Old new kitchen table

Like mentioned here we got rid of our kitchen table to make room for a new one or actually an old one. The table is not exactly antique but old anyway. It is my sister's table, but she does not have room for it at the moment so we are keeping it for her. The style of the table is not something I normally like. I'm more of a fan of modern or mid century furniture, but yet I like this old table. Perhaps it is because it's on loan, I do not need to keep it forever or because it is about the only decorative furniture in our home and therefore it's not overwhelming. Or maybe it's because my sister has recovered the chair cushions with modern fabric. 

I'm happy to keep the table for her. This table is way better than the one we used to have. I also like that this is rectangular in shape, the old one wasted a lot of floor space. We also decided to have the other table against the wall, before we had the table in front of the window. Now there is much more space between the table and the sink. On the picture below is the old table and how it was placed.

Before and after: True minimalism

We used to have a dining table in our kitchen, but we sold it. The kitchen feels so big, fresh and open to new which makes me feel good. I've been sitting on the floor of the kitchen and just admiring the openness. 

But really, that is not how it's going to stay. We are not true minimalists. We are getting a table. My sister is moving together with her boyfriend and she has a very nice old table and chairs which do not fit into their apartment at the moment. So we have agreed to store the table until they do have space for it. And therefore we sold the old kitchen table which was nothing fancy and my sister's table is much nicer. The table we had sold much faster than we thought and now for a while we are going without a table. We do have a dining table in the living room, although it is bit of a hassle to transport all the food and tableware there all the time. Anyway I have found it quite nice still to have the kitchen so empty, it feels refreshing. Now we also had the opportunity clean the floor and the radiator thoroughly.

White sofa

We have white slip covers on the sofa. The covers do need to washed from time to time. I had not washed them for a while (maybe for a year), it is bit of a hassle to take the covers off and put them back on. But surprisingly I do not think those have needed washing until now, maybe my standards of cleanliness or whiteness are not that high. 

Removing the covers for washing reminds me of why I made the slip covers in the first place. The sofa frame and the cushion fillings are in very good shape, but the upholstery is really worn. The pillows have holes and stains. Considering it's age, about 30 years, it's a miracle the upholstery is the only thing that is worn. The sofa is obviously well made, I love the it, the proportions are excellent and it's good to sit on. Odd to see the sofa in it's original colour.

Incoming mail slot

Besides some unfinished sewing and knitting I have been very unactive around the house. We were sledding three weekends ago and the sleds are still by the front door outside. I have a pile of Christmas CDs on the coffee table that I cannot seem to put in place. The kitchen is a constant mess and we only finally last week did the basic cleaning we are supposed to do in every two weeks, but I don't know how long it had been since we had done it last time and I don't even want to know. After removing the shelf from the entry and placing the metal cabinet there I've had the incoming mail slot cube on the floor forever. On Saturday that finally found its place.

I screwed it on the wall next to the metal cabinet. I drilled two holes on the back plate of the cube and then screwed it on the wall. I have made the incoming mail cube few years back from plywood to specifically fit the old shelf we had in the entry. The cube has a slot for A, for me, for us together and for unpaid bills. The incoming mail cube has been the best working organizing system we have in the whole apartment, especially the unpaid bills slot. We see in an instant if there is something that needs our attention. The other slots we empty once in a while. It was very important to find a place for this mail slot cube.

Metal cabinet

You saw this metal cabinet partly already. I found it from the metal trash from work, I had been looking for something like this for quite some time. It barely fit into my car, but I'm really happy it did. I'm not sure A is that happy about the cabinet. He thinks it's hideous and would fit way better into a garage or similar. A said the cabinet might be better painted white. But I don't know, I like the old, scratched look.

Anyway he did help me to break into the cabinets, only two of the doors had keys, the rest were locked. Ignore the boxes on the floor.

On the picture on top is the shelf we used to have in the entry. I found it so dull, handy yes, but so dull. So what do think, are you with me or with A?

Oh yes, and linking to

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.

Enthusiasm bites me back

Being enthusiastic is normally a good thing but being enthusiastic and way too optimistic about the time it takes to hack two IKEA bed side tables can lead to having no bed side tables at all. 

I placed an add for our old bed side tables in the net and one person was interested in them so I lifted them to the entry. But she didn't come to get them, so technically we still have bed side tables, I just wont bother lifting them back. The new ones are like almost done... almost.

The office tour

Hello and welcome to the office tour! The office is finally finished, at least I'm calling it finished even though there were a few things on the to do list that I am still left to do. Hover over the next three pictures to see the before picture. (Thank you Christina for the tutorial about the animation)

I couldn't be happier about the new office space, we have so much open floor area and I have plenty of work surface for taking photos, sewing, crafting and working with the computer. I now have the table higher than it was before so I can also stand while working.

 

I'm still so in love with my wall cubbies. I placed in them stuff I use most often. One of the clear boxes holds glues and other different tools. I have my sewing toolbox on the top cubbie and there is also some yarn. On display I have my tapes, so I remember to use them.

The door side of the room has A's shelf and the guest bed that I bought and attached the Sesam wall bed mechanism to. Now it takes so little space, I love it. I am still planning to build a closet to hide the bed, but I'm not hurrying that, I will build it when I have some time and motivation for it.

I was also planning to get a new office chair for A, but we have not find any that both looked good and was functional. Many nice looking chairs lacked some ergonical issues like armrests and the adjustments were poor. I might make a slip cover for the chair later.

The other side is mostly mine. The narrow shelf part on the right holds more of A's stuff. But most of the shelf holds my things. When I planned what I should keep in my shelf I desided to give some area to the unfinished crafts projects. So I added one wooden box and two baskets on the bottom of the shelf on the left. Now I'm happy to say those are mostly empty, but usually I have many craft projects going on at the same time and previously I had no place where to keep those so they just sat on all horizontal surfaces which did not look good.

Lastly, this is my view to the garden from my work space. I love being able to see outside while creating.

 

Hope you enjoyed the tour. I certainly did. 

Cubbies on the wall

Remember those cubbies I showed long long time ago? Perhaps not. Anyway these were part of the heritage we got some time ago. Since then the cubbies have been waiting for the painting in the office to be finished. That was a long wait.

I took out the shelves with cardboard boxes from the cubbies. The boxes were glued really hard on the shelves and  first tryed to rip the boxes off, but the shelf boards broke and I ended up throwing all the shelves and the boxes to trash. In the end I did not even need the shelves, since I desided to turn the cubbies on their side.

I drilled holes to back plate of the cubbies and asked A to hold the first cubbie on level against the wall. After I marked the places of the holes I drilled the wall and attached the first cubbie on the wall with srews. To level the second shelf with the first one I used books to hold the second cubbie on the wall while I marked the places to drill.

I think the cubbies are super nice and handy too. Here you also see my work surface. We had a table in the office before but I didn't like it's wooden colour, so I bought a new table top from Ikea and attached the old legs to it.

Now I have been filling the shelf (that you can just see in the right there) and the cubbies with stuff. It's unbeliavable that the office is almost finished!

All shelves are painted

 
All the shelves are now painted! Finally! 

It took way longer than I thought. I assumed it will take me about one week to finish each side of the room to  paint the walls and the shelves. But it took more like one month to finish each side of the room. Huh, but now they are ready. How amazing is that!

For these shelves I needed to buy quite a lot of paint. I used branch varnish on places where I was afraid the resin would show through the white paint. I think I could have gotten a lot of shelves from lets say Ikea for just the price of the paints. But these shelves we had are expensive brand and they are quite versatile and good quality so it was no point getting rid of those. And new Ikea particle board furniture won't last for decades like these shelves have already done. These are the paints I used.

• branch varnish 3 desiliters (did not need as much, but it was the smallest jar I could find)
• primer 3 liters
• finishing paint (semi-glos) 2 liters

I painted twice with the primer and one time with the top paint. I had to paint the edges two times, the paint did not stick as well on the edges as on the bigger surfaces. The bigger surfaces were sanded by the belt grinder and the edges by hand and I think there was still more old varnish left on the edges so the paint did not stick as well.

What I did horrible wrong with the painting was the scheduling. I had not realized it takes so long for the top layer to dry, which was three days. The paint will feel dry after few hours, but there was this sticky feeling to it and that was only gone after the three days. I also made the painting more tiring for me because I did it actually in 5 sections

1. sanding and painting the first shelf from the other wall
2. sanding and painting the new shelves I bought used
3. painting the vertical support piece that I used as a drying stand
4. sanding and painting the second shelf from the second wall
5. painting the vertical support piece that I used as a drying stand

This makes me realize why it took so long in the end to finish all of the shelf. But it would have been quite difficult to empty all the shelves at the same go, but I atleast should have bought the new (used) shelves earlier so I could have combined painting them and the first shelf at the same time. Well... live and learn.

Ah, but how I do love them! Maybe I love the shelves even more because of all the work the painting included. I'm so happy.

Saw dust

After sanding of one shelf the surroundings looked like this. Everything was covered in saw dust, including me.

One shelf is up!

Hihhey! The shelf for the painted side of the room is now dry and assembled! Yay! It's white! So pretty.

I must say the assembly was not pretty. I placed the top, bottom and middle shelf on the vertical support pieces, which was freakingly difficult because I didn't have anyone to help me. A is in Shanghai for two weeks and I did not want to wait putting the shelf up.

I had the shelf lying on the floor and then tried to measure that the shelf would be straight before I screwed the cross support on the back. I lost my nerve when I made the measurements, the measuring tape just did not stay on place and my arm didn't reach anywhere and I got really mad. Also I made the mistake of starting to put the shelf together while I was hungry. I guess my blod sugar was too low because I started coursing to the shelf. Now I've eaten and the shelf is also up and not crooked so I feel lot better.

That table top that sticks out from the shelf will be A's work surface. A tends to pile stuff on horizontal surfaces so I thought to prevent that he should not have as much space for it as before. And we will get separate work areas, so his stuff wont slide onto mine.

The shelf under the work surface is for collecting the cord mess, I plan to tuck all the excess cords there and maybe also the external hard drives. I hope the shelf does not hit his knees. The bottom shelf on the right most likely needs to be moved away since I think it will be on the way of A's feet and also the computer tower needs to be placed somewhere.

But it's up, Wohoo! Next I need to move some stuff on the shelf to make room for the other side of the room so I can paint that side and the shelf there.