Sunday 19 April 2020

LOCK DOWN HOUSE AND GARDEN DIY

I wrote this post three weeks in...
standard lockdown behaviour, posting it during week four!



Three weeks into lockdown,
according to some, we should at the very least be learning a new language, taking the opportunity to detox etc to emerge from this cocoon a butterfly to your former self.

But...
No one has ever been in this situation before.
So we can cut ourselves a bit of slack, 
and roll with the setting up whatsapps,
photographing our dinners,
doing the Jo Wicks PE class every morning, as an adult!

As one our attention spans seem to have been reduced to about 10 minutes.

Here's some of the small things I have done in my relentless quest to have a fabulous house with not only hardly any money,
but now also without shops!

Re-found my love of eBay

It's back to it's former glory days at the moment,
lots of people buying and selling.
I've just bought two of these chairs for a bargain £35 for the pair.


Marcel Breuer Bauhaus B34 chair.
I knew it wasn't going to be the 1950's original as they are worth over £1000,
but I was hoping it was the official reproduction with the Knoll Breuer stamp,
they didn't have that, but I still love them,
and £35 for the pair, an absolute steel!
A lot of couriers are still working,
doing contact less picking up and dropping off.
(Excuse the absolute state of the kitchen, like most of the world, while we are in lock down and the first sun of the year is shinning, I'm in the garden/yard).

(Also a pair of bargain trainers winging their way to me).

Painting everything in the back yard.

No chance of anthracite for the wood work and matt white for the walls as would be my first choice.
(With lots of greenery and a few boho pieces scattered around).
The choices are,
whatever rooting through the old paint tins unearths.

The disgraceful back door before.


And after.


Two tester pots of Valspar masonry paint mixed together and painted on.
I know it's matt over gloss, but I've done it before and it worked so fingers crossed for this time.

Also if anyone is using dark Valspar masonry paint for the first time,
don't be alarmed if it gets wet and goes back to the alarming bright colour it is before it dries.
It feels and looks dry after a couple of hours but it takes a couple of weeks to fully set and stop changing colour when it's rained on.
I'm hoping with this dry weather it will give my masonry paint over gloss a time to fully harden and so hopefully stay put.

The never ending £5 bargain tub of junk shop find cream trade masonry paint called back into action.

The disgrace of a wall before.


And after.


The whole wall stretching to the back was painted too.

The massive brown gates between mine and next doors yard definitely needed painting!

I had a tin of terrible brown with a hint of mauve, but trade, oil based paint (it was free from a charity furniture shop) which I usually use for a dark undercoat,
tried it in case it at least made it look less scruffy.


For the first time in this paints life, it has dried to an attractive shade!
A kind of weathered grey with just a hint of mauve.
The whole of the giant gates are now painted.
(Have to send a special thank you to my old neighbour who used to also paint my side of the doors when he did his, I now realise the mammoth size of the task).

I then painted the small gate opposite in the same paint and it resorted back to it's usual mad type and dried bright pink/mauve.
Horrified!
I've now got the back fence and shed door in old, faded, blue, quite attractive,
mixed with the new big doors colour, OK-ish,
but then add a pink gate...
awful!
Like a person with zero taste has tried to smartened the place up,
(and that person was me!)
Will sort asap

New plants from old.


Cuttings from a money plant re-potted in to old Poundland scented candle pots.

I know nothing of gardening,
but
any bits of a money/jade plant
that fall, or you break off.
Just stick them straight into a pot of compost and they grow!

Rosemary cuttings, just snipped off and stuck straight into the ground.
 Going in every spare outdoor pot.
And so far those little cuttings are surviving!


I particularly like Rosemary as it stays green all year, smells nice, and can survive anywhere.
These are the qualities I like in a plant!

Ripped a fern in half to make two.


(As in my last post).
I didn't know you could do that until we were locked down and was googling about ferns.

It's actually grey and cold here today as I write this so I am going to bite the bullet and do a big house clean.
The sun is back tomorrow so I will be back out then,
storing up the vitamin D
and sorting out the pink gate.

Stay well.







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