy, sunshiny life (whether it wanted it or not), and now standing proudly in my office, providing a pop of colour and a lot of happiness, when I look at it. My office still has a lot to improve (it is seriously under construction), because all the junk and basically everything, we haven’t found a place yet has just been thrown into it since we moved in, but I have a vision about this room and working hard on making it come true 🙂 And my little sunshine commode was the first step in the process 🙂

 

The printer drawers

For this post I have to get back to last December.

This is when I decided that I was going to attempt to make two of those beautiful, colourful printer drawers for the shared baby room, that are so popular in Denmark, and very expensive. I gathered my inspiration and paper supplies mainly from Papir og Tapet, a little webshop, started by a Danish mother. After that I went to a hobby shop, and bought two of the biggest printer drawers I could find 🙂 And I was ready to start my very first DIY project, hurray 🙂

I started by painting the drawers. And again, and again 🙂 Each of them got 3 layers of plain hobby paint. Since I wanted to make all the decorations for my daughter pink and green, and for my son blue and red, I chose a neon pink colour for hers, and a simple blue for his. I became a little exhausted by all this painting (I was mainly painting during the night, in the kids sleeping time), I took some break from the actual physical work, and turned to planning. I carefully measured the boxes in the drawers. and picked two times 46 custom cut pieces of paper scraps. That was by far my favourite part, I love picking nice papers 🙂 For my daughter the dominant colour of the scraps became green, and for my son, red. I also paid attention to details, and tried to collect patterns and motives that are somewhat connected to my kids, like squirrels and birds and Mickey Mouse for her (we used to call her Squirrel when she was a baby, and obviously at that point she was fond of birds and Mickey Mouse Club House), and cars, trains, stars, vikings, soldiers and hamsters for the baby boy (yes, we used to call him Hamster 🙂 ).

All I had to do now, was to glue those scraps in their destined places, and I was ready, and happy, and very proud of myself, after all, these to babies were my very first ones 🙂

First they were put up in their temporary places in the apartment we used to rent at that point, each of them above a crib/ baby bed. But now they are hanging happily in their final spots, in our new house 🙂 I will come with more pictures of them, when I write about the baby rooms, I promise 🙂