Author Archives: zefiart

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About zefiart

Blogger, DIY-er, poodle lover, graphic designer, dog groomer, recycler, artist, wonder woman in my spare time.

a measuring cup pencil holder, a wire shelf and a shutter shelf

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A little more cleaning up…

Its not finished yet. There is still another 3/4 of the workshop to finish, but I made a start last night.

Before:

After:

Of course, I would have gotten more done if I didn’t get distracted. The way I seem to work is: stare at the mess, dither about where to start, pick up something, put it down, move it over to another surface, look for a container to put it in, think a shelf would look nice there, look for things to make a shelf out of, necessitating moving more things over just a bit to make space, find a measuring cup I got at a tip shop and decide it would make a great pencil holder, find wire to make that, then start cutting wood to make brackets cause nothing I have will work, then make a shelf out of a broken wire basket cause I always planned to do it but never got around to it, and now I have and its good to finally do it, but oops, there’s still a huge pile of stuff to put away so I pick up things and put them in their place, realise there are now too many things so create new places for things and labelling them so I can find them again… and suddenly its 9pm and I’m blowing black stuff out of my nose.

But my new toolbox is now full of tools…

and that wall is looking like a working workshop instead of a jumble sale.

The drawers are only there temporarily… till I find my electric plane. Then they’ll go back into the tv unit/divider.

You may notice a few other things in the picture above… the stencils given to me by a good friend cause she knows I’ll love them and cherish them and call them my very own. My new measuring cup pencil holder (that dark little triangle lost in the gloom), my new wire shelf and, last but not least, the new recycled shutter (louvre door to be exact) shelf.

The one I always planned to put up but didn’t have the necessary bits or the patience to buy them. What the heck, right? Make do is the name of the game!

Don’t try this at home.

Hey. It works. Don’t judge me cause I’m imaginative!

Meanwhile let me share my gorgeous new pencil holder. Its a measuring cup I found at the tip shop last weekend. I’ve never seen one like it before.

Please ignore the hole in the wall. I didn’t do that. The wall came pre-punched.

Do you wanna see the wire shelf?
I’ve had this wire basket for quite a while and the wire on the corners has come undone and its not in the best condition. I always thought it’d make a good shelf.

So, while in the middle of cleaning and organising my workshop, I naturally had to stop and make this little fella.

Firstly I had to wire the corners to stop the wire bits from sticking out and causing bad things to happen.

Then I trimmed some offcuts of plywood as the shelves. The bottom shelf just sits in place but the one in the middle is wired in place. I drilled holes to feed wire through and hold the shelf in place.

I attached it to the wall with those plaster wall plugs… which of course weren’t the right size for the job. Oh, they’ll take the weight ok, but the screws weren’t long enough to clamp the wire back in place properly.
Thats ok.
As long as its pretty!
z

cleaning up and clearing out – a cathartic exercise

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I’ve been on the path of simplifying my life for a while now. More in my head than in the actual physical world unfortunately… I lie in bed at night and mentally clean out the sheds with overflow with crap I’ve accumulated in the last few years, things I plan to use to make something one day, things which will come in useful one day, things that I’m sure I’ll need again one day…

Well, I’ve decided that if one day hasn’t come in the last 5 years, it probably won’t ever come, and I’m beginning to sort things out.

Of course, its way easier said than done. Especially when you visit a friend’s house and she has way more stuff than you do, and you talk about something you once had but threw out, and how there’s a great idea for it here and now, but its gone, cause you cleaned out and threw it away, and now you don’t have it for that great idea and you kick yourself and you want all the more to hold onto things you do have right now, cause you’ll surely need them one day, when you have another great idea and you’ll go searching in the bowels of the shed where people are afraid to enter cause its crammed full of things precariously balanced on top of other things and if you shift one thing you’re in danger of being crushed by the weight of all the good stuff you can’t let go of, cause, surely, you will need them soon, or one day, cause here you are now, looking for that one thing you know you put in the shed in 1993 cause you were sure it would come in handy one day and the day has arrived and here you are, rummaging in boxes up to your neck and pulling it out triumphantly and saying “here it is! I knew I had one of those!” its perfect for the job, and you’re glad you’re so clever and had the foresight to keep it all those years ago…

UGH.

Its not easy to clear out stuff.

sigh.

But here I am, my nose full dust and, ugh no doubt, mouse droppings, cause storing stuff in sheds means that, inevitably, mice get into things and if you’re lucky they only chew up the newspaper and plastic containers and not the items you so loving shoved in there so long ago.

I began with a plan: throw out anything I’m not likely to need or use in this lifetime. That included all bits of furniture or timber which wasn’t real wood – I took things apart, removing and keeping hinges or catches or doors. Any smaller bits of real wood which were of no use were put into the kindling pile.

I allocated the space just outside the store room as a temporary rubbish dump, tossing bags of rubbish out there, flinging out the chipboard pieces I don’t think I’ll ever want to use but which I kept just in case…

I packed up things which would be sold at a garage sale I’m planning to have sometime in the near future. ie useful things which need to be in someone else’s home where they’ll be used and appreciated more than I appreciate them.

Another pile for items I’ll take to work for projects there.

Bags of things I no longer want to take to various friends who I know might appreciate them.

Lastly, I went through my big plastic storage boxes of craft and sewing stuff. I was ruthless. I managed to go from 9 boxes down to 6. I still have tons of craft materials, but I’m a bit more realistic about what I’ll actually use.

So, prepare your eyeballs for the before and afters.

Before:

After:

Almost everything on the lower level on the left hand side of the above pic is garage sale stuff – which means I’ll have that much more space when its gone!

Before:

After: 
 

I still have bits of wood, doors, STUFF, but its easier to get to now.

Before:

After:

I even have space left on shelves now! The poodles approve. They can now get through the room and get outside.

Before:

After:

I’m feeling better already, and I’ve only just started.
I mean that in a figurative way cause I’ve been working on this for most of the weekend. On and off. But I still have the entire workshop area to clean up and organise and a whole 2 other sheds to start on.
Its going to be a looooooong haul.
z

eat more fish!

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My brother is in the fish business.
In fact, most of our family is in the fish business. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the fact that my grandfather was a fisherman or that we’re greek and sea water runs through our veins, or anything like that. 
Its pure coincidence.
However, fish is what our family does. I can’t tell you how many years I spent my holidays working in the family fish processing plant – packing fish, pulling apart squid, stinking of fish…
My brother has a fish shop and seafood distribution business in the ACT, my cousins work in fish or, if they don’t work in fish all the time, they fill in when they’re needed just to keep the tradition going.
We’re a pretty smelly bunch.
But I digress.
I wanted to share with you this little present I made for my brother’s shop. 

Get it?

Its a lamb… and its saying we should eat more fish.

Ok, yeah. You get it.

Pretty appropriate with Australia Day coming up, when everyone needs to eat lamb or be labelled un-australian!

I actually had the little sheep. I made him a long time ago and had him sitting on a shelf in the living room.

And the idea isn’t mine. I have to confess I saw it somewhere and thought I’d use it… I mean, hey! I had the sheep, I have a brother in the fish business… can you blame me?

All I had to do was make a sign, a post and twist one of the little sheep’s legs to hold it.

Done.

Cute, topical and relevant.
A thoughtful gift if you ask me!
z

the living room then and now

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This post has been a long time coming.
Basically cause its a big post.
And cause the before pics are rather embarassing…
But I’m taking a deep breath and here goes.
This is what our living room looked like when we moved in. After de-pinking the walls, but nothing much else was done. Stuff just plonked in. 
Yes. You may have noticed the metal poles holding up the roof.
Over the last few years I tried a whole lot of different layouts but nothing really did it for me… The TV antenna plug is in the dark grey wall under the window so I kept the TV in that general area for most of the layouts, while everything else got moved whenever I got restless.
Which was often.
The wood heater is in the middle of the room, more or less in line with the poles, further limiting my furniture placement choices.
Not to mention the need to dry things in front of the fire in winter… lovely.
Given the TV placement in that corner, we were stuck with the front part of the living room being the ‘living room’ area while the back part (near the kitchen pass) was the work area.
I tried the couch at a right angle from the wall, near the front door…
I tried the couch against the poles…
I tried the couch on the other side of the poles and leaving just armchairs on the TV side…
I moved every single armchair, recliner, bookcase and coffee table we own, and trust me, nothing worked.
Maybe cause we own ugly furniture.
But the poles in the middle of the room were driving me crazy!
I knew I had to do something to make the poles part of the design of the room or remove them.
Since removing them meant putting a PROPER beam across the living room ceiling which would be expensive, a room divider it had to be!
The idea for a room divider was nothing new. I’d seen the need for one the minute I walked into the house the first time. But the inspiration (and guts) to tackle it took years to hit me.
Only last month as a matter of fact as you may remember.
After thinking about building a room divider/entertainment unit and flipping the living room for approximately five years, I suddenly went out and just did it!
So here are the before and after pics.
This is what the front part of the living room looked like before:
And here it is now:
Wayne’s office is now in the corner where the TV was and there’s a reading corner near the door to the porch.
In the middle of the room is my brand spanking new, upcycled cd cabinet room divider, which incorporates the poles as part of the design.
When you walked into the living room from the kitchen before, this is what you saw:
Now you see this:
The divider separates the ‘working area’ from the ‘relaxing area’ of the room without cutting it in half.

Instead of this:

We now have this:

We still have ugly furniture, but we make do for now. A dropcloth makes a nice cover for the couch and I try to ignore the blue recliner. 
And yeah… I need to toss out that salmon carpet and I need bigger rugs, but for now… you got it! We make do!

I can’t afford a wall of bookcases for behind the couch, so until I find the courage to build my own, I make do with what I have. Once I paint them all the same colour it won’t look so bad.

The living room feels much nicer now, more comfortable. Of course I had to get used to the TV being so much closer, but its ok now. And I love the way the work area isn’t the first thing you see when you walk into the living room. Its a much better layout.
Its not perfect… but it’ll do for now!
(till the next time I get restless!)
z

imaginative rustic dog proofing for the garden

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Life is back to normal… the holidays are over…

When I got back from Canberra on the weekend, after a week up there with Mom, I was greeted by a couple of surprises.

Firstly, my up till now white hydrangeas are now pink! A very pretty soft pale pink.

It might be cause I gave them hydrangea food, although it said “Blueing agent”, not “Pinking agent”… oh well. They’re pretty.

The second surprise wasn’t as pleasant…

Seems the dogs had been doing some of their own creative gardening…

Its not the first time.

Before Christmas I’d planted some lettuce and spinach in a rusty old washing machine tub and placed it and my basil in a rusty ammo box in part of the garden which the dogs had excavated. I placed a big galvanised watering can and some yellow tractor springs there too. It worked. No more digging and destruction in that spot.

However, other spots needed a dog’s special touch apparently.

This spot above had my first (and favourite) penstemon in it. A dark dark burgundy. It was taller than the lavender. When I got back it was broken. I grabbed anything I could find and filled in the gap to discourage digging.

Ditto above, a little further over where a galvanised mop bucket, a rusty bucket, a terracota pot and a birdcage create deterrents.

And here a geranium in a stainless steel bucket…

I ran out of pots to use as discouragement so I grabbed my old kid’s tricycle. It doesn’t look too bad there… I think I’ll leave it there and let the plants grow around it.

Dogs and gardens isn’t a perfect match. On the other side of the yard I’ve had to use puppy pens as semi-permanent fencing to keep the dogs out of the garden bed. They’ve destroyed that quite a few times. Turns out bunnies live under the casita, what can I say…

So, back to the grind.

It was a terrific Christmas. Having Mom over from Greece was really special. She’s an amazing woman. I can only hope I have half her energy and looks in my mid-80s!

Mom loved Tasmania and our home – she even thought Wayne was okay… heheh

Anyway, it was terrific to spend time with Mom at home, as well as driving around Canberra with her catching up with friends and shopping.

Did I say shopping? Canberra has an IKEA! And Aldi! Well, Aldi isn’t that exciting but let me tell you, their white chocolate is wonderful!

Ok, I’m off to water the garden. Tomorrow is going to be a stinker

z

the divider – stage 1 & 2 finished

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Remember the room divider post a little while back? I was using these two images below as my inspiration and starting point:

I had a CD cabinet similar to the one above, though much smaller… and I have metal poles in my living room like below (only uglier)…

My thought was that since it was too much work (and expense) to remove the poles, I’d embrace them and make myself a room divider which included them in a kind of farmhouse industrial style.
Now prepare your eyeballs for something really, really horrible… the view of our living room in mid-chaos a couple of years back. Not sure what I was up to then, but somewhere in between I decided to take these photos…
From the kitchen side:

From the front door side:

Beautiful poles, dividing the room in half, totally limiting what you can do with it, making it hard to decorate, ugly… what can I say? Not to mention the three different ceiling heights in our living room as different rooms were opened up or added to create the big living room (before our time).

Below you can see the CD cabinet, in amongst all the crap bits of odd furniture we were using as part of Wayne’s office in the living room.

I started with the CD cabinet as my base. I’m not good at making furniture from scatch (how do I know? I’ve never tried it, but given my problems with measuring I’d say it was a fair bet!

… I found that the drawers were square and would fit in it either upright or on its side. I considered recycled timber but I decided to go with plywood. You can get it in large sheets so I wouldn’t have to join a million pieces. I used 12mm construction ply. Plenty strong enough for what I needed. I gave the guys at the hardware store the measurements I needed and they cut it for me using their wizbang saw.

I built a box around the cabinet with open shelves on either side to extend the cabinet to totally fill the space between the poles. I actually measured that really well. Its a really tight fit but it fits!

We won’t be moving this in a hurry…

I had planned to use some 60’s legs on it, but they were too spindly. This sucker is heavy. In the end I found some chunky round metal legs at Bunnings which were almost a perfect match for the poles (I got the slightly taller ones than the ones pictured. I bought 6 of them to make sure there’d be no sag, not that I expected any, but to appease Wayne who was concerned about the weight on just four legs.

I painted the poles satin black to match the legs and it looks like the poles were part of the design.

I build the unit/divider in two stages. First I made the base box around the CD cabinet, put legs on it, moved it in and gave it three coats of polyurethane.
I put the TV on it so we could use it while I built the top section to hold the PVR, DVD player, etc.

I made the top shelf as a separate box with dividers and back, but no bottom. I measured the PVR and DVD player and built cubbies to fit them, leaving one middle one free and two end ones open. Once that was finished I brought it in and just put it on top of the base. It wasn’t connected to anything at that stage.

Of course, you always need a back on a TV unit so the TV doesn’t go flying. Especially when you have a poodle like Romeo who not only watches TV, but likes to protect us from all the scary animals living in it!

I built the back out of ply offcuts. The two uprights go all the way to the ground for more stability and the top section (with air holes) sits on top of the upper shelf. I attached this to the base at the back with screws. I used mostly black screws for this job as I wanted the contrast between light ply and black metal. When I ran out of black screws I used regular ones (way cheaper) and just coloured their tops in using a permanent marker.

Now the back side of the unit is a small sitting area and you don’t have to look at the back of the TV.

This is what it looks like from the side. The living room area is now closest to the kitchen and you can watch TV from the kitchen through the opening, the office area is now on the far side of the living room and much less visible when its a mess!
At the last minute I decided to put backs on the side shelves of the bottom unit to hide the electric cables. Since the power points are on the wall, there was no power in the middle of the room.  I had to get the electrician to come put a power point in the floor just next to the pole, you can see it in the photo above. 
Stupid me – forgot to ask him to bring the antenna cable up too… sigh. Now I’ll have to do it myself or find a willing sucker friend to do it for me.

I used leftover bits of peg board from my linen cupboard makeover for that. I put the white sides to the front and the brown to the back but sprayed them gloss black – they look mat cause its a rough surface and they kind look like the stuff old speakers were made of.
I had my painting of Dancer framed and have hung it on the back side of the unit to give it a cosier feel. My first aid box sewing basket acts as a side table.
The divider/unit isn’t finished. There will be either one or two shelves above it taking it up to the beam, and the back bit needs to be polyurethaned. I just ran out of time before Christmas. I can easily polyurethane it a couple of evenings after work.
So what were the boo-boos in this project:
Well, of course there was the failure to bring the antenna cable over so now it has to sit under a rug and its visible.
There was the original plan to use galvanised iron for both the legs and between the shelves – I don’t know how all those bloggers in the USA build gorgeous shelving units out of that stuff… here its SO expensive! I paid over $60 for 6 legs and it would have cost MORE if I went with galvanised pipe!
The dividers between the PVR and DVD players aren’t totally straight… it was hard to attach them so it was a bit of a hit and miss process.
And best of all, with all the movement and weight, the bottom drawers of the CD cabinet no longer fit in their place! I’ll have to plane them off a bit. So till I do that I have the CDs just sitting in there like its a bookcase. 
Eh. 
It works.
And I love it!
z
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tea bag village – a recycled work project

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How do you decorate your home for Christmas? I like to do things a little differently. Not the usual kind of stuff in other words. Well… except for candy canes. I love them cause I eat them when they’ve done their decorative dash. This year I used them to bulk up my pitiful collection of Christmas cards. I love email but I mourn the loss of cards at this time of the year. (I never send them myself either!)

You’ve already seen my Christmas tree this year…

So it’ll come as no surprise that I used a recycled tea bag and papier mache project as part of my Christmas decor.

This is a project I worked on at work with one of our participants. I made up little houses out of milk cartons and other small cardboard boxes and he papier mached them in plain white paper.

Once the white paper had dried we covered them with tea bags! I’ve been collecting tea bags for a long time and for this project I soaked them, split them and thew out the tea leaves, then dried them flat. The colours are just amazing.

I did try writing on them but didn’t like it. They’re all plain tea bags now.

Below you can see I used them on each side of the new TV unit and on top of the wood heater.

On the wood heater I wound some fairy lights around them and light them up in the evenings. They look beautiful.

They’ll be going back to work after Christmas to be exhibited next time we have an art show. I just needed to get some nice photos of them and hey, while they were here… I might as well put them to use!

z

the office as guest room

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You know, when your mom’s visiting you don’t get much time to get online. Its rude. Especially since you only see her once every 3 years or so.
So I’m trying to catch up while she takes a nap.

I wanted to share how pretty the office was as a second guest room for my niece Maria. I had to borrow the bed from my good friend Patrice (thanks ‘Trice!).
Naturally the day we decided to bring up the bed it poured with rain almost all day and everything got soaked. Luckily it was hot and we managed to dry everything out with fans before we had to use it.
It was a bit of a squeeze in the office as its not a big room and I have the craft cupboard in the corner, but it still looked great. Fresh flowers and the greek lace curtain… Lovely.

Since the weather here is a bit random, airconditioning one day, heater the next, I added my flokati throw (a new purchase from Freedom a month ago) to the foot of the bed. It really tied it all in together… the minty green colour is just perfect.

You know… If I moved the bed over to the wall and moved the little wardrobe over to the other side… hm… Maybe I’ll keep Patrice’s single bed…
Only joking! 
z

kmart plant stand side table

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Did you noticed the little side table in the guest room?
Its something really quick and easy to make.
First, you get one of these metal plant stands from Kmart. They had them in copper and aqua in our local store.

Then you get a round timber cheese board or whatever you have on hand. Give it a sand and then stain and/or varnish it. I did both.

Using liquid nails (liquid nails is your friend!) you glue the stand to the timber top.

I had it sitting upside down for a day with weight on top to make sure the glue was nice and dry.

Easy, and very cute.

The roses are from Patrice’s garden. Yellow roses are my favourite.

z

the linen chest finished

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You may remember this tallboy makeover from an old post. It started life as a chest of drawers but the drawers kept getting stuck and falling off their sliders. I decided to make it into shelves for linen storage.

This is what it looked like when I shared it back then.

All fine and good till you fill it up with mismatched linen and blankets. Kind of messy looking.

It needed doors. So I made doors. The easy way. Basically I made 2 square frames out of pine, with a bar across the middle. Then I used peg board for the door panels to allow air to circulate and to strengthen the doors.

I even used my router to notch fancy bits out of the bars!

I painted the peg board in chevron type stripes white and the same shade of aqua I used on the holland blind to tie it in together. And to make it more interesting.

The project wasn’t without its delays and ‘oops’ moments. I’d originally measured to have the doors sit outside the walls of the cabinet, but decided that looked awful. And me and numbers ain’t a match made in heaven… That meant I had to trim down the doors so they’d fit inside and I could use simple hinges.

I also changed the knobs to plain black ones. I wasn’t sure the pumpkin knobs were working.

It took months to finish this cabinet. Mainly cause I got sidetracked with other things. In the end I let it sit for weeks just waiting for hinges. But it was worth the wait. I love the way it looks now.
z