The Interior DIYer
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My IKEA Family Live feature!

Heart palpitations at the ready. Back in July you may {or may not, I won’t be offended} remember I shot and submitted pictures of our apartment to IKEA after receiving some rather exciting e-mails from them asking me if I’d like to be a featured IKEA member for their IKEA Family Live online magazine. UMM, yes please with a körsbär on top. 
After some trials and tribulations {which by the way, I received a camera stand for my birthday, ha!}, I submitted all the pictures safe and sound and met my deadline. Sigh of relief. Then the waiting game went down. It wouldn’t be until November until I’d be featured {having submitted the photos in July}, but it was just enough time for the dust to settle and for me to get excited about it all over again!  

Me on the IKEA Family Live  homepage. No biggie. 

I know, slight overkill with the screenshots and whatnot, but how often do you see yourself on an IKEA website? Of course, to see the full feature, click on over here to read all about it and gawk at a couple more pictures of our apartment if you’d like 🙂 
And if you’re a fellow IKEA fiend and would like to also be a featured member, just send an e-mail on over to homes@ikeafamilylive.com with a couple of pictures and details on your home! You know you wanna. xx A
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A little something on the side (table)

It’s about to get romantic all up in here friends. This time last month we celebrated our first wedding anniversary. We journeyed back to Dunboyne Castle, where we got married on a surreal autumn day. We of course booked a room for our anniversary, a fabulous dinner, and breakfast the next morning. We checked in and when I got to our room, this is what I found … 

Husband had been sneaking. He got in contact with the florists we used for our wedding {the lovely Dolores and Brian from Dunboyne Flowers}, he e-mailed them reminder pictures of our wedding flowers, and back in August ordered the most gorgeous hydrangeas from Holland, which were the exact match to my wedding bouquet, and had them delivered to our hotel. Gentlemen, take note. 

I never got to keep my bouquet from our wedding as the drunk girl young lady who caught it, kept it. I think that’s how the rules go, don’t they? But the romance-ball that husband is, he gave me a second chance to swoon over my bouquet all over again. 
They were incredibly delicate hydrangeas and unfortunately didn’t last very long. Since the first time around I didn’t get a memento of my bouquet, I stole a couple buds and leaves here and there and squashed them in a Harry Potter book highly respected novel for adults for a couple of weeks.

Yesterday I did a quick revamp on an old picture frame I had by spray painting it my all time fav spraypaint – Montana’s ‘winegum’, stuck on some leftover black and white ribbon I had used on our wedding boutonnieres / button holes, and framed the pressed and dried hydrangea pieces. It’s a perfect little addition of oomph to my nightstand. Yes and yes. 
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DIY Friday – dapper dresser

I’m not sure if you could call this week’s DIY Friday technically a DIY, but it’s a revamp no less to a piece of furniture I bought 4 years ago. Our apartment didn’t come with storage for one’s small items in our bedroom, so I went online and bought this old wooden dresser. It was cheap as chips and did the trick. It held my garments, husbands manly stuff, and a drawer dedicated to pyjamas. Perfect. 
In the early years of my apartment designing, I painted the top of the dresser with leftover paint; it was a weird greeny-grey paint, and I don’t know what the hell I was thinking to be honest. I quickly gave up on doing anything with our dresser and then 4 years happened. Yeah. For 4 years it sat like this in our room … 

I think the word you’re looking for is ‘fugly’. I hated it and it was such an eyesore in our bedroom. Last month I finally had enough, so I got on my bicyclette, cycled to Rua on Capel Street and picked up a tin of Annie Sloan Chalk Paint.

Back in the day I had a major crush on the EDLAND line of furniture from IKEA. I daydreamed of having a house and filling it to the rafters with beautiful EDLAND armoires and dressers. Sadly, that line became extinct, but I was lucky enough to swipe a little EDLAND bedside table in their final sale {sadly, it was the only piece we had room for}. To date, it’s still one of my favourite IKEA pieces. I adore the dark grey, and it inspired me to pick Annie Sloan’s moody warm ‘Graphite’ grey.

Enough of that. Onto the makeover! I cleaned the dresser of any dust and whatnot, took out all the drawers and flipped it over to start. He was in bad need of a pedicure, so I sorted that out while I was down there. Yes, I’m claiming this dresser to be man as no woman would let her feet look like that.
After two coats of paint on the feet I turned it right-side-up and gave the body two coats. Pretty straight forward.

While I was at it, I updated the drawer pulls as well. I’m afraid I picked these up years ago in IKEA – they’re from the GLIRA range which is also now extinct. You can actually see one of these drawer pulls in the ‘before’ photo that I replaced years ago in premature revamp excitement. Our dresser kind of looked like it was winking for a very long time …

I took the old rusty drawer pulls off, filled the holes with decorators calk, let it dry, painted the drawers with two coats of paint and finally added my ‘new’ GLIRA pulls. And ta dah! It was much easier project then I thought it would be.

I’m so happy with the result and I really don’t know why I didn’t tackle this project sooner. I guess it was just one of those things you keep reminding yourself to do, and after years of mental torment, you break down and do it eventually. Please tell me I’m not the only one with ‘guilt projects’ that eat your brain like a zombie?
Anyways homies, it’s Friday and I cannot wait for the weekend to hurry up and get here. Happy Friday! xx A