Kitchen Make-over

Hi guys!

Today I decided I would finally share my kitchen make-over with you!
Of all the rooms in the house this one has undergone the most drastic change and I am absolutely thrilled with the results!

Here is what my kitchen looked like a few months ago. It's a good size with lots of storage but as you can see it's very dark and there's a LOT going on! Yellow walls, brown cabinets, different coloured surfaces. It was in desperate need of simplifying!

I knew I wanted it white and bright so I put together this little mood board for myself.

As you can probably guess the first thing I did was take a paintbrush to those cabinets and get rid of that dark wood! Enormous piles of mess aside I think you'll agree it already looks a LOT better!!

Next I targeted the tiles. I'm renting so there's no chance of re-tiling (and even if there was it's a little out of budget).

I bought some self-adhesive vinyl from Homebase, cut it into squares the same size as my tiles and simply stuck them over! Here's how they looked before and after.

I chose a vinyl from a company called Designs Folie in silver to help reflect light back into the room. If you're wondering how these hold up when they get wet the answer is very well! They've been in place for two months now and even the ones around the sink are still going strong! I have a feeling that the quality of vinyl differs from brand to brand though coz I lined my bathroom cabinets with a different brand and it's not doing quite so well!

I also used white vinyl (the good quality stuff) on the over-head cabinets. They were already covered in a sort of marble effect, laminate so there was no way of painting over them. Here's the 'before' although it's difficult to see exactly how the marble effect looked.

I started at the top edge and worked my way down before moving on to the middle section and finally the top and bottom edges. I cut each piece slightly wider than the width of the section I was covering so that it would overlap onto the wood and metal areas seamlessly.

 
Here you can see what a difference the white vinyl made to the cabinet!

This is how it looked once the whole thing was covered.

I lived with it like this for a few weeks before deciding it was still a little flat so I added some colour! I couldn't paint the inside of the cabinets so I bought some thick card from a stationary store, cut it to size and wedged it into the back of each cabinet.

In case you're wondering, the walls haven't been painted, these pictures were just taken at different times of the day.

To continue the blue and red theme I added a pegboard pot holder (with the help of my boyfriend) to a spare wall along with some other accessories to tie everything together.

I absolutely LOVE my pantry door handles! I got them on sale at Zara Home. My rug cost just £15 from IKEA  and my tea towel (which I'm planning to frame at some point) came from Pretty Berlin

There's still a few things I'd like to add like a blind for the window and maybe a few more accessories here and there but for now I'm very happy with it!

And that's my kitchen!! Thanks so much for reading! Come back soon for more make-overs, decorating inspiration and fun home accessories. Until then have a Happy Hump Day!! :)

Organising Spices

Hi guys!

I just recently redecorated my kitchen (photos to come soon) and I've been having more fun than I care to admit implementing some of the fantastic organising tips that I've been drooling over on Pinterest! One of my many favourites is this drawer organiser which I found on fakeitfrugal!

I absolutely HATE riffling through a shelf of almost identical bottles, inevitably knocking some over and having to have this conversation with myself, 'wait...did I just check this one? nope, don't think I did. wait...no, that's not it either...did I just check that one...?' At this point I normally become convinced that I don't have any *insert literally any spice here* left and go to buy some only to find it during a later search for cumin. All my rambling aside, spices are annoying and I'm very glad someone had the good sense to find a way of taming them!

Here's how my spice organising went! These are my spices before.

Below is one of four corner pieces of protective packaging which came with my oven. Heather at fakeitfrugal used something else but I believe in making use of what you've got (which is why I've been happily tripping over these in my laundry room for nearly two months now)!

I started by cutting the cardboard into three pieces the same width as my drawer using a saw.

At this point I could have just inserted them into place and added my spices but I went one step further and sprayed them blue to match my cabinets :)

And that's it!

I am in love with this solution!!! It's completely put an end to all the rummaging, it cost me nothing AND it took like 5 minutes!! Now all I have to do is nag my boyfriend into putting things back label up! Wish me luck :)

Couch Makeover

Hey guys!

I was lucky enough to be given a couch (in fact quite a bit of furniture) for my big move! And since the table turned out so wonderfully I figured why stop there!

The picture below is not the best example of this couch before. It did have cushion covers when I received it but I had removed them (for reasons you will find out later) so unfortunately this is the only 'before' picture I have. 

 

I was eager to get started on the painting but first I had some mending to do!

I'm not sure the picture below does the sagginess of the seat justice but trust me it was a pretty sad looking frame. Luckily it was an easy fix!

First I removed each section from the base of the chair and cut all the old fabric away so that I was left with a basic wooden frame.

Then I cut a piece of cotton canvas a couple of inches larger than the frame. I placed the frame in the centre of the fabric and beginning at one edge I folded the fabric under and stapled it to the wood.
I continued folding and stapling in this way along one whole edge before moving on to the opposite edge and sides, pulling the fabric tightly to ensure the surface was taught.
  

I kind of made it up as I went along when I came to the corners. Basically I cut away any bulky extra fabric and folded one side under the other so that it was nice and neat.

Here's how the frame looked with the new canvas seat!

I knew this was gonna be nightmarish to paint by hand (what with the lack of flat surfaces and all the tiny, difficult to get to crevices) but I'd run out of my trusty automotive paint and unfortunately another mixture was just a teeny bit out of budget :(
I figured I would have needed about a million cans of spray paint and probably some expensive finger surgery if I'd decided to go down the spray can route. Instead I used a semi-gloss emulsion and a paint brush.
It took 3 coats of paint including primer and two days (along with some fairly serious sunburn) to finish but it turned out great!

 

As you can see I didn't bother to paint the inside. That section of the frame is hidden under the seat of the couch and can't be seen from the outside. 

Once the frame was looking snazzy it was time to tend to the cushion covers! Remember I said I would get to those!? Well here they are!

They're not the happiest looking cushions are they? Personally I'm a big fan of yellow so instead of replacing the fabric I decided to revive it!

I used Dylon Sunflower Yellow dye and 500g of salt (to fix the colour). Dylon is very easy to use and gives great results when the instructions are followed correctly. I've dyed a lot of things over the past few years and I've learned that when using a single colour in the washing machine it can't hurt to add a little more dye than you need! I wanted a really strong yellow so that's exactly what I did!

  

I used 3 boxes of dye for 6 cushions and the result was better than expected!! See for yourself!

 

I think you'll agree it's a HUGE improvement!!! :D

Juuuuuuust in case you need more convincing here's the before and after of the whole couch!

Note: If you're worried about dye being left in your washing machine try running an empty cycle when you're finished. This will get rid of any residual dye that may have been left behind in the drum! 

That concludes my couch makeover!! Thanks for reading!!! :D

I'll be posting more furniture refurbishments over the next few weeks so keep your eyes peeled!