Proof of Life

I can't believe it has been 5 months without blogging! That never happened, not even 1 month!

Things have been hectic and blogging and social media have suffered under it, I'm going to do my best to blog regurlarly again as I do love it.

You might remember that we bough a house almost 2 years ago. We first moved our working space, which took almost 6 months and then slowly the house as we were on zero budget and a lot needed to be bought and done on the new house as no one had lived in it  before a lot of things were missing, like a stove and warm water boiler etc.

After moving the house I worked on both the new house (garden, curtains, shelves and a million other things) but also continued emptying the massive amount of stuff from the old house (attic full of vintage items and furniture, thousands of books etc).

Our old house is a beautiful house full of wooden details but we have lived there for 20+ years and had 10 dogs and our working area it was very tired. As we hope to sell it for a good price I have been renovating it, myself and also with some paid help. Interior and exterior walls have been painted, some roof repair etc. I have been fixing a lot of furniture pieces that were previously in the attic. They are all vintage, I sold a bunch of furniture locally through Facebook marketplace and Letgo to empty the house (and for some cash) and also been fixing those that we are using to stage the house.

It has been tiring but also very satisfying to see these old sad pieces come to life again! This room's very dark wardrobe made it dark. As it wasn't in perfect vintage condition I did not feel guilty to paint it to make it fun. The paint work is inspired by the chair in the corner, which was brown before and did not have cushions. The fun blue fabric was also used for a long cushion on the bed. The mirror is also an old and very heavy piece that used to be gold and dreary. The pelican photo was taken by me in Florida.

Only the bed matrass was bought everything else we already had and was just a question of spending time and effort to make it.

Our pretty varanda that used to be our workspace is now a spacious living area. The couch set was a sad outdated brown 1970s set that we at one point wanted to give to a friend and didn't want (for free) and is now beautiful. I painted the wood off white and upholstered it with Gray-offwhite fabric. If we had no dogs I would have wanted it in the new house! There is also a table set on this veranda that also got painted and new cushions and a work table got a make over, I'm only showing parts!

This sad little cabinet had some missing pieces, and is now one of my favorite furniture pieces in the house. Not sure if I'm going to sell it once the house is sold as I love it now.

The seating area furniture belongs to the house but the wood was sad and dark.

A bit more spicey, light and fun and about 10 hours of paint work.

All these midcentury pieces were in the super full attic but now have been great to stage the house. They all needed work though.

I upholstered the sides as the wood was bad and dark.

The chair in the corner got the same fabric as the bed to match. I fixed the vanity (no before pics. And am going to fix a chair to put in front of it.

I forgot to picture many other pieces and I sold 5 large furniture pieces which made a lot of space.

I'll soon show the new house as well which finally has a garden, not entirely finished and a bit of a mess which is another story for another day :)

Kitchen Update

I finally got a little visible progress in the kitchen.

Removing the protective stickers already helped a lot.

The table is another project that I hope to finish this week. It is a gorgeous table which was our table in the Netherlands but it has been in the house in Kütahya for 22 years to it got some water damage. You'll see soon how that turns out.

I bought a special tile paint, it shines like tile and keeps the texture.

Ahhhh so much better, wish I had cleared things up before taking the photo but I had been painting for 4+ hours by then and just wanted to go home. The kitchen feels much more like it belongs to us. The shiny handles wouldn't be our choice either but we can live with those :) In the future we want to move the kitchen to a room that for now will be our office, a closed kitchen will be more practical with the dogs, but that is a big (expensive) change that will have to wait some years. The kitchen is also not designed very practical, I think there is like 8-9 meters between the fridge and the stove :D The kitchen is the only place we are not happy with of the house, but it is huge so that makes it up quite a bit.

Some Home Renovations

If you have been following our blog for a while you might remember this shed. It had a new door and path a few years ago. With the thought that I would also organize the inside a bit I took an inside photo back then but never got to the organizing.

This shed holds our warm water boiler, washer, dryer, lawn mower, a toilet, garden tools, and general tools. A tiny place with lots of stuff. On top of that, the shed is not a straight rectangle but instead, polygon shaped, hence why the washer and dryer were so oddly placed. I actually thought it wouldn't fit side by side or if it did we would lose a lot of space as we can't put them all the way against the back wall but during one sleepless night I thought about something and the next morning I measured it up and turned out my plan was doable.

While the washer was almost against the toilet before, now there is plenty of space between those two things to easily open and use the washer.

It was a simple solution. I measured the odd space and had a white MDF cut in shape, this gave a large table space for detergents and sorting laundry, the lost space in the back was not such a loss because of that. Besides the general space got much larger so we actually won space.

Mum also wanted a faucet there, so I dug up this sink we had at the attic (given to us ages ago), I bought brackets for it, and I took the old faucet from our kitchen (we wanted new ones in the kitchen for ages anyway so that got done in the procress as well). As I did all the plumbing work etc it hardly costed a thing.

When the floor got so open the ugly gray floor bothered me so I painted it teal for some fresh color. And even though we added a sink the space is still bigger then it was before with all the same stuff in it. It is still a weird mixture of stuff but it is a handy space which we use all the time.

The shelves I also completely reorganized before there was all kind of bags, boxes and old drawers, just when I started this project I found these crates at the curb, which were perfect! Total cost for this entire makeover was 48$ (paint, MDF, plumbing tools, new trash bin to fit the space at the left and brackets to hang the sink), the value for us; a million bucks :D

And it seems renovations are contagious as I decided to also tackle our entry stairs, which you can also see here when I did some other TLC in this area.

There are some small finishing touches to do but it is a much cleaner and fresher entry now :)

DIY in your home is so satisfying when you see the before and after, a house is like a living thing, it constantly needs work and attention :D

Tender Loving Care

I have been giving some TLC around the house. Last Winter I have finished quite some projects and we are still enjoying the results so I thought it was best to continue fixing up the things I can fix up on a budget :)
This is our garden door, we actually have two. This way if any of the dogs escape they don't end up on the street. It's not that they would want to run away but they are curious and can wander off and get lost.
It was in a very sad state, the door actually has started to hang, cracking the wall in the process and making it almost impossible to close it, it was beside ugly super annoying.
But let me get in to the details :)

Our sad little postbox. It is hardly ever used, all our phone, internet and credit card bills come through email to save paper. Normal post comes in a PO box at the postoffice. Only thing that comes in there is are the electricity and water bills as they are read every month.

After a metal worker fixed the door and also all 4 other metal doors that we have in the garden got some care and new door handles. The slide locks where a hell to open and were ugly too. As to answer your mental question of 5 doors, they separate the garden in parts. With 10 dogs, no man can get in our garden. But sometime someone needs to get in, like an electrician to fix something. We then lock them up in the back garden. The garden can be divided in 3 different ways which is handy :)
I filled up the crack in the wall, brushed the postal box and painted it with anti rust paint. Same goes for the iron door, with its pretty new door handle :)

So much better :)
You know for you it doesn't seem much, but when you pass these doors every day it is super annoying and after wards very satisfying (yes I am satisfied with small things in life, p.s. Happy Thanksgiving :)!)

Between the two front doors are our water and electricity meters. We had to move both of them as the guys coming to read them just can't get in. Our doggies are feminists, they can get along with ladies (if they are nice) but guys get always a few nibbles :D

The electricity meter was also rusting and got two coats of paint.

The second door got stuck all the time, and a very difficult sliding lock, was rusting and the white plastic that was attached to it looked miserable.

The new lock was a huge improvement, one of the hinge got replaced so that the door doesn't get stuck anymore. I painted the door and then sewed a beautiful natural looking fiber stuff and attached it to the door. This door has never worked so smoothly and never looked so nice in the 15 years we had it, yaaay!

With only a little cost and many hours of painting, I am happy with the results :) The other 3 doors are still in progress, I have to paint them in bits because of the doggies, but the end is near. Also some metal garden furniture is getting some love.
Do you do any work around the house yourself? Don't you just love giving stuff some attention?

Merry Christmas!

We here by would like to wish everyone a very merry Christmas!

For us the past 7 years Christmas is the time we work harder than ever, which we are thankful for of course but doesn't leave much time to celebrate :)
We never have snow around here, its too warm for that, but we will now rest a bit and enjoy our merry and bright bathroom!

I painted the ceiling 3 times, only need to give the grouts some tender loving care and then clean it up all nicely but we are very happy with the result, considering how it used to look this is a huge improvement :)

More Progress!

I'm so happy with the progress that we've had these past 2 weeks. You know you annoy yourself for years on things on your house and when you finally do it you think 'why did I not do this years ago?!'. The things that have been done are that kind of things, it didn't even cost a lot of money nor time, it was just a question of getting in to action, which was exactly why I shared the plans here for an extra kick in the behind :)
I've already show the shed before with the new door, in the mean time the surroundings of the door has been plastered, I will paint the walls of it this week. I also mentioned a stone path. You see the shed is our laundry room and we walk through that part of the garden almost every day (you know laundry grows during the night). The problem here was that with walking on the grass for years the ground was lower, making it a perfect rout for water, aka rain but also sprinklers water. So often walking to the laundry room was a muddy business like doing the laundry wasn't torture enough :)

We now have a pretty stone path there, every time I walk by or on it I smile, these little things give such a pleasure :)
You can also see a metal square thing in the ground on the right side.

This is that door up close. It goes to an underground room, which is not a bomb shelter but the mechanical room for our swimming pool (which we haven't used for years as it costs so much money to maintain clean). This little door has also been annoying me for years, it's so ugly.

I spray painted it green, it costed me 25 minutes (including waiting between 2 layers), it costed about 3.50$ and has been the cheapest and quickest yet one of the most satisfying make overs ever :)

The path continues until the shed, where usually a lot of water gathered, including between the house and shed, now no water will go there and everything will stay dry and pretty.

So if you have small annoying things in the house that you have been wanting to fix for ages, by all means; go for it! It is thrilling, satisfying and cheaper than therapy :)

An as I have been showing a lot of home renovation projects I also wanted to share a creative before / after project.

This bag was entirely hand knitted by mum, all in one piece with lots of colors, 100% wool, making it perfect to felt.

Once she knitted it and felted it in the washing machine, I have sewn the lining and kiss lock, and attached a chain with upcycled leather strap on it.

Making it an adorable and colorful little purse, available at StarBags.