Well, time has done a funny old disappearing act over the past few weeks. I’d planned to write this post back in September but then, chronic illness waits for no-one and instead of writing and doing I’ve been lying in bed plotting and scheming.
As much as I LOVE summer, it’s not my most productive time of year. As soon as the first warm days appear in April, I spend as much time as I can outside in case “maybe this is the only summer we’ll get” and somehow like this year, 5 months pass with not much action on the home front. This will be the last year that I’m self-employed so time is definitely running out for me to make the most of this time I have.
Now the weather has turned it’s time to knuckle down and get on with allllll these little jobs that still aren’t done. I’m trying to break them down so they don’t feel too overwhelming and will make me do them before Christmas, right?
Tiling The Living Room Fireplace
After a saga that’s run longer than most soap operas, I’m hoping that by the time this post goes live, the fireplace may actually be tiled (please keep everything crossed). It’s basically the last “major” piece of work that I’m wanting to do in the living room and is a work collaboration that’s been in the works since this time last year *eye roll*.
I really hope it will be worth the wait and just finish the fireplace off, making it look a little bit different. We absolutely love what we’ve achieved over the years, replacing the illegal gas fire that we inherited with a DEFRA-approved Scandinavian log burner but ya know, sometimes things just need one final tweak!
Painting The Bedroom Wardrobes
Our bedroom is somewhere on a long list of “when we have some spare ££ we’ll be able to renovate it” but who on earth knows when that will be. The previous owners built a loft conversion and it’s a lovely bright, airy large space but it’s just not configured very well. We’d love to create a walk in dressing room under the sloping part of the room and reposition the bed to where the wardrobes currently are, amongst many other things.
Until then, it’s about thinking of some clever budget ideas to make the most of it. We were left two basic glass and melamine wardrobes by the previous owners which is super handy but well, they’re just a bit bland. Combined with our mismatched IKEA Malm drawers and the bedroom looks quite a lot like we’ve cobbled it altogether from bric-a-brac shops. I recently came across a fantastic blog post from Sam at Dove Cottage who showed how she managed to paint over her glass wardrobes giving them such a fantastic face lift in the process. So it’s time to turn the ugly duckling into a swan!
Building Our Little Kitchen Pullout
Earlier this year we got round to creating our little “fake larder” down the side of our fridge in our teeny, weeny kitchen. I’m all about trying to maximise space in a budget-friendly, useful way and it’s amazing how just a few MDF shelves and brackets have really added so much extra storage space to our kitchen.
However we still have those items that are too bulky to fit into cupboards, things like boxes of cereal and washing powder. As we have some space under the new larder shelves which isn’t being utilised, Mr D came up with the idea of making a pull out trolley that would look really neat and tidy tucked away and again make the most of the space we have there. He’s cut the MDF almost to size and ordered the wheels for the bottom but we now just need to double-down and get it done.
Painting The Kitchen and Dining Room Doors
I can’t remember when I took the handles off the kitchen and dining room doors to prep them for the new door knobs. It’s been a while in my classic way of starting but never quite finishing a project. The living room door looks so good since we switched out the old-fashioned silver handle and replaced it with a beehive door knob. I bought two more door knobs to finish off the downstairs and well, it’s another project that hasn’t gone any further even though it would probably take me a day to finish.
So there we go, hopefully four achievable projects to get done before December – surely now I’ve written it all down it has to be done, right? #famouslastwords
Do you have any projects you’re working on over the next couple of months? I’d love to hear about them.
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