I love old stuff, vintage, retro, whatever. Old. I like it. That's why I like you.

I also love that you're reading this thinking, she thinks I'm old?!

Course not, I didn't mean you, I meant you!

Anyway, onto the dude of it.

A while back I bought a coffee table for £5 in the charidee shop here called Too good to waste. It sells old stuff cheap.

I thought it'd be perfect to go with our settee and armchairs which are very 70's. But it was orange.

Don't believe me? Here ya go.




Orange isn't it. Told you so.

I love the shape of it though so I decided to sand her down and varnish her dark. In my mind I had a dark walnut colour but I chose dark oak in the shop so that's what we had.

So we got her outside, unscrewed the legs, unscrewed the leg plate things and got to sanding. I did the underside and Dus did the top. This was my first time sanding.....eee!

Essential pre-DIY drink preparation

Scraggerdy clothes, pink marigolds, Dus' pollution mask. It's a good look!

The area all around the working area was orange with sanded off varnish, icky! What's that? You think I posed for this photo, you don't believe I really did sanding?


Aha, how's that for proof! I thought Dus was taking photos, didn't realise he video'd me. At the end you can almost hear him say, "Good work Baby". Cute huh?

Anyway, so it was all sanded and lovely and so then I started varnishing. I did 3 coats of dark oak then three coats of clear. Just to be sure.

I forgot to take a photo of it sanded so here's a couple that I took just as I realised and before I'd finished doing a whole first coat!



It was quite nice sanded but I wanted it dark, dark I tell you!

Due to the fact that it rains here most of the time, and that week it rained EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. I had to varnish it in the house. Plastic on the table and newspaper on top.

Thou shalt bake cake for thine husband whilst coats are drying. (There's white chocolate stars in the jam in the middle). Serve said cake on a suitably manly handbag shaped plate.

Okie doke then, the big reveal.

Tadaaaaaaa!!!!

It's not raining today, it's been finished all week but I had to wait to take it outside to take photos! I did run up the garden to see the thermometer though. 1 degree C at ten to eleven. That's 33 degrees F. Brrr!

And because we all like a good before and after:


And then in the interests of keeping it real, here's a photo of it before I emptied it to take it outside to take a photo of it finished.


One day I'll get around to re-doing my settee too!

Can you guess what task my DIY Dusband could possibly have been doing to 'NEED' all of these tools....?


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One small but attractive hanging basket of trailing petunias and ivy. :)

It had been sheltering in the back for a while but it was time to introduce it to the crosswinds in the valley and make our house look a bit more beautiful! (I'm not sure terraces can ever look truly beautiful, but a hanging basket helps, right?)

Our curtain pole was coming out of the wall so Dus got his tool kit out to sort it out.

He called me through to ask if I wanted it straight by the spirit level, or straight by the ceiling.

Here's a pic of it 'level' by the spirit level.


Needless to say I asked him to put it up 'unlevel' so that it looked straight by the ceiling!!

These crazy old houses eh?


On a side note I read a blog a week ago (ish) that said their house was really old, it was built in the 60's. HA!!! Our house was built at the turn of the century....that's old. (But on the plus side the walls are about 2ft thick!)

So, you all know the story of how we broke our front door trying to break in when we forgot our keys and then we had to move our keys off the back of the door cos I'd blogged to the whole world that we hung our keys on the back of the door?!

What, you didn't? Ok, well you can go read it here. I'll wait.

Ok, all up to speed? Well....we remembered the landlord bemoaning the previous tenants who painted it the bright dark green and they hated it. So knowing we'd have to re paint the door we asked them which colour they wanted it painting. Olive Grove they came back with, a discontinued Dulux colour, but one the local Jewsons could mix.

Dus repaired the door, fixed the mouldings back on, filled the holes and sanded it ready for painting.


What with our busy lives it lived like that for a good few weeks before it was primed with a quite nice dark grey primer. There's lots left and I have a few projects in mind for it!


See, you couldn't tell that the mouldings underneath had been ripped off and fillered to within an inch of their lives! Dussy did a fab job here. It's why he's head of DIY in our house.


And there we are, the top coats going on. If you look carefully you can see a small part on the left where the grey undercoat hasn't been painted over.

It's not as grossy green as we thought it would be and it's growing on us, but it definitely wouldn't have been our first choice, that's for sure!

At least we're not letting the rest of the street down anymore with our bare wood door!

I've just found a folder full of pics just waiting for me to document the day I upgraded my bookcases.

I took them in February of this year....anyway, moving on.

Here's our upstairs corridor before.


Blah, blah, blah.

Anyway, so the bookcases I wanted were £80 each but then miraculously just as I had some money they went down to £50 for both! hurrah!

Here's Dusband putting them together. Doesn't he look hunky!




Now there is so much room I was able to move all my girly novels onto them from the original shelves but also Dus' boy novels, his work books (MASSIVE tomes on coding) and all his cd's. I do wish I'd taken a pic when they were newly filled as they could do with a bit of a tidy up now!


On the left hand set at the bottom is all our wrapping 'stuff' hence the messiness of it.

I love them and the corridor doesn't feel at all narrow like I thought it might do.

p.s. yes I know our floor is wonky and the door is wonky....our whole house is wonky!!