Warm feet

My periferic blood flow seems to be nonexistent and so my feet are cold all the time, especially on winter. I got a heating pad for my cold feet as a birthday present (two and a half months ago). I keep it in the bed all the time and then I can switch it on when ever I need it. It's electric and therefore it has a cable that needs to run from the socket to the foot of the bed.

The cable of the heating pad was just loosely hanging on the side of the bed. It looked ugly and the controller of the heating pad was not easily accessible. But I made a cable holder from a white sheet fabric and now I don't have to reach for the controller and the cable is not hanging loosely anymore.

I made slots for the cable, but left an opening for the controller. The slots are wide because the controller and the plug needs to be pulled through the first slot and the plug through the further slot. The fabric cable holder is attached with safety pins under the mattress pad. In the last photo I've drawn where the heating pad is positioned and how the cable runs under the sheet. I think this holder looks very good (read: it does not really show much at all) and I think it's pretty clever. But the main thing is that the heating pad is now super easy to put on and off.

Stamping rehearsals

Remember when I made the owl stamp? Finally I managed to use it. I was inspired by the Piipadoo blog and their stamped kitchen towel. They had used a potato as a stamp. I have stamped with a potato back when I was kid and wanted to do it again. So I also did some stamping with two potato stamps.

I used the owl stamp on a plain white duvet cover for Likka. I used three different colours and also mixed them to get two complementary colours. The stamping quality is nowhere near perfect, but I do like the duvet cover now. 

I made two potato stamps, a half circle and a star. With the potato stamps I decorated two flats, which we do not use when cloth diapering. These flats I use mostly when nursing and for wiping some drool and the occasional burp. That means that those flats are kept out in the open, like near the sofa and it does not hurt if those flats look nice. 

Nursery in the bedroom

I was going to blog about the nursery before Likka was born, but at that time I wasn't sure if we would leave the area like that or if it would need some changes. I just wasn't sure what a nursery needs, but as it seems it does not need much. Now after few months of use I can show our nursery because I know that it's a functional one.

The so called nursery, what does that word actually even mean? Is it a room or an area? I'm unable to translate that word. When I search that word from pinterest I see lots of images of huge rooms with a crib and diaper changing table and some cute nick nack. Anyway... we are clearly not having much from that. Our nursery, if this can be called a nursery, contains of a crib and a shelf in the bedroom. 

Having the crib in the bedroom does make the room bit crowded, but that is fine. We bought an older style crib because those are smaller than the newer ones. The width and especially the lenght is shorter. I made a bumper pad for the crib before Likka was born. I'm happy I made one. Likka tends to push with her feet so that eventually she bumps her head to the head of the bed. I don't think she can harm herself even if there were no bumper bad, but I like that there is some cushion in between.

We already had a small shelf in the bedroom where we kept used but not yet dirty clothes. We emptied that shelf so we can keep Likka's clothes on that. Most of Likka's clothes are stored in the office in boxes but the ones that do fit or are just about to fit are on that shelf. The top shelf has shirts and similar and the middle shelf has pants. On the bottom shelf are some outdoors clothes, which are still too big. Inside the cabinet are the bed linen for the crib and some bigger hats and mittens.

On top of the shelf are some containers with more of Likka's clothes and other necessary items.One of the containers has socks and other has hats. One of the smaller containers is empty and the other one has Likka's hair brush and comb. Also there is a small flash light which I used to use when checking Likka's diaper at night.

I haven't really decorated the nursery area, I did buy a house shaped shelf from Luhta for some keepsakes. The pineable decorations also refer to Likka's real name, I thought those would be funny, but I don't think we will have those on the wall forever.

So that's the nursery. Small, but there is everything Likka needs.

Uh-oh, it wont hold

Don't worry, we still have the headboard canvas. This post is about the bedside tables, I just used the above picture to show those bedside tables, incase you've forgotten what they are like.

After painting the bedroom and reinstalling the bedside tables the old fixings didn't hold up anymore. My bedside table, on the left, was a bit loose even before the reinstallation. But now even A's side was coming off from the wall.

See, it's loose and it was starting to feel bit scary, I was afraid to place my drinking glass on the table, it felt like that could collaps the whole thing. So off to the hardware store I went and I bought special drywall anchors, I had previously used just regular plugs, which even might had been too big. I don't think they squeezed the wall well. Then I removed the tables and I saw that the old plugs were definitely loose. I pulled out the old plugs.

The drywall anchor was screwed to the drywall. It seemed really solid, I guess sometimes buying the right gear makes all the difference. 

No gap anymore, whew!

Head"board"

Creating a headboard for our bed has been on my list of to-do's for years. Now because the kid is on it's way and we have placed the crib in the bedroom in the foot of the bed, there really is no room for a headboard. There is only a narrow path between our bed and the crib and even with the slimmest headboard the path will get too narrow, we need every cm/inch we can have there.

Instead of a proper headboard I thought of hanging a canvas on the wall to represent a headboard. I had bought a Marimekko fabric Räsymatto long time ago for a totally different project, which I then desided against on. Since I had that fabric and I still like it a lot just not with the project I originally thought of, I used that for a headboard.

I bought a piece of molding, cut that a bit wider than the fabric, then drilled two holes on the ends of the molding. I painted the ends of the molding with the same paint as I had painted the bedroom walls.

I sewed a casing on the top of the canvas where the molding goes through. Then drilled two holes high on the wall and hung the canvas with screws. I did also touch up the heads of the screws with the wall paint so those would be less visible.

I have seen these types of fabrics hung on the head of the beds in various design magazines. I must admit that I'm quite sceptical if these are very handy. I know they can look good, but what will happen when we lean onto the wall? Because I do not know anyone who will just lean, people will also slowly slide down against the wall. Will the fabric stretch or even rip eventually? Any experience, anyone?

Bumper pad for the crib

From my own childhood I have an under sheet that was used a lot in my bed. I have never been able to throw that sheet away, even though it's in quite poor shape. I cannot remember when I got that sheet, perhaps when I was around three years old and used it for a long time. I think I remember having the sheet in my bed even when I was in high school.

For someone in high school the sheet is perhaps a bit embarrasing, because it has images of trains, this is the sheet which I mentioned in this post, where I said the sheet reminds me of the Marimekko Bo boo design. Some months ago I took the sheet down from where I have been storing it and examined it's condition. It was very pilled and the print colours had faded especially from the center.

The egdes were on better shape, although even those could look better. I wanted to make something from this sheet, I was just unable to throw the sheet away without even trying to use it somehow. So since the ends of the sheet were only somewhat usable I had to make something long from the sheet and then it occurred to me to make a bumper pad for the crib from it.

I used the train fabric only on the surface that faces the inside of the crib and used some old linen fabric on the other side. On the top I added some ribbons so the pad can be fastened to the crib. Inside is some wadding. I could have designed the placement of the ribbons better and there could be more of those, so it would be easier to attach to the crib, but this works too.

I was really lazy and did not measure the circumference of the crib and the pad is bit longer than needed so it's just layered twice partly, but that's fine. Also I seem to be unable to take in between photos these days. I just always forget. Anyway I think the bumber pad is awesome! Love the trains still.

Bedroom painting is done

Remarkable, only a week and the bedroom is all painted. Wohoo!! Last week I wrote a post about starting the painting. So I removed the moldings and teared the loose wallpaper away. I again did not remove the wallpaper fully. From the experience from the office I know it just is too much of a hassle. Besides the result with the wallpaper under the paint is not bad at all, maybe the edges can be seen a bit, but that fine for me.

I spackled the edges and the holes of the wallpaper and then sanded the spackle smooth. The amount of dust from the sanding was overwhelming, luckily I had covered the bed with sheets so it did not get dusty.

Then some covering of floor, taping some edges and then finally painting. I almost run out of paint so I had to water it down a bit for the last wall but the coverage was still good, so I was lucky that I did not have to get another bucket of paint. I had chosen a very light gray colour for the walls.

The window wall did not have any wallpaper and it was originally painted white, but after I had painted the wallpapered walls the window wall looked really dingy. I tried washing it but it did not help, so I painted that too. But I used plain white on that wall.

Once all the painting was done I attached the moldings back. I was luckily wise enough that I had written on the back of the molding which piece goes where. The molding were originally nailed on the walls but I prefer screws, those are much easier to handle especially if those ever want to be removed and put back again. 

Bit murky picture above but there is the corner of the window wall painted white and the wall painted light gray. The gray I chose does in my opinion have a slight green tone, which was not my original plan. According to my sister all the walls are white and according to A the walls are gray, but once I mentioned the green tone, he said that he might see it there. So maybe it's gray enough.

So above the bedroom wall first with the light on and then with the ceiling light off. The pictures are a bit grainy, sorry about that. And underneath is the wall before.

One room per summer?

Last summer I had a project to renew the office, now I started to work on painting the bedroom. One has to have projects, doesn't one?

Mostly white duvet cover for the kid

Just when I said that I want to have lots of colours in our kid's sheets, well I need to take those words back. Because I made a white duvet cover for the kid. I just happened to have this sweet ribbon and wanted to use it somewhere. I had bought the ribbon from a thrift store years ago.

The middle part of the duvet cover is an old waffle towel I got from A's mom, the edges and the back are from the old sheets we inherited.

Also linking to Op-Shop Show-Off, because of the ribbon.

Carrot duvet cover for the kid

For our bed I do not qualify anything else than white linen. I love the fresh white feel of the bed linen, I think white just looks always good. But for the kid's bed, well that is a whole different story... 

For the kid I want colour and lots of it and when I discovered yet again the orange double undersheet from our linen cabinet and realized we are never going to use it in our own bed I desided to make a duvet cover for the kid from the sheet. I think the undersheet was originally A's parents, but it has moved long ago to A's own home and then to our home. I am normally quite ruthless when it comes to sheets and do donate them quite easily, but this undersheet has somehow survived. With the white short stripes it reminds me of a carrot and the sheet has always humoured me.

I used the sheet to make a carrot duvet cover for the kid. I love the old sheet in this purpose. I'm still left with a quite large piece of the undersheet, some of it will be used for one other project, but there might be few more projects coming with this carrot fabric.

Airing day

Sorry to have been this quiet lately, I have no particular reason except that I have not done anything blog worthy, which actually is quite rare. Also next week I most likely will not post much. But then I have a good reason. I will tell you later, although it's most likely not that exciting.

On the weekend I took the bedroom blankets and pillows out to air and also some blankets from the living room. The living room carpets I threw on top of the snow to freshen them up.

I always put the blankets and pillows out with their dirty sheets, that way I don't have to mind if the laundry lines need wiping or if a bird poops on the pillows. When I bring them in and change the sheets. There aren't many better things than fresh smelling bedding and linen. Should air the textiles more often.

New night stands with painting disaster

So... the night stands, or the lack of them that I mentioned here are now ready and on their right places. This Ikea hack I made with the new night stands didn't seem to first work out at all. I bought two Expedit Cubes that can be attached to the wall (I can't find the cube from Ikea's webpage? Whaat!?) and the drawers to go inside the cube. My point on getting new bedside tables was that I wanted something that could be attached to the wall so vacuuming would be easier and also I wanted the new night stands to be slightly smaller ones than the old ones. Also I wanted them to be shiny white, the old ones we had were brown.

I forgot to take any proper before photos. But here you can somewhat see what we had before in the bed room. The picture is taken on spring when I was doing the spring clean.

Also I took a photo of the cabinet which I used when I placed the cabinets on sale in the web.

Dull thing was that the cubes I bought did not come in shiny white like I wanted but instead in the mat yellowish white. Also on the cubes the top and the bottom was supposed to be attached with screws through the boards. That would have meant that the screw head would be visible. Which meant that I needed to do some hacking.

I don't know what went through my my head when I started to assemble the cubes. Because for some odd reason I desided to attach the parts with plugs instead of making a deeper hole for the countersunk screw which I could have then spackled over. That would have been so much easier.

Anyway I was a jackass, because of course I was unable to put the plugs exactly on the same line so the sides of the cubes are now just a tiny bit closer to each other than they should and now the top drawer in the cube does not slide as well as it should. I would have never thought that the tolerances in Ikea furniture is this tight.

Once I got the cubes assembled I desided to spray paint them to shiny white. I started with a primer. I had bought one primer and two shiny top paint cans. The painting was a total disaster! It was just horrible! The primer spread out everywhere, luckily it didn't stick to anything I didn't want it to stick but the dust spread all over. And the smell, awfull!

Then I started with the top paint, it would have been okey, but from somewhere I got dust on the painted surface and the result was just bad. There were tiny pieces of dust on the surface and it looked horrible. Also I run out of paint, two cans was just too little. I had killed half of my brain cells in the smell and the result was horrendous. I was so annoyed that I didn't even take a picture of the horrible finish.

Then after listening to some advise from my colleaque I returned to using regular paint. I sanded the spray painting I had done and painted with furniture primer. I sanded again and then painted with shiny oil based paint with a mohair roller.

And the finish was so nice! I love the result I got when using the regular paint, I didn't have any dust problems either. Just look how shiny it is.

Then was just left to hang the cubes on the wall and assemble the drawers. I would have wanted to hung the cube just a bit lower but under the other cube is a socket which defines the hight.

Because I did not paint the underside so here you can see what the screw would have looked like if it was on the top.

After all the trouble I still do think the painting was worth it, I do love these cubes. I love the airy feeling they have because they seem to float next to the bed. If I would have been happy with the shade of white the cubes were I think I could have just covered the top to hide the screws. Like a glass plate that has a painted underside or a painted board.