Old belt turns into new shelf feature

Happy new year everyone!

I don’t know about you, but the start of a new year always awakens  my urge to slim down my belongings. Some people start the year full of good intentions to quit smoking or they go on a diet or cleanse; I want to start tidying the house. So the first three days of 2017 I spent getting rid of quite some clutter and clothes I haven’t worn in years but are still taking up space. Especially now that we moved to such a small house, I get more and more Marikondo-esque fits where I just want to throw out everything.

I am very bad at just throwing out things knowing they can be re-used in some way. I always donate my clothes to friends and charity shops and whenever I can, I repurpose materials.

Lately I have been getting more and more into succulents (as has the rest of the world in 2016 according to my Instagram!)and I’ve been trying to propagate some of them. Since we don’t have a lot of space to put these various nursery projects of mine and James doesn’t like me cluttering up the few window sills we do have, I needed a space saving solution. I’ve seen these beautiful retro scandi hanging shelves come by on pinterest, Etsy and instagram. Some of them made with metal, ribbon or old belts. The first bin bag for charity I managed to fill up happened to have a few belts in it and so I decided to give it a try today.

The pictures are of a somewhat poor quality, sorry about that. I didn’t start the project until late in the day and so the daylight was gone.

shelf scandinavian succulent

STEP 1: find your shelf.

This project is dead simple, especially if you already happen to have a bit of wood lying around to use as the actual shelf. We always have bits of wood everywhere in the house, so I didn’t have to go out and buy or cut any. I used a 18 mm plywood for my shelf.
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STEP 2: Cut your belt to size.

The belt I chose was pretty wide and so I decided I would cut it into two elegant slim halves. I started cutting my belt with scissors and I should have known that was a bad idea. See, the thing is, I am a horrible cutter. This is what my half of the belt looked like after I attacked it with my scissor skills.

img_9649I then decided to use a knife. Much better plan. Decide on your own cutting device, scissors are probably the fastest and easiest way. By the way, I didn’t measure anything as I just laid the two pieces on top of each other to make sure they were exactly the same length.
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STEP 3: drill holes in the belt pieces.

If you’re really lazy like I am, just fold your two pieces of belt together and lay all four layers on top of each other so you only have to drill once. I suppose you could also pierce the belt with a pick of some sort but since you need a drill to make a hole in the wall to hang the thing anyway, drilling is the fastest and most accurate way.
drill hole leather belt scandi

STEP 4: Find a screw and little washer.

The washer (little flat ring) is optional, but I just think it looks nicer. Remember, the nicest type of screw to use is a mushroom head screw, like the ones I used for my photograph on forex project. Mushroom head screws stay on top of the surface, so they don’t wiggle themselves into the material.

washer and screw

 

 

 

washer screw belt leather

I think it just looks so much slicker with that washer

STEP 5: find a wall plug, measure with level,drill holes in wall, hammer wall plug in.

STEP 6: Screw both belt loops into the wall

belt hanging wall leather washer loop

STEP 7: place your shelf in the hanging loops and.. voila!

Shelf’s your uncle! (for you non native Brit readers: it’s a British word joke)

 

shelf scandinavian wall wood

shelf hanging leather belt succulent planter shelf succulent scandinavian planter shelf leather leather hanging shelf

 

DIY Bloomingville wall feature replica

Both my partner and me are both fans of ‘the imperfect’; we like reclaimed wood, scuffed edges, furniture pieces with a bit a history and character. The strange thing about doing up a wonky, dirty house I guess is the fact that once you finally get to the stage where everything is clean, straight and white, you want to KEEP it clean, straight and white! It’s safe to say this whole process has really influenced our interior design preferences.

Therefore, with the amazing geo patterned Eyffinger wall paper we chose for the bedroom (the grey version) an angular, calculated trend in the room was set.

geo wallpaper

copyright karwei.nl / eijffinger wallpaper

About a year ago we made a road trip to Scandinavia and, not that I wasn’t aware of it before, but I REALLY REALLY like Scandinavian design. One brand I have liked for a while now is Bloomingville. Their products have mid range prices, making them only affordable (to me at least) when they’re on sale. I have been drooling over their wall features for a while now, they have several geometrically shaped wooden displays in their collection.

screen-shot-2016-10-10-at-11-06-43 screen-shot-2016-10-10-at-11-18-52screen-shot-2016-10-10-at-11-19-05I wasn’t willing to pay the asking price for them though and decided to try and make one myself. A little bit cheeky, I decided to order a Bloomingville hexagonal shelf from an online shop with a generous return period intending to have a better look upclose before returning it. Copy cat? Ehm, let’s call it ‘making a replica’.

When the shelf arrived, it complimented the wallpaper very nicely, as I expected. But I was surprised by the quality of the wood. It weighed nearly nothing and it was very soft, making it very prone to any kind of damage. It was so not worth the asking price of 150 Euro!

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What I also didn’t like was the extra bit of wood that you had to use to attach it to the wall. Such a shame to mess up the simplicity of the honeycomb shape like that. I was sure I could do it better!

The process really was dead simple.

  • I measured the Bloomingville shelf, as I liked its size, and cut six pieces of 18mm plywood to the same length. Bear in mind, these days, lots of DIY shops offer (often free) woodcutting service. So if you’re not too tool-savvy yourself, try and go to your local DIY shop to ask for help.
  • I cut the pieces off at a 30 degree angle (180 divided by 6, because 6 shelves, is 30)
  • I used PVA glue to glue the pieces together. This PVA had a drying time of about 20 minutes, which gave me plenty of time to check that the diagonals of the hexagon all measured the same length, because that’s the way to check if a hexagon is even. Clamping a hexagon is nearly impossible, so I used masking tape to tightly bond the edges together, like this:
    img_8244 I then gave it some extra pull by taping it all the way across, which, to be honest, was probably completely useless.img_8241

After the project was dry, I started fiddling around with the metal hanging slots I had lying around, I usually use them for the wooden lights I sell on Etsy. There are two different types of hanging slots. Obviously it’s nice to attach a keyhole plate completely flush or countersunk into the wood, but I always find it a lot of hassle to drill or router into the wood. PLUS… the plywood is too thin to drill a hole the size of a screw-head into, it would probably tear the wood. So I chose to use the lazy keyhole slot plate (see image below) and the fact that there’s about a millimetre of space between the wall and the shelf is hardly noticeable.keyhole-slots

Obviously because of the shape of the wall shelf, placing the slots vertically isn’t an option. I therefore chose to attach them on opposite sides of the hexagon and attaching them making a clockwise rotary movement. Make sure to use the proper drill bits in the wall, good wall plugs and check that the heads of your screws are compatible with the keyhole slots.

 

I was indecisive about how and what height I wanted to add shelves, so I added the slot plates and took a break to admire the shelfless version…
a very minimal hexagonal shelf

The last step of the process: adding a shelf/ shelves. I decided to go for one shelf which I placed at around two thirds of the height. I didn’t do any accurate measuring, I guessed the length, cut off another bit of plywood and cut the ends at a 30 degree angle again.

And here’s the result…

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I’m very happy about the result! It’s a nice little feature on our bedroom wall; not too invasive, stylish, scandi-style and customisable. Just how I like it.

Total cost of project: 8 Euro

bloomingville-replica-tribute

First impressions of the house; how it was and how it is now.

I thought I’d start my series of new house stories off by showing some photos of how the property looked the day we got the keys. Brace yourself.

Here’s the kitchen:

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First I cleaned everything thoroughly and then I started on that back wall. It was in an awful state, stuff came crumbling down all the time, I think I plastered about three thin layers before I managed to see a difference in the surface.

kitchen

Tackling the first wall and testing some colours

kitchen

Living room

Although the house is nowhere near finished, I thought it’d be cool to do some current before and after comparisons. Here we go.

Downstairs living room

The stairsoffice beforelivingroombeforestairs before after The landing, side of the stairs

landingstairs before afterThe landing, which we, after much deliberation, decided to turn into an office with room for storage on the right hand wall. We considered using this cosy nook as our bedroom, because of its lofty feel. But James wisely convinced me of the fact that doing so would probably lead to the other room being in a perpetual state of mess and dumping ground, since it’s the only room with a door. In hindsight I am so happy we opted for this! The slim storage, woolly rug and beanbag, whilst trying to keep everything airy and transparent which is why we went for a double ply wall mounted desk with a single white hairpin leg.

 

My dream: doing an old house up. And then blogging about it.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where something you’ve always dreamed of is finally happening and the reality is NOTHING like you thought it would be?

That’s what’s happened to me in the last three months, hence the fact I was somewhat MIA from my blog.

We have a new house! (yay!) And it’s a very old house (more yay!) It’s one of those houses that needed so much work done to it it could have been an inexhaustible source of stories for my blog. I could have written endlessly about moodboards, shared before and afters, asked you guys help with choices that needed to be made, diy tutorials and so on and so on. Has it always been my dream to do a cute little house up, document the process meticulously as I went and create something inspiring to share with others? Yes, it has.

So three months ago, when I first walked into that 1911 built dark and abandoned terrace house which we were going to turn into our new splendid house, taking photos and write about everything little action we took surely was the first thing I did, right?

Wrong.

We had 24 hours to make the decision whether or not to accept the offer of this place (has something to do with a complicated Dutch system). And since we were moving from a ridiculously 190 m2 big flat to this in comparison slightly minute one bedroom terrace, moving our stuff over would not be the only thing that needed doing. And did I mention the new house was disgustingly neglected? We had a period of 4 weeks to renovate the new (but very old!!)  house, to buy / source / build and make new furniture since everything in the old house was too large. One of my friends who came to house/rabbit sit in our old flat once lovingly refers to our old sofa as ‘that couch on steroids’. So I had to sell almost everything I owned, which wasn’t easy by the way, since I hand made most of my furnishings and each single item has some sort of emotional meaning to me. I also didn’t want to make the time sensitive situation reduce any potential profit and so I hustled, negotiated and online listed my ass off.  Four weeks to plough through my three year’s worth of ‘I-have-a-massive-flat-anyway-so-why-not-collect-this-clutter’. Four weeks to rip out floorboards, lay all the flooring, do the painting, the plastering. Four weeks to build, clean, sand, fill and paint every inch of that old and dark house. Four weeks to arrange finances, process address changes, to look for bargains and find ways of sourcing new furniture that would actually fit our new life style.

I was completely overwhelmed by everything involved in the process. And the fact almost anything in the house that could break, leak or crumble actually broke, leaked and crumbled didn’t help either.

 

first photo old house

This is the very first photo of the house, I took it with my iphone on the day we had the viewing. As you can see, it was a shit hole.

To make a long story short: I didn’t blog AT ALL.

 

So the coming months I will dedicate my blog posts to our new/old little do up house in a ‘in hindsight kind of way’. My stories will mostly be throwbacks to the pain splats, the struggles we faced, the problems and challenges we encountered and the little triumphs.

Even though most of the big and structural work is done,  there are still quite some things in the house that need doing. And since my cortisol levels have returned to normal, I might even find the time to sit down and share some projects with you as they are happening. Who knows.

Our camper project: Tallulah

 

Life has these mysterious ways of making its road lead you in directions that you had never previously thought you would follow.

This is a sad post. It’s sad because it’s about letting go, sacrifice, saying goodbye.

I am one of the worst when it comes to letting go, but even me, a neurotic keepsakes clenching hoarder, even I know that in order to let the new in, the old must go out..

I fell ill, moved country, I fell in love, we commuted between countries, him and me built a camper van… And now, because we want to take our love to the next level we have to sell our precious project we worked so hard on. We have to sell her way before her time. So many holidays we could have still enjoyed, so many road trips we should have made still. Unfortunately there’s no way we can keep her as my boyfriend needs to migrate in order to be with me and importing the van isn’t an option.

So here’s a little photographic hommage to the run down London florist van we turned into a very special camper van. Tallulah, our labour of love.

The highlights.

tallulah

driving through Scandinavia last spring.

 

coffe in VW camper van

Coffee and magazines are your no 1 necessities whilst campervanning.

vw camper sand

Tallulah’s toes in the sand…

sunset vw camper

Tha back window as a frame to a perfect sunset.

sun visors vw camper van

My home made upholstered sun visors!

beach denmark camper vans vw

In Denmark we found this amazing wide beach which was completely accessible to camper vans, it was amazing.

sweden vw camper

The view in Sweden.

travelling camper

Let’s go travelling…

rabbit passenger

Our rabbit passenger

rabbit camper van vw

sniffle sniffle, travelling Parker rabbit style!

vw t4 birthday camper

Birthdays, camper van style!

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Coffee and magazines…necessities for camper vanning!

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