Billy...finally!!!

Have you seen my living room before?

We have been living in this house for almost 3 years now. And god, every year it looks different and I keep changing things all the time.

Wanna see how it looked from the start?




I used to paint our living room wall brown!! :D

And remember here that I told how I customized the old dining chairs I bought from the online shop? I also repainted the old wooden table that once we used in a study.

Put them all together in the living room, now we have a new dining set!!



And see, no more coffee-brown color here... :-)
The room looks much brighter and more spacious with this fresh-light-green wall, right?

However, the look doesn't stop there because just 2 weeks ago we decided to purchase "Billy bookcases" from Ikea, which I so so so longed to have.


Billy...Finally!!
ta da...

This is not a final version yet because I want to change the pendant lamp over the table too.

Right now the shelves still look a bit empty. But soon they should be filled up by more and more books. PHEW!! How much I love spending my time in this room. :-)

PS. I just realised that we use a lot of colours in our house. Oh, and I made 2 posts in one night! :D

My 'sweet retro' study

I just redecorated our study!

My original plan was actually having a study room with a bit of retro style, so I spent months to look for the old retro furnitures in the online shop (www.marktplaats.nl).

And I found this lovely desk (below) for just 15 euros. :-)

It needed some spruce-up so I sandpapered it and then painted it white. I am quite happy with the result.

The picture above is how my study looked before (really dull looking) and see how it looks now (below).

I actually thought about having a real retro style of wallpaper and found one with really bright orange and brown colors in our local shop. But after looking thoughtfully at it, I changed my mind. That retro wallpaper would make our room darker. So I picked the other one instead, the white wallpaper with these cute pink flowers on.





Look at the chair. Don't you think it looks so lovely? :-)
I don't have to do anything at all with it because I already love it as it is, the white color with that cute orange cushion. It's so comfortable to sit on and also in a good condition (looks almost new). Actually I have two. I bid 14 euros for two of them and that was the highest bid. So the owner decided to sell them to me. Unbelievably cheap, right?





The room is not completely done yet and there are a lot more to do. But I just couldn't help myself to blog about it already here. :-)

Oh, there are a few more pieces of furniture that also need some changes, like this one (below). And of course, I still stick to the retro style. Looking forward to getting all done!!!

My treasure, someone else's trash...

I just bought 4 old chairs from someone via this website http://www.marktplaats.nl and paid only 15 euros for all four of them. So cheap!! I loved them from the picture I saw and I loved them when I first saw them in real. Although they were red but that was not a problem because I intended to paint them white myself anyway. Transporting them was a disaster because we almost couldn't fit all in our car. But we did it anyway and arrived home safely at the end :-).

Let's see how they look before and after...

Before pictures: when they are sitting in our working room waiting to be painted. :-)


.............................


After picture: when I painted one in white.

So far I have finished only three and with excitement, I already tried fitting one next to our livingroom wall (recently repainted) to see if it looked nice with the new wall color. And it looked just perfect!

When I finish all of them then I will use them as our new dining chairs together with our new dining table. Ahhh I really like how they turned out.

The first sewing project : a sofa slipcover

Last week I was busy with making slipcover for my couch and believe it or not, I quite enjoyed it. I didn't even touch my computer for the whole week. Didn't know before that sewing could be this fun :-D



I got inspired to make such slipcover from this book "At Home With White" by Atlanta Bartlette, which I bought about a month ago. You can see from the picture above that a slipcover like this doesn't look too difficult to make. And that's why I decided to buy a new sewing machine so that I could make this pretty-simple-slipcover and god, it is a good investment!!

OK, Let's come and see how I made it...


First, I will show you my couch. This is how my old couch looks. It's not that old actually. We bought it only 2 years ago since we moved in this house. Anyway, I got bored with its dark color and wanted something white and bright. But buying a new couch isn't what I want. I think making things by yourself is more fun and of course money stays in your wallet, hehe...





I first started with cutting fabric in pieces. This process consumes quite a lot of time and you need to measure every piece really good. After that put them together with pins and hand-seam them roughly so the pieces stay together when you start sewing by the machine.


Before sewing the whole thing, you should turn it inside out and try covering it onto the couch again to see if it fits on every angle and curve of the couch. If it does, then let's start sewing!! :-)



And here we go (after so many hours of sewing and a little bit pain on the neck and shoulders)... The new look of my couch... Ta-dahhh!!!



I am not a sewing expert but I am so happy and satisfied with my first sewing project. I also want to have some cute cushions to go with it but right now I don't have any fabric for that yet. That will be my next project then, making new cushions. So for the time being I borrow the old ones from the other couch for this photo shoot :-D.







How incredible that something so simple can make the whole room look completely transformed, right? My livingroom looks so much brighter and better now and that it's just by having this simple white slipcover.




Now I am looking forward to continuing with my next project. See you next time!!

My new toy and a little update of my life...

Been absent from here for a while due to the down feeling of my life. A lot of (bad) things seem to keep coming. It's like one day I felt all right and strong and cheerful but then the next day, unexpectedly and unpreparedly, I was hit and crushed into pieces. I knew that life could sometimes be so unfortunate but really I never thought it could be this bad. But that's why it's called 'life', isn't it? Always full of the unexpected. However, I am ok now I think. Not 'completely' ok but at least it's better than the last few months. I am trying to pick myself up from the ground again and hopefully some good things will come along soon.

Well, I didn't mean to come here to moan about my unfortunate life. So let's talk about some fun thing.

I had been thinking about having my own sewing machine for about a year already and always ending up not to because I wasn't really into sewing. I thought it wasn't necessary or every time I wanted to sew I could just go to my mom-in-law and asked her to help me. Anyway last week I changed my mind and decided to buy one!!!



It was also on sale so that wasn't a difficult dicision to make, was it? :-D I am now thinking about making a nice slip cover for our sofa. I already have some white fabric at home but first I have to see how I can get it done. This could be a nice project to put my life back on track and finally enjoy living again, right?