Poppies in the Garden

My posts have been a bit dark and dreary looking recently.  I’ve been working inside a lot, quite often in the evening after work, and quite often surrounded by dust and detritus.

I thought I needed something to brighten things up, so this post is about Poppies.  Poppies.  Wooo!

This is a Common Field Poppy.  Sow from seed in the Spring, and you’ll get flowers in the Summer.  Each flower doesn’t last long, but more come along to replace it, so you’ll get to enjoy them for quite a while.

Look at the cute hairs on this one

At the end of Summer, wait for a dry day, and cut off some of the pretty seed heads and place in an envelope for next year.

Poppies like ground that’s a bit poor and dug up.  To germinate they need the light on them, so sow by just chucking a load over some of the rough patches in your garden.  Think “churned up first world war battle field” rather than “nice garden loam”.

One thing to warn you of; they’re quite stealthy.  Other plants, you sow and they obligingly get on with the job of germinating.  Poppies germinate when it suits them, and once they do the flowers come quick after that, with the result that often the first you know of them is a lovely splash of red.

P.S. In case you’re wondering that weird thing on the right of the picture isn’t some kind of grotesque caterpillar, it’s just the discarded flower bud casing.

Painting Furniture

I bought a couple of cheap “shabby chic” style bedside tables from TK Maxx.  I thought the shape and proportions would work really well our bedroom, but I didn’t really like the finish on them.  More shabby than chic I thought.  So I stripped and painted them, and now I’m telling you all about it in fantastically gory detail.  Lucky you.

Here’s the ugly “before” picture.   If you look carefully you can see tea rings.

To do the stripping I used a heat gun, and a paint scraper.

The heat gun blows out hot air, much like a hair dryer, only it’s hotter and more focussed.  You just heat the paint so it bubbles a bit, and then scrape it off with your scraper.

Also like a hair dryer, the heat gun has different settings for different levels of heat.  I used the highest setting throughout as I was happy to accept a little bit of toasting, and I wanted to get through the job as quickly as possible.

Btw I wouldn’t recommend this method for older or more precious furniture.  Firstly old paint may contain lead, and heating it would cause the lead to come out in the fumes.  Secondly, a little bit of toasting is inevitable unless you’re very patient and careful.  The alternative is using a chemical stripper.

After much heating and scraping I end up with this sorry specimen.  Don’t worry, that black stuff isn’t severe toasting, it’s where the wood has previously been stained in order to achieve that shabby look when the top layer of paint rubs off.  I figured I could just paint over it.

Now for base coating.  A base coat is a water based paint that provides a good surface for the oil based top coat to stick to.  It also helps seal in any resin in the wood, and even out colour tones for a better finish.

Did you spot the sandpaper? I used that to clean up the table of scraggly bits of left over paint.

Once you’re done you can clean your brush in water.  Or if you’re not quite done you can leave it overnight in a plastic bag, and carry on where you left off the next day.   That’s my handy tip.

Now it’s base coated.  See, completely different to how it was before!

No honest, it’s completely different, because the old paint was designed to flake off the furniture, and this stuff is going to stick.  Perfect for the top coat.  I went for yellow because I wanted something to brighten up the room.  The shade is safe though, I wasn’t looking to make a statement here, (what would the statement be? I am yellow?).

Water won’t cut it for cleaning gloss paint from brushes, you have to use something like white spirits or turpentine.  Also, another annoying thing – I find that gloss paint takes about 2 days to dry.

Here’s the “after” picture.  Ta-da!!

Okay, it’s not that marvellous.  But I think it matches in kind of well with the rest of the room and gives it a bit of a lift.

Also, I made some cute coasters for them.  They’re just knitted squares of brightly coloured wool.

Here’s the view from my side

And here’s the view from his side

There’s a distressed Venus Flytrap on my side, which is happily showing it’s distress by flowering.  I don’t know how to make it happy, so I guess I’ll just have to enjoy the brief show before it dies.

Restoring my 1930s Bathroom Tiles

My house is what estate agents call “in need of modernisation”, as beautifully demonstrated by my slightly moldy 1970′s bathroom tiles.

So I got my lovely man, a mallet, and a crowbar and started getting the horrible things off, and look what we found ….

Yes, slightly worse for wear, but really pretty lovely 1930′s bathroom tiles.  Wow, it amazes that anyone would cover them up, I mean which would you prefer?

(Checkout the wallpaper and the border, eeeeks!)

Well, I’m smitten, so I’ve set my heart on fixing them and making them into the glamorous and practical tiles they deserve to be.  This means carefully crowbarring off all the top tiles, then carefully scrapping off all the old tile adhesive – I found that a wallpaper steamer works well for this, the wet steam makes the adhesive go like putty, then you can get a scraper and scrape it off.  I won’t lie, it’s quite time consuming.

(In case you’re wondering that is the corner of an old radiator that’s been painted blue.  The previous owners were paragons of taste.)

We’ve got two walls done, just two to go, and then I’ve got to figure out how to replace gaps, clean up, repair, and seal everything.  I think it’s going to be worth it though, cos I’ve got a feeling it’s going to turn out a little bit amazing.

(P.S.  You see the trim tiles are missing on one wall?  That’s the side where the dividing wall between the toilet and the bathroom has been knocked down to make one big bathroom.  I guess the pretty edging tiles went in the process.  If you happen to know where I can find some replacements, I’d be eternally grateful.)

Lovely Borage in the Garden

Borage, borage, borage.

Sounds ugly, but it’s super pretty.

I make sure to grow a patch every year. It’s cheap and easy to do from seed, just put them in the ground in the Spring, and they’ll be ready for Summer.

It’s also known as Star Flower, for obvious reasons.

If you can give them a permanent patch, they’ll self seed themselves for next year. But happily they’re not pushy, invasive types, so don’t worry, they won’t become weeds.

Pretty blue flowers.

And the best bit is, wildlife love it.

Especially the bees!!

Bliss.