De-beige-ing chairs

The cake worked well, and Maisy's party was lovely. I'll share some photos tomorrow.
We bought a few more Piper Tru-line blackwood chairs a while back. The style matched our two red chairs (the ones I saved from the tip). But they were covered in horrid beige vinyl.
So today was the day, it was grey and cool so we stayed inside and tackled the chairs. The other chairs had come apart easily once you unscrewed the screws. But the cushions on these ones didn't budge. We worked out that the vinyl had adhered to the timber frame, perhaps if they'd been in the sun. So we took to them with a razor blade and a knife. Cutting then free! We recovered them with the same red as the other chairs. We did two, but will need to buy some more fabric to finish off a 3rd chair. We're pretty happy with them!
Hope you had a lovely weekend. I'll be back tomorrow with the Hoot cake.

Mid-week pick me up

Thank you for your reassuring and sympathetic comments on my post about the driveway. I’m feeling better about it, our friend doesn’t think it will get much worse, but he won’t be able to fix it until it dries out. So we’re just keeping an eye on it, and driving on the opposite side of the road! It’s our only access onto the block; we have a very strange shaped block of land, a big triangle with a narrow access (only 20m) at the wide end of the triangle. It just so happens that it’s also incredibly steep and goes over a creek! Anyway, we’re being positive and hoping the wet weather stops soon.

So I thought I’d share a few things that have made me happy this week.

This guy is seriously cute with curly black hair and his white tummy. The “Oreo” bull (really a belted Galloway) lives over the back fence, which is about 10m away from the hut. We have a series of long narrow windows that run down the hall and smaller windows on the back wall of the living room, as well as the breezeway French doors. So as I wander down the hut, I often lock eyes with this dude. He seems quite calm. Just happy to munch the grass and watch the crazy antics of our dogs!

More red in the hut. I just had to go back a buy a few more of these candleholders from Spotlight, ahem like seven more!

Finally, we got around to finishing off a project we started in June last year.

Do you remember the two unloved Blackwood chairs we found at the tip? Rob had sanded them back and oiled them last year. But with nowhere to put them, recovering them didn’t seem that urgent. When we moved to the hut, we popped them up in the loft and forgot them again. Last weekend we picked up some red fabric and Rob pulled out the many staples and replaced the horrible dirty blue hessian fabric with the new bright red. Now I’m thinking I’d like to recover the four pale blue chairs with red too….watch this space.

Hope your week is going well, mine has certainly picked up!

 

Thrifting Goddess

I must have been in the zone on the weekend. Inspired by PMM and Michelle I have been in thrifting training over the last six months. We have two favourite shops to browse in, one of which is on the way to the block at the Margate Train. So every weekend we drop in and look around, trying to envisage items for furnishing our hut one day. New furniture is so soulless don’t you think? Rob also felt that as the hut will be brand spanking new (we still live in hope that it will get built soon!) it would be nice to have some pre-loved furniture to provide some character. We have been undecided on what style of dining chair we’d like. Do we go country? But the price of “trendy” bentwood chairs had put us off. A couple of months ago we visited the train shop, and I spotted four chairs. They’re not country, I guess they’re retro, a little daggy but beautifully crafted. The best bit was that they were Tasmanian made, by a (now extinct) company called Pipers Tru-line. Made of Tasmanian Blackwood. They had a nice padded seat, and a curved wooden back, we’re guessing 1970’s? Because of their supposed dagginess they were reasonably priced. We snaffled them. My first real dining chairs- the novelty of this was exciting, each time I walked past them I experienced a little thrill.

I then had my Pipers eye in so to speak. Barely a month later, I spied another Pipers Blackwood dining chair at the Train shop. This chair was a little wider, with a padded back, and arms; a Carver chair. It was extremely comfortable. I dragged Rob over to try it out, so we bought it and its twin (which was hiding out the back), these were even more of a bargain.

Then this last weekend, we drove by the Train shop on Saturday. But Rob was keen on Sunday, and was duly rewarded. This time I spied two IKEA armchairs. We tried these out a couple of years ago in the Richmond store, and I thought I was going home alone- Rob wasn’t leaving it! But the freight costs are a little prohibitive. Although not quite the ones we wanted they are still enormously comfortable and the price wasn’t too bad. I stood guard over the chairs (there were others customers circling like sharks) and despite a scary moment when the other shop owner wanted to check that the price tag was correct (he went away grumbling how lucky we were cause he meant the price to be for each chair not the pair) we scurried away with our new chairs. I have abandoned the couch in favour of mine. At the risk of you realising just how domestic our life is, neither of us could imagine being happier than sitting in our chairs with little rugs over our knees, drinking a glass of wine and watching TV. We even thought it a little pathetic! Nigella sulked at us until I relinquished my chair for her turn.

Now I didn’t think my weekend could get any better. But I was wrong. On Monday we headed to the block. Driving past the Train shop we instead visited the tip-shop for stakes for our new trees. I jumped out and from the car park spied the perfect lines (well I thinks so) of a Pipers Tru-line chair. Barely able to contain myself I rushed over and sure enough somebody had abandoned two dining chairs that match our Carvers chairs. They had obviously been unloved for a long time, worse, judging from the state of the wood they had been left outside! Like the big brown eyes of a puppy in a pet shop window the chairs pleaded with me, I couldn’t leave them there. The shop attendant said we could have them for $5 each! My god I nearly kissed her. Triumphant we took them home to provide some TLC, a little sanding, some new foam and fabric and we have two more perfect Blackwood chairs. Rob is a little worried though- will our hut turn into the home for lost Tru-line chairs? I’ll post some photos soon!