The Interior DIYer
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Kitchen update – the bones

First up, thank you to everyone who let off steam along with me both online and off in regards to my rental rant last week. I’ve chosen to use my rental rage for good, and so this past weekend I channeled all said rage into bringing our rental kitchen into the 2000’s. It started so innocently on Saturday morning while Robert was asleep. “I’ll just reoganise the cutlery drawer … ” and as I gained momentum, much like Juggernaut, I was unstoppable. I whitened, sanded, scrubbed, stripped and painted our kitchen top to bottom in one day. I’ve got to say, even though I only painted everything white, it has made a world of difference. 
There are bare boned before and afters together below, but if you’d like, you can see a full room tour of what our kitchen looked like before here. Also, please note that our kitchen does not get any natural light, so my photos aren’t as wonderful as I’d like them to be. Yay, florescent lighting …

I started by taking everything off the walls and counter so I was starting with a blank canvas. I then tackled the more finicky task of bleaching the grout along the black splash. I normally clean it with an eco-friendly cleaner, but that never corrected the previous years of neglect [from the previous tenants]. I don’t use bleach unless I have to, so I figured this time wouldn’t hurt and I really had to go in with chemical warfare. I used thick bleach and a toothbrush and scrubbed all the grouting. I washed it off after 30 minutes, but I didn’t see the total effects until about an hour later. The grout came up beautifully. 

The kitchen hadn’t been painted during our time living here. I had white paint leftover from tackling the hallway a couple of months ago, so I got to work and repainted the walls next. That didn’t take long as there isn’t much bare walls. I recharged, then tackled the one thing I had been avoiding for months; the last door. I sanded the kitchen door, frame and skirting boards and painted them WHITE. 

Can we just have a moment of silence please, in honour of me sanding and painting the FINAL DOOR AND SKIRTING BOARDS IN OUR APARTMENT …

I had to take the shelves down in order to open the door and properly paint both sides of it. The shelves will be going back up as we need them for extra storage. It’s a teeny kitchen. I cannot tell you how much I love our kitchen now that it’s not accented with that hot mess of high gloss yellow door.

But stay tuned because on Wednesday I’ll be sharing the fun bit [I think so at least] – the accessorising. I can’t wait to get in there and take a fresh look at our kitchen and reorganise it. Sometimes you just have to start from the beginning again. I picked up some extra goodies over the weekend that I cannot wait to add [and use!]. Woop! 

Kitchen update – before – middle – after
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Renters anonymous

Apologies in advance, as today’s post is a bit of a therapeutic rant for me. Hold on tight … 

Things have been a bit tough lately. For anyone who lives outside of Ireland, at the moment things are a bit tough when it comes to rent and the cost of living here in the Republic. It’s actually getting to a point where – get this – it’s actually cheaper to buy a house or apartment than to rent one. I’m not talking a little bit cheaper. I’m talking exponentially. Rent is skyrocketing and so are stress levels, not to mention people’s mental well being. There are many people I know who are making the leap from renters to buyers because the cost is becoming that ridiculous. 

I’ve mentioned before that I’d love for us to own a house. In the past year, this feeling has become unbearable. I’m an interior designer, DIYer and let’s face it, a blogger. My blog is supposed to be an online portfolio of what I am able to do. As a renter, there’s only so much you can design and DIY when living in someone elses house. There’s a lot of red tape. And what’s worse, as someone whose blog is kinda based around designing and DIYing, I can’t showcase and demonstrate my ideas and skills in a rental. Basically, I’m screaming into a pillow on a daily basis. 

And now I’m being mildly tortured by the thought of buying [see first paragraph]. I’m hoping that if I kinda dear diary about it here, it will stave off my fixation to run to one of the gate houses in the Phoenix Park with a fist full of money, knock on the door and make it rain on the current owners [p.s. I want to live in one of the Phoenix Park gate houses. Badly. If you own one and are looking to sell, let. me. know].

I’ve lived in rented accommodation for a long time. It will be eleven consecutive years this year. That’s eleven years of living with with other people’s furniture. Eleven years of carefully dancing around other people design choices. Other people’s colour palettes. Other people’s uncomfortable and ugly couches with weird stains that I don’t want to think too much about. Other people’s fixtures and fittings. Eleven years of other people’s mattresses. 

I’m supposed to be showing my design and DIY skills here on my blog and all I can really show is painting something a different colour. I want to DIY panels on every wall. I want to re-tile a bathroom. I want to install and repair real [reclaimed] wood floors. I want to choose fixtures and put them into place myself. I want to tare down walls and remake kitchen units. I want to source a neglected claw-foot tub and restore it. I want to upcycle a piano into a kitchen island. I WANT TO BUY A COUCH THAT IS COMFORTABLE AND NOT UGLY. I want to etch glass. I want to make my own black grouting. I want a pantry full of pretty and recycled storage. 
Having said all that, we’re not really in a position to buy a house. Not yet. To me, that seems like a really grown up thing to do. I mean, husband and I still stare blankly at each other at times and say things like “we’re married … that means we’re adults … ” I don’t even know if I’m adulting right. Not to be confused with adultery. Nope. Definitely not that. 
I don’t want to sound ungrateful for the homes I’ve lived in. I am very grateful. And they’ve been great practice. I just feel I’m ready for a home of my own. I had a eureka moment last night where I said to myself, “why not just do all those projects you’ve wanted to do to the apartment? Do them, and when the time comes, undo them.” So do [and subsequently undo] them I will.

This is my desperate attempt at finding a silver lining as a renter. I hope this will keep my buying urge at arms length for a little longer. I hope. 

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My DIYs – how have they held up?

I was surveying our apartment last week sprawled out on the couch when I had the idea to do an update on some of the DIYs I’ve done and show how they’ve held up over time. For the most part, they’ve all stood the test of time! Hurrah! But for a small few, they haven’t aged as well as I would have liked. 
Since I’m big on keeping it real, I wanted to do a little update to show you exactly how things have worked out. Because let’s face it, not everything goes according to plan #CestLaVie …

DECEPTIVE DUST COVERS GRADE: A+

Considering I made my first round of deceptive dust covers close to 4 years ago, they’ve held up almost perfectly with the exception of the occasional label corner needing to be re-glued. I could not have imagined this project would have held up so well considering it’s just construction paper. A+ in [or on] my books.

BOLDER SHELVES ON A BUDGET GRADE: B

Since installing black construction paper to the back of our landlords shelves in April of last year, they’ve held up relatively well. On the odd occasion, one section of paper will fall down. But as it only takes about 20 seconds to fix them, I won’t mark them down too much as for the most part, I still find them a great design solution as a renter and more importantly, so easily reversible. 

REUPHOLSTERED FOOTSTOOL GRADE: A+

As someone who suffers from dangling legs because I’m kinda short syndrome, this little foot stool is something I use every single day. And since reupholstering it 2 years ago, it’s still in near perfect condition. Not bad since it gets stood on on a daily basis.  

DRIP FEATURE WALL GRADE: F- BURN IT TO THE GROUND AND START OVER

Oh lawd have mercy. This project is what prompted me to write this blog post. At first, the drip wall was perfect. It was such an accent in our living room. About a week later I noticed one of the main drips had cracked and split. Simple enough of a fix, I’ll just repaint that section, and I’ll touch-up a couple more drips while I’m at it. NOPE. Queue domino effect and soon the cracks were out of control. I think for the most part this had to do with me using [cheeeeap] left over guache paint in stead of going out and buying a sample pot of wall-appropriate black paint. I’ll definitely be doing this project again, but with appropriate paint. I have well and truly learned that lesson. 

REFILLABLE TISSUE BOX GRADE: A+

Our little refillable tissue box is an absolute trooper. It a massively complex DIY, if you can even call it that, but it has held up remarkably over the years [and tears]. It has a few scuffs here and there, but nothing a Sharpie can’t remedy. 

LAMP REVAMP GRADE: A+
TASSLE LAMP SHADE GRADE: C
When I first revamped my charity shop lamp, it was perfect! And it still is. It hasn’t aged at all and is still in perfect condition. Then, the following year I added tassles to the lamp shade. That in itself  has worked out great, with one exception – Juniper. I found out the hard way that our soon-to-be-11-year-old cat Juniper was sneaking up onto our desk and EATING THE TASSLES, which is incredibly bad for cats as anything string-like they eat can get tied in knots in their little guts and the idea of that makes me want to cry. So for the sake of Juniper, that’s why I moved the lamp up onto our shelves. I am much more tassle-aware now. 

ELECTRICAL TAPE STORAGE GRADE: A+

One of my very first hardware store / budget hacks is still a raging success; covering ugly stuff in electrical tape. As electrical tape is quite heavy duty, any of the pieces I’ve used it on have stayed the exact same. Even our cat food containers, as seen above; we’ve used them twice a day for the past 2 years and they’re still in perfect condition. That’s a total win in my books.