When I showed you my lounge area a few weeks back, Di wondered if the rest of the lounge/kitchen/dining area would also be up for a bit of stickybeaking too, well, Di this is for you!
This is how it all started out, with cream carpet, with vinyl flooring in the kitchen area, poles over the windows. a very curious bit of shelving to the side of the sink (where the microwave went, I think), an integral washer dryer hidden behind a cupboard door and a spotlight fitting on the ceiling.
The first thing I had done was to get the whole area painted from white to calico with white glossing. The carpet and vinyl were ripped out and oak flooring laid along the whole length of the room. A rose chandelier, the same as in the lounge area was fitted, as were two cream linen effect blinds on inside of the window to add depth to the wall. I also bought a tall fridge freezer for the kitchen.
The very first pieces of furniture I decided to buy were two white Ikea Hemnes glass door cabinets with drawers. I thought if two could fit between the two windows in the room, I could then work the rest of the room round them, they would be the focal part of the dining area, drawing the eye away from the less glamorous kitchen area. If I measured the space once, I measured it a hundred times, by my calculations I would just have a touch over 5cms from the edge of the window sills on either side, it was close, but they fit, perfectly, I was sooooooooo chuffed.
And it goes without saying that the plain, dull brown knobs were quickly replaced with shiny, sparkly ones from Home Bargains at £3.99 for a box of four.
Next followed an Ikea Bjursta/Borge table and chair set in oak finish. I chose that design because the table extends to accommodate eight people. It originally came with four chairs but after a week or so I quickly realised I could really do with another two for entertaining, fortunately, when not in use all the chairs still fit neatly under the unextended table, with no floor lost. The chairs have removable, washable, pale cream covers, but I also bought a spare set of sand coloured ones, just to be on the safe side, what with having baby fingers around!!!!!
The empty space above the sink was filled by fitting three kitchen cupboard units (without the doors) onto the wall, to provide much needed storage and a little display space. And last, but not least, a smaller, more modern mixer tap was fitted over the sink.
As I showed in my previous post, the drop leg table that I use for working at fits beautifully under the window, between the glass cabinet and the end kitchen cupboard, without any lose to floor space when down.
It’s all but finished, but not quite satisfied, after Christmas I have decided to have the space between the work surfaces and cupboards tiled, in the plainest, as near to calico coloured tiles as I can find, rather than leaving it just painted.
I also think I might like to exchange the gas hob for an electric one and the integral electric oven may also go as it makes a terrible racket when it’s on and I really wouldn’t trust it to anything like a delicate cake!
There’s also a space under the boiler which seems a bit of a waste, however I think that would take a lot of imagination and then some ingenuity to work out what could be done there, so I might have to live with it for a while yet until inspiration strikes.
I had an idea that I would like a quirky sort of cuckoo clock in the kitchen, sadly the clock doesn’t cuck, but the design is exactly what I had in my head. It’s an Allen Designs Fly Bird Clock and was a sort of present ….. I never buy anything online now without checking TopCashBack or Quidco to see if I can get any cashback on an order, and as it happened I had just received £20 cashback on my house contents insurance, well, it was a no brainer what I would put it towards. I had to shop around as the prices of the clock varied greatly from £33, which is what I paid, up to £53, so it also pays to shop around as well as “do” cash back, because in the end it only cost me £13.
I had never heard of Allen Designs before looking, but now I am a fan, there is a clock for anyone who likes quirky, but a clock in every room might look a bit on the obsessive side, so I will have to stop at just one!
Marc used an MDF ring as the base to his wreath.
But, as we were in a crafty mood and Marc was showing me all his beautiful shiny bits and pieces (oooow’er matron), it seemed rude and ungracious not to avail myself of a few of them ……….
…….. to embellish the wreath just a little bit more, there was no way I wanted Marc to think I was turning my nose up at his lovely glittery baubles ……
So …… on top of the various plain buttons more diamonds, pearls and shiny things were added, with Marc’s approval.
