Shame-free shelving

I've had a great weekend: a nice lazy Saturday and then two days of beavering away (today's a public holiday) with lots to show for it. Things to say about the smoky downpipe in the loo, the leak (eek) in the bath, tiling at the sink, a slightly disappointing mirror situation, knitting and, above all, my hall cupboard.

When I arrived, my hall cupboard looked something like this: two rails for hanging clothes and a two-thirds finished space up top for stuffing suitcases and the like.


In January 2008, I christened my new Christmas drill and put up shelves. The Shelves of Shame, to be precise. They were shameful for two reasons. First, I mis-measured, so one of the brackets at the back was about half a centimetre out. This was particularly shameful because I actually went so far as to chisel a half-centimetre sliver out of the skirting board to account for this difference, but at no point did it occur to me to triple-check my measurements. Very stoopid. The other thing was that I got the shelves cut to the right width at the shop, not realising that the cupboard gets narrower towards the back and that I'd need to leave space for the bracket system, so lots of half-assed slicing of little strips ensued. With a desperately blunt old hacksaw. Yeah, embarrassing.

Add to that the totally knackered old paint job and the dusty holes and gaps left behind by the workmen and the random electricity and gas paraphernalia and it was a pretty grubby place.


I liked the blue paint, but it was in a terrible state and this was a good excuse to use up some of the many random tubs of white paint and primer I have lying around taking up space. I made the mistake I make every time and completely forgot that I needed to do the door as well until I was halfway through and didn't want to be adding sawdust and grit to the mix.

This was the scene last night, with shelves everywhere and an old tin of primer used up on of the blue (most of it anyway - I ran out with a couple of square feet to do at the bottom corner):



Today, it's been painting city. Actually, I haven't been outside for two and a half days now I come to think of it.... Fortunately, the outside comes inside, even at night.

Baby steps

I had a friend staying last weekend as well, but I managed to get a pair of shelves primed and painted only to come up against my lack of an extension cord. I only have three proper sockets in the flat. I can plug in lamps and chargers and the like in all of the sockets, but to plug in "large" items like computer, radiator, hairdryer, iron or drill, I need to rely on the biggies, of which two are in the kitchen. So really, I have to rely on the single proper socket in the hall, which permanently has a little multi-socket extension cord in it for computer, radiator, etc. And damn but that little extension cord is MILES away from being able to reach my bedroom windows. A couple of friends brought round four metres of cord to allow me to put up my curtain rod, but I'm now stuck for cord to put up my shelves. Not urgent, but a little frustrating. Vivement new electricity!

So, shelves almost done. Other priming news concerned this little chair, which I found beside the rubbish bins a couple of nights after I moved in here (it doesn't really show in the picture but it was a pretty nasty yellowish colour):
- which now looks like this, ready for a coat of proper paint:

- and I primed the new bits of my DIY'd bathroom door.
I've also finished oiling my bedroom windows and have sorted out curtain rings for one side of the window - I miscalculated so I need to buy more rings for the other side. I think that's all for this weekend. Baby steps indeed. :)

Paint chipping

Late nights at work again all last week so I didn't get back to my bedroom until Friday night. As I waited for the kettle to boil for my hot water bottle (yeah, very hot, but I don't have proper heating and I love my repurposed Sigg - stays warm 'til morning!), I went in to take a look at what I'd done last weekend and started idly picking at a loose bit of paint on the hall side of the door. Bad move - an hour later, I was still there, surrounded by paint chips but at least I'd done a whole side. Nothing more addictive than picking, especially when whatever it is comes off in satisfyingly large pieces.

I know that this is NOT an effective way to strip paint but I'd started, so I ended up spending the weekend finishing that side of the door. Of course, I enlisted the support of my trusty scraper and my trusty penknife but it was still a slow job. In the process, I discovered that the clumpy layers of white paint hide semi-clumpy green paint and that two of the windows have been broken and replaced at some point so the molding is just a rough approximation of quarter-diameter dowling. I was rather relieved to discover that actually, as I'd got down to the wood in a couple of places and was wondering if I'd be morally obliged to strip all the doors and panels in the apartment back to basics to show off the wood.

This is how things stand tonight:
Next steps: find a way to take the paint off the handles and bring on the chemicals for the windows and the other door - enough of this penknife nonsense!

Dust

Having de-poussièred my house last Sunday night and spent a whole week of evenings breathing fresh air, I got stuck in with the sandpaper again today.


This morning, I shunted all of my furniture into my sitting room in preparation for a blitz. My parents are coming over in a few weeks - partly for a holiday, partly to wield paint-brushes - and even though I know they'd be happy to do it, I don't want to land them with all the preparation. So I got out my steps and my sandpaper, put on my work clothes, plugged the gaps under the bedroom doors in a (failed) attempt to keep the dust from getting out, and set to.

The lazy bugger was who sloshed white emulsion all over this flat at some point in the last twenty years deserves to be shot. I spent four hours just on the glass door and I didn't even finish there were so many slobbery drips and runs and lumps (how do you even make lumps when you're painting?). There's paint on the glass and paint on the door handles and the detail of the molding is obscured by... paint. Yeech. Oh, and he had a go at the cornice too.

It's really strange powdery, chalky paint which is pretty difficult to clean up so I'll see if I do anything this week during the evening or if I just have another blitz next weekend when I have enough time to make real headway and justify the cleaning up time. In the meantime, I'm all cosy in my sitting room. Slightly crowded, it must be said, but it'll be nice to wake up in here for a change.

All systems go

It's been quite a weekend. Quite a week actually - so busy I was just about hyper-ventilating, finally lost my temper and snarled at my obnoxious colleague, and told my boss I want to hand in my sheriff's badge and go down to 4 days a week by July at the latest. She took it well (too well?) and told me I'm welcome to change my mind but I can't see that happening any time soon.
Flat-wise, lots on the go. :)

Last weekend, I picked up handles for my cabinet from BHV. I ended up going for slightly expensive ones that caught my eye and I'm really pleased it did. The end result is exactly what I'd hoped for. Now I just need to get the rest of the bathroom into working order...



I'm getting there. This weekend I've been working on the door. It's been difficult and I'm not out of the woods yet but things are looking promising. I ended up finding molding that was almost a perfect match in BHV - thank feck I didn't try and muddle something with bits of dowling, a thought which crossed my mind and was, fortunately, rejected. I can't imagine what a nightmare that would have been. To make the difference between the original bit and the new bit less visible, I ended up removing the good bit of molding on the right-hand side. It was tough getting the joints to align, especially as I don't have any sort of work table and my only saw is a small, increasingly blunt hacksaw (the last two weekends have been heavy on the tool-blaming front...).



Once I had the molding sorted, I set to trying to replicate the central panel. Lots of sanding to get the existing bit of mdf and the door frame smooth enough, little bits of sanding to soften the edges of the new additions and give them a similar look to the originals. Measured, glued, looks okay, probably should have let the glue cure a little longer than I did but I'm desperate to get my flat cleaned up tonight - I've been living surrounded by sawdust since Christmas and it's getting a bit old.

Getting the central panel into place was a real drag. The piece that was originally used to replace the kicked-in section isn't quite the right size, so I couldn't align it with any of the wooden edges or prop it on anything to keep it in place. I tried to glue it but I couldn't keep it in position long enough for the glue to set and I don't have any clamps or anything. I was also trying to manoeuvre it into place from inside the bathroom while peering round to the hall side to check it was correctly aligned. It was definitely an occasion when it would have been useful to have had another pair of hands. Or to have glued on the central panels once the main section was in place. Hem.

I ended up using some tiny nails which are hidden by the molding glued on the other side. I think the central bit will look fine once it's painted.


On the inside, I again resorted to the glue. Again, I'll withhold judgement until it's painted but I think it's a pretty decent save and it didn't work out to be particularly expensive.


The last thing I did this weekend was to finish the Shelves of Shame. Still shameful, but fully functional. I've been able to put away all of the stuff that's been cluttering up the corner of my bedroom since I moved in and my new Danish chair is now in place, just waiting for the rest of the room to come into shape around it. Bought new foam for the chair too, so a trip to the Marché Saint-Pierre will be in order too.

The Shelves:
- before: two clothes rails right at the back


- during: using my superduper new drill (AEG 600R) to throw up a heck of lot of dust


- halfway through: loading up shelves while cursing the mismeasurements that meant I had to shave half a centimetre off each shelf to take account of the cupboard narrowing towards the back and the top. With a small, increasingly blunt hacksaw.


- after: all loaded up with a salvaged clothes rail towards the front and space to hang brushes and the like between the clothes and the door. The organization will change slightly when I get a wardrobe, and I'm also planning to fix up something for shoes, but for the moment, it's a million times more useful than it used to be so I'm happy.

New year, new glam cabinet

December was a bit of a write-off between work blues and winter blues. Looks like January and February aren't going to be any better on the work front but I'll keep my little fingers crossed...

I had a good few days at home over Christmas and came back with all sorts of ideas about things to do in the flat only to have a major reality-check when I opened the front door. Heck but there's a LOT of work to do. At least I now have a clearer vision of how I want it all to come together design-wise. The key will be getting the electricity sorted. Once that's out of the way, I'll be able to get the sitting room and bedroom into shape and the kitchen and bathroom will come along in their own sweet time.

In the meantime, I decided to go for a quick win. Not quite so quick in real life but a win nonetheless. Still a few little things to tidy up but, over the last couple of weekends, I've:

- taken the other, very shabby, bedside cabinet I bought in the dépôt vente by the Bassin de la Villette

- (that I'm planning to put in the bathroom once it's all tarted up and has a new, smaller sink and more, em, forgiving, tiles)

- sanded it down (resorting to nail varnish remover when it came to extracting old wax from the more inaccessible carved areas - surprisingly effective)

- sanded it again with fine grain and wiped it all down

- and painted it with black gloss

Needs a little finishing but it's looking pretty fine, though I say it myself.

Note, also, that the bedroom door is CLOSED in that third picture. Yep, I decided minimizing dust levels in the rest of the flat was a bit of a priority so I went at the door with the roughest sandpaper I could find and managed to get rid of the extra layer of emulsion/gobs of old paint/sloppy-drips-and-runs that were keeping it from closing. Crazy amounts of dust - I now understand the work that will be required if ever I'm to close the other doors in here...