If you have a garden, you're always busy - 300th post spectaculaaaaar!

Ok you got me, not really so spectaculaaaar, because mostly I've been painting things and I only just noticed that this is my 300th post. Not bad really considering I get pretty bored pretty quickly. I blame work and the fact that it forces me to spend so much time with seventeen year olds that I've accidentally adopted their attention span. That and I'm naturally really childish.

The greenhouse desperately needed a lick of paint - the old sage green was wearing off and we didn't want it falling to bits! I painted on lots of wood preserver before the colour to give it the best possible chance.

We started with slate grey Cuprinol as a base and added a little purple and black acrylic paint to make it a much richer colour. Classy, we thought.

It was pretty tricky painting the roof, (balancing one foot on the top rung of a ladder, trying not to fall through), and really it's best the photo's are from a distance because there is far more paint on the glass than there ought to be.

Still, it looks pretty in the photo's and that's one garden job done - there are always plenty more though!

Beccy

Why don’t you come on over, Valerie?

Well, Open Studios is over for another year, but I just wanted to show you our greeter-lady, Valerie.

I have a folder full of display ideas, but I really wanted this one – a lovely vintage lady standee just like ones I had seen here on Nicky Grace’s blog.

Mum set to work and found the original on google images, she was a Jantzen advertising girl.

We blew her up to just over 5 feet tall (from about 12”) and used a free website called blockposters.com to print her out tiled onto A4 sheets. Mum added a skirt and also a half moon to the bottom to help her stand up and to strengthen those little ankles.

Mum transferred the image to a sheet of 1cm thick MDF (£6 from Wickes for 2’ x 6’). Transferring an image onto a soft material like wood is easy – place the template over the top and redraw the lines, pressing hard with something like a ballpoint pen. When you remove the template you should be able to see the groove left behind by the pen.

The cutting out is the only bit I did! Mum’s not a friend of power tools, but I am. A quick whiz with the jigsaw and we had this:

And then mum did her painting thing:

You’ve got to admit, she’s very good at it!

And here’s Valerie greeting visitors to our workshop!

Isn’t she amazing?

Beccy

Painted wood

We love painted wood, much more than stains and varnishes. This wardrobe was my mum’s when she was a kid and it was second-hand then so god knows how old it is.

It had a thick layer of dark brown varnish on it so I decided to strip it off. I forgot to take a before picture of the moulding at the top…

…but here’s an after picture. Isn’t it lovely? I used paint stripper and a toothbrush to scrub off all that dark varnish, and you really couldn’t tell what was there before.

I stripped the whole thing and then finished it with fine sandpaper. It looks quite patchy in the pic, but it was much cleaner than it looks.

Then mum used a small roller and pure white eggshell to finish it. She put the paint on in several thin layers because we didn’t want it to be too white, and also we didn’t want to lose the moulding but accentuate it.

It’s amazing how a little highlighting has brought out all the detail. Those triangular bits were always just triangles, but now we can see all the little leaves. We never saw the veins in the large leaves before either, or the petals on the flower.

We love it, and it will be perfect in mum’s newly decorated all-white bedroom (when we finish it!).

Beccy

Cat-proofing…

Because Kitten was diagnosed with FIV we had to find the kindest way we could of keeping him as an indoor cat. He’s not likely to infect any other cats but he could easily pick up cat flu or some other nasty virus due to his reduced immunity. He never went out much anyway but then neither do I and if someone told me I could never leave my house I’d get a bit restless!

So, we decided to cat-proof the yard, at least then he can have some outdoor space and sit in the sun.

The plan was to attach a cat-net over the top of the whole yard so he couldn’t climb out. We needed to make the fence higher to do this so tall people wouldn’t have to crouch!

We bought some trellis and stained it a blue-grey colour to tone down the brash orange.

Then I attached a batten to the top of the fence to support the trellis.

The trellis was attached to posts at each end and then drilled through to the fence behind so I could secure it with huge screws.

Our gate was only waist high so that had to go. I decided to replace it with a sturdy piece of trellis we found at the hardware shop – it is sturdier than some of the gates we saw! We also wanted t be able to see through it to the garden and all the tall gates were solid.

I attached a block of wood to the trellis so I could use a traditional gate latch.

Then I hung the gate (I said it quick but it took ages to get it right, with lots of cursing and accusing my family of being useless)

We painted the fence too, just to make it look a bit nicer – we’ll get round to painting the rest of the fence at some point but we were pushed for time.

Then it was just a case of getting up on a ladder and screwing in loads of hooks all around the edge to hang the net from. The net comes with the hooks and also a length of rope that you weave through the edge to make it tighter and secure.

It’s a transparent net from Zooplus and cost around £15 – in fact the whole thing including trellis and paint cost less than £100. You can see the net quite a lot from outside but from inside it doesn’t feel like we are boxed in and it is fairly unobtrusive.

While we were getting things from Zooplus we splashed out on a little house! Isn’t it cute? Look at those little steps!

Kitten, true to form, has so far ignored it. Oh, and he hasn’t escaped either. He tried to climb the gate once but couldn’t and hasn’t tried since.

Beccy

Nature will find a way…

… is what my friend Trace always says. Something about Jurassic Park, or something. She has a uniquely ad-hoc style of gardening as a result, simply chucking handfuls of annual seeds around the flowerbed and letting nature do it’s stuff. If it grows, it grows – if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. It works though. Sure, sometimes things die and others get out of hand but the result is a bit like manicured nature. Clouds of pretty things left to their own devices.

It was her birthday last week, so mum decided to make her a plaque for her garden.

After choosing a gardeny font, mum printed it out to the appropriate size.

The base of the plaque is an old drawer front, taken from our (ever growing) stash of Interesting Things.

Mum placed the print out over the drawer front, holding it up to the light to make sure the lettering was in the right place, and used a pen to draw over the letters making sure she pushed into the wood slightly.

This created a template that she simply filled with white acrylic paint. It’s a lot easier if you work from left to right, doing all the letters on the left before moving over. Use a tiny brush and don’t overload it (mum says). She also says curves come out better if you move the wood, rather than the brush.

Two suitably old screws were added to the top to attach a bit of wire for hanging and it was done!

Doesn’t it look great?

I’ll show you what I made tomorrow,

Beccy

We’ve got taps!

…and benches and worktops. And stuff.

We’ve had a few days off work – Monday was a Bank Holiday so we got that off, but since it’s half term we managed to get a couple of extra days too – so we’ve been putting in some hours trying to get the workshop finished.

And here’s how it’s looking now. We’ve painted the finished benches and Elle came today to wield her circular saw magic on the worktops. It’s not that I’m scared of it (honest) it’s just that I can’t cut a straight line even with an 8-inch blade, well clamped guides and the will to do it! Elle is a demon with that saw - and she has a sense of urgency even during our current heatwave (which I lack – I just want to sit and drink Robinsons barley water all day).

This sink drainer was a godsend – it has the perfect shaped hole already cut for a Belfast sink and it’s (probably) teak. It cost us £6 on ebay plus the drive to Hull pick it up. It looks lovely now but it was a bit grotty when we got it (which wasn’t mentioned in the listing), but for £6? We knew we could clean it. A bit of elbow grease and a gallon of teak oil later (did you guys know that stuff can spontaneously combust? Yikes!) and it is now shiny and looking as good as new. The taps are chrome, 40’s and cost considerably more!

Our Belfast sink was also an ebay find and cost £5 plus the drive to a Mormon church in Rotherham to pick it up – Elle has a very handy other half who’s going to come and drill us a huge hole through the wall for the sink waste, then we can fit it in and we’re good to go!

I also hung a curtain today because I’m paranoid of night-time peepery. Ok, I’m not going to be getting changed in there or anything but a lit room with black uncovered windows always makes me feel like I’m being watched. This is one half of a pair of curtains we bought from Oxfam a few months ago, the other one is going to become a blind for the window.

And finally, we just managed to stop this going into a skip at college. It was dirty and worn and that orangey woody colour. There are also 20 trays in a lovely shade of school furniture brown. So, we painted the carcase in the same shade of white as the walls and the trays are getting a coat of pale blue Plastikote. It has doors that refuse to hang straight so I think we’re just going to leave them off. This will be great for holding all our tools and Interesting Things.

Right, I’m off – Junior Apprentice is on telly and I need to nurse my slight sunburn.

Beccy

What do you think of this colour?

So, we painted the workshop table, but we’re not sure about the colour – it really is that turquoise. I’m getting used to it, but mum’s not so sure and we both have to work on it. We wanted off-white walls and splashes of bright colour and we had this unused tin in the shed. What do you guys think? Could you live with it? I think the thing she really hates is that it clashes with the ever-so-slightly-different-shade-of-turquoise stools you can see on the left of the picture. And we didn’t think of that. And they are perfectly worn in all the most fashionable places by years of use so it would be a travesty to paint them.

I also spent hours Tuesdayday notching the legs for the rest of the workbenches that will be going around the corner of the room. I had to do 13 of them (lucky for some) and although I like using the circular saw – you know how I love power tools – it tends to kick up sawdust into my face and make my cheeks hurt. Who needs fancy micro-dermabrasion? The great thing is that this weekend I can start putting them together!

I think I didn’t appreciate just how long it would take to make these benches, even though I knew we’d be only be able to make them in the few hours a week we have spare. Soon be finished, and then the sense of major achievement will kick in!

Beccy

The building of a table…

I have to start by saying Knock-off wood is awesome, Ana is awesome.

We needed a huge table for the workshop, one metre by two and a half. The dimensions have to be perfect because we have so much we need to fit in there. We also needed the table to be sturdy, have storage underneath and most of all be cheap!

Enter Knock-off wood. I’ve talked about the site before and all Ana’s amazing (and free) woodworky plans. And not just any plans, these are plans for high-end, high-priced furniture from places like Pottery Barn and the like and the thing is, they’re better made, and much, much cheaper.

Here’s our newly delivered wood. It’s mostly planed, sawn softwood but see those green ones on the left? They are our table legs, and they are un-planed fenceposts. You see, it’s impossible to get planed 4x4’s anywhere near here.

Enter my new friend/torturer the 60’s plane…

…which created this. An enormous pile of shavings. Now, you might be forgiven for thinking I did all this by myself because that’s how I’ve made it sound, but I didn’t. There were three of us – me, ma and Elle, all taking turns, one measuring, one sawing and one planing. And I tell you, it was hard work for all of us!

These next pics show the table in progress. Once we had cut all the wood, which took 2 days (although we were cutting wood for a further two workbenches at the same time) it still took another day to put together but it was worth it.

And the (almost) finished table. It is definitely sturdy! two of us could barely turn it over, never mind move it. All screw-holes need to be filled and it’s going to be painted below, but the top will probably be lightly whitewashed because I hate yellow pine and I think I might be rubbish at applying convincing stains!

So our hands hurt, our knees hurt, we stink of wood and have sawdust in places we didn’t know we had places, but I have to say thankyou so much Ana! The specific plans can be found here if you want to see. I’ll post another pic when it’s properly finished, but for now I was too excited to wait! I don’t know about ma and Elle, but this is the first woody thing I’ve made since CDT classes at school, and I’m proud.

Now onto the other two workbenches…

Beccy