The Interior DIYer
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Guest bedroom bedside table – updates

Have you ever decorated part of your home and once it was finished, it didn’t exactly look better? Yeah, that happens around here more often than I’d like to admit. 
Case in point, our spare bedroom earlier this year [below]. I painted our bedside table black and accessorized it with pieces I wasn’t particularly fond of and it was all just BLEUH. Everything needed a bit of an upgrade, so on Monday night I repainted the bedside table with leftover Dulux Exterior SatinWood ‘iron clad’ paint that I used on our living room stools. This paint is meant for front doors, but it works like an absolute dream on furniture. 

Upgrade step 1: complete! Now onto step 2: in keeping with my current a bit less IKEA phase [ie – our new old desk], the next step was to find a replacement lamp for the IKEA lamp we had. Yesterday I took to my well-worn Dublin charity shop route and I spotted this absolutely lush gold lamp in Second Abbey …

Phwoar. Isn’t it well lush? I headed to Dunnes Stores and picked up a small black pleated lamp shade to bring it out of the early 90’s, and I’ve got to say, I’m ridiculously pleased with how it turned out. Just LOOK at it …

All shiny and gold and pretty. I next upgraded our rescue kit for unexpected guests box [psst – you can also see what the bedside table originally looked like in that post]. I had a spare white KASSET box from my DIY holiday memory boxes, so I added the contents of the rescue kit to the slightly fancier box and added an old school Dymo Omega label to balance out all the fancy. And damn straight, I am mixing gold and silver. 
And last but not least, I decided to jazz up the bedside table by doing something I almost never do – I bought flowers. I love flowers in our home so I don’t really know why I’m always hesitant to buy them. I will admit part of me thinks it’s a bit of a waste of money. I know that sounds harsh. I tried to curb my opinion by buying these pretty pink roses which were reduced yet absolutely perfect [WINNING]. I trimmed them into one of our gold tumblers, et voila. 

When I showed husband the new getup in the spare bedroom, the first thing he said was “are you sure you want to keep that lamp there? It’s really nice and we’ll never see it in the spare bedroom … “. He makes a good point. Yes, he may be critiquing my styling placement, but I’ll focus more so on the fact that he thinks I made a kick-ass Frankenstein lamp 🙂 xx A
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New old desk

For a while now I’ve been a bit over our home office. I’ve wanted to mix things up and more importantly, make our apartment a bit less IKEA-y. Don’t get me wrong, I heart IKEA, but thanks to our landlord’s [IKEA] furniture that we can’t change, our apartment was starting to look a bit like a catalog. So out with the new, and in with the old.

I wanted an older and darker desk with more character, so I took to the internet. I sold our IKEA desk within a couple of hours and that same evening I found a pretty sa-weet mahogany desk. It was petite, compact and fill of pretty. I even haggled it down to the same price that I sold our IKEA desk for, making it a direct swap of IKEA for mahogany! Not bad … 

My grand ideas for this small space kept bringing me back to Christine Dovey’s, aka Bijou and Boheme’s, basement makeover. There are no words. It’s just insanity. I’ve yabbered on about Christine many times before, so I’ll keep my drooling to a minimum today. But there’s something I just really adore about the dark accessories, white walls, old school painting and gold accents going on. A perfect mix of old and new. So ideally, I’d love if I could work the following into our new office space …

– Include our existing upcycled charity shop lamp. I’ve had a hankering to update it a little by adding MOAR DANGILY TRIM Done! 
– Add some more teal candles from Tiger [you cannot go wrong with 2 candles for €1], as well as adding another metallic antler candle holder, similar to the one on our living room shelf
– A giant piece of art of some sorts. Kinda old and maybe kinda new and I might even try my hand at something. This section is a bit up in the air. Can you tell?
– The moment we got the desk, I wanted to change the door knobs. They don’t look too bad below, but the current hardware is in no way in keeping with our living room [our office sits in the corner of our living room]. I’ve spent a couple of days searching for some yummy knobs [oh dear god, hello SEO!] in hardware stores to glitz up our desk, but no luck. Going completely against my ‘less IKEA look’, I spotted these ORRNAS  door knobs on the IKEA website and I like what I see. Bringing a little bit of IKEA back in is okay, right?

– I would just die if I could have a black ghost chair. Or dark grey. I’m not picky

At the moment the chair I’m using I found abandoned on the side of the road. It’s a lot less dirty than it sounds, trust me! If the whole ghost chair thing doesn’t work out [which let’s face it, probably won’t because of €€€], I’d contemplate reupholstering my skip-chair in black velvet. It seems like it would be a fairly straight forward job, the only thing deterring me at the moment is the thought of all the cat hair.

Oh and before I forget, above is a better picture detailing the top ‘drawer’ in our new old desk; it folds down revealing a rolling shelf that I use for my keyboard and mouse, and when the desk isn’t in use, we store our laptops in there. Out of sight, out of mind. This little desk isn’t just a pretty face, and I couldn’t be more smitten.

xx A

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Thrifty things – a clowder of teapots

No, do not re-adjust your screen. This is not a vision into the depths of your nightmares, it’s just my new cat teapot. And may I add with pride [quickly followed by a hint of shame], I now have a cat teapot collection. A clowder of cat teapots, if you will.

I suppose it all started way back when Emily and I visited the Merchants Market for a blogger feature of hers. That’s when I spotted my first cat teapot; the little portly lady-cat teapot who looks like she rather enjoys sausages. Then the other day I spotted this gentleman-cat teapot in the window of NCBI Charity Shop. It was after hours so the shop wasn’t open, so the next day I cycled over and scooped up my purchase.

“Do you have cats?“, the lady at the till inquired. “Oh I do. I have two kitties“, I said. She then looked me up and down with a puzzled look on her face. “You aren’t covered in cat fur though“. I laughed and I told her my anti-furry-clothes tip … 

PRO TIP – run your hand under the tap and using the palm of your hand, begin to brush your clothes. The water on your hand will collect any fur. When your hand stops collecting fur, simply run it under the tap again. Repeat until all the lonely people glitter, I mean fur, is gone. Voila!

I’m not entirely sure where I’m going to keep Mr. and Mrs. Cat Teapot, but I quite like where I styled them on our shelves. Not too bad. And please don’t tell me I’m the only one with a porcelain animal collection? Don’t leave me hangin’.

xx A