May 24 2012
17 Comments
DIY, Our Flat, sew sew

Turning a dresser into a cabinet

Hello blog friends.

I finally got a chance to take a load of pictures of our new cabinet.

But first… remember this freecycled dresser?

Well, it’s now this:

Hold on a minute? Wasn’t that a perfectly lovely wooden dresser you just ripped up and painted? Well, yes and no. For one… the dresser was seriously light – the bulk of the wood was very thin pine (although to be honest, it was as light as balsa), with just a wafer of veneer over the top. It was nicely constructed, with dovetail joints in the drawers (which led us to believe it might be utility furniture from after the war). The veneer was damaged though, and because it was so thin there was no way of refinishing it, really, so painting it was an easy decision.

So I primed it

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and painted it (mizzle, by Farrow and Ball, “A soft blue grey reminiscent of a west country evening mist”) (ha!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As for ripping up it’s bones? Well. The fact is we don’t need a dresser. We needed a cabinet in the living room to keep kitchen overflow in (I wanted the bedroom’s one teeny closet back!). And we are never going to need a nice dresser, because one of the funny things about my family is that ALL our heirloom furniture is chests of drawers. (You can see one here). For some reason, my mum’s family seemed to hoard them and now she has them all. They’re all much older, better made and more beautiful than this one.

So this one? Became a cabinet of sorts. BUT. For now, I’ve done it in a way that it could be restored. I sawed the bits of wood from between the drawers off in a way that they could be replaced with careful use of woodfiller and mending plates. We’re currently using two of the drawers as shelves and storing the other two. The curtain has been attached with a tension rod (UK readers: Wilkinsons has these for about a third of the price of Homebase, by the way). So far, everything could easily be reversed.

This picture also shows how we lived with the cabinet for a bit (with the curtain on) before committing to sawing off the drawer bits, to see if we liked it. We did, so one lunch time I got my saw out, and this happened:

Down the line, if this piece has a permanent life as a cabinet? I’ll rip up the drawers to make proper shelves and try my hand at using the drawer fronts to make cabinet doors.

Back to those knobs…. here’s some close ups of the contenders…

After careful consideration, I’ve decided I like the painted wood ones best. Some of you thought these were white but they’re actually the same “mizzle” colour as the cabinet. I didn’t white balance for all of these pictures. This picture though, is a very good representation of the greeny-grey colour. I love it!

The best thing about this colour? It happened by accident – I ended up painting at my mum’s and forgot to bring enough paint of any of the colours I was considering. She had a load of mizzle left over from her bathroom, so I used it. Serendipity is lovely, non?

A closer view of the things on the top. A bunch of flowers from that Mr V, my gorgeous Roberts radio (he also gave me that!), a framed receipt from this shop (it’s handwritten), and a “Socialist Sunday school” print that I gave mr v for his most recent birthday (see, I give him things too!)

I made the curtain out of this Ikea fabric. You can see the stitch line a little down from the top – I made the rod pocket quite large so it would go over the bump in the rod easily. It’s lovely and thick so it (normally!) hangs really nicely and should be durable. I probably used less than half the metre I bought so I plan to dot a few matching accents off it around the room.

It annoys me that it isn’t hanging evenly in this photo! It normally does (I even put some pennies along the bottom seam to make sure it does, sigh). But having finally got around to taking pictures… you know how it is.

So, there we have the story of my new old cabinet!

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May 22 2012
7 Comments
DIY, Our Flat, sew sew

Works in progress

1) That darn cabinet dresser thing… I swear I’ll take some decent pictures later. Until then, I have a little query for you, which knob do you prefer? I originally only painted two of the right hand one (a cheapie pine knob I found in my mum’s shed) because I couldn’t find the green glass ones I bought ages ago. But now I’ve tracked them down, I think they’re all wrong and much prefer the plain ones. What do you think? I understand this will be easier once I’ve got some pictures of the piece in context, but there you go.

2) I spent a lovely weekend at my mum’s house, mainly sewing on the Cambie dress (as well as walking, talking to my mum, eating gorgeous food and having a lovely bath). Here’s how far I got by Sunday evening:

Ooh! I know it looks mainly done but I still have the whole lining to do and some fit issues to sort out. But! I have conquered many of my dressmaking fears, namely: cutting out (slow and steady, not too tricky really), gathering (did it while chatting to my brother, easy) and adding a zip (fine! not perfect but it’ll get easier every time).

3) Oh dear, remember that filing cabinet I was re-doing and kept promising you pictures of? Well. It ended up finding a resting place behind the sofa, so I never fully finished finished it, because you can’t see it. This meant I never got around to taking pictures of it, because I kept thinking I’d finish it properly). So, here is my promise that I will take some pictures of it in all its nearly finished glory (because it’s still a vast improvement) and share some pictures by next weekend. Or the one after, ha. (What? It’s finally sunny!). I just hope I can still find the before pictures, because it was fugly.

4) What are your works in progress at the moment?

5) Totally unrelated to the rest of this post but, I LOVED reading all your stories on my post about moving in together. If you left a comment early, be sure to go back and read the rest. I just love finding out how other couples work their way through big (and little) decisions together. You know?

 

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May 17 2012
36 Comments
Our Flat

When did you move in together?

Do you want to know something funny? Mr V and I met in November, and by the end of the next April, we’d moved in together!

People find that shocking, but we’d been discussing it since that January! It was so crazy, but at the same time it just made so much sense.

Before we met, I think I’d have thought moving in together so quickly was rather rash and sure to end in tears, but we just knew. You know?

I mean, pretty much as soon as we met we started spending every available moment together. Moving in together just made everything easier. We already did each others laundry, cooked each others dinners and all sorts of other domestic things. (We had this one weekend where I nursed him through a virus while he nursed me through a nasty allergic reaction. But, before we moved in together it always just felt like something was in the wrong place – sometimes it was clothes, sometimes toiletries, but most of the time it was the other person (d’awwwww).

For the first six months of living together, Mr V shared my bedroom in my big shared house, and then we moved to our lovely flat in Putney. And now, we’re engaged and, well, you know the rest.

In a wonderful stroke of luck, we’ve never really fought about anything domestic. I mean, Mr V hates my habit of leaving empty coffee cups everywhere and he won’t let me hang out our washing (fine by me!) since apparently I do it like a child, but, really, the last three years of living together has been so easy and makes me excited for the rest of our lives. Hooray!

So, tell me, how long did you and your partner wait before moving in together? Are you someone who wanted to be engaged, or did you go further and wait until you were married? Maybe you’re still waiting? Tell Momma Vita all about it.

Edited to add – I just realised that I wrote this in a bit of a rush last night and forgot that perhaps not all my readers live with someone. (All the ones I “know” through comments do!) If this is the case for you, I’d love to know about how you live now and what your thoughts are on cohabitation!

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May 15 2012
16 Comments
Our Flat, sew sew

A few things…

Hello little blog, how are we today?

I just thought I’d update with a few little things!

1) I solved another small kitchen conundrum. We had this funny half cupboard above the stove. The vent for the fan runs up through it so it’s kind of awkward, but the narrow shelf made it perfect for spices…

….if you only had a few spices (that picture is actually really old, it got way worse). Because this cupboard is pretty high, I couldn’t see into that deep bit on the right so rummaging for herbs and spices was just difficult and a bit dangerous (picture bottles of herbs falling on my head!).

There are a million ways I could have solved this that would have been niftier (mounting a baking sheet to the back of the cupboard and using magnetic tins like Ainhoa!) or prettier (decanting them all into matching glass containers with pretty labels), but…. I just found a cheap spice rack that would fit in the cupboard and screwed it into the vent housing (Don’t worry, first I made sure the screws were short enough not to damage the vent itself!). I can still reach the top shelf on tip toes and at least I can see what I’m doing now!

 

Now that they’re more accessible, I actually love that cupboard, it’s such a handy place for herbs, right in reach of the hob.

 

2) Lookie what arrived in the post! A pretty scalloped edged postcard from a friend and….

Hooray and huzzah! Mr V ordered me the Sewaholic Cambie dress pattern last week and it’s already arrived. It’s my most ambitious sewing project to date (at least the two quilts I’ve made are all straight lines) so I expect to be clocking most of my spare time right here, probably swearing at my poor sewing machine. I hope it works out!

3) Sneak peek of the latest addition to the living room! I love it and will be writing a post all about it pretty soon (bearing in mind point 2 above!).

What’s new with you this week?

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May 10 2012
25 Comments
Our Flat

Top tips for tiny rental kitchens

Hello! Ever since I wrote my post last week about our teensy kitchen, I’ve been on fire thinking up ways to get the most from the space so I’m back with some of my top tips!

We’re renters, so while I could write a million posts about things I’d do in this kitchen if I owned it (pot rack, wall mounted lid racks, more sensibly proportion cabinets, extra shelving….etc), here are some ideas that anyone can do – whether you own your house or not).

1) Never underestimate the power of extra shelves. All of our cabinets are these stupid massive boxes with no interior shelves. They’re too shallow for the normal shelves you can put inside cabinets, but these half ones from Ikea give us just a little bit of extra vertical storage space.

(I know, I know, we could totally easily build extra shelves in here, but something so permanent is a little bit down the line, if we’re even here long enough to fully commit to customising stuff like that.)

Update! See some more extra shelves we added to make better sense of an odd cupboard right here.

2) Do what makes the most sense, whether it’s what people normally do or not. Mugs live in cupboards or on shelves, right? no! With so few easily accessible shelves, we’ve ended up with mugs in a drawer. Keeping mugs in our cupboards led to a whole load of wasted vertical space. Keeping them in the drawer makes the most sense, for us.

I might put down a pad in the bottom to keep them in place, or construct some sort of divider (like this?) if I think they’re at risk of breaking.  (It helps that we have no kids who will open and slam the drawer.)

While we’re talking drawer storage, I had these scrappy bits of quilted fabric from a project that I ended up not making, so I made them into pan liners so we could stack our non-stick without damaging them.

Hey, they don’t look perfect, but leftover fabric and batting is better than spending £4.99, right? (Hmm. Until this moment I thought those things were £4.99 each, not per three….probably would have been better to just buy them!)

3) Think outside the room! The advantage of small space living is that things can be the opposite side of the flat to the kitchen but still be easily within reach.

The kitchen is one of the smallest rooms in the flat so it makes sense to use the other rooms to store kitchen items. Right now we keep this stack of lesser used items in our bedroom cupboard (but I’m refinishing a cabinet to keep them in the living room, because I’d rather keep jumpers here). I’ve now moved these items into a cabinet in the living room, and jumpers live here, but a bedroom closet is still a great place to keep kitchenware (the living room just made more sense for us).

We also have this shelf of cookery books in the sitting room.

4)  Get stuff off the counter. As you can see, I’m ok with appliances on the countertop. (Sure, it would look clearer without but I don’t see any other choice here.) But! I do agree with keeping as much small, cluttery stuff off the counters as possible.

I picked up four of these hooks from Ikea (they’re actually from the Pax wardrobe range) and use them to corral onions, garlic and kitchen roll. The onions etc are this small wire basket and the kitchen roll is strung up using some black grosgrain ribbon. Oh, and gotta love a magnetic knife rack.

5) Back of the door! Buoyed by how well my cord and charger organiser worked, I bought this over-door organiser to whip the kitchen into shape. This time I decided to go for a bold graphic labeling system rather than adding pictures to the pockets. It’s not pretty but I love it because it’s really working well so far (and it freed up a load of drawer space).

What are your favourite tips for small space living?

PS. Smitten Kitchen’s top tips are here

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May 03 2012
19 Comments
DIY, Our Flat

Some small desk upgrades

Is it Friday yet? It sure feels like it should be…

Anyway, here’s a few little changes that have gone on to my dear secretary desk lately (sadly, neither of them are picking up the top cabinet – seen here – oh well!).

First up, I finally gave up the ghost on the dead flowers you saw here last time (although the flower on the left is doing its best to die too!) and replaced it with some basil. Isn’t it funny how it seems weird to have basil anywhere other than the kitchen? Well, no windows in the kitchen… massive window by the desk.

I also added a few knick-knacks, a picture of my parents way back when and some postcards I’ve received lately.

Inside, I added my external hard-drive to one of the cubbies. Do you see it? Thought not! It’s been disguised with a sheet of patterned origami paper from Muji.

And I’ve run the power cord through the back with a big shoddy hole made by drilling lots of small holes. I was going to make some other holes for things like my laptop cord (I keep my laptop in one of the long horizontal cubbies), but I made such a bad job of this hole, I figured I’d wait until I’d bought a better drill bit (a hole saw drill bit?) so it looks a bit neater (as the other hole will be a lot more visible).

So that’s a few little tweaks I’ve made in our house this week. What have you tweaked this week?

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Apr 29 2012
19 Comments
Our Flat

Teensy kitchen

My kitchen is almost certainly smaller than yours. I thought our last kitchen was tiny (and I’m pretty sure it was!) but this one really takes the biscuit.

For some reason though, I’m head over heels in love with it. I took a picture of it on my phone the other day and got it out at work just to look at it, like a lovesick teenager. Ha.

Why I love this kitchen so much is beyond me. It’s got an electric hob and oven, which I hate, and it’s not even like the lovely glass topped electric hob we had in our old flat. It has no windows. I pretty much hate the colour of the tiles. It has no lower cabinets, and all the upper cabinets are too narrow for large plates. I can only properly reach two cabinets without a stepladder (purchase number one when we moved in!) and each cabinet is just one big box, with no shelves. There’s only a modicum of countertop. There physically isn’t anywhere I can figure out to put a bin. Go on! Suggest somewhere! Inside a lower cabinet? Nope, don’t have one of them. Behind the door? Nope, no room! There isn’t a square foot that isn’t necessary for washing up, doing laundry, using the oven, opening the fridge or entering and exiting the room. So, we have a bin liner hooked on the back of the door and the recycling lives in a cupboard in the living room.

But, like I said, I love this kitchen! It’s so weird. Maybe it’s because it’s the first kitchen that my Kitchenaid has been in? (Totally worth the counter top it uses, by the way!). Maybe because it’s so small it seems stuffed full of my favourite things? That probably makes it too cluttered for other people, but I don’t care. I’m like a magpie, I just love being surrounded by pretty, colourful things.

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But anyway. Here she is at the moment. I’m sure she’ll get better, so I’ll do a post another time about with small space kitchen tips, when I’ve worked them out myself!

Oh hey! See me and my green jeans in the kettle?

It took a few days of counter top ballet, but I think I finally figured out the best way to put all the appliances out. It would look a lot better without the one-cup coffee machine (that white thing with the monogram mug in it) and just use the kettle and a cafetière (French press!) but I love that thing. You just press the button, walk away and come back a minute later to a hot cup of coffee. Morning magic!

The toaster earns its counter top space by (making me toast, and) holding bread and butter on top of it atop two cheapie Ikea chopping boards. This keeps the chopping boards off the counter and also makes it easy to just whip everything off to make toast.

This set of cabinets has lighting underneath. Ooh! (haha)

(Have you noticed the mammoth sink? Who decided to put in a huge sink in such a small place?)

By the stove I keep plain flour and sugar in large Ikea glass jars, in an attempt to make the bare baking essentials all in arms reach (and, as I mentioned, my arms can only reach two cupboards and they don’t hold baking goods!). The Le Creuset lives on the stove top, because I love it and because it’s too heavy to keep up high and did I mention we’re short on cabinet space?

For all it’s faults, it’s actually a pretty great kitchen to cook in. Everything is right within reach (with the help of a stepladder), the oven works really well and the big sink is actually really handy for keeping the counters clear when cooking or baking. I like shutting the door, putting the radio on and cooking up a storm. Sure, I cannot wait until I have a bigger kitchen, with windows, and backsplash I’ve chosen myself and cabinets that make sense, but for now, this is great.

So there you go! A little look at our kitchen. As I said, I’ll share some small kitchen tips just as soon as I have them all worked out. Until then, Here’s a post with my top teensy kitchen tips. I’d love to see pictures of your kitchen!

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Apr 26 2012
11 Comments
Parties and presents

Perfect moving away present

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Hello! Here’s a quick post to let you know about a present I gave last weekend that I was pretty thrilled with. I’d told my friend that I’d been trawling google street view compiling all our friends’ addresses because I wanted to write more letters. My friend A asked me to sort out all our friends addresses in an address book for her as a birthday present.

I had so much fun putting this present together for her.  I bought a nice Moleskine A-Z tabbed notebook and put all our friends addresses, email addresses, phone numbers and birthdays inside. I also sneakily used Facebook to acquire the addresses of some of her friends who I only know a little bit, as an added bonus for her.

I didn’t want it to be just a boring, useful present, so I added some of my favourite plain postcards (with green text!) and a selection of pretty stamps from the Post Office. My friend A  is sporty and loves animals, so I was excited that they had these stamps at the moment. I slipped the stamps into the clear pocket that the postcards came in and wrapped it all in a large envelope with ribbon and stripy string.

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She absolutely loved this present! (I mean, she did ask for it, so….). I think this would be perfect to do for someone who is just moving away to university or leaving town (hence the title of this post!). If I’d had more time I’d have added pictures of everyone next to their address… but sometimes done is better than perfect, right?

PS. Of course, I had to buy some pretty stamps for my stamp drawer too! William Morris! Eee!

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PS. Here’s another fun use for Moleskine’s A-Z tabbed notebooks.

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Apr 24 2012
12 Comments
recipes

Kitchen and Kedgeree

Hello! I promised you pictures of our new kitchen and… I don’t, for boring reasons that you don’t need to know about.

But you can totally see some tiny bits in the background of some poorly lit pictures of last night’s dinner (later this week I’ll share the  kitchen pics, ok?)

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So, kedgeree! My mum used to make this for dinner all the time so I always find it comforting. But unlike most comfort food, it’s not terrible for you and it’s almost fancy-ish. Ha!

(From Wikipedia: “Kedgeree is a dish consisting of cooked, flaked fish (sometimes smoked haddock), boiled rice, parsley, hard-boiled eggs, curry powder, butter or cream and occasionally sultanas….It is widely believed that the dish was brought to the United Kingdom by returning British colonials who had enjoyed it in India and introduced it to the UK as a breakfast dish in Victorian times…An alternative view is that the dish originated from Scotland and was taken to India by Scottish troops during the British Raj, where it was adapted and adopted as part of Indian cuisine.”)

So. With some help from Delia, here’s how I make kedgeree (although we have it, like most other people these days, for dinner not breakfast). It seems fiddlier written down but is pretty easy really. The sun-dried tomatoes are my addition, feel free to leave them out! Oh, and I hate fresh parsley (I know, right?) so feel free to add that back in!

Buttery kedgeree for two

  • 260g smoked haddock fillets
  • large knob of butter (table-spoon ish?) (oil would work too)
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 1 tablespoon medium curry powder
  • one mugful of white rice
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  • frozen peas
  • half a cup of sun-dried tomatoes
  • a few pinches of paprika
  1. Boil the haddock in at least a pint of water for 8 minutes (with the lid on). Get the fish out with a slotted spoon and cover with foil to keep warm; keep the fishy water (skim the foamy stuff)
  2. Chop the onion and fry in the butter for five minutes. Stir in the curry powder.
  3. Put the eggs in a saucepan of cold water. Bring to the boil, allow to boil for one minute then remove from the heat. Set aside with a tightly sealed lid for fifteen minutes.
  4. Add the dry rice and stir until it’s fully coated in buttery curry goodness
  5. Add just under two mugfuls of the fish water (top up with clean water if need be). Put on a tightly sealed lid and simmer for ten minutes
  6. When the time is through, turn the heat off but leave the lid on for another five minutes.
  7. Mix together rice, fish, lemon juice, frozen peas and chopped sun-dried tomatoes
  8. Around this time, the eggs will have had their 15 mins. Replace the water they’re in with cold water to get perfect soft-hard eggs.
  9. Let the flavours meld a little (and the hot rice to cook the peas) while you peel the eggs. Once peeled, cut them in half and put a pinch of paprika on each egg (I just like the way it looks!)
  10. Put it all in a bowl and enjoy! (It’s nice with ketchup, but we didn’t need that since I’d added sun-dried tomatoes and the butter stops it being too dry)

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What are you enjoying cooking lately? I’d love a recipe!

Ps. There’s a vegan kedgeree recipe on Clair’s blog, complete with details about the dish’s starring role in Downton Abbey

Tagged
Apr 23 2012
6 Comments
trips

My top ten favourite things to do in Paris

Following up on my tips for Little House Big Heart‘s London trip, I thought I’d share my very favourite things to do in Paris.

  1. Flea shop at the Marché aux Puces de Saint Ouen and have a beer at the Jazz cafe there
  2. Hire vel’libs (the public bike hire scheme) and enjoy the sound of cobbles under bike wheels
  3. Order a “noisette” (small, strong, frothy coffee) and a Flan Nature (vanilla custard tart) while people watching in the day time, or a “demi” (what to call a beer to sound least like a tourist) in the evening.
  4. Walk through the Jardin des Tuileries, either while walking between the Eiffel Tower and Louvre, or just because I love it.
  5. Stroll the Canal du Saint Martin (maybe skim a stone like Amelie) – shop at Antoine et Lili and have a beer overlooking the water.
  6. Shops: BHV (home wares!), Promod (beautiful affordable clothes) and I really want to visit Merci next time. Stock up on my favourite cheap perfume at Sephora (Vanille Bourbon! Oh la la!)
  7. Walk through the Cour Carrée of the Louvre at dusk or after dark (Mr V and I were lucky enough to catch a flautist busking and had a little dance together). Browse the bouquinistes while we’re in that part of town.
  8. Go to Montmartre, sit on the steps of the Sacré-Coeur, watch buskers, eat over-priced ice creams and enjoy the view
  9. Ride a bateau mouche (at dusk or just after) for views like these
  10. Wander, get lost, stop at cafes any and all cafes that look nice, watch people, lose track of time, you know, those things you do on holiday that make it a real holiday!

I hope I haven’t bored you with my foray into travel writing! I’ll be back with a post about our new kitchen tomorrow.

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