Bargain Hunt!
Are you ready for some mind-bending, bargain-busting before-and-afters? Let's do this!
First up: a refinished Victorian chaise. "You mean reupholstered Hazel, surely?" NOPE! I mean refinished, in 24 hrs, using only furniture paint. Don't believe me? Check out the "before" shot & behold the faded baby-blue silk that went with literally nothing in our home!
We bought this piece at a Police auction of all places 3 years ago and finally bought a big enough house BUT, having neither the time nor money to reupholster it I thought "heck, Fusion Mineral Paint says you can paint fabric - let's do it!" There's a lot of what's-the-worst-that-could-happen choices I've made in renovating this house and can I tell you something? I don't regret a single one of them!
I'd say this process works better on leather than fabric, personally, but if like me you have a piece which is going to be almost purely decorative, then absolutely give it a go. One piece of advice to you before you start painting any fabric/leather though - use a colour with good coverage (like Ash, Azure, Midnight Blue...) - anything but Mustard! This took me 6 coats which was more soul-destroying than anything else!
Ready to have a go? Then simply:
Mist fabric liberally
Apply 1 coat of 50/50 paint/water, quickly & in one direction
Wait for it to dry - about 1hr
Lightly sand with a very fine grit paper or sanding block - 600+ grit
Clean away the fine dust
For your second and subsequent coats there's no misting, and you need to use a two thirds-paint-to-one third water blend going forward
Build up your coats until you're happy with the coverage all over, allowing to dry in between each coat and lightly sanding then cleaning each time
Lastly, apply a clear furniture wax in firm, wax on, wax off motions
The result: a totally transformed piece for £25, which now feels like leather! I finished it off using the end of a pot of Midnight Blue for the woodwork & picked out the carved details using Pebeo gilding wax in King Gold.
Next, just so you know I don't have a painting COMPULSION! I got these gorgeous wee deco-profile oak side tables over a decade ago in a second-hand shop and they stayed in the same slightly tired, crusty state until now. Using an electric orbital sander I used 240 grit all over to strip off the old crispy varnish and make them lovely and smooth to the touch. After a good dry brushing to get all the fine dust oot, I used Osmo Oil to bring back the natural glow. Of course I had to gild the handles...I'm still ME after all!
The piece in the room I get asked about the most has got to be this lamp! When I spotted it on Marketplace for £10 I could see its potential right away, even though my husband said it was the most old-fashioned thing he'd ever seen! And to be fair it really was - the frosted glass petals with etched flowers against the shiny gold just looked, well, fussy like yer Granny. But once I got it back to my studio I set about dismantling each petal from its frame, cleaning and drying them all, then figuring out how to achieve the desired result.
I've realised from speaking to people about my work that they tend to have an assumption that everything comes out perfect first time - this couldn't be further from the truth! I'm just like anyone else, I have some EPIC fails, and a lot of the time I figure things out as I go! So I bought several pots of glass paint for this job, having done quite a bit of glass painting in my teenage years, I figured job would be a good-'un. NOPE! First of all the coverage was terrible, it was blotchy and runny, and stickier than Slimer from Ghostbusters! Considering that I had to paint both front AND back of each of the 25 petals, it was definitely back to the drawing board...So, given that it's not a high-traffic item, that people would be touching all the time, I decided to look at spray paint instead. I bought one can of Rustoleum High Gloss spray paint in Racing Green, laid all the petals out on sheets of card in the garden, and within 1 hour they were looking glossy, even, gorgeous green. I've seen a few of these lamps for sale since then so if you need one, keep your peepers peeled!
Curtains are often an overlooked expense when planning a room, so don't come a cropper by forgetting to factor them into your budget. It's another area you can easily blow the bank but you don't have to, if you're willing to do a bit of extra leg-work. With all of the pattern already in the room I knew I needed to go for texture rather than print when it came to curtains, and what could be more sumptuous than velvet? But proper 100% cotton velvet is expensive, and modern synthetic velvet is really thin and insubstantial, so I had to find a canny solution...I decided to search on Ebay, looking for a set of vintage velvet curtains that were bigger than I needed so that I could alter them down, and allow room for shrinkage. Because my plan was to DYE them myself!
You can only do this with 100% cotton velvet, don't try it with synthetic or you'll be sorely disappointed. Fortuitously there was a Groupon Deal on Dylon colour pods, so I worked out my weights and quantities, then commandeered my best friend's large capacity washing machine for a day. I spent £57 on 9 pods, £170 for the curtains themselves, and £120 for professional cleaning and alterations. So all in all under £350 for a massive pair of custom curtains which would have cost over £1,000 from a shop - I'm calling that a WIN!
Lastly: the coffee table! Bought for £10 off Facebook Marketplace, I decided to chop his legs off to create that low, ottoman look. This is a handy hack for improving visual flow, as a coffee table the same height as the sofas looked way too imposing and stopped your eye travelling around the room. Just lopping 6" off made all the difference! As the table was to sit underneath one of my favourite finds - the Art Deco chandelier - I created this custom-taped design to mirror the shape of the crystals. Using a 50/50 blend of Fusion's Homestead and Heirloom to coordinate with the feature rug, accents of Enchanted Echinacea, and Rustoleum Gold Furniture Paint I used the existing shapes and grooves of the table top to completely transform its appearance. It's ended up being one of my favourite pieces in the room, and woe betide the fool who puts a coffee cup down without a coaster!!
Tomorrow we'll be looking at artwork and accessories AKA injecting YOUR personality - see you there!