Earring repair.

Some of my favourite earrings look too old to wear anymore. Just all tarnished and gross. SOLUTION! I bought a packet of hooks for about $3 at Spotlight. (I got a packet of little rubber backs while I was there. Now all my stud earrings have backs.) I took my earrings off the old hooks and onto the new ones, using my flatmate's pliers.

Made: cake, paintings.

Every year I take my turn on the office birthday cake roster. I picked a recipe a bit more complicated and rich than I expected. It's a Nutella cake from nigella.com. It is flourless, with 6 eggs, a jar of Nutella, a block of chocolate, lots of hazelnut. I took some photos before I took it to work and the icing fell off on the way and I repaired it when I got to work. I think I like rich cakes better without icing anyway. I just always forget that.

Yes. What a good cake. 

Also I did a set of paintings for Elsie, in her colours.

Also I went to officeworks and bought a pencil caddy, which is a makeup organiser. I think I need another one maybe, it's quite a success.

FINISH! of the tallboy makeover project.

So this was the start of the project, back in June, when I was discontented with my yellowing old pine chest of drawers and thought it would be an easy and cheap thing to do to just sand and revarnish it.

It took a couple of weekends to sand it, using a borrowed power sander, and eventually I just focused on the drawers, which are the front, and left the sides and top a bit tinted still. I didn't sand the handles because I would just buy new ones and paint them to match.

I did the varnishing on the long weekend, and it was pretty easy compared to sanding. 3 coats over 3 days. A shower curtain on the lounge room floor (conveniently we needed to replace it that weekend) solved my problem of where to do it.

Cost of the project at this point, approx $75. The varnish was $55, plus the brush and the sandpaper. I have at least a 3rd of a tin of varnish left over so I am wondering about going over some other furniture with it, but I'm not sure yet. I need a rest.

This is the layering of the coats. It's hard to get the colour true with my camera but you get the idea.

And then, the amazing and fun part. While on holidays I found a shop in Bellingen selling loads of second hand knobs. They were so pretty, and since I was planning on replacing the drawer handles anyway, I bought up 10 blue knobs. $45 for 10 handles, taking cost of project to about $120. I just love it when I buy something unique, which I also need, and which will remind me of good times and nice places.

How amazing does it look!

The finished thing!

I am extremely proud of myself. Especially proud that I finished it, even if it took four months.

Curtain thingy.

I did sort of accomplish this on Saturday. This is the falling out bracket.

 

This is a new bracket I put in. It's a close fit but not the same. It looks weirder, but it's not falling out so that's good. I realised now that I really only needed to replace the red things that grip the screws, probably. I have kept the old bracket and I will put it back on before I move out.

New double bracket.

Tallboy makeover.

Saturday and Sunday were beautiful days. In the morning I walked to Bunnings, bought sandpaper, and then around the middle of the day I spent 2.5 hours or so sanding. The first day was discouraging, because I thought a sander would just scrape the lacquer off in 2 goes, like icing off a cake. I had to buy coarser sandpaper on Sunday and also one specifically for removing paint, and then I had more success. But still, it was really slow going. Sanding is slow, that is its nature.

Here is the before, the shiny orange honey colour:

This is the result I got on Saturday with medium coarse sandpaper. The sander had a bag so it contained a lot of the dust, but I did it in the bathroom to contain the dust as much as possible. Unfortunately it amplified the noise. Sorry, neighbours. Anyway, this was discouraging because all my work only got half of it off.

This is the finished result on Sunday with coarse sandpaper. I'm much happier.

I'd say there is still at least 10% remaining I could take off, but I hope this is good enough.
This is the sort of brown I wish it to be when I stain it.

Before I did this work, I had to remove all the stuff in the drawers and put it into green bags. Actually seeing the bottom of the drawers was an interesting experience. This is a shot of the sock drawer after I took out the socks, stockings, ribbons and bangles. Quite interesting treasures. A 1964 australian penny, a blue rock, a leather papoose baby necklace, chopsticks, my first watch. The undies drawer was even more interesting and a lot deeper, there were old greeting cards and my red P licence and about 4 lost prescriptions and a bird whistle and a ponytail of hair and some tiny photo frames and more.

I'm looking forward to eventually putting back the things that should be in the drawers, i.e. clothes, and then have fun sorting/throwing out the rest.