dining room - part 2

by jona on Monday, November 30, 2009


so dining room is partly finished.. all that's missing is some sort of wall ornament for the wall, nice ceiling pendant and maybe a new runner

for the pendant i'm thinking something like this:


but seriously though, can a room really be finished? just something to ponder on.. hehe

anyway, for dining, i decided to go black for main furniture with a splash of whites and grays with a hint of brown.

here are some before and after shots:

- wine rack stained in black.. might be a tad too black tho...


- hall table painted in black and varnished (silly me bought matt black paint)


- dining chairs reupholstered


- also, as i was pulling down the old curtains in the nursery, i noticed the once were blue tie backs have faded quite nicely into silver.. and thought they might go well with my new white curtains in the dining :)


then i thought, hmmm not sure about the gold though.. what if i painted them white....


they are now hanging very happily in their new home :)

there are still a bit of faded blue here n there to it but i think it gives the tie back some sort of character



and without further ado.. my dining room :)



so far........ haha


will be posting on reupholstery steps soon

ciao for now!xox




White on White Picture Wall

by Rustic Pieces on Wednesday, November 25, 2009


Awhile ago I mentioned that I had frames that needed to be finished on my to do list. Here are the beautiful golden frames I inherited from Rain's aunt months ago:



Nice slightly ornate gold frames, just needed some white paint! Here it is after a few coats of paint:




So I finally managed to get pictures for them printed out and I thought all I needed to do was get some plain white cardboard for the background. It looked awful!! The school project cardboard look just didn't go. And then I found out today that there are proper mat boards for this kind of thing, NOT cardboard. So I will need to hunt around for a board that's cheap, abit off white in colour and the right size (38cm x 38cm).

In the meantime I thought I'd look around and see how white frames look on white walls. I'm worrying that it will look abit too white, but the ones I found look reeal good! I think I might also chuck in some darker coloured frames on the same wall but first gota finish these off. So fingers crossed I'll find my mat boards soon!







 

 

I know the last one isn't actually white on white but how good does it look!! I LOVE stripes, which I'm planning to do in one of our rooms and I love how a whole bunch of different shapes and sizes manage to match with each other.






Overdue Updates

by Rustic Pieces on Saturday, November 21, 2009


Holiday fever has definitely hit me hard and I'm having way too much trouble focusing on what I should be doing! This will have to be a VERY short quick update since I'm about to head off and watch NEW MOON!!! (HELLO TWILIGHT FANS!!)



Our very first Christmas tree was a steal I found last December at the end of year Christmas sales. From $210 down to $20 at KMart! You can't go past a bargain like that! I'm planning to hit the after Christmas sales again to stock up on new decos for next year, I'd love to have a Tiffany blue / silver theme instead of gold which are well loved hand me down ornaments from my parents.

Finally as promised I managed to get pics of the finished dining table. So here is the before picture, just a normal wooden dining table that had been in my family for over 10 years. Still in beautiful shape, just a few scratches and the wrong colour.




Here is a picture of my "workshop". Chairs with just prep coats of primer but they already started to look much better!



And finally the finished product is ready:









That's it for now, hope you enjoyed the pics! Sorry I have to run but I'll post up more soooon.

Have an awesome weekend!



dining room - part 1

by Rustic Pieces on Sunday, November 15, 2009


so as per my recent blog 85% done kitchen makeover, i have moved over to the dining area. Surprise surprise! i actually have a decent before photo.

Before Photo of Dining:


I kinda dont mind this room actually, but it just didn't feel like my taste. haha 'my' taste! sorry aaron, you dont get a say in this lol.

so i am now in the process of slowly changing things around.

i really wanted some sort of buffet in there to hold our nice cutlery, preferably with a built in wine rack too to replace our sad looking 9x9 two dollar rack. But because of the limited space (room is only 2.7m x 3.4m), normal sized buffets are just a tad too big.

so i have been on ebay non-stop trying to look for a buffet that measured no more than a metre n a half long with 35cm in depth, at the same time looking for new lamps for the master bed.. and whadoyouknow! i came across these lamps going for $29.95 for two plus $12 postage.

i showed abby my find and was threatened if i didn't hurry up she would grab it.. and so i got paranoid and bought it.. without reading the description "buffet lamps" :/
yes i know. i got too excited.. i didn't even realise they were buffet lamps until it arrived the next day and aaron told me they were too high and will be an effort to turn on and off while in bed :/

so i've got these beautiful lamps with no buffet table :/

a week later i found this wine rack for $10 and couldn't resist..

1. u can't go wrong with that price
2. i just had to get rid of our old wine rack and thought it'll just be temporary until i found a buffet with built in wine rack. and;
3. u really can't go wrong with that price

naturally i kept searching for buffet tables with wine rack built in that measures no more than a metre n a half in length, 35cm depth and didn't cost over 100.. askin too much u say? you're probably right coz i didn't find any.
i got over it but still wanted some sort of side table and found this for $45:

i bought it hoping the lamps would match.. but theyre much too tall for a little hall table :(

so yes i still havent found a home for these lamps.. i'm determined tho.. maybe they can go in the 'soon to be' tv room :)

i know i bought items that weren't on the agenda but what can i say i'm a cheapskate.

i also purchased new curtains for $59.95 from spotlight.


and how can i forget about the dining chairs.
upclose of old fabric:

fabric i will be using for reupholster (grey with leafy design):


the other day i took one of the seats apart. it took me half an hour to unstaple the old fabric only to find out there's another layer of fabric to be unstapled!! grrrr! lucky the fabric was so old it was easier to rip em.

these chairs were that old, the foam would crumble in the slightest touch and the frame was all cracked!

so yesterday, i took aaron with me and went to bunnings to buy mdf board.. i am not going to do webbing as i am too lazy to do extra stapling plus i just don't have the tools to make the frame.
then to clark rubbber for the foam and wadding
aaron convinces me i should just get one for now in case it doesn't work.. i shouldn't have listened coz i laid everything last nite and it seemed ok.. and now i have to go back to bunnings and clark rubber to buy the rest!

stay tuned for the finished product as well as the after photo of the dining :)

85% done kitchen makeover

by Rustic Pieces on Saturday, November 7, 2009


i have no idea what came over me, but one day i just decided 'o i might paint the kitchen!'

maybe it was the hormones (i am 6 months pregnant) or maybe it was the fact that hubby and i are painting the whole house anyway.. but that's another story.

so off to bunnings i went and enquired if it was possible to paint on laminate.. and was informed that it IS possible to paint on laminate AND tile! :D
so bought miself the following:
- tile and laminate cleaner
- tile and laminate primer
- laminate paint

theyre all the same brands and the lady suggusted i do the 3 step process (clean, prime and paint) otherwise, warranty will be void.

i actually do not have a before photo because i keep forgetting to take em... thanks to abby she keeps reminding me :)

here are some 'kind of' before photos:

so imagine the bottom cupboards in the same colour as top cupboards.
and window sills in lovely brown colour




and after pics

the bottom cupboards were done with the laminate paint.. but the smell was just too much for a pregnant lady :) so i thought, 'hmm i wonder if normal paint works' (as we use water based paints for the house and has no smell at all). yes it does! the rest of the cupboards i used enamel paint.. and i thought they looked better than the laminate paint.
laminate paint gave a matt finish whereas enamel paint gave it a shine and is actually brighter and whiter.




my next project is to also paint the tile splashback.. so fingers crossed that works!

i would also like to change the yellow benchtop.. i haven't done any research on it yet.. but most probably we won't get an actual benchtop as we will be renovating the whole kitchen in the future so i'll probably just take the laminate top off and replace that.

but i probably won't be able to do anything until hopefully in the next month as I am quite over the kitchen!

I have actually moved on to the dining but i'll save that for another day :)

The Hutch Affair

by Rustic Pieces on Wednesday, November 4, 2009


It all began one day early this winter when we stopped off at Berry. I love Berry! Maybe because I don't get to see it as much since it's about 2 and a half hours south from Sydney. Berry is a beautiful authentic country town with a good old-fashioned style main strip filled with vintage cafes, an ice cream parlour, awesome pubs AND of course tons of country homeware shops!



So there we were just shopping around when I saw the most beautiful white hutch used as a display stand for odd bits and pieces. It was similar to this hutch here:



Beautiful and the perfect size! Not too large or deep with nice open shelves so that you can see the detail of the different wooden boards. Unfortunately it was priced at $800, so adding delivery cost would be around $900. So after failing to convince Rain that this was one of those investment pieces that would last forever and would be something that we would never ever regret or need to buy again, we left it behind.

A few months later while ebaying at random I came across the white hutch in the picture above for $355! I knew then that it was definitely a sign! But Rain was still not convinced and after another round of nagging I let that one go too. It turns out though that agreeing with him actually paid off, because a few days later I saw and won this on ebay for $70!!



Who could say no to that? It's exactly the same!! I soo can't wait to have it in my garage ready to be painted! It will have to wait until next week since we'll need all the room in our garage for our house warming BBQ this weekend. I'll definitely do an update once it's been through my paintshop. Other pieces that are on my to-do list are my dining set (which should be finished by tomorrow YAY!), a giant bookshelf from thanks to another great ebay sale and the refurbishing of my old frames (yes, jona still not done, not happy jan!). I'll also need to find or get a new USB cord for my camera so I can actually have more pics to put on show.

Anyhoo that's all for now, I'll be back after the BBQ with more updates!



Related Posts with Thumbnails