Old Chair, New Look...

Before we carrying on with the next bathroom update, 

check out our chair that we revamped...

Remember all the old things I found under my parents house a little while ago? 

(You can read more about that here). 

Well after staring at this poor chair for a few months, 

I finally decided it was time for a revamp. This and the fact that I had now found material to use for the cushions. BUT before I carry on with how we did it, can i just say that I got such a good deal with this material!! I got it from Biggie Best in La Lucia Mall for an absolute bargain. Most of the material there is in the range of R270 upwards but I got three metres for R105 total!!!! It was on sale for R35/m. So despite being short on cash, I went ahead and bought it anyway. Normally this material would have cost me at least R800 for the same amount. After finding the material, I also got some foam cut for the seat of the chair and wadding/padding for the back of the chair. (actually Karin did this for me... Thanks Karin!!) We just used some brown paper to trace the shapes we needed for the foam for the seat and the back.

After cutting out my material, I started off by ripping out all the old torn canvas you see below. The original backing of this chair used to be cane and there were still little bits of cane stuck around the edges of the chair so we had to pry this out before carrying on. It was quite a time consuming process as we sat with a hammer and screw driver and slowly hammered it all out, being careful not to damage the chair. 

After this was done, I gave the whole chair a light sanding before painting it with two coats of wood primer. The wood primer I used was Plascon Wood Primer UC2. I then left it overnight to dry before bringing out my can of white spray paint. I have found an awesome white spray paint that is really good quality and covers really well. It is called RUST-OLEUM Painter's Touch: Ultra Cover, Gloss White. I only needed two coats before it was looking lovely and white... 

Because I loved this paint so much I went and bought two more cans and I gave our two bed-side tables and some frames we found some new glossy white life. 

Below you can see the chair in all its lovely white glossy-ness. (it looks better in real life)

The other picture shows the backing material on. We just cut it to size, using the brown paper pattern we had made and used a staple gun to attach it to the chair. We had to make sure that we pulled the material quite tight before we stapled it on. We stapled it from the front but the staples won't be visible because of the cushion that goes on the front.

Before we started on trying to upholster the back section of the chair, I attempted to make a cushion for the seat of the chair. Thanks to Karin for lending me her sewing machine and guiding me through making my first cushion cover... 

it even has a zip and piping around the edges...

To make the backing of the chair, we did a bit of recycling and pulled the masonite back off an old cupboard we were going to throw out. Again we used our brown paper pattern to draw out the shape it had to be. Once we had cut it out of the wood we laid some wadding over it and the material on top of that and slowly pulled it over the edges and then stapled it at the back. This process wasn't as quick or simple as I have just explained. Because this was our first attempt at any kind of re-covering/upholstery, it was very trial and error but it turned out well in the end. After the piece of wood was covered and looking pretty, we stapled it on to the back of the chair, this too was not terribly easy but after some time we got it to work. It would have been slightly easier if we had used a thinner wood but we were just using what we had lying around.

After this was done we used some edging/lacey stuff and glued it around the edges with a hot glue gun and finished it off with a some nice tacks, the edging and tacks were also compliments of Karin. While we were attaching the backing Karin sat quietly at her sewing machine and within fifteen minutes had whipped up the lovely little scatter cushion. Thanks for all your help with this Karin.. it turned out lovely. It really was a team effort...

A quick project breakdown

The chair: 

Removed old canvas, removed old cane edging, sanded lightly, 

two coats of wood primer, two coats of white spray paint.

The cushions:

Made a pattern of the seat and backing using brown paper, bought foam and wadding, 

bought material, cut out material, sewed the seat cushion, cut out wood for chair backing, 

upholstered chair backing, attached to chair, finished off with edging, tacks and scatter cushion.

This whole project cost about R380 to do. You could never find such a lovely, real wood chair for that price in the shops. So D.I.Y and finding and re-vamping old things is not only cheaper but we have fun doing it. 

Of course it always takes a whole lot longer than you think it would and is never as easy as you think but the end product is always so satisfying...

Next up... COMPLETED EN-SUITE BATHROOM..

Plumbing, Plastering and Priming

Here is a quick update on what happened after we had the en-suite bathroom stripped...

Firstly, we hired a double blade wall chaser and industrial vacuum cleaner from Coastal Tool Hire in Durban. They were very helpful and we will definitely go back there for any other power tools that we need to hire. You can check out there website here: http://coastalhire.co.za. 

The Wall Chaser basically cuts 30mm x 30mm grooves into the wall (in my opinion looks like an angle grinder with two blades instead of one). We used this to cut grooves in the wall so that the pipes for our shower and basin would sit inside the wall. How hard could it be???? (This is going to be our slogan and we are going to print it really big and put it up in our house, it is the story of our D.I.Y journey: HOW HARD COULD IT BE?) The answer is usually: Way harder than we originally thought. :) 

Before we could start cutting the grooves in the wall, we had a plumber help us mark out where the pipes for the shower and basin would be. Then the cutting started and it took a good couple of hours, because it wasn't just cutting with the chasing tool. It didn't cut deep enough into the wall so Stu had to go back with and hammer and chisel and knock out a bit more. Thank goodness we hired the industrial vacuum that attached to the chasing tool - even with the vacuum and a sheet stuck up over the door, there was so much dust. 

After the walls were chased and we were happy with it, we started on the plumbing and building the base for the shower. This process took place over a weekend and then the Wednesday after that was a public holiday so we finished it off then. We kept all the rubble and bits of brick that came out from chasing the plumbing holes and used it when building the base of the shower.

 Then the next weekend we plastered the holes - our first attempt at plastering and it didn't turn out too badly. It was very frustrating at first but once we got the hang of it it went well.

These pictures show the finished product after the plumbing and plastering was done.

The next step was to grind back the wall where we would be painting.





There were lots of lumps and bumps and old adhesive still stuck to the wall. We used the angle grinder with a sanding pad to grind it back and make it nice a smooth to paint on. This process was very dusty and took about two weekends to do. It was one of those exersizes that don't really show much progression but have to be done in order for the next step to take place.

This grinding stage also resulted in a trip to the emergency room. Not wearing gloves when using power tools can have awful outcomes. Somehow the angle grinder slipped and caught Stu's index finger. But long story short, he luckily didn't lose the tip of his finger and after two months it has healed so well you can hardly see the damage.

After the grinding was done we plastered the top sections of the wall with a thin layer of Rhinolite plaster. The below pictures show the end result.

After the Rhinolite had dried properly we primed the section where we were going to paint with a general plaster primer and waterproofed the shower section with Coprox Masonary Waterproofing. The Coprox was really easy to use and apply. All we had to do was mix the powder with the right amount of water and paint it on. While it was drying we had to spray it with a light mist of water just to help the drying process and cure it so that it didn't leave a coat of powdery dust. We did two coats of this and we had some left over so we painted it on the entire floor to just add some extra waterproof protection.

The second coat we did in the evening with the help of our trusty headlight. 

Nothing like a bit of midnight waterproofing...

So thats all the hard/ugly/messy stuff finally done. YAY!! 

Check out the next post when we get to show you the fun stuff like putting in the downlights, cornicing, painting the walls and finally the tiling!!!

Bathroom Demolition

So…. it's been nearly three months since we last posted an update. 

We have been very busy trying to get the en-suite bathroom finished and it is taking way, way longer than we ever imagined (well at least longer than I had imagined, Stu knew in reality it would take a long time, especially since weekends are the only time we can work on it.) We are making great progress though and finally feel like we can see the end!! So here is the first in a series of what i think will be quite a few updates...

Tile stripping and ripping out all the old accessories. Smashing tiles is quite therapeutic. The pic on the right shows the top section and part of the basin pedestal out.

The thing that amazed us both was the amount/thickness of tile adhesive 

(which looks more like cement). Not to mention how the tiling was quite obviously done after installing the toilet, basin and bath. Guess they didn't get the memo about tiling first?

The above four images show the removal of the toilet. Man, were we glad to get that ugly brown toilet and basin out??!!! Another thing that had us flabbergasted was how the toilet and basin pedestals had been cemented in.  It took throwing a 4-Pound mallet at it a good couple of times to pry it loose/smash it up into tiny little pieces...

After we started smashing out the floor tiles we discovered a 

not-so-lovely mustardy-yellow linoleum flooring. 

By this stage we were not even surprised, I mean could we expect any less 

after all our wonderful discoveries already? :)

Some shots of tile demolition… 

The top white/off-white/smokey/creamy/dirty coloured tiles came off really easily and in huge chucks. The brown and white ones however, took a bit more effort and patience...

Then it came to trying to figure out how one person could get a cast iron bath out and down and case of stairs without dying of over exertion… The only tools that were used was a small crowbar/tommy bar and 4-Pound mallet.

The bath wall finally out after a lot of hammering and prying…

Half the bath out… See how badly damaged the wall underneath 

the tiles was due to lack of waterproofing?

After the entire bathroom was completely stripped, I couldn't wait to place the toilet and basin pedestal in to see how they would fit and to see if the space we had allocated for the shower would be enough.

After a lot of thinking we realized our original idea of having a walk-in shower running along the left side wouldn't be that great because although it would be a metre in length, it would only be 650/700mm wide. So we have decided to go with a different layout. 

As it turned out we managed to find a really nice semi-frameless shower that was cheaper than the long one we originally wanted. Below is a picture of what it will look like... We can't we to get it all in and finally start using our long, very long awaited shower!!! 

So next on the list of things to do (which we have done already, I am just really behind in posting) is to sort out the plumbing and build the shower base. This is the thing we are/were most worried about... luckily it all turned out great so stay tuned for a plumbing update :)

Garden Update . . . Before & 4 Months After

So after a few weeks break from everything D.I.Y and a nice weekend away camping on the banks of the Vaal River with a whole lot of other Kombi enthusiasts, we have got stuck back into the home renovations, more specifically, the bathroom. 

But before that here's is a quick garden before and after for you to enjoy . . . 

We still have quite a way to go and a lot more stuff we want to add / do in the garden but I think its looking way better and a lot greener than it was before we moved in.

BEFORE

AFTER 4 MONTHS

Striking it Lucky . . . Awesome Old Finds

So this last weekend we were planning on stripping tiles out of the bathroom. But as you can see, we didn't get around to doing it. We didn't actually do anything D.I.Y or house related. We have decided to take the rest of this month off and chill out a little and then hit the D.I.Y again hard in March. . . But don't despair, I still have quite a bit of stuff to share with all you lovely people who are actually following our blog . . .

Check out all the rad stuff we have been finding over the last few weeks . . . 

THE CLOCK

Starting with this awesome old clock that is in need of A LOT of TLC. It belonged to my great grandfather, W. A. Russell. I actually found it under my parents house. From what we can see it needs to be sanded down, re-varnished and have a few holes fixed and then the working parts need to be made to work again. It has a plaque on it that says it is from 1928. So that makes this clock 84 years old. Is anyone in the clock business and have any helpful tips on restoring old clocks like these? I wonder how much it would be worth now? 

THE BALL & CLAW CHAIR

While I was under my parents' house, all covered in dust and sand, I also stumbled over this old oak ball and claw chair that belonged to my mother's grandmother. It also just needs to be sanded down and varnished or sanded down and painted in a nice glossy white enamel paint? We are still deciding what look to go with . . .  It originally had a wicker/cane back but we aren't really fans of the wicker look, so the plan is to make a nice backing out of plywood and then cover it with a cushion and also have a new cushion made for the seat part. We are thinking stripes, maybe cream/white/grey/navy blue stripes. We will just have to go and scout out some fabric and see what is available.

Maybe something along these lines? What do you think? We will be doing a charcoal/grey feature wall in the dining-room so I am thinking top-right if we want to keep it neutral, or maybe the top-middle if we want to bring in some blue/navy to the room. Bear in mind the chair will be painted in white enamel paint . . .

THE KIST

Next up on the list of cool things we have found is this kist. It is nice and big and also just needs a light sand and varnish/wood sealer. There are lovely brass handles on the sides and a brass latch on the front that needs to be polished up to reflect its former glory. I had the perfect place under the window in our dining room just waiting for something like this to be placed there . . .

THE DINING ROOM TABLE

Up until December we didn't own a dining room table. We have never really had the need or space for one. After we moved into the new house the area that was the 'dining room' was so bare and in desperate need of a nice table. Although we have never had a nice big table, I have always had a picture in my mind of what it must look like but I had yet to find it in reality. One weekend around Christmas time we were window shopping and browsing in a couple of shops and we saw this table and both instantly fell in love with it. We had no intention of buying anything, let alone a dining room table. We didn't really have the money for it at the time but as always we came up with a plan and thanks to Mom & Dad Strydom we now have a lovely dining room table . . . 

THE CHAIRS

BUT we didn't have any chairs. Ever since then we have been on the chair hunt. We have seen some lovely chairs for around R500-R800 each which doesn't seem too bad if they are real wood (We have also seen some for this price that aren't even solid wood and made really badly). So thanks to Gumtree, we now have two chairs to add to our table and the two of them together only set us back R350. Yes, they are completely different chairs, but that is the point. I am wanting to get 6 completely different old looking chairs that are made from real wood. I want the whole mix-n-match vibe. BUT my challenge is to get them for under R200 a chair, or free if that is at all possible. So, two down, four more to go . . .  

*Side Note: If you are reading this and you have something similar hanging around full of dust and unwanted, we would gladly take it off your hands. Drop us a mail and we will make a plan to get it from you. :)

This first chair looks like it has already been 're-done' and although its got a few bumps and scratches, we love the way it looks and are going to keep it just the way it is.

And here is the second chair we picked up today, like all the other pieces it just needs a bit of attention. We are thinking of just sanding it down and putting a darker stain on it so it matches the colour of the other chair and then getting some nice cushions for them . . .

THE WINGBACK

This lovely old wingback chair wasn't really part of our search for dining room chairs but while browsing Gumtree, I found this lovely old chair was going for R150! I felt like I had struck gold when I found it!! I couldn't pass up the chance. So off we went all the way to the Bluff last night to pick her up. Don't get me wrong, the old lady, as she will now be called, needs to be fully re-covered and needs a makeover but for R150 it is well worth it. The legs also have a few holes in them from borer bugs but nothing that can't be treated and fixed . . . I have got a few quotes to get her recovered but I am really toying with the idea of us trying to re-do and re-cover her ourselves. Maybe another 'Step-by-Step' in the pipelines? Has anyone ever done any furniture upholstery before? Feel free to drop us a mail with any helpful hints/comments . . .

Last, but not least, check out this rug we got for a bargin and a half (R200). This is one of those natural fibre woven rugs. It is massive and it weighs a ton. (The width of it is slightly longer than the length of our 6-seater dining-room table. It also needs a good clean and a little TLC but I think it's going to look just fine in our new lounge . . . Compliments of a lovely co-worker and friend . . . Thanks Raapie . . .

*Side Note: I have no idea why there is an arrow on the right pic :). 

Sometimes weird stuff just happens . . .

What do you think of all our lovely finds? Let's hope we can fix them all up and make them look really good. We will keep you posted as we go along. Not sure when they will all get done, the en-suite bathroom looms . . . but maybe they can just be side projects when we have had enough of the big projects :) Has anyone else got any D.I.Y, home projects, furniture restoration they are busy with?

Let us know . . .  Send us your before and after pics with a short write up and we'll pop it up on the blog. We are very keen to get a South African home renovation vibe going where people can get a chance to show others what D.I.Y / renovation jobs they have managed to pull off on a small budget . . . and even if you not from S.A, drop us a line and say Hi, we would love to hear from you :) 
oldhouse.newhome159@gmail.com
Until next time . . .

A Sneak Peak at Our Bathroom...

So next on our ever growing list of things to do, and the thing we would LOVE to get done ASAP is our en-suite bathroom. Currently as far as we are concerned, IT IS DISGUSTING. . . it is so outdated and has been done really badly and the entire thing needs to be completely stripped out and re-done. That, and the fact that we have two bathrooms and neither of them has a shower. . . We NEED a shower. So that is the plan for this bathroom. To make a shower and make it nice.

This is what it looks like now. (We actually don't even go in there if we can help it.)

It actually doesn't look as bad in the photos as it really is.

A couple of months ago I downloaded Google Sketch Up to see if I could play around a bit and do a quick mock up of how I saw our tiny en-suite bathroom working. I made everything to scale so I could figure out how we were going to fit everything in. Having never used any kind of 3-D/Modeling program before it took me a very long time to figure out enough of the program to do what I wanted to. There were some things I couldn't figure out, like how to take the path lines off so you could just see the shapes and not the points they were made up of. But after I had figured out the sizes that everything had to be, and how it all fitted in, I gave up on trying to make it look pretty and just left it with the lines on. This is what I ended up with:

Now you have an idea of what we are aiming at and you can see the amount of space we have to work with. As you can see from the sketch, our shower isn't going to have a door. I don't think the water will splash out too much because we are going to have a small row of bricks which should solve this problem but we will only really know once it is done. We have already bought all our materials and accessories, the only thing left to get is the shower glass and brackets.

BAMBOO ACCESSORIES

Now that we had an idea of what we wanted to do, the fun part was buying everything. 

Let's back track a little to October last year, even before the house was registered, straight after we got bond approval we saw a really nice bamboo toilet seat, then our eyes moved slightly up to the next shelf and we saw the bamboo towel rack and then we saw the soap dishes and toilet roll holder and and and... Basically every bamboo accessory we could see in front of us went straight into the trolley! 

We have a couple of really nice bamboo kitchen accessories and really love them, so we are suckers for bamboo stuff. 

THE TILES

The next thing we got was some floor tiles. Originally our idea was to have mosaic tiles in the shower only BUT because our bathroom is so incredibly small, 1,73m x 1,73m, we just decided to do the whole floor with the same tiles. We found these really cool natural stone tiles from CTM. They definitely weren't the cheapest ones but there were only four boxes left and thats exactly the amount we needed. So we just bought them. It was R49.95 per sheet and there were 11 sheets per box so it did work out a bit expensive but you can do the maths if you really want to :) The awesome thing about these tiles is that every sheet (30cmx 30cm) is completely different and random. I am so glad we bought them when we did because even though we were told they were getting more in, we haven't seen them again in any of the stores we have been into and there are similar ones but none that are quite as nice as these ones.

I could not wait to lay some of the tiles on the floor to see what they would look like. This is what it looked like after I laid them out. Like I mentioned earlier, every sheet is different so when they are laid down there is no specific pattern, which we love!

THE TAPS

The next things we bought were some taps for the basin and the shower and a shower head and arm. We spent a little more money on the taps. All the taps and the shower head and arm we got from Bathroom Bizarre. The total we spent on this was about R1,800.00. We could have got cheaper ones but these are the ones we wanted...

THE BASIN AND THE TABLE

Finding the basin and the table happened at pretty much the same time. Originally we wanted the basin to sit on top of a nice concrete counter but after more thought we realised it wouldn't look so good in such a small area and the 'heaviness' of the concrete counter might make the bathroom look even smaller than it is. After a couple of weeks of thinking and looking around for just the right thing, we can came across this table. The only thing wrong with it was that it was completely the wrong size. So I snapped a quick pic in the hopes of sending it to someone to have it made up in our dimensions.

 The basin we ended up buying to was a Trio 3-in-1 Drop-in Basin from CTM. Initially I was a little hesitant to buy it because it looked a bit funny. But when we saw it 'dropped-in' to a table/counter, it looked really awesome. It was also really well priced at R249.00, compared to all the other counter-top and stand alone basins we had seen that ranged between R500-R900. There was one basin I really loved but I couldn't justify paying R900 for a basin.

After we had bought our 'drop-in' basin, we then figured out the dimensions of the table we wanted, including the size of the hole that would have to be cut into the top of it to allow us to drop our basin in, and sent it to a furniture company in Greytown called Traditional Furniture.

This is what we got back after a few weeks . . .

 It was made of Saligna rather than the usual Pine. I can't explain how happy I was with the finished product. When I sent the pic as a reference I wasn't expecting it to be EXACTLY the same, I would have been happy with something similiar, but as far as I can see, it was exactly as per the pic we sent them! Normally when I have asked for stuff to be custom made there has always been some problem and it is not exactly right the first time round but this was the exact opposite. Thanks so much Graham and Charmaine from Traditional Furniture. We love it!! We asked for it to be unvarnished and we bought some Matt Wood Doc sealer and sealed it ourselves. We have done 3 coats of Wood Doc so far but want to do another two or three coats to be extra sure it is properly sealed as it is going to be in the bathroom. The total amount we spent on the table and the basin together was about R650.00.

Here is the finished table with the basin placed in the table and the taps balancing very carefully on the basin.

THE TOILET

This is the toilet we picked up for R399 from Builders Warehouse. This is as close as the toilet will be to the basin because we don't have too much space to work with. The only major thing is going to be changing the plumbing to allow for a shower instead of the bath that is currently there.

We are planning on doing most of the work ourselves except for the plumbing. After the bathroom is complete we will be able to add a whole lot more skills, including plastering walls and tiling to name a few, to our ever growing list of things we can do. We realistically only see it being completed in a couple of months time, as it depends a lot on whether we have budget for the plumbing to be done and when you are doing it yourself after-hours it obviously takes way longer than if you just hire someone to do it for you. 

And the stripping begins . . . (We did this small amount of tile stripping about a month or so ago) 

This weekend we are planning to spend most of the day on Saturday knocking out tiles . . . Check back next week to see if we actually managed to do what we have planned and hopefully we will have some more progress pics to show you all . . . 

If you have any thoughts, ideas, helpful tips we would love to hear from you. or if you have done something similar before send us your before and after pics, we would love to put them up on our blog.

Drop us a mail: oldhouse.newhome159@gmail.com or leave a comment . . .

Wish us luck :)