Tuesday 23 August 2016

Hello from the USA


While a lot of our readers and customers are from the USA, this time I am in the USA myself!
This is my very first time to go across the ocean and it has been so exciting to be here and explore. I arrived in San Francisco after a very long journey of about 30 hours. With a 10 hour time difference I was jet lagged for about 3 days but during that time I walked a lot around the city.


View from my hotel room window with beautiful old buildings right across.


The room itself was stylish and even had a map which I love, it was also pretty central so I could walk a lot, I eventually walked a little too much as my legs ached from day two on but that can not really be avoided when you visit a city for a short time :)



On the first day I walked about 15 km and saw so many amazing old buildings, the city is very picturesque and some  houses seem like to be made out  of candy :)



I walked some streets that are not touristic at all so I had it very nicely calm and could just enjoy the surroundings.



At some spots were some beautiful trees like large scale bonsai trees.



Before it was clear that I was going to San Francisco I did not know much about the city, for example the weather is totally not what you would expect from California and is pretty cool and even chilly in the nights and during the day it is like Fall or Spring. It has its own climate really, and as soon as you drive out of there it is hot.





The roads go up and down and up and down and some are actually very steep and hard to walk, both up and down is a tough exercise and apparently car brakes are changed here twice as much compared to most other places, because of all these steep roads.



Here below you can see the Lombard street, famous due to the fact that it goes zigzag down and it was very crowded and hard to take a decent picture.



This road down towards the pier was actually so steep that going down my toe nails were pushing in my shoes, it was a hard trip lol :)


And my first and for now last peek at the Golden Gate bridge, not much to see due to fog which is apparently very often the case.




I love love love these fairy tale buildings, they are so very pretty and sweet.


I walked the entire Fisherman's wharf, passed all the piers.



They had a lovely souvenir shop full with globes, maps and nautical stuff, totally my style :)


This is the wheel of an old boat, a boat with a huge paddle wheel which were usually used for rivers.




Lots of fish restaurants. as I do not eat fish I was quite hungry by the time I had walked the entire wharf :)



The famous pier 39, unfortunately I did not see any sea-lions, but it was pretty anyway, I was starting to get pretty tired so I didn't investigate much so maybe I just missed them.




And this is the Bay Bridge which is very long and much used to get out of the city.



There are also a lot of modern buildings, but of course I prefer the old ones.


This was just from the first days and I am still in the states for 6 more days so I will blog again as soon as possible :) I hope you enjoyed the trip with me!


Monday 15 August 2016

From Trash to Treasure


A project of two broken chair this time. These chairs had pretty front legs, the back legs were broken off as they had back legs that continued as the back of the chair making it not a very strong construction.


First I removed all the wood and seats that won't be used.


The original sides were straight but the fronts had a nice shape so I cut two pieces of wood in that same fun shape.


After having this construction clamped for a day.


I sanded it entirely and also added strengtheners to the wood and wooden lats for easier upholstering.


I then applied two layers of white paint to make the color of the entire stool equal.


And then in green and purple, which also needed to be done twice.


Painting straight stripes is a tedious thing to do but the results are always fun :)


And the result! Not what you expect from two broken chairs, isn't it?


The purple paint was chosen to match this amazing vintage embroidery. And as we both love the green-purple combo the remaining of the wood became green.


Funny enough the shape of the wood matches the shape of the embroidery (you know the shape I had cut out) which is a total happy coincidence!


The vintage embroidery is done on linen and is called 'drawn thread embroidery'.


The embroidery has not been attached to the stool as we would have had to ruin the originality of the embroidery. Another plus point is that the embroidery can be removed for dry cleaning.
The stool is available at StarHomeStudio, where you can see more pictures.