Easiest upholstered headboard tutorial/cheat, promise!

So today I'm going to show you the easiest way to re-upholster a headboard. It's so easy that it's basically a cheat, and while it may not be the "proper" way of doing things it most certainly worked and I'm delighted with it! And as one of my fave bloggers over at the nesting place is so fond of saying "it doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful", and I couldn't agree more. So here we go......

As Max got bigger and needed to move out of the moses basket and into a cot, we decided that the time was right for Emilia to get a big girl bed, freeing up her cot for Max. There was no way we were going to buy a second cot when Em was nearly three and able to climb out of hers anyway, and neither were we going to use the travel cot for Max in his room. It's fine, but it's ugly. So it was time to bite the bullet and buy a single bed.

Now, the minute I knew we were getting her a bed I started thinking about what would be the best option, both style and function wise, and decided on a divan or a wooden framed bed without a headboard, the idea being that I could hang one on the wall behind the best and therefore have it be really easy to update as her room changed.

And the minute I knew I had free reign with the headboard situation I knew I wanted a really luxe, over the top vibrant velvet upholstered headboard. I've always loved the style, and I thought in a kids room it would stop if from being too "little girl" while still being really colourful and fun.

So I kept my eye out, not sure how I was going to go about it, and then one day I was nosing around the LAW charity shop and found the perfect solution....a single headboard in a gorgeous shape and great condition in the exact style I wanted, for three frickin euro!!! The lady in the shop told me they often get them in and have trouble selling them, so it was cheap. 

Only problem was the colour. It was an olive green, and while I actually really liked it as it was I had set my heart on something really bright for the room (Em's room is coral pink/white/gold) it had to be changed.

So I went on Ebay and ordered up a metre of beautiful mint green velvet, thinking that it would be a real statement, and then I could bring the colour into the rest of the room with accessories.

The velvet arrived, the colour was perfect, I had all my materials (stapler and fabric!), I was good to go.

And then I made my first mistake...I cut out the shape I would need after laying it over the headboard, not taking into consideration that it would have to be forced down into the button hols, so this wouldn't be enough.

Nightmare!

Noooooooooo!!!!!!

And while this would have been fixable by just pulling the material tight and stretching it, that meant that there was too much strain on the staples in the buttonholes, and it started to rip! 

(I had bought dressmaking fabric rather than upholstery/curtain fabric which is much more robust as I couldn't get the colour I wanted in it)

Double nooooooo!!!!!

So it was back to the drawing board, and this time I chose a coral pink velvet (€4.99 a meter in Guineys) as it had turned out I wasn't that happy with the mint green in the room anyway.

This time I was determined to not mess it up!

So I ironed my fabric, even though ironing is one of my very least favourite things to do!

This child better LOVE her room! I only iron on VERY special occasions.

The I dug out my trusty hot glue gun.....

....and laying the fabric over the headboard with plenty of extra over all the edges, I simply started from the middle and glued the material on... I didn't even remove buttons, I told you this was a cheat!

Liquid fire, a.k.a hot glue

To hold the fabric in place while the glue dried (hot glue is approximately as hot as the surface of the sun) I found the inside of a childrens Nurofen syringe was perfect! Happily this was sitting by the sink when I was looking for something to do this job :)

                                 Then I had a toddler inspect my work with a pencil......

Now, if I had thought about it a bit more I would have realised that if I worked up/dpwn/up/down the lines between the buttons would have been much more even, but whatever, I think it's fine :P





I then flipped the whole thing over, trimmed the excess fabric off and then pulled what was left tight before stapling top and bottom in the middle to start with, then worked the whole way around, pulling it tight and smoothing the edges as I went.





                                                            And there she is!

It could be smoother, and the lines a bit more even, but I think it's gorgeous anyway! It took around an hour, not counting my first attempt, and I think it's going to really pull Emilia's room together.

It cost €9 total, and if I had just slowed down and actually thought it through before I started the first time I could have saved myself a lot of trouble! This was a project that I had convinced myself was going to be so easy that I was way too confident and ended up sabotaging myself. But now I've told you what not to do so it should be easy peasy for you ;)

I should hopefully have a full reveal for Emilia's room up sometime next week, still have a couple of projects to finish for it.

So tell me what you think, I love comments almost as much as I love it when a plan comes together ;)

Linda xx

Super simple Ikea Rast hack

 I love Ikea.


Like really love it.


Like as in have its functional, reasonably priced babies love it.



During the two years when we were trying to buy a house I spent a lot of time thinking about how I wanted our house to look, and what I wanted to fill it with. Unfortunately we weren't going to have the budget to just buy whatever we wanted straight off, we were going to have to be creative! We were going to have to find pieces that were inexpensive, but still stylish and decent quality, and to my mind you can't really beat Ikea for that.


So I had spent quite a lot of time on the Ikea site, and also on pinterest, checking out what was available and what could be done with it....and one thing that kept cropping up was the humble Rast dresser and the many things that could be done to it to jazz it up, from basic painting and staining to more adventurous ideas like adding mirror or overlays.

The Rast is solid raw pine and is priced at €25.....yes €25!! That's a fantastic price for solid wood furniture, and the fact that it's unfinished is the biggest selling point for me as it leaves you with unlimited possibilities as to what you can do with it, bedside table, hall table, dining room sideboard, the list is endless.


What we really needed was extra clothes storage in our bedroom, so we decided to buy three Rasts to go along the big blank wall beside the bed, where there was a slight alcove that they would fit into perfectly. 


As the room was painted a dark grey all over I decided to stick to bright white and gold as the colours for the furniture, curtains and bedding to stop the space feeling too dark. With that in mind I wanted to paint the dressers glossy white, with gold cup pull handles and gold brackets on the corners of the drawers.


So I removed the original handles (and kept them, cos you never know...) and filled the holes with wood filler, let it dry and then sanded it flush with the wood.


I then painted everything with one thick coat of this....

...which was a big mistake! It stank to high heaven, took 3 days to dry and had a really disappointing finish. Lesson learned, if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. There really is no way to cut corners if you want a good paint finish. If I was to do it again (and I will, cos I want two of these together in our entryway) I'd give them a serious sanding first, coat them with this primer.......

.....and then do 2-3 thin coats of a water based white gloss to finish them off, giving another light sanding with very fine sandpaper just before the last coat to make sure to end up with a really glossy finish. In the long run I know it'd give a much better result.

When the paint finally dried took these cup pulls (got them on ebay from China, they were around €20 for 12 of them)

 ...and these corner brackets







(2 inch flat corner right angle bracket/brace-again I got them on ebay as it was much cheaper, around €10 for 50 of them) and sprayed them with my trusty rustoleum bright gold spray paint, and once they were dry Gavin attached them.

side note-I recently tried out the plastikote on the right as it was only €3 a can in Woodies, but I won't be buying it again. The colour was much brassier than the rustoleum and not nearly as nice, and the nozzle kept getting clogged as I used it.

And here you have them!

Despite the poor paint finish I really love them, and they currently store all of Gavins clothes so they're really functional. Despite the mistakes I made it was a relatively simple project and I'd expect that the next time I do this it would only take a few hours, total.



Ever attempted an Ikea hack? I'd love to hear about it in the comments ;)


Linda

Fish bowl terrarium

Apologies! My laptop had a milk related toddler incident so I haven't been able to post...it does mean I have several projects that are ready and waiting for me to get them on here though :)  #silverlinings


It seems like I keep seeing little glass terrariums with succulents in them all over the internet at the moment, and it's one of those situations where I don't know if I just started noticing them because I decided I loved them and wanted one, or if it really is a new trend and I'm finally getting in  at the start of something! I know which is more likely.... :)

So having seen these all over, and most particularly on one of my favorite blogs, Vintage Revivals I decided that I was going to make one when I got the chance.

 *if you've never visited you need to head over there as soon as you finish reading this because Mandi's style is amazing. Like out of this world, I want to rub myself all over her furniture amazing.......aaaand that just got weird....


 Now, succulents not being in abundant supply here in Limerick I had to content myself with checking every garden center in town every time I passed them, and last week I got lucky (wait for it) in a place called "Lucky Lane" on Catherine st.

It's really cute in there, kind of a craft collective where people sell home baking, up-cycled furniture etc, and there's also a garden section that has lovely plants, and there I found my succulents. I got 3 for €10, so I was fairly happy with myself.

Then all I needed was a glass globe to plant them in, and I figured the easiest (and cheapest!) thing to get was a fish bowl. So off I trotted to the pet shop to get one...only to be faced with nothing but rows of hideous plastic bowls, not the look I was going for! 

I was so annoyed, thinking I was going to have to trek out to the bigger Petmania outside town, but then I called in for my usual look in the Limerick Animal Welfare charity shop (they often have great furniture for ridiculously low prices, like the solid wood mid-century sideboard I picked up for €50....though I did nearly have to fight someone for it) and lo and behold, sitting in the middle of the shelf full of glassware, is a fricking perfect glass fishbowl!!

Seriously, I couldn't believe it, how lucky was that! And the next great thing was I technically got it for free, cos I bought a little copper sugar bowl at the same time, and the lady in the shop thought it was priced a little high (€3!!) so she just charged me that for the two (?!!). I love it when things work out like that! :D

You can just see my little helper in the reflection, as well as me in my pyjamas....glamorous.

So I hauled it home, filled the bottom with gravel and compost, planted my succulents and put in some marble pebbles I gathered when I was walking in the Glen of Aherlow last week. The only thing that went wrong with this is that I'm a novice when it comes to planting so at first I out the compost in and then tried to plant, but I quickly realised that that meant I had way too much soil in there so I had to start over, placing the plants first and then adding the compost around them. I could have avoided a serious mess if I'd realised that beforehand!

So there you have it, I love it! It's now sitting in the middle of my dining table, where I try to always have a plant or flowers, and I think the whole thing looks really modern, but in a retro way which works really well with the Eames inspired chairs and the Ikea lighting in there.

Apologies for this terrible picture, my excuse is that I have two small kids who try to "help" if I try to do anything while they are awake, so I had about five seconds to take daytime photos!

 

So what do you think? I think all I need is a couple of plastic dinosaurs to stick in there and it'll be perfect.......and I'm not even joking :)

I have a couple of really great projects (great in that they weren't difficult, didn't take forever and saved me a butt load of money) completed for the kids rooms that I'll be sharing in the next free days.

Until then, I'd love you to say hi in the comments!

Linda XXX

Really useful chalkboard wall....

In the year I spent pinning images for inspiration while we tried, and failed, and tried again to buy a house for our growing family, one thing that kept popping up in homes I admired was chalkboard walls. So, when we finally moved into our new house and started to look around and see what we could do to make it our own on our little budget, it didn't take long for me to look at this wall beside the fridge and decide that black was definitely the colour for here!

I wanted our chalkboard wall to be functional as well as decorative so this really was the perfect place for it. I am a maker of lists, however, if they're not right in front of me I totally forget to check them. Also I have an artistic two year old who thinks walls are the ultimate canvas so this wall was going to be a place I could solve both problems, and having it right beside the fridge meant I couldn't miss it and I could keep an eye on Em as she drew while I was cooking, perfect!

I used less than 1 ltr of paint that I picked up in Aldi for €5.99 (I actually bought two but I didn't need the second tin), but they sell it in all the big hardware shops, and you can even get it in different colours or with metal added to it to make it magnetic, adding another dimension to your wall :) I did two quick coats, and that was plenty.

I also made these little cork boards so that I can pin things I want to keep, or need to make sure I don't lose! I bought two packs of three cork pot stands from Ikea (I think they were a couple of euro a pack), I taped them off and painted them with geometric shapes that compliment the colours in my kitchen, dining and living room (which are connected) and then I stuck them on the wall with command strip velcro strips.

And there you have it! We really love it, and honestly it's been the most useful thing we've put into this house so far, it gets used every day. It's holding up really well, even though I often use a wet cloth to clean it down properly.

                                                           
                                                                Em loves it!

What do you think? Have you ever used chalkboard paint in your home? Have any good ideas for what I can do with my second can? :) 

Linda

What a difference a spray makes....

Let me introduce you to my best friend.....

hey girl......

This is my go-to, absolute favourite type of gold spray paint, and I've used it on an embarrassing amount of stuff in my house! In my opinion gold is a neutral (don't disagree, I will fight you on this!), and I often pick up accessories etc in charity shops that I paint to freshen them up and make them match my other decor, and this is by far the best one. It's really bright and shiny, and a nice deep antique-y type of gold that's really beautiful.

So when I needed a side table for my sitting room (we don't have room for a coffee table in front of the couch so we use side and occasional tables instead) and picked up the Klingsbo metal and glass one from Ikea for €30, it didn't take me long to decide to give it the spray paint treatment. 

The original black wasn't offensive or anything, but it was too harsh with my colour scheme of gray/white/pink, and I had also seen many beautiful pics of metal work Ikea pieces that had been spray painted gold on pinterest and absolutely loved how glam they were, so I was itching to try it!

So I started with this......

And two quick coats of spray paint later I had this.....

I think it makes a huge difference, and really brings out the detail in the metal work underneath. It's added a little bit of luxury to my living room :)

What about you? Have you ever "hacked" something from Ikea? Used spray paint to make something fit a room better?



Linda