HOUSE: New House = DIY = Just call me Kirsty ...

As you may have read in a few of my older posts me and the Hubby recently bought a new house and with that we have been able to start decorating and really making this little nest our own. This has lead to quite a bit of DIY and refurbishment, hence my title of just call me Kirsty.

This has been a frequent sight for us recently. 

Allsop that is. If you are not familiar with her she is sort of interior designer who does a few different shows on telly. Some of the bits are a bit too adventurous but she has some really handy tips for making your house into a real home by adding your own stamp. We have really embraced this idea by customising some of our existing furniture and and adding some new bit and pieces as we find them.

I have documented most of our progress on Instagram but I thought I would do a post (or two) about some of the bits so I can go into a bit more detail.

Here is our pretty girl taken from the garden. 

Our first agenda after moving in and getting things sorted into the right rooms was to get some paper on the walls. If you read my  post on making a house a home you might recognise some of the paper. 

All ready for hanging, 

Lounge 

Dining area

Bedroon

Spare Room 

 We decided to go for a feature wall in each room and its amazing the difference just one wall of paper makes to the feel of a room. I know this isn't exactly DIY but I wanted to show the progress we have been making in turning the empty shell into a real home.

So here is the dining area complete with wall paper, wall art and furniture. Our next mission was to commence painting. Old clothes on and dust sheets at the ready!!

We went for this antique white wood paint by Craig & Rose calling Regency White, which is softer than a basic white paint so had more of a county feel.

I started simple with the drawer fronts for my dressing table and varnishing the top of the kitchen block. 

After that we moved onto the folding chairs. before and after. These aren't our final dining chairs as my sister gave us some pine ones but at the time they still needed sanding down and prepared, plus these are our spare chairs so would need painted eventually. 

Hubby hard at work doing a second coat on on the chairs while the first coat on the table legs dries.

 

Luckily it was a nice warm day so we were able to set all the stuff outside to dry. Not only did this speed up the drying but also stopped the house smelling too painty. The wood paint has an acrylic base so is quite pungent but we went for an eggshell finish which means its only got a soft sheen not a shine like your normal acrylic paints. 

 

Here are a few pictures of the pieces all finished and back in place. I really like the country feel of the white legs with the beech/natural wood top. 

Next up for painting were a few more bedroom items, specifically my dressing table chair, cheval mirror and winged mirror. For these though I had to sand down the frames first to remove the varnish and get the wood ready to take the paint. 

Chair seat still needs needs recovered to tone in with the rest of the room. I just bought some nice grey/silver fabric at the weekend so that is my next task. 

The final items I am going to post today are our dining chairs. 

You can see how shiny the chairs were in the top left picture, so we had to give them all a good sand to get rid of the shine so the paint would stick nicely.

Spindles have to be one of the most annoying things to paint! not only are they fiddly because they are round but as ours were shaped all the little grooves were a right pain! 

Masked up mirrors and an skygo on the iPad while the hubby was at work ... because thats how cool I am hehehe 

I painted the chairs in two sections so I could turn them upside down to do the legs instead of crawling around on the floor. 

However as we had 4 chairs and an impending house warming, we ended up setting up a mass painting station outside one day when the in laws were up so get them all finished. There is also a mirror for the downstairs loo in the foreground. 

 

In laws gave us a new car boot sale bargain coffee table too which got a top coat of our antique white paint on its cream legs. 

As this has turned into a rather epic post on painting I am going to leave it there for now. Next house post will be on our new bargain dining table and tiling the kitchen splash back! 

If you like my post feel free to leave a comment.

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