fry basket pendant light

Posted on March 16, 2014 by zefiart

Its about time I shared the other pendant light I told you about. I really did mean to post this sooner but you know what plans are like.

So… this is the newly enclosed end of the porch with its plain little light and unfinished walls. Pretty boring.

This is what it looks like now. Still unfinished but so much more interesting.

First I got the biggest of the fry baskets I had waiting to be made into something. Its a great size for a nice big pendant light. Using my trusty grinder I cut off the handle. I then cut out a section on the bottom to fit the light through. These light extension things are ready to use ones I bought from a hardware store years ago and had in the shed. This one is longer than the one I used on the entry light.

Next I moved the position of the light fitting. I was really limited in that cause I could only move it as far as the wire would allow me. Then I could only hang the light fitting as far towards the centre of the space as the cord on the light extension would allow me.

I then had to find a way to actually hang the light in that spot. I was going to use a hook but I couldn’t find one that suited the job. Do you remember the clamp things I found at the garage sale a few weeks ago? I used one of them to hold the light cord in place.

I love the way that looks. The rust in the basket gives the light an almost golden glow and I love the patterns it throws on the walls when the light is on.

Now, if I get around to buying cloth cord and the bits to make my own pendant light extension cords, I can make the cord longer and hang the light in the middle of the space. I will be doing that sooner or later so I can make the lights for the kitchen.

For now it’ll do.

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steamer pendant light

Posted on March 13, 2014 by zefiart

I’ve been swamped by things that need doing lately. So much so that creativity seems to have been left far, far behind.

This morning I opened up the door to the silver shed (where we keep mowing stuff, chicken feed in a large plastic bin, and where I store projects that have been finished to take to markets and projects waiting to be started…) and I was assailed by the putrid smell of mouse pee.

I had seen evidence of mice in there, what do you expect when you store grain, even in a bin with a lid? But today the smell was really strong. Sigh.

I have to start working on projects again soon, before the mice eat everything!

Anyway, I had promised I’d share the two pendant lights I’d made a couple of weeks ago when the creative urge got too strong to suppress.

This is the first one. I’ve hung this in the back entry/pantry. Actually its the only way anyone uses to enter the house. It is rather wierd, to enter through a pantry, but hey, in country homes no one ever uses the front door.

Especially if it means walking all the way around the house to access it.

I have friends who never even knew we had a front door!

But I digress. This light is made from a tip shop steamer and one of those ready to use light extension cords you can get at the hardware store. I had two of them and when I found them in the casita I thought “what the heck” and put them to use.

Since the holes are only at the bottom of the steamer there are no pretty patterns on the wall around this light. It directs light downwards. Its not ideal for the pantry area, but it’ll do for now. It would be better over a table or a desk.

Obviously we use those low energy light globes everywhere.

I hate them.

They take ages to warm up to full strength and they’re ugly. But what can you do? You can get other styles in low energy globes now so when it comes time to replace them I’ll be looking for prettier alternatives.

Very rustic, huh?

The other light is prettier. Stay tuned.

a quick shot of power tools

Posted on March 1, 2014 by zefiart

I mentioned that the other day I got distracted from pulling nails out of the kitchen floor by the fact that I could finally reach my power tools.

Hello circular saw! Hey there jigsaw! Nice to see you again grinder! I sure have missed you guys!

So, while I was there admiring them, patting them, etc, I remembered that I’d promised Wayne I’d put a lid on the box he stores chaff in for the horses. Its a raised garden bed box made of pallet wood that we got (in pieces) from the Men’s Shed in New Norfolk. That’s a community based place where men can go and bond over power tools, as well as learn new skills.

Anyway, Wayne had put this together, lining it better so it would hold the chaff, but he’d never put a lid on it. Up till recently we’d been using pieces of leftover flooring as a lid and moving them out of the way to reach in.

I’d been hit on the head by a falling ‘lid’ a few times…

It was time for a proper lid.

I’d gotten some pieces of laminate flooring from a friend and one piece was almost the right size. Using that and a piece of old timber I’d found, I created a proper lid. I attached the bit of timber to the end to give the lid something to hinge off, then trimmed the lid to the right size.

Since the flooring is that click together stuff, I had to reinforce it with bits of pine that came out of the kitchen. I glued and screwed those into the back to give the lid strength.

Then I used some gorgeous big old hinges I’d picked up from a tip shop. (I tell you, my tip shop finds always come in handy!).

The flooring and the timber slat were different thicknesses, so to make the hinges fit properly I had to pack it up a bit. For this I used some of the masonite we’ve been pulling off the kitchen floor.

Waste not, want not!

Lastly, I found an old handle among my collection of junk, and voila! A working lid. Not perfectly finished, but hay (pun intended!), the horses don’t mind.

No more head bashing cause now when you open it, the piece of timber on the end allows the lid to sit back against the wall with the right lean so it won’t slam back down.

look what i found

Posted on February 28, 2014 by zefiart

I got a great email the other day from Laure,l from The North End Loft, telling me she had featured my tin crown in her Friday Finds post. Thank you Laurel!

http://www.thenorthendloft.com/2014/02/friday-finds.html

It got me thinking. Lots of bloggers do ‘finds’ type of posts once a week and its a great way to share things with your friends and followers. Maybe I should do it…

Then again I’m a ‘fair weather’ blogger. Sometimes I post a lot, other times I disappear for weeks and my friends have been known to phone E.T. to intercede on my behalf in case if I’ve been abducted.

Its all very well to have time to do everything I try to cram into my day, then I have to find time to blog. And most of the time I’m just too tired at the end of the day to answer emails, let alone be creative and blog.

I think I will join the ‘finds’ club, but make it a random thing… you know, more like a surprise than a reliable weekly thing.

So, in the spirit of sharing interesting things I’ve seen, been inspired by or found… here is the best idea for displaying art. I found it while browsing The North End Loft. Laurel made up boards with pegs and clips up different art according to the room and the mood. Isn’t it brilliant?

I think I’m going to make some of these for myself. There is only so much wall space in this house and there is just so much I’d like to display. Changeable displays are a wonderful idea.

Here are some great finds from a garage sale up the road a week ago. I love this old fashioned bike light… it’ll make a great something one day. And those clamps. I have ideas for those already, but you’ll see how one has already come in handy in an upcoming post.

I also found these two old scales to add to my collection. (Anything over 3 is a collection and I now have 4 of the hanging type and 5 of the table type scales). This first is wonderfully chippy with that lovely old fashioned green on the back.

The other has a lovely patina of rust and green. They’re both hanging on the side of the house for the time being, replacing the plants I had in hanging baskets.

Most of the plants I had in pots have gone into the ground now. The garden is looking wonderful. Most of the plants I put in have grown and the place is starting to look like someone loves it. If I continue in this vein my garden will soon look like a little old lady lives here.

– You know. The older the you get the more into gardening you are… the best cottage gardens usually belong to little old ladies who’ve been gardening for 30 years.

a bigger bathroom – work in progress

Posted on January 18, 2014 by zefiart

As you know, things snowball around here.

First it was a broken oven, suddenly it was a kitchen remodel and a bathroom disruption.

I can’t actually call it a bathroom remodel as Wayne put his foot down. He was ok with moving the hot water cylinder. He was ok with removing the bathtub to get to the pipes and cause we never use it and it really needed to be gone.

He was not ok with me adding to the work (and cost) by redoing the bathroom “while we’re at it”.

In fact, he actually said “Once the bathtub is removed thats it. We live with the bathroom as it is.”

That doesn’t scare me. For one thing, just having the tub out makes a huge difference, and I love the shelves I put in. There’s tons I can do to make room more user-friendly and less gag-worthy.

And in a year… who knows…?

To recap… This is what the bathroom looked like before we removed the bathtub. A tiny square room with lamipanelled walls. Ick. You had to walk in between the shower and wall, then almost turn sideways to get past the corner of the shower and the vanity. Once in, you had a narrow space between the shower, bath and vanity in which to do your thing.

Once the bathtub was removed, we suddenly had space! The entry was still cramped, but then it opened up into a much bigger room than before. With the shelves on the wall for storage and an empty wall opposite I can move the towel rails and hangers from the left and right of the doorway, giving you a sense of more space.

Removing the bathtub left a huge hole in the wall where the laminpanel was broken to get to the pipes. Easy fixed. I got a piece of masonite from the casita (see? keeping things comes in handy), cut it to size and screwed it onto the wall. I then got out one of my many mixed up paint colours and found one that almost totally matches the colour of the walls.

I then looked around the house for a piece of furniture I could put in the space for storage and added bench space. I found an old wire drawer unit I’ve had for yonks. Its hand many roles over the years – bedside table when I was a student, linen storage, dog towel storage. For the last couple of years its been unsused space in the laundry.

A good wash and a top was all it needed to bring it into the bathroom. I had some laminate flooring pieces I got off a friend. I cut one to size and voila – new top!

Laminate flooring clicks together so I had to reinforce by screwing a couple of pieces of wood underneath. I love the extra space it gives me now.

And while we’re at it, I might add a small note on the toothbrush holder. Remember the toothbrush holder I was so happy with?

Well, turns out test tubes are the worst thing you can use to hold toothbrushes. Water dripping off the ends gathers in the bottom and become stagnant and the stench is unbelievable.

I had to replace them with large gauge syringes. They still get gunky at the bottom and need cleaning now and then, but they let the water out and don’t stink!

I should be posting that in my failed projects!

i’m a big fan

Posted on January 11, 2014 by zefiart

Thought I’d quickly share these photos of the birthday present I got Wayne this year.

I was looking through the old tool section of a local antique store when I saw this little beauty and just had to grab it. Its a heavy duty fan of some kind of machinery.

(We like getting eachother useless rusty things as gifts. Love it!)

I love the chippy paint and the rust. The photos suck, but hopefully I’ll get better photos of it when I put it up somewhere.

Don’t you think it’d make a terrific light fitting for the new kitchen?

Then again, its Wayne’s present, not mine. Maybe it’d look better on the garage wall!

the bathroom – or how to make a 15 minute job last 5 hours

Posted on December 28, 2013 by zefiart

This morning I had a plan. I was going to clean the house. And by clean I mean a real spring clean type of clean. Clean up, clear out, organise.

I was optimistic. I’d start in the bathroom cause its the smallest room and would be the quickest to clean and tidy, then move on to the living room, the bedrooms, the office…

Uhuh.

I started in the bathroom around 11am.

I finished around 4.30pm.

How come it took me so long to clean and tidy such a small and ugly room?

Well, cause its small and ugly. I just got to the point where I was hating it more than ever… I decided to take out the tall narrow cabinet I had in there for towels and put up some shelves to make it look more… bearable.

It sounded easy, right?

First I removed the ugly gold and cream fittings from the wall which were never used to hang towels on.

I used my new contra saw to cut down old cupboard doors from the kitchen to make shelves. I had planned to put up 4 shelves but decided to leave it to 3, the top one would have been too high.

The top shelf holds my bottle collection. Minus one which broke in the move. All crammed in. I will thin them out and only keep the antiques there later.

The second shelf will hold Wayne’s towels and, for now, holds my poodle mirror and a small duck basket.

The third shelf will hold my towels, a larger duck basket with soap bars and my small caddy with my toiletries.

I may be the only person in the world who’s like this, but if I don’t have my beauty products out where I can see them, I forget to use them. Ok, not the deodorant. I remember that! And my moisturizer but I do forget to use eye cream or cleansers etc.

Below the shelf, on top of the bathtub, I’ve put two baskets which I need to make labels for. The tall tennis ball basket will hold bath mats, the larger one will hold hand towels.

I quickly painted a timber door I had from a tip shop trip a while ago. It serves as a shelf over the end of the bathtub. We never use the bathtub so its a waste of space…

While I was at it, I cleaned out the vanity and threw out anything I didn’t use or need. How cathartic! I found I needed more space to put some other products (my perfume bottles, hair spray, etc) so I knocked up a quick caddy to hold them.

I had this odd little box which would be perfect, all it needed was a handle. I found a couple of bits of pine off a cut down bit of trellis. I nailed that to the ends of the box. Then I found an old hammer handle which I used as the caddy handle.

I will paint it one day, but for now its fine as is. It holds stuff and that’s all that matters.

I did discover that taking shortcuts often ends up in disaster.

See, the drill was in the bathroom. I was making the caddy in the workshop in the casita. It was too far to walk in the sun… (about 50 metres). I was too lazy to go get the drill so I just put a nail through the end of the hammer handle.

And split the wood.

So, a clever person like myself soon found a way to fix it… I got a clamp and put it around it, holding it together so it won’t split. HA!

I had to put a nut on the other side to hold the handle in place cause it had a hole way bigger than the nail head. Hey. Make do, right?

So there you go.

Five hours later and I have an orderly bathroom, complete with clean floor, walls, shower, sink, and organised storage. I celebrated by having a shower.

I’m exhausted. I have a headache. Don’t yell at me, I think I’m dehydrated too. I never drink enough and its been hot today.

Time for a rest.

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an old bathroom cabinet gets an update

Posted on December 6, 2013 by zefiart

I’ve had this little cabinet for a long time now. Back when you could find solid timber bathroom cabinets at the tip shops. For the last few years these guys have become scarce. I’ve only seen plastic (yuck) or metal ones, usually that really awful rental flat stuff.

When I found this cabinet it had the same mirror (which shows its age) but it was painted in layers of thick paint – not in a chippy yummy way at all. Just yuck. The inside was stained and even yuckier…

What I did was sand all the paint off using a grinder with a sanding disc cause it was a serious job which called for the big guns.

The back of the cabinet and inside of the door was rotten, so I kept the mirror but put in a new sheet of ply to cover the back. I replaced the back with some old tin stuff I’d found. I’m told its siding from an above ground swimming pool. I don’t know. I just liked the look of it.

The metal contrasts nicely with the old distressed timber inside…

And the back has some bits of rust and discolouration cause, you know… its OLD.

Finally, I coated it all with some satin varnish to finish it off.

Originally I’d made my own knob for the door but it broke – and the magnetic catch I put inside the door is really strong and my knob didn’t really give enough grip. So when I decided to revamp it last week I replaced the knob with a sash window pull. A nice old rusty one I had in my collection of drawer pulls and knobs.

When I was living in Fentonbury I had this little guy in my kitchen to hold coffee, tea, etc. Its never been used in a bathroom. But maybe, one day, if we ever get around to redoing our bathroom, it’ll find a place in there.

Unless I sell it first.

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what to do with an old rubbish bin lid

Posted on December 4, 2013 by zefiart

One day, not too long ago, I found this galvanised iron lid at the tip shop.

I just had to have it. I loved the colour. Or should I say ‘discolouration’? It was marked with old paint and rust and who-knows-what-you’d-rather-not-know-about.

It was wonderful.

I took it home, gave it a good wash, a bit of a scrape with steel wool and it was clean but still colourfully trashy.

Since it was magnetic (see magnet on right hand side of above photo), I thought it’d be ideal as a magnet board for photos or notes or whatever…

But there was a handle in the middle. What to do with that?

Make it into a ‘whatever’ holder!!!

(I did mention I had a whole LOT of birdwire, didn’t I?)

I drilled a couple of holes on the top and bent some wire to make a hanging hook, and done.

The photos are my dad and a friend in cowboy costumes, and my mom and her brother at a dance.

I found a couple more lids at another tip shop a couple of weeks ago and grabbed them. Both of these ones sold at the last market. They were simpler versions of the one above – ie magnetic boards with a hanging hook. They came with 3 magnets made from buttons.

These two were reversible… you could pick which side you wanted to hang as the front – I love both colours. The old galvanised metal as well as the old fashioned green paint.

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the broken rose frame

Posted on December 3, 2013 by zefiart

Have you ever had one of those ~~days~~ ~~weeks~~ months when your life just seems to be so busy it overwhelms you?

I’m having one of those months. I look at each week ahead of me and I groan at how many things I have booked in. Work, dogs to groom, meetings, appointments, other work, supplies or groceries to buy, things to fix, make, wash, etc.

Wayne is always lecturing me on how bad I am at prioritizing. That I have a busy week ahead of me and I go on and cram more stuff into it. That he virtually has to drag me out of the house to spend a bit of quality time just relaxing.

I always say that I can’t not do something. I even like to work on something while I watch TV. I love audio books cause I can listen to a book while I drive, groom dogs or work in the shed.

I do remember being able to just relax, once, a long long time ago… and I remember having days in my life when I had nothing planned and could spend the day doing as much or as little as I wanted.

What happened to my life?

Does anyone else have this problem?

Up till about a month ago I was working 5 days a week. Now I’m working 3.5 days and I’m busier than ever. Please, someone, explain to me how I manage this.

Failing that, can someone please point me in the direction of a cloning facility?

Ok. Enough of this self indulgent crap. Time to share something creative.

I had found this old frame in an op shop a long time ago. I loved the rose pattern on it but whole chunks of the roses were broken off. A friend (yes, you Diane) told me I could create new roses but that sounded like too much hard work to me.

Besides, I’m a trashy kinda girl. I like things in their natural state of disrepair, patina, rust, grime, etc.

All I did was paint the frame white, then give it a bit of age using some burnt sienna acrylic paint and a damp sponge. It made the roses really pop and the blank spots actually don’t look that bad.

I had been considering putting a chalkboard into the frame, cause, you know, chalkboards are so popular… but I wanted to go a bit different this time. So I put in bird wire.

Yes… I’m going through a bird wire phase…

I did mention the failed attempt at keeping birds from nesting in our roof. On Saturday I had to cut two holes in the wire I slaved to put up in order to remove a dead adult bird and to let out 3 youngsters who were trapped…

I have tons of bird wire I won’t be using on our roof….

Anyway… I got out my trusty staple gun, put in the birdwire and voila!

The photos, for display purposes only, are my parents. Mom as a beach babe, my dad, and the two of them in a loving pose on a beach.

I took the frame with me to the Lazy May Market on the weekend and donated it to the raffle. I did consider buying tickets to the raffle… it would have been quite cool to win it back and keep it! But I didn’t. It didn’t seem fair.

Maybe if I’m lucky I’ll make myself another one!

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