Our flat isn’t exactly spacious. Don’t get me wrong, it could be smaller, but the only storage we have (besides our bedroom wardrobe) is one tiny closet in the hallway.

I wanted someplace to store books, computers, cables/cords… and plants! I wanted more plants! Oh, and whatever it was had to fit perfectly between our living room doorway and TV cabinet.

I started hunting around for a perfect bookshelf – something visually open, interesting and tall. Our flat might not be big in square meters, but it has really high ceilings – why not make the most of them? Since this bookshelf was going beside the doorway, the shelves couldn’t block sight lines into the room. Hence my ‘open’ requirement.

The perfect bookshelf was the helix from CB2. But, not only did I want it to be cheaper (international shipping and all), I also wanted it to be wider and taller. I figured that it couldn’t be too hard to make something similar myself – after all, it’s just a couple of metal poles and wood, right?

Well… nothing’s ever easy, is it?

I found a website that not only supplied the metal I needed but would even cut the mitre corners for the top! Cool right? They also had metal lugs that I could get welded on as shelf supports. Now, all I needed was someone to weld those 16 joins (for the corners, and attaching the lugs).

I started asking local metal fabricators but the quotes I got were insane! I mean, the metal was going to be delivered to them, already cut to size – they just had to weld it. They were trying to charge £200 to make 16 weld joins. Bat-shit crazy…

So I put it off to the side and kind of forgot about it for a while, until I had an epiphany. There are other jobs that use welding! And, because building custom furniture or railings isn’t their 9-5, they might not try to rip me off! So I called up a local auto-body shop and managed to secure the work for only £30! Boo-yah! To finish them off, all it took was a couple coats of primer and black spray paint.

Next up, came the wood. Which threw another wrench into the works.

See, I wanted the shelves to be 30cm wide, which it turns out, is wider than standard planks of wood. I searched high and low but anything wider than 20cm was expensive. So I decided to go with plywood! I knew that I could add wood edging (which I used to make the bedside tables) to make it look like solid wood, but I kind of liked the plywood edges.

I looked around for a place that would not only supply large enough sheets of the right grade plywood but would cut it down into my shelf size. That’s when I discovered Builder Depot and boy, do I wish they had a location closer to me! I have lots of projects in mind…

The first time we went, I didn’t call ahead of time and they were out of the birch ply I was planning to use. I had already been toying with using marine grade (looked nice in photos), so figured I would just give that a shot. It ended up being a nightmare. The edges just splintered when I tried to sand them smooth, not to mention the stain looked awful. So I managed to convince Richard to drive me all the way back another weekend for the birch ply – it made all the difference.

Seriously, the stuff is amazing – it’s no wonder they use it to build kitchen cabinets etc. The edges are neat when you cut it and you can sand it without wearing away the top layer.

To construct the shelves (which the helpful staff at Builder Depot cut at 30cm x 100cm) all I had to do was cut a little notch to allow the metal to sit flush with the edge. I measured my metal posts, marked the square, and cut it very carefully with a jigsaw. It took some time to do each one, as I had to sort of cut it away in triangles a bit at a time.

After cutting, the shelves got good sand and some Danish oil! As I was worried about the colour looking blotchy, I did a couple of coats with clear oil first. I figured it could soak into the grain and ensure that it didn’t absorb too much pigment in the later oils. Then I did a couple passes with a mixture of Canadian Cedar and Jacobean Dark Oak. I tested both colours on some scrap plywood and decided something halfway between would be the best match to the existing wood in the room. Once the colour was dark enough, I let them all dry completely before varnishing.

Side note – I can’t wait to have a garage or somewhere to do stuff like this! We ended up taking them to my brother-in-law’s place, as they had some room in their garage we could use.

Now, one thing I didn’t do a great job of, was choosing the best birch ply sheet. The stuff they had in stock wasn’t the same grade on both sides (BB and C) which meant that some sheets had lots of these patches anywhere there was a knot on the one side. I hate being picky when someone has to forklift sheets down for me, going through them until I find ‘the one’, so I kind of settled on what I thought was good enough. Well, the stain really highlights those patches! It’s not the end of the world though – I made sure that they were either on the underside of a lower shelf or the topside of the higher ones. You never see them! But if you’re doing anything similar, learn from my mistake. Be that annoying perfectionist going through an entire stack of plywood!

Now that I had everything ready to go, it was just a matter of putting it all together. The metal supports got these plugs to go in the bottom so they wouldn’t scratch the floor and then I just had to attach the shelves.

I found screws that were short enough that they didn’t go all the way through the plywood; unfortunately, the holes on the lugs were a bit wider than the screw heads. To compensate, I picked up some washers and sprayed them black to match the screws. Then it was a simple job of attaching the shelves by screwing through the lugs, making sure to put the shelves in the right order (to hide the patches).

Finally, we stood them up, measured and marked the holes for the wall, and drilled in some drywall anchors. The studs would have been great, but the placement of the shelf didn’t line up with any. We used some spare butterfly anchors we had and I painted the heads black to match.

And that’s it! It took a long time to actually get these shelves up, what with finding the right welder and getting the wrong wood at first, but I’m so happy with them! They fit the space perfectly – adding much-needed surface area for all my books and plants. (Not to mention the booze and computers/random cables hidden in those baskets.)

What do you guys think? Feeling inspired to find a local welder of your own? Now that you know my mistake’s secrets, give it a shot!

SIMPLE ART LEDGES: Now that I’m back to being my productive self ?, I figured I should really post a few projects I made last year that never made it onto the old bloggity blog – like this one! Queue the endless ramblings…

Do you ever look around your place and think that something’s missing? You have all the essentials (furniture etc.), but for some reason, the room lacks personality. For me, there are two ways to solve this problem – plants or artwork! Or both! Ooooooohhh…

Our flat was seriously lacking in the personality department for a while, so I started to remedy it through an assortment of items (juju hat, abstract paintings, baskets, an old flag), but the wall above our tiny dining table still needed help.

SIMPLE ART LEDGES

Now, I’m a big fan of gallery walls (done them 3 times in previous apartments) but I wanted something ‘looser’ this time. Something that I could adjust when the mood struck. Maybe it’s because I’m feeling inspired by everything that Jenny Komenda does lately, or maybe it’s the fact that I feel loath to fill a million nail holes someday.

image via

Enter the art ledge! Dun dun dun… The perfect option for those feeling a bit lazy in the whole hanging-a-gallery-wall department. Not to mention – is it just me or are we all getting a bit tired of gallery walls?

I mean, don’t get me wrong, when they are done right they are amazeballs… but they just feel a bit overdone these days. Since I didn’t feel like I had the right wall or a great collection of pieces to display as a gallery, it didn’t feel like the right move here.

Back to the art ledge!

images via

Aren’t the above rooms gorgeous?

The space I had in mind for them wasn’t huge, but when I looked around at ready-made options, they were all too short (or not solid wood – so cutting them down wasn’t an option). I wanted something the same length as the table itself, so figured why not make my own?

All you need are a few pieces of wood, finish nails, wood glue, appropriate filler, and sandpaper. (Depending on how you want to finish them, you’ll also need either paint, stain and/or varnish.) It only took me like 30 minutes to cut and assemble the ledges. Easy peasy!

I took photos of the assembly but lost them (it was ages ago). But then I realised, there are waaaay better tutorials out there than the one I was making. Why add to all the great content already in existence?

If you’re looking to DIY some yourself, check out this tutorial from Chris Loves Julia, this one from A Beautiful Mess, or this one from Little House on the Corner. Honestly, it’s so simple and there is no right/wrong way to do it. Just go to your nearby DIY store (I used B&Q) and find the strip wood that fits the style/size you’re looking to build.

I decided to paint mine the same colour as the wall so that they would blend in and allow the artwork to be the focus. They would look equally awesome as wood too… there was just too much already in the form of the table/chairs/frames etc.

They’re mounted with some simple screws that we had lying around. Sure, I could have pre-drilled larger holes to sink them into the wood (and then fill/sand) but I just couldn’t care enough. This way, if I ever want to remove them, I can do it without any extra hassle. Also, since they’re painted the same colour (and generally covered with artwork) you can’t tell they are there.

And that’s it! Super simple and easy to change on a whim. My kind of project! Why not make some yourself?

I recapped our allotment in this post a couple weeks back and used the following illustration to show the layout of our first plot.

To show all the changes that we’ve made this year so far and our plans for all the plants, I created a new illustration for 2018. You can see it below.

So the first big changes up from last year, are the greenhouse and a second plot! Richard is so incredibly proud of the greenhouse. It took a while to build, but mostly because we were doing it in winter and there’s only so much time you want to spend freezing your butt off outside painting pallets. The frame was built out of pallets that Richard got from his work, and for so long it looked like we were building a pen for animals. Then he added some curved plastic pipe for the roof supports, and a shelf made of pallet scraps for starting seeds at the back, and everything got covered in plastic! The thing that took the longest was painting it all with the same stain as the shed (Tudor Black Oak) as pallets have so many nooks and crannies.

We’ve used it to start all our seeds this year, and made use of both the shelf as well as the bare ground to keep large bins full of seed trays. It was great to not have our windowsills full of little trays, like last year. Now that everything has been planted out, it’ll mostly be used to grow all our tomatoes, chilli peppers, and cucamelons.

Outside of the greenhouse, I opted to plant some lupins and salvia because I wanted to fill the space a bit and make it look prettier. On the other side, I moved some forget-me-nots that kept showing up on our plot to make it look nicer. Our allotment neighbour has them, and they keep seeding little plants all over our plot. Since I like free flowers I decided to simply move them, rather than get rid of them.

Besides the greenhouse, we have our shipping boxes-turned-raised beds from last year. We’ve moved them to a slightly different spot because of the greenhouse, but they’re in the same part of the plot. Instead of lettuce greens (which we always forgot to pick) we’re growing all of our herbs in two of the boxes while keeping the third for carrots and radishes like before. Hopefully, the nasturtiums, which are planted around the two herb boxes, will really fill out and spill into the middle… so pretty!

Over by the greenhouse is our shed! I gave it a couple of fresh coats of stain, as it was looking a bit worn after the winter. And of course, we gave it a much larger patio! If you follow along on Instagram, you will have seen the progress on stories. It’s soooo nice to have enough room now to sit with a few friends for a BBQ, which would have been too cramped before. And I can’t stop loving the herringbone brick! We scoured Gumtree to find free bricks in our area and then cleaned the old mortar off them to add to the existing patio._

I also frosted the window to make it look less cluttered (and prevent prying eyes – people’s sheds have been broken into before), and added a window box! Richard’s convinced it’s a bad idea, but it was in my allotment dream to have a pretty window box on the black shed. So far I’ve managed to keep it alive, despite not watering it every day. I specifically chose plants that do well without tons of water.

To further pretty up the space, we have our lavender around the shed (which is so much bigger this year – yay!) and a passion flower climbing up one side. I’m hoping that after this year the lavender will be big enough to sort of make a hedge all the way around the shed, but the back plants were smaller to start, and get less light. Without direct sunlight, they throw out really scraggly long flowers, but I’m hoping that after I prune them back a bit, they won’t flop over so much.

Beside the patio, we have Richard’s beloved sweet peas, in a newly built trellis. Last year we used bamboo, but the weight of the sweet peas caused it to sag too much. So we got some old scrap wood, stained it black (of course), and put green string between them. Hopefully, they’ll get even taller than last year with their added support. I had to redo the string part a couple of times because I first used wire (they didn’t like it), and then it was too far apart for them to grow properly. Hopefully next year we can get it sorted early enough to get super tall sweet peas. We basically want to make a privacy screen out of flowers to create a little private patio area.

The only other things on this side of the plot are our bean trellises. We’ve had some issue with the one corner, where plants seem to suddenly wither and die – we’re not sure if it’s ants creating nests in the roots, or some kind of fungus. Either way, we’ll try the beans somewhere else next year.

The finishing touch for this half of the plot would be to somehow get some solar string lights above the patio, but we’ll see. We don’t spend too much time at the allotment once the sun goes down, so it might be a bit of a waste… but so pretty!

Between the shed side of this plot and the other side, we have a plum tree and an apple tree. Pruned back a fair bit from last year, but still more to go. Hopefully next year they’ll be all nice and open. I also added some solar “light bulbs” amongst the trees which come on around dusk and make it look so pretty! They were only £1 from the pound shop, but work really well.

On to the other half of this plot! I told you these allotment posts would be long! 

The other half of our plot is broken into three sections. On the far side, we have our strawberry patch, rhubarb patch, and a few raspberries and blackberries. Everything there was the same last year, with the exception of the raspberries. They’re all transplants from little raspberries that decided to sprout in the grass between our trees. (Turns out raspberries are pretty much invasive on our plot – they keep popping up all over the place, so we just move them where we want.) Last year we had squash plants there, which we’ve moved to our second plot, as there wasn’t enough room. Our strawberries and rhubarb are much more established this year! We got a crazy amount of strawberries in June, and are hoping for another good crop later in the summer.

On the other side of this half of the plot, we have another bank of raspberry canes. These were moved from the other side of the plot to make way for the greenhouse, and they are much happier here! Hopefully, they’ll root in really well and produce lots next year. We also added a couple yellow and black (!) raspberry plants in amongst the old ones. Beside these is our new composter that Richard built from three pallets (and stained black – of course). Honestly, Richard is so in love with his composter, and I like that we can use it to store and sort bamboo and other wood posts.

In the middle of these sections, we have all our rows of plantings. We changed the way we oriented them from last year because the slope of the hill kept resulting in the lowest plants getting all the water. From the bottom, we have two rows of potatoes, two rows of beets (three kinds), parsnips, onions, and sugar snap peas! Right beside the peas, we have our second plum tree, which we surrounded with dahlia and teddy bear sunflowers. It’ll be like a little burst of pretty flowers in the middle of so many practical things. Well, that is if they start blooming anytime soon

Unfortunately, our first crop of beets and Swiss chard didn’t germinate, and the second got attacked by slugs. We’ve replanted them, and new shoots are emerging, but for now, this section looks all sad and bare. The parsnips did okay though, which was the complete opposite of last year. The snap peas have again been absolutely decimated by birds and slugs. We keep replanting them, but they just get gobbled up before they can get more than an inch or two tall. We maaaay need to buy larger plants soon.

The last thing on this plot, at the far end, are our last three trees – two apples and a cherry. The apples are doing okay – one got a bad aphid infestation and dropped a lot of apples, while the other is great. The cherry, however, keeps dropping all its fruit before it starts to ripen. There’s a pest problem there but I haven’t managed to figure it out yet.

And that’s it! Or, at least, that’s our old plot. I didn’t document the new one this past month simply because it was so overgrown in weeds (argh!) that it was hard to see the plants. As it was left for over a year to completely overgrown with grass and weeds, it’s been hard to tame. We’re almost there now, so I’ll try and document it for July. Already it’s proven quite the courgette/zucchini patch and the squash plants are right behind! Looks like we’re in for a bumper crop this year!

So what about you guys? Do you have a big vegetable garden this year?

So last year we took on our first plot at the allotment (community garden) nearby. It had been left to get a bit overgrown as the previous owner couldn’t take care of it anymore. I talked about what our dreams for the plot were in this first post, as well as what we had done so far in this one. However, that is where my posts stopped! I kept wanting to take photos and post updates but would think “I need to weed first” because I wanted super pretty ‘Instagram-worthy’ pictures. Well, that never seemed to happen, and then our tomatoes all got blighted and I just gave up. I just never thought it looked good enough to document.

Buuut… it’s hard to really show how far we’ve come without first posting some photos from last year. They’re mostly just iPhone photos that I took to send to Richard while he was away, so he could see the progress. I apologize for their lack of quality.

So first up, we need to just remember where we started…

That was how the plot looked when we first signed up for it. It had rows of raspberry canes covering one half of the plot, a few giant woody lavender, a couple of rose bushes, and some fruit trees. Other than that, it was all just grass and weeds – completely overgrown.

We pulled up all the old landscape fabric and rotated the two halves of the plot. Unfortunately, as we learned the hard way, certain weeds etc. just get worse if you rotovate. Richard had broken up and turned the soil on one half by himself, but then while he was doing the second half, the allotment site manager came over and offered to rotovate instead. Turns out they get broken up and churned into the soil – only to pop up later 100 times worse. You can see evidence of that in later photos…

Now, to make things less confusing let’s refer to some diagrams and images – shall we? Last year just after we cleared the site, we drew up some plans of what we wanted to do (this plan was in my post about what we had done so far).

And of course, our plans changed as we went, and by the end of the summer, the actual plot looked like this. Oh, and my diagrams got better

Now, our plot essentially has two sides, broken up by the trees and grass in the middle (as shown in the diagram above). Let’s start by talking about everything that we did on Side A.

the plastic shed base, laid on top of the white weed-covering fabric

So one of the first things that we managed to do was create the patio area and shed. We ended up getting our shed assembled, because Richard was away at the time, and I can’t build it by myself (hard to lift and screw things together, simultaneously). The company delivered it and put it together in about 20 minutes! All I had to do was clear the area, level the ground, and install a base. To that end, I put down one of those plastic shed bases. It was super easy to put together and came with landscape fabric to prevent weeds from growing underneath. We could have gone with a wood base or concrete, but the wood ones are super expensive, and the concrete wasn’t going to work on an allotment.

Once the shed was up, I painted it black with some Tudor Black Oak stain we bought from B&Q, just like my inspiration photos. It probably took about 4 coats to really cover, which took forever with the tiny brush I was using. I also covered the exposed black shed base with some light grey gravel.

Then, I cleared the ground and levelled it as best I could for the patio. I had been dreaming of having a herringbone brick patio since Richard first mentioned having an area for BBQs and tea breaks. Somewhere nice to sit and relax after we’ve been gardening. We changed the orientation of the shed and patio from our first plans but kept it in the same corner of our allotment.

We had been given some free bricks from Richard’s work, and I simply laid them on top of some landscape fabric and filled them around with packed earth to prevent them from shifting. Unfortunately, we never filled in the gaps with sand, which meant that it shifted around a fair bit when walked on. Something we remedied this spring, when we decided to increase the size of the patio!

On the shed side of the allotment (side A), we ended up planting beans, tomatoes, and herbs. Richard was given some shipping crates from his work (not the best wood, but hey – free!) that we turned into raised beds for nasturtiums, lettuce greens, and my cucamelons! I painted them with the black stain that I used on the shed and they looked really nice! Nothing that a little black stain can’t spruce up! I erected some bamboo in between two boxes and rigged up a trellis with some string for the cucamelons to grow up. My original plan was to make a living archway, but the bamboos just weren’t tall enough to walk under.

you can see the boxes in the right photo, along with by cucamelon trellis before it was tied together

bean trellis in the foreground, tomato plants behind, then boxes in the background

The third box we had was used for carrots, as it was the only one deep enough. We had read online that chives prevent carrot flies, so we planted some in each corner of the box, and it seemed to do the trick! None of our carrots suffered from pests all summer. Beside the grass and trees, along the boxes, we added a row of raspberry canes that we salvaged from the plot when we took it over. The only other things that we planted were some sweet peas and lavender around the shed.

Everything was doing really well until our tomatoes caught blight. Almost everyone in our allotment got it and we ended up losing all 12 plants. Juuuust as they all had tomatoes about to ripen We were both so depressed. We had all kinds of tomatoes too, from green zebra ones to giant beefsteaks.

all our lovely tomato plants just as they caught blight

On the other side of the allotment (side B), we planted rows of beets, swiss chard, peas, potatoes, zucchini, and oka. We also had a patch of strawberries, rhubarb, and Jerusalem artichokes, as well as some dahlia and sunflowers. This side of the allotment did really well! The rhubarb was constantly provided, as were the potatoes, zucchini, beets, peas, and Swiss chard. We forgot to harvest the oka and Jerusalem artichokes until it was too late, and the strawberries kept getting eaten by squirrels.

our rhubarb, strawberry patch and the rows of newly sprouted plants

our beets and Swiss chard just as they started coming up

this side of the plot once everything had come up!

The only other things on the plot were our fruit trees. The plums we missed, as we were away when they were ripe, but we got plenty of apples! However, our cherry tree kept dropping all the cherries before they ripened… so something is wrong there. Just not sure what.

And that’s it! That was our allotment last year, and boy has it changed! So far we’ve moved tons around, built a greenhouse, and got a second plot!  If you follow me on Instagram, and especially the stories, you’ll have seen more of this by now. I’m planning on documenting the allotment much more this summer, with a post every month on how things are going. We have big plans this year!

What about you? Any plans for growing your own fruits and vegetables this summer?

See, we were lazy and didn’t want to spend all that time and money on installing a plaster ceiling medallion. That, and the fact that the selection was incredibly limited at local DIY stores – we couldn’t find one in the right size that wasn’t insanely expensive. So, after our success in installing plastic coving in our kitchen, we decided to go the same route with our ceiling medallion. Plus, it takes like 5 minutes to put up!

We ordered this ceiling medallion from Amazon, as the middle circle was large enough to accommodate our IKEA pendant light. Many medallions had detailing too close to the middle or were too pricy. This one had detail right in the centre, but the smooth expanse around it was wide enough for our needs. We simply cut away the middle detail, as our light would cover it anyway.

When we received it, I was a bit disappointed. It wasn’t smooth and ready to paint, like our coving had been, but resembled polystyrene packaging. It had that rough nubbly surface. So, I thought I would try a trick I read about on Daniel Kanter’s blog Manhatten Nest. He painted his plastic medallions with watered-down plaster/filler to help make them look older. I mixed up some, but I think I made it too wet… when my first coat of primer dried, huge cracks formed all over the surface!

I was sooooo bummed, as sanding a detailed medallion is ridiculous. I tried to remove the larger cracks with sanding and then hoped that a few coats of primer would fill in the rest. Well, it took like 6 coats before they started to look okay, but even then had more texture than I would have liked. After primer, I used our ceiling paint to do a couple more coats.

It still has a bit of a rough/sloppy look when you see it up close… but definitely doesn’t look brand new! If I were to redo this, I would skip the joint compound, and simply do a couple rough primer coats, allowing the paint to soften the edges.

Once it was all painted, I simply applied some No More Nails to the back, and stuck it up in place! Took me all of 5 minutes to install. Then I just re-attached the lamp, caulked around the edge, and painted it once dry.

So my verdict? I would definitely recommend polystyrene medallions for the ease of installation, and removal. They are so quick to put up! But, I do still prefer the look of the plaster one. Maybe it’s just because I know it’s plaster, but I feel like it has more visual weight to it. Or maybe that’s just because it’s bigger The one that Daniel Kanter used in his kitchen definitely had more presence to it, so perhaps it’s not because it’s polystyrene, but because we chose one that was too thin. Hmmm…

I think in the future I’d use plaster ones in my forever home, because I like the thought of using real permanent materials, rather than plastic. But for this wee flat?

Polystyrene my friend, hands down!

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As I mentioned in the first kitchen saga post, our kitchen came with IKEA cabinets that were no longer available, and we had to replace the upper cabinets in order to add more storage. Now, we could have kept the lower wood, as I’m a fan of a two-tone kitchen, but all the white appliances sort of messed that up. My original plan with the kitchen had been to do a tuxedo kitchen with deep navy or green lower cabinets, and a white top. But, as our appliances were all white, you’d be left with half white, half colour. Not exactly the look I was going for. So, in an effort to make the kitchen feel brighter and larger, we went all white. Does that make any sense to anyone besides me? No? Okaaay…

beautiful navy + white tuxedo kitchen via Apartment Therapy

So, that meant painting our lower cabinets white, but what about the upper ones? I could have colour-matched IKEA’s SÄVEDAL doors, and then painted everything in our kitchen the same, but decided against it. See, every ceiling, door, and trim in our flat is painted All White by Farrow + Ball. If I wanted to use the IKEA white colour, then it would have meant repainting our doors and trim in the kitchen to this different white, and I didn’t want it to look different from the other rooms in the flat. (Richard wishes I had told him about the colour-matching option…)

Am I crazy? Yes. But I also justify it because the finish on the doors was so smooth and machine-made looking, that all the built-in trim with brushstrokes would have looked different. We would have had to paint the doors to make them all look the same, no matter which white we used.

Aaaaanyways. So in addition to painting all the wood doors and trim below, we had to paint all the new upper cabinet doors as well. That meant removing all the hinges and handles, cleaning everything of grease etc. and giving it all a light sanding. For the wood cabinets and trim, we used 3 coats of this primer, and then 2-3 coats of our Valspar paint in All White. For the upper cabinets, it took 2 coats of primer, and then 2 coats of paint. After the doors were up, I did a bit more sanding, and some touch-up paint, as we had been painting on low surfaces and little bits of fluff kept getting caught in the paint.

Now came the fun part – making all the IKEA cabinets look built-in. See, I’ve always been a huge fan of inset cabinetry and wanted to try and give our bank of cabinets a similar look. This meant filling in the gaps all the way around the cabinets with wood and trimming it all out.

inset cabinetry inspiration via Curated Interior

To get the look I wanted, it meant lining up the trim with the cabinet doors, as opposed to the frames. So we added a piece of 21x21mm strip wood all around the cabinets, flush with the face of their frames. To install it, we simply screwed into the piece from inside the cabinets with a couple of wood screws. Not only did this give us a piece we could then attach the trim to, but allowed us to offset our next piece by a few millimetres in order to create a gap between the doors and our trim.

For the left and right side facing trim pieces, all it required was some No More Nails, and then some finish nails into our strip wood. The one on the left was one solid piece, but the one on the right was two separate pieces because of the window. As the side pieces were quite narrow, they didn’t need any other support, but the piece running along the top required more help. If we had only secured it to the strip wood, then it wouldn’t have stayed in place – the long expanse of pine was just too heavy. So we used some scrap wood that we had lying around and built some supports all along the length of the cabinets, to prevent it from leaning, and then screwed the piece into supports on either end as well. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo showing the larger support pieces on the ends, that we screwed the facing trim into. Just imagine them…

As our ceilings aren’t level, we were left with a bit of a gap towards the right side. However, we weren’t too concerned as crown moulding would cover it. See, all the rooms in our flat, except for the hallway and kitchen had some sort of moulding or covering around the ceiling. Even the bathroom has a really simple coving. But for some reason, the kitchen didn’t have any, which always bugged me. I wanted to make the room feel a bit more architecturally interesting, and add some character back in. Not only that, but it would finish off our built-in cabinetry quite nicely.

Now, one thing I have noticed here in England is the lack of available moulding for the average DIYer. You can buy wood coving at trade-only shops, but nothing for the average Joe (me!). The main reason, I discovered, is because coving here is traditionally made of plaster. And after our experience with installing a heavy plaster ceiling medallion, we weren’t about to try that again. Which meant that our only option was to use the stuff readily available to us – polystyrene. Now, I know what you might be thinking – “ew, plastic coving – gross! that’s not adding character at all!” – which is exactly what I thought at first. But, as it was the only option, we went for it.

We ended up purchasing this kit from B&Q as it was the closest in style to the existing moulding in our flat (see above) and came with mitred corners. It was relatively easy to install, except that our not-perfectly-flat walls meant that we had to hold some pieces up for a while so that they held instead of drooping. We probably would have had an easier time if we’d used No More Nails instead of the coving adhesive, which took aeons to dry fully. (We found that out after using it to fill the gap along the ceiling and had to wait until the next day to sand and paint.) The other part that made it so time-consuming was the number of pieces we had to cut. Our room has 5 corners, which meant we had a total of around 13 or so pieces to cut and stick up. That also meant a lot of joins to try and smooth out. I’m a bit meticulous about filling and sanding, as Richard could tell you.

Our final pieces were some quarter-round trim that we added vertically along all the edges that meet the tiles. Once they were up, filled, and sanded, all it took was a few coats of paint. As per usual, we used All White for the trim, and then I cut in again using the wall colour – Barest Hush.

Then, all the cabinets got their matching handles, and the drawers as well. The handles that we chose are these ones from Etsy, in the 14cm length for all the cabinets, and one 23cm long one for the drawer below the oven. The drawer pulls are these ones from the same Etsy seller, in the 7.5cm length. They have a subtle texture, like cast iron, but visually match the smooth handles.

The final touch was filling in the gap along the tiling with silicone caulk. I made sure to tape both edges before filling and then smoothed it with a damp finger before quickly removing the tape and smoothing it again. Once that dried, the whole thing was finished!

We went from basic IKEA cabinetry to something that looked built-in and far more expensive! Not bad for just some simple pine trim, and plastic coving eh? Just don’t count how long it took us to accomplish…

Now we’re just one step closer to a finished kitchen! We can finally put away the paint cans, and start adding those finishing touches. Soon, we’ll have the first properly finished and decorated room in our flat! Yay!

While the kitchen progress is ticking along slowly, I can’t help but look ahead and think about accessories. All the white cabinets and pale walls have me craving warmth and texture. I’m thinking of a funky wood clock, a patterned faux Roman blind, and a vintage rug!

Okay, so the rug may not actually happen. See, Richard isn’t a fan of having a rug in our kitchen. He sees it as a place for crumbs and germs to live, while I see it as much-needed warmth, texture, and style in our all-white kitchen. I have been eyeing this rug on Etsy, but am worried it might be a bit too small for our space.

I’ve debated spraying a rug with some sort of repellant fabric spray, but am not sure if that would help (or convince Richard). For now, I would be content to vacuum it regularly. See, I have always lived with some sort of rug/mat under our kitchen sink areas, while Richard has not. My mom always had flat weave mats to stand on, and I loved the feel underfoot. All soft and cushy…

But enough about how they feel, look at them! Doesn’t a rug just add so much color and interest to these kitchens?

bright pink kilim in a tuxedo kitchen via laurengrant

dark kilim in a pale sage kitchen via Glitterinc

colorful rug in a dark green kitchen via wtf

red Persian rug in a white kitchen via home deco

So where do you stand? Rugs in the kitchen – yay or nay? Gross and crumby, or stylish and awesome?

And so, we continue the kitchen saga! After we got the cabinets up, and the paint on the walls, work stalled. Richard went away to Kenya for a few weeks, and then I joined him for a little 10-day trip (photos coming soon, I promise!). After that, we sort of just got used to the walls the way that they were – all bare plaster and drywall. But, we had plans for them! Richard and I are both big fans of subway tiles and thought that they would suit our 1920s flat. Modern and historic at the same time, no?

However, I didn’t want just white on white, since our cabinets are already going to be white. I wanted to do a contrast grout for a bit of drama in our little space. I looked around at inspiration and settled on a medium grey tone for the grout. I didn’t want to go too dark as I didn’t want it to look busy, but dark enough that you could actually see the grout.

white subway tiles with contrast grout from Patchwork Harmony

Once we had our plan in place, we started shopping around for tiles. We decided to go with Tons of Tiles as they had the best selection of smaller-sized subway tiles and fair prices – plus they did sample tiles! We ordered their beveled mini metro white gloss, mini metro white flat, and Rustico white gloss. Richard was really into the beveled tiles, as they most closely resemble the authentic metro tiles here in the underground. My only concern was that the uneven edges when they’re cut would make the corners and edges of our walls look wonky. I like the idea of using beveled tiles, but only on a single wall.

My personal choice would have been the rustico tiles – I love the wonky edges and handmade look. However, Richard wasn’t as big a fan of them. I still think I’ll use them someday – maybe in a bathroom or other space in the future. I love the way they look in these two spaces that Emily Henderson designed. But with these tiles, I wouldn’t use a contrast grout.

shower with textured tiles

English country kitchen with textured tiles

In the end, however, we decided to go with the simple, flat metro tiles. Classic, and understated – the perfect tiles to go with our grey grout. Now, we just had to tile the kitchen… simple no? Well, after weeks of thinking about doing the tiling, contemplating renting the equipment, and learning how to tile – we decided to just pay someone else to do it.

Now, don’t think we’re lazy or anything here. If we had a few rooms that required tiles, then we would invest in the equipment and learn to do it ourselves. But, as we only have one small closet and a shed to store supplies like that, we decided that it wasn’t worth the effort. Someday I will learn to tile (I’ve always wanted to), but today wasn’t going to be that day.

We ended up hiring Jack from Bespoke Plumbing & Tiling Solutions, who we found online. He had great reviews and was super helpful in answering all my questions. After chatting with him about grout, we chose Smoke by BAL, which he sourced from Topps Tiles. It’s a great mid-grey that I think looks perfect once dry.

Once all the details were sorted, we arranged for him to come by on a Saturday when Richard would be around. Unfortunately, I had to work that day and left Richard with detailed instructions on what I wanted. See, I’m really picky about things like how the tiles line up, etc., and wanted to make sure I wouldn’t come home to something that would make me upset.

I could have just gone with a simple brick pattern, but that wouldn’t be my style As I had this idea of the tiles fitting with the 1920s flat, I wanted them to look a bit more historical. That got me thinking about the types of details you find in old brick buildings. They always have those vertical bricks above the windows, either straight or curved. I looked it up, and it’s called a soldier course. But those don’t always happen above windows and are sometimes found at the top of the ceiling line, or along the edges as a trim. For our space, that meant a row of soldier tiles along the one outside corner by the door, and above the window.

I really like the look of them at the top of the wall, but thought it would be a bit much with our crown molding (which we will add later). Doesn’t it look great in this bathroom?

Waterworks showroom bathroom

It’s a subtle addition, but I really like it. What do you guys think? Was it worth the hassle to add the vertical tiles above the window, and along the wall?

Sorry for all the close-up photos, but I don’t want to give too much away until the whole room is complete. As you can see in the photos, we’ve added hardware and started trimming the edges of the cabinets. Soon we’ll paint everything and dress it up a little with accessories.

Not quite finished, but we’re getting there!

As for what we have done since I last blogged about it? Well, we finally have a functioning kitchen again!

After we patched all the holes in the walls and cleaned up from demolition, it was time to paint! We had chosen Barest Hush by Valspar to be the color for our walls. We tested a couple of swatches, but Richard was worried they would be too dark, so we settled on this option. My goal was to have a grey-tinted green that didn’t read too strong either way. As our living room is grey, I didn’t want the whole place to feel the same. But of course, I also didn’t want too bright of a color, as I tend to prefer more muted walls. Let the color come from the furnishings, in my humble opinion.

Valspar’s Barest Hush

For the cabinets and trim, we are sticking with our tried and true All White by Farrow & Ball, color matched to Valspar paint. This time around we went with their premium paint, as it was the most scrubbable option. It also comes with a built-in primer, so win-win! However, due to time, we didn’t get around to painting the cabinets, just yet. That’s a job for another day. Or month… year… sigh. Procrastination is real folks.

After painting the walls, we put the pot racks back up and got to tackling the cabinets. Originally, our kitchen had only three upper cabinets – two on the right of the range hood, and one on the left. As I mentioned before, we had planned to simply add three more cabinets above our original ones, and paint them all to match. Instead, we ordered eight of the METOD cabinets – four of the 60×60 size, three 60×80, and one 60×40. The four 60×60 cabinets were in the top row, with the 60×80 replacing our existing cabinets. In order to add the MAXIMERA drawers, we ordered all 60×60 doors, and the remaining 20cm of the cabinet became the drawer. The final 60×40 cabinet sits above the new LAGAN range hood.

Quite a lot of new storage eh?

Installing the new cabinets was another point where things took much (much!) longer than they should have. The IKEA rails were fairly simple to cut and line up, but then we started having issues.

See, we ended up back in the same place as before, dealing with old walls. We couldn’t seem to find consistent studs in the walls, and our expansion screws weren’t working in the crumbling plaster. This meant that we had to go grab some spring toggle screws from Screwfix… only the first set we brought home was the wrong length for our wall thickness – darn! I think Richard had to make three trips that day just to get the screws we needed. Every time we tried one set, there was something wrong with it.

We ended up putting in more screws than IKEA said to, as every now and then we would hit a stud, or have to move to a new hole. We just put up as many as we could (that were secure). The more the merrier, right?

Soo many screws

Once we got the rails up (finally), it was a simple matter of hanging the cabinets. Of course, because our walls aren’t perfectly smooth, the cabinets wouldn’t line up perfectly. IKEA recommends that you screw the cabinets together for stability, which we did. It also solved most of our problems with the cabinets not lining up. Just a simple matter of clamping them together, and then two screws in between the holes for the shelves.

The only thing not quite so simple to put up was the range hood. We decided to replace the one we had (even though it worked okay) with an under-cabinet version so that we could add two more cabinets to the mix. It just felt like too much-wasted space in such a tiny kitchen. While the installation was relatively easy for the range hood, it came with a plug, but ours had originally been wired into a fuse box. All it meant was that we cut off the plug, stripped back the wires, and wired it into a new white fuse box. Then we cut a hole in the back of one of the cabinets so that we would have access to the fuse, should we ever need to replace it.

We sort of sandwiched the new fuse box on the back of the cabinet, and then it sits in the original recess that the old one had. Not sure if that makes sense to anyone, but we did it months ago and I am forgetting details… I also forgot to take a photo of it inside the cabinet.

After the cabinets were all screwed together, and the range hood up, it was a simple matter of putting in the shelves and attaching the doors. Of course, IKEA put silly stickers right where the hinges needed to go, and they are the type that is ridiculous to remove! Coconut oil to the rescue! Just rub a bit of that onto the sticker and it comes away so easily.

The hinges for the cabinets were really simple to install, and I only wish that I had got the 90-degree ones. The ones we bought open a bit wider (I think they are 110 or 120 degrees). When we were ordering them, I thought that would be a good thing, however, it means that the doors want to open into the walls and window. Oh well!

We finally have drawers!!! So exciting!

Now this is pretty much where we got to before Richard had to go away for work. We managed to put our kitchen back together and use it for a little while. The next steps are to add some trim around the cabinets in order to make it all built-in, and then paint all the doors and trim to match.

I’ve ordered the tiles and hardware, so the only thing we’re waiting for is for me to get off my lazy butt and trim out these cabinets! But of course, Richard is now back in England, so hopefully he’ll be the motivation I need…

Welcome to demolition!

Okay, so I’ve given you an overview of our plans for this kitchen, and what we’re hoping to accomplish. We thought it would be a relatively straightforward couple of days, but boy… were we wrong! Once we started demolition, we realized we had created quite a mess for ourselves.

Let me try and break down where we went awry.

oh, look! It’s Richard’s hand!

So on our first day of demolition, we removed all of the upper cabinets, which also meant moving everything in those cupboards to our living room. Let me tell you, living in a kitchen/living room for about a week isn’t fun. Bleh. We also had to remove the range hood, IKEA GRUNDTAL pot racks off the wall, as well as anything living on the countertops. We kept stuff in the lower cabinets and didn’t bother removing the fridge etc., as none of that was changing besides paint.

range hood and stainless panels removed

Once everything was out of the room, we contemplated the tiling. Before we could paint or start putting up our new METOD cabinets, we would have to remove all the existing tiles. This was precisely the moment that things went wrong…

See, our building has all this great character because it’s old. Do you know what else it has?

Crumbling plaster walls – that’s what! As soon as we started removing the tiles from the main wall (carefully, I should add) huge tile-sized chunks of plaster were coming away with it. Behind the plaster, all we were left with was the original lath and nice gaping holes. From what we could tell, the original plaster “feet” (where the plaster squeezes in between the lath, creating little anchors) had broken away. Due to the sheer thickness of the tile adhesive that they used (crazy thick!), the plaster just came away with the tiles.

our beautiful lath…

After removing everything, this is what we were left with. One massive hole, and another smaller one.

The two end walls were okay as they were either external brick walls or newly built cement board ones. Minimal damage, with only a bit of filling required to even them out.

We googled how to repair walls, looked at all sorts of products available at our local B&Q, and ultimately decided on two courses of action. For the larger hole, we would fill most of the gap with new cement board, screwed into the studs. Around the edge of the board, we would fill the gap with a plaster repair compound (ours was the same brand, but a different type, can’t find it online). For the smaller hole, we felt confident we could simply patch it with the plaster repair compound. In retrospect, we ended up with some smaller cement board pieces when we cut them down to fit the larger hole. Those would have probably been better to use in the smaller hole, but at the time we didn’t want to buy a large board just to use only like 10% of it.

Due to the depth of the original plaster, and modern cement board thicknesses, we ended up using two pieces screwed together. Nothing we could find was the depth that our original walls were.

Here’s where a lot of the excess time of this project started taking place. See, our local B&Q didn’t have the type of cement board we were initially looking for (although we later changed to a different kind, which they did stock) and so we had to wait until the next day before we could get the right stuff. Then, the plaster took aaaages to dry, and we needed to apply it in layers for the large hole, allowing each to dry about 24 hours before applying the second. All in all, it took us 3 days (!) just to patch those two holes.

our drywall patch job

Ouch! Three days of next to no visible progress is quite disheartening. We were feeling quite frustrated at this point, and tired of living surrounded by boxes of kitchen items. At the end of all that time and effort, the result was so minimally changed from what it was before, but it was definitely an improvement!

No more cabinets or ugly tiles, but also nothing else! Hey, at least it’s clean, right?

But that is where I’m going to leave this off! I’ll pick up soon with photos of our new paint colour, and the cabinets in place. For now, I have to finalize which tiles we’re going to use, measure, and order them!