The Kitchen Project

This week the builders have been in to rip out our old kitchen and install a shiny new one. Although our old kitchen looked quite nice it was falling apart in places, didn't have great storage and wasn't really what we would have chosen...

 

So we had an Ikea planner come out and give us some ideas for how to make the space work better for us and then ordered a white gloss kitchen with white acrylic worktops. This sounds like a crazy plan for a couple with a dog and a baby on the way, but we have been assured that the white gloss actually shows things like finger prints much less than a dark one!

The kitchen was delivered in its flat-pack state last Sunday and stacked up in the spare room.

 

The builders arrived early Monday morning and it took them only a few hours to rip out the kitchen, including an impressive piece of masonry.

Because our new units are a slightly different size to the old ones we have also had to order a new floor, but for now the floorboards are gone and there is some rather horrible retro vinyl tiles on the floor!

Here is how the kitchen looked mid week...

And our little cloakroom is being transformed into a utility room...

The kitchen is now mostly finished, and we have been really impressed with the speed and hard work of our builders. They ensured that our oven and sink were fitted so we could use them over the weekend, but until it is totally finished we don't want to cause any mess! This time next week though we will have a brand new finished kitchen, hurrah!!

Sweet Smelling Post Office Table

Baby Briggs' room no longer smells of oil! I ordered some foam and upholstered the piece of plywood in the parcel shelf with PVC to make one big changing mat, which meant it smelt like foam for a while. Then I waxed the table base, which made it smell lovely. Then I lined the shelves with pretty polka-dot scented drawer liners from Laura Ashley. So now the whole room smells like flowers - result!

The changing mat has got handles on so that it can be easily pulled up, in case anything spills down the sides of it!

The shelves have plenty of space for useful things...

...and for new friends.

One of Baby Briggs' many little outifts...

We also put some shelves up that would allow us to display the covers of our books. There is now a very sunny reading corner waiting to be used, I can't wait!

Tweed and Coffee Sack Chair

This week I completed the other Parker Knoll chair. I didn't really take any photos while I did it because it is exactly the same as my nursery chair! The only extra thing this one needed was a spring in the back being put on. As you can see in the photo below the bottom spring had fallen off on one side. This was because the eye that the hook on the end of the spring was attached to had come off.

So I drilled into the wood and attached a new eye before rehooking the spring on.

And now there is a lovely new chair to be sent up to the shop in Stonehaven.

Grey tweed with coffee sack on the side

Coffee sack on the back

Coffee sack piping

And for no other reason than she is incredibly cute, here's Henny...

Post Office Table

My parents bought an old post office table years ago at a farm sale. It has pigeon holes and a parcel shelf and Mother Goose has always been convinced it would make a fabulous changing table. So we were all very excited that it would finally be able to come out of my parents old barn and be put to good use in Baby Briggs' room.

My dad sanded it, put it in his car and drove it all the way up to Edinburgh. There was then much huffing and puffing, and groaning and grunting, as Dad and Mr Briggs carried it up the stairs to our first floor flat. Although it separated into two parts this was a pretty hefty bit of furniture. Here is Dad reassembling it in Baby Briggs' room.

The bottom of the parcel shelf was still a little grubby looking even after sanding so Dad fitted a piece of plywood to cover it. With a changing mat on top it will be perfect.

There are plenty of pigeon holes for nappies, baby wipes, things I don't even know we need yet, and of course my old childhood favourite books - here is my old Beatrix Potter collection, tied up with string...

G.B is inscribed underneath the parcel shelf. For Great Britain perhaps? Or Great Briggs?

The only problem we have with this lovely old piece of furniture is that after it was used as a post office table it was used by a farmer to store his old tractor parts. This resulted in some of the shelves being covered in oil, which has seeped into the wood. The day after we put it in Baby Briggs' room, Mr Briggs and I realised that the room smelt like an old workshop! Although it's quite a nice old smell - it reminds Mr Briggs of his grandads shed - I can't imagine it will be very good for a tiny baby to be breathing in the smell of oil, and it is getting stronger! I tried covering the whole piece of furniture in baking powder (and bicarbonate of soda because I wasn't sure which one you are meant to use!), as this is meant to soak up smells. Maybe I didn't use enough or leave it on long enough because it still smelt. 

So then I bought a carbon activated blanket. Apparently activated carbon, or activated charcoal, is extremely porous and therefore it's increased surface area allows it to absorb pollutants and odours. Supposedly all I need to do is leave this blanket on the piece of furniture that smells for 12 hours and the blanket should soak up the smell...

Fingers crossed that this works, or maybe we will have to redo Baby Briggs' room in a tractor theme, complete with smell! If anyone has any other suggestions for how to get rid of the smell of oil please do let me know as I really don't want to have to get rid of this gorgeous piece of furniture.

On a slightly different, but still unexpected, note, work to get our home finished in time for Baby Briggs' arrival continues. This week we had new shower fittings put in but when the tiler came to remove the tiles ready for the new ones, a supposedly quick and easy job, all the plaster work fell off the wall!! This is how our bathroom looks now...

The joys of old buildings.

Nursery Chair - Done!

It took a bit of thought and a lot of effort but the comfy chair for Baby Briggs' room is now done! First the legs were painted and the back went on...

Then the sides (these were the trickiest bits)...

You can see springs in the photo above, which is what the seat will rest on but to make it extra secure I attached a layer of strong canvas...

I stitched, and piped, the cushion and voila we have a new chair!

The back was covered with a lovely coffee sack...

And finally, check out this little guy made from the off-cuts of material and some chair stuffing!

Nursery Chair

This week I started work on two mini Parker Knoll armchairs. As I wanted to keep one in our nursery and sell the other, I decided to do mine first so that if I made any mistakes on the first one then I would know how to do the second one better. I am so glad I decided to do this as I have already had to redo a couple of bits! 

It took me nearly two days to strip, due to stubborn staples and an ever growing bump getting in the way of bending and general flexibility! I haven't done enough of the new upholstery (that I'm happy with) to post photos yet but here is how the chair looked while being stripped.

The back

The front

The Parker Knoll!

The back stripped, showing the springs that keep the chair in place when you lean back.

Stripped and ready to be put back together again.

Starting as I mean to go on

I have had a productive start to 2012 and am determined to keep it up. I already know that I like organisation and routine, and with a baby arriving in April, I feel that 2012 needs to be the year that I make every effort to keep organised and be as productive as possible. That includes this blog, so I will be trying my hardest to update it every week... or maybe every two!

So far this year Mr Briggs and I have painted Baby Briggs' room and got started on some decorations (these will be posted soon), had a couple of days romantic break in London, ordered a beautiful cot, looked at pushchairs and ordered a new kitchen. For me one of the most exciting things has been that my tub chair has been sold in the shop in Stonehaven, and someone even went in and asked if there were any more! I can't explain how exciting it is that someone liked a piece of my furniture enough to buy it, and it has really inspired me to get on with more upholstery this year...

So the past two days I have been working on a headboard for our bedroom. This is how our bed used to look, a bit dull.

So I bought some mdf from the nice people at Walker Woodstock - I use the Gorgie road depot where they are all very friendly and will cut your wood to whatever size you need. The full size sheet wouldn't fit in our car so I had it cut in half and when I got home drilled some mdf struts to the back to put it back together, and then glued some foam to it. The foam was ordered from eFoam, who I would definitely recommend as the site is simple to use and they always deliver really quickly.

Next I attached my material - "Linen Stripe" from Laura Ashley. I like working with stripes as they give you something to work to when attaching material to a straight edge.

We don't have much space either side of our bed so instead of having lamps either side we bought some clip on lights from Ikea. I attached two strips of mdf to the back of the headboard so that these could be clamped to the back and allow the light to shine out round the sides of the bed.

Two headboard forks were then attached to the back to allow the headboard to be fitted to the bed. 

And now this is how it looks.....

The artwork in the last photo is a 19th century Japanese block print that I bought from Liberty in London (with some very generous Liberty gift coins a kind friend gave us for a wedding present). I bought it specifically to go in our newly decorated bedroom and was worried the colours wouldn't be quite right - I would say they are pretty much perfect!