Since Jake and I moved in together, we’ve become so much more likely to drink at home than we are to go out to a bar, pub or club. For me, there’s something so much more satisfying about curling up on the sofa and enjoying a glass of whiskey than there is getting wasted in a sweaty nightclub and downing anything that’s wet. I’ve changed.
By drinking at home, we must have saved so much money. We don’t feel the need to buy new clothes all the time, we don’t have to fork out for taxis, we aren’t tempted to get a takeaway at the end of the night, and most importantly, we aren’t paying a tenner for each cocktail at the bar.
This got me thinking about how cool it would be to have our own home mini bar. Continue Reading
It was only a few weeks ago that I first heard about the homelessness charity Emmaus. I spotted them on Twitter and found myself spending ages looking through their tweets. Bursting with photos of donations, charity shop displays, and stories of the people they help, these guys really are experts when it comes to promoting their charity on social media. As soon as I spotted the photo below, I knew I’d have to start paying their shops a visit.
I soon realised that their Fitzwarren Street store in Salford isn’t too far from Jake’s house, so popped over for a visit yesterday. Although there’s one room overflowing with clothes and several bookcases filled with great titles, this shop’s best feature is definitely the amount of affordable furniture it has on offer.
As soon as I spotted the two bedside cabinets below for just £5 each, I instantly knew that I’d be returning another day with my Dad and his car. These babies might be gone by the time we can nip back, but I’ve got my fingers crossed that there’ll be some other bargains for us.
Everything in the building (and in the car park outside) was so well priced and I found myself wishing I could buy almost everything and take it home for some TLC. It really is the perfect place for upcyclers looking for an easy project! Although everything is cheap, it’s also in decent condition and nothing seems like too much hard work. A quick paint job should ought to do the trick, but the vast majority of pieces would also be perfectly fine as they are, particularly if you’re a first time buyer or someone who has just moved into an unfurnished flat.
Can you believe this table and chairs below is just £65 for the set? There’s nothing wrong with it! If I had a van big enough to drive these home, I’d probably paint it all white and recover the cushions with a different fabric, but it’d certainly be perfectly fine left as it is if you couldn’t be bothered with the mither.
I think my next upcycling project might involve a little something like this nest of tables. Since I’m living at my parents’ house at the moment, I’ve been firmly warned not to bring anything hefty home as the house is already bursting at the seems. So something like this would be perfect to do up and stash in the garage until it’s time for me to move out.
So much furniture…just a shame I don’t have my own van to take it all home in!
If you’d like to know more about this fantastic charity, take a look at the Emmaus website or follow them on Twitter.
Have you got a favourite place you turn to when looking for your next upcycling project? Or perhaps you’ve just moved into a new home and you’re in the process of filling it with second hand treasures? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below!
If you caught a recent blog post of mine, Not Fit For The Tip - Can I Upcycle This Abandoned Chair?, you’ll know that a couple of months ago I stumbled upon a broken chair left outside a student house in Fallowfield. The leg was hanging off, some of the wooden bits that hold the legs together were missing, and the cushion was definitely in need of some TLC.
The chair was left in even worse condition when someone threw it down the stairs and into the basement of my boyfriend’s student house in the middle of the night, causing part of the back of the chair to snap off. The person responsible apologised the next morning when he realised what he had done, so it wasn’t the end of the world. Besides, if anything it just made the challenge that bit more interesting, and fixing the back of the chair turned out to be the most fun part.
Back when I was a student, my housemates decided to hurl a perfectly good TV down the stairs unaware that I was just about to walk through the front door. Gonna be honest, if I’d arrived home a few seconds earlier I probably wouldn’t have lived to tell the tale. But anyway, I digress. Despite the damage to the chair, I was not deterred and I took it back to my parents’ house so that we could breathe new life into the old girl.
And now it’s time for the big reveal, and a run down of what we did to fix what probably would have just ended up in landfill.
So here the chair is before we did anything with it. Doesn’t look so bad, ey?
Oh no, there we go. As you can see, the back of it wasn’t looking so pretty.
And two of the supporting pieces of wood were missing. You can’t tell in this picture but the leg closest to us was hanging off when I found it. Clearly someone had tried to glue it, but all it needed was screwing back in. The screw that held it in place was twisted and so the first thing we did was pull it out with some pliers and replace it with a brand new one.
Thankfully, I still had the piece of wood that was missing from the back of the chair. If I hadn’t had that piece, I think it’s safe to say this wouldn’t have been worth bothering with.
First thing’s first we added tons of glue to the broken part of the chair.
Fitted like a glove!
We applied a few layers of masking tape to the sides to protect the wood from the g-clamps.
This side wasn’t looking its best either, but thankfully we were able to unscrew the knob at the top and drip some glue into the cracks before clamping it together like the other side.
Then we just had to wait a few hours for it to dry. After polishing off a couple of episodes of The Walking Dead, I returned to the chair to see how it was getting on…
We ended up waiting a whole 24 hours to ensure it was completely dry and to minimise the chances of the wood breaking off again. When we did remove the clamps, it was looking pretty good by this point. Although you could see a very thin crack running down the side, it was pretty firmly glued and nothing a few coats of paint couldn’t fix.
The next job was to unscrew the metal heart from the back of the chair. I originally wanted to leave the heart exactly how it was, but it had gone a little rusty in some parts and so we decided it needed a bit of lovin’.
Once the heart was unscrewed we started to sand the chair down. At first I just used some trusty sandpaper, before my Dad went and found his electric sander to make the job that little bit easier. I wasn’t allowed to use it though… so after taking a couple of photos I popped back inside for a hot chocolate and some more Walking Dead.
Ta da!
Next we took a trip to a DIY shop to find some pieces of wood to replace the missing supports between the legs. Thankfully, we were able to unscrew one of the legs so we could take that with us to compare it against the pieces of wood in the shop.
We couldn’t get an exact match, but were able to sand down a couple of millimetres off each end so that we could fit them into the holes.
A bit of glue on each end and one step closer towards completion.
The next step was my favourite bit, painting it. Not much to say here really. After adding the first coat of primer we sanded it down, I decided to paint it white partly because it’s versatile and should fit well in any room of my future house no matter how I decorate it. Also, we already had half a tub of white paint in the cellar and so I decided to finish that off rather than paying for a new tub. Standard cheapskate behaviour, really. After priming it, I used undercoat and then glossed it.
Here the chair is after one coat.
Although the heart from the back of the chair was originally black and I would have liked to keep it that way, in order to keep costs low I decided to use up some white spray paint we already had knocking around the house. I think in order for you to make an upcycling project worth it, you really need to make the most of what you’ve already got.
Here the chair is once we reattached the heart. What a beaut!
I found this gorgeous fabric in a haberdashery in Manchester’s Northern Quarter and decided it would look lovely for the chair’s seat cushion.
We drew around the cushion once placed on the fabric and then added an extra 3 inches before cutting around the outside with some pinking shears (or as I like to call them, zigzag scissors). These are the best scissors to use if you want to prevent the material from fraying.
Stapling the fabric to the cushion was easily the most stressful part of this whole upcycling project because it was vital that we didn’t get any creases in the material. We also had to be make sure that the pattern was straight.
The more hands the better!
Next we had to locate the holes where the screws had originally been so that we could firmly attach the seat back on the chair.
We couldn’t simply put the screws straight in the cushion, as the screw had to go through the underneath of the chair frame. It didn’t take too long to attach it though.
Hey presto!
Remember how part of the back of the chair had broken off after someone threw it down the stairs? Well, you’d never suspect a thing now!
She’s so beautiful! Have to say I’m pretty proud of my first upcycling effort, but as you can probably tell from the photos, it would have taken me a lot longer if it wasn’t for the help of my parents.
Hopefully this is just the first of many upcycling projects. When I eventually get my own house, I love the idea of filling it with loads of upcycled furniture, but then again, considering how long this took, maybe I’m best off just popping to Ikea…
I’ll leave you with my top tips for a great first upcycling project:
If possible, use something free. That way if it goes wrong, it’s not the end of the day or a waste of money
Remember that time is money. If you spend five solid weekends upcycling something that could have cost you twenty quid to buy new in Ikea, it’s probably not the type of project you should embark on regularly
Use up old paint, sandpaper, fabrics
To save money, you could use old curtains or an old dress for the seat cover
Any fabric left over could be used to make matching cushions
Try to borrow as many tools as possible if you don’t have them already
Make sure you think carefully about what you’re going to do
If you get stuck or feel like something is going wrong, take a break, ask a friend, or have a look online for help. There’s no point in panicking and ruining it. Be patient.
Have you ever upcycled anything? If so, I’d love to hear from you and see your creations. Let me know in the comments below!
As I got off the bus in Fallowfield last weekend and started walking to Jake’s, I saw this old chair left on the pavement outside a student house. After a quick inspection I noticed that the leg was hanging off and some of the wooden supports that hold the legs together were missing. It seemed that someone had left it there to get rid of, and so I decided to snap it up and see if I could fix it.
I’ve loved the idea of upcycling old furniture for a while, but without my own car, I’ve missed so many chances to pick up various unwanted pieces of furniture. As a member of several Buy, Sell, Swap groups on Facebook, I regularly see people sharing photos of wardrobes and dressers that they no longer want and are willing to give away free to a good home. If I had a car, I’d be round there at the drop of a hat. While a tatty wooden chair wouldn’t have been my first choice, I realised that this was probably the perfect opportunity to make use of something that was easy to carry and low risk. By low risk I mean that if I mess it up and the whole chair somehow falls apart, it’s not the end of the world. I’m not precious over it and it hasn’t costed me a penny.
When I arrived at Jake’s he was the only one home, so I decided to leave the chair in the front room until my Dad was able to drive over and collect it the next day. But the next morning, half an hour before my Dad was due to arrive, I wandered into the living room and to my horror, the chair had gone. I dashed outside and down the road in my slippers to see if someone had left it by the bins, I then looked in Jake’s backyard before finally looking in the basement. And there it was, lying on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, screws all over the place and a huge chunk of the chair a few feet away along with the seat cushion.
Turns out one of Jake’s drunken student houesemates had returned in the early hours of the morning and hurled it down the stairs for some reason unbeknownst even to himself. I felt frustrated and angry and disappointed, but to be fair, he’s a nice guy and was extremely apologetic about it and was just as bemused as I was when it came to determining why he committed the crime.
Even though the chair was even more broken than when I had originally found it, I was determined to still have a go at fixing it. I really think there’s still some life left in this old girl, and she’s not yet fit for the tip. So when Dad arrived I bundled the chair into his car and he kindly drove it home for me so that I could work some magic on it as soon as I got chance.
About half an hour later, I got a call from my Mum. Apparently as soon as my Dad arrived home they took the chair into the house and decided to inspect the damage. Dad hadn’t even got chance to take his coat off before he was trying to fix it for me! I know he’d happily fix the whole thing himself and my Mum would love to sand it down, paint it and cover the cushion with a much nicer fabric, but I’m keen to do as much of it as possible myself.
This morning we decided to make a start and spent a bit of time gluing the broken piece from the back of the chair and securing it with clamps to dry. I’ll keep you updated with the progress and will share some photos once I’ve finished upcycling it. Hopefully in a few months’ time I’ll be fixing a whole manner of things and this time next year I’ll be filling my new home without spending a fortune on brand new furniture. We’ll see.
Have you ever upcycled anything? I’d love to hear about your thrifty efforts in the comments below. Feel free to share pictures and links of your proudest upcycling moments 🙂
Update 15th February: The chair is going well. It has now been fixed and I’ve started to paint it. Here are a few progress photos, the full ‘How To’ guide will come very soon!
I recently got a little bit addicted to KFYHFF on 4OD. Luckily there’s only 4 episodes because even though I enjoy it, I know it’s not actually that good.
If you love all things vintage, unique and quirky and believe that recycling and upcycling are there way forward, then it’s definitely worth a watch.
But while I like the idea, I really think that Kirsty is being a little bit misleading with the whole ‘free’ aspect of the programme title.
All the furniture and decor she uses is technically free at first. She pulls stuff from skips, runs into abandoned houses to pinch what can only be described as school chairs and often tells people on her other show - Location x3 - to take the house with all the junk in it to ‘secure the deal’ -we know your game Kirst. You just want all that shit for yourself and your other show!
The problem for us is that Kirstie has a team of talented experts including designers and upholsterers to help her transform each free thing into something great. So unless you have these skills yourself or a friend who will work for you for free or favours, these transformations will cost you.
Sometimes we are shown things we could do ourselves, but it will cost you in terms of time. Time is money (as I say all the time) and sometimes it’d be better to spend 6 hours actually working than turning old dresses into cushion covers. Not sure she actually does this, with the dresses and cushion covers. But you know what I mean.
If you’re looking for some creative ideas and inspiration and want to escape from this disposable world where we throw everything away and buy the same stuff from Argos as everyone else, then this programme is definitely worth a watch. I think upcycling is a great idea, and I’d love to give it a go at some point, but I’m not going to kid myself into thinking it’s free.
