My vintage yacht makeover!

I spotted an old old old boat in an antiques store in Balgowlah, NSW. So happened it belonged to a stall owned by my husband's aunt. So I got it as an house-warming gift :)

'Course... this is almost 16 months ago now...

It looked way more romantic in the photo she sent me of the boat.

It screamed out for a redo... since there was no way I'm displaying the tired blue boat with its moldy brown-now-white-then sails.

First coat of undercoat. I put two coats.

The topcoat drying, a bright sunshine yellow.

Husband hanging the yellow boat on its freshly painted pink base and holder above our TV with some wall brackets.

For almost 16 months it's been sitting up there without the third and final sail... I chose bright yellow-andsomethingorother vintage fabric/napkins for my sail... happy happy yacht! (Thanks mum-in-law for making the sails for me!! (I have no sewing machine!))

It's finally completed! TODAY!



(A month before we have to LEAVE this place!!!)

London Home: I love so bad!

Daisy Pink Cupcake posted shots of an AWESOME London home.
Man, I wish I were given that freedom around here :)







Hop over to her blog to see more shots!

Today I'm inspired by

... vintage floral bouquets in simple white frames against a snowy white wall...


I've been trying to collect them especially since we moved and I painted my large and high living room 3-4 coats of white :) I don't have as many nice ones since they are getting expensive...

Here's my slowly growing collection:


This is my latest... a floral bouquet painted 2 years ago by my husband's 94 year old Nanna.


Coco+Kelley also posted a similar image here. (Actually looks like the same frames rearranged!)

James Merrell

Sherrill Canet Interiors

My previous post featured a green living room by Sherrill Canet Interiors. I clicked over to her site and I was drooling by the end of it. (Isn't it fantastic when interior designers are so confident of their work that the photos displayed are so large that we can really look at detail??)

New York designer Sherrill Canet has created such gorgeously elegant but sumptious rooms for her clients... man oh man. I especially love the mix of new and antiques, something that I myself strive for (not similar level of antiques, of course!!!!).

Let there be WHITE!

So I'm finally kinda ready to reveal the living room in all its glorious whiteness (remember my previous posts about white living rooms here and here). My all-cream house was a state of blandness when we finally got the keys. The next day, my in laws, husband and child marched there armed with almost 20ltrs of white semi-gloss. We have given the living room two coats of that glorious white (plus undercoat of course). Ceiling in the same semi-gloss because I love light bouncing off the walls. And the ceiling isn't really a ceiling, it's two walls colliding in the centre at the highest point.



My sister in law counted... the living room has 15 walls. So ALOT of cutting in to do. Plus we had to hire an OUTDOOR scaffold so we could paint the INSIDE ceiling.



Here's hubby taking a short break from painting the ceiling. He did enjoy having the scaffolding to monkey-climb on for 2 days.


Now with the scaffolding gone, the awful cream gone and furniture in place, complete with decorative child (we actually live here, so please pardon child-moved objects):





Still have more to do:

1. Trimwork painted. Not decided on colour yet.
2. Lighting replaced.
3. More artwork to be bought and placed :)

Vintage/ old budget finds

Hi!

Saturday I gave a CrazyQuilt lesson at the LQS, and it was a success, 2 of the girls are now hooked, and the the others liked it too. I was planning to take some pics, but when I got the camera out I had no batteries left :-((

W are re-doing our living room. We now have a sofa there that I have had for a long time. I had it when I was living in a small apartment and it was used as a pullout bed as well. My DH and I had been looking for a nice sofa for a while, but couldn't really agree on one, but now we found one. It is a beige one, with big pillows in a tweed kind of woven fabric.

I am now planning to redo the whole living room at once, and to do this on a budget, at bit like how I did my sewing room make-over. I found some great things for a bargain. I found this fabric. The light blue is going to be our curtains. I liked it a while ago when I saw it, and thought I would buy it someday. So I went back to the store to buy it and found out that the fabric was not 1.40 m wide for 19 euros but 2.80 m wide. It was folded in half on these big roles. So that meant I could buy half of the yardage I thought I would need...*s*. And the other fabric had a little error somewhere. We saw it when we were measuring it, so I got that 50% off, and I didn't have to use that part..

Last Friday I found this old footstool that I redid in a very modern fabric in blue and yellow. (the pic looks more gold but that is because I used a flash.

The Old footstool:

The footstool is hollow and has a tray inside as well:

This is how it looks now:

We also found this old cabinet. It will fit our TV on the top...our DVD and video player and our stereo inside, plus all our videos and DVD movies. So we will be getting rid of a lot of clutter...*s* I will sandpaper it down so you will see the wood color below the white paint. If that doesn't work I will repaint it in some color.

I also started working on Lucy's star quilt. It looks great, but is a bit difficult with the Y-seams.

So now you know what is going on in my house..total chaos, in hopes to getting a new living room done soon!

Barbara