Before/After and Others

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Before/After: KITCHEN

Problem here was simple: moving into a new house where we literally hated the looks of the Kitcheners... a few enquiries/quotes later, even only for replacing the doors led us to the following conclusion, we simply could not afford it.
So, it was either DIY or leave it as is... impossible! and being lucky enough to have black marble bench tops and splash back, we thought white would bring a nice clean and contrasting look. And so it was on:

Removing all doors
Sand through the layers of grease and varnish
2 quality seal coats
3 coats of high durability enamel paint and "voila"

Looks easy enough, but it was not:

Get ready to suffer, this is much longer/tougher than it looks
Ponder the type of sander to use: all was done with a belt sander, which when used with little experience will easily leave marks and dents... thank god you can only see them up close. I would recommend a mix of belt, orbital and sanding for the best possible finish
Don t do (like I did) in the middle of summer under full sun: I had to stop a few times because of dehydration/exhaustion. We were on a timeline though, would have been better in winter but it was summer...

That being said, the result looks good and after 8 years is still going strong !

Before/After: Entrance Console

Same concept as above, all was wrong here:

This varnished wood finished looked awful
The yellow and pinkish paint was just horrendous
For some reason only half of the whole length was used for storage, the rest was empty with no access... stupid.

This was pretty much all delegated to my parents: come to see us in Australia, you can look after the kids and help out a little :-) :-) Emphasis on the "little".

Again, requires some skills but the process was rather straight forward:

Remove all from panels
build a wood carcass on the side that was empty
Cut new doors out of Ply
Cover with drift wood like wall paper and install
The wall behind, you can see in the photo a little, is all covers now with textured brick wall paper, looks real !
Final touch (and that I did myself:-) , get nice handles and install...

Again, well worth it, not only it looks better but it doubles the storage capacity ! Thanks mum and dad ;-)

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After/Before: Bedroom Storage

Probably my first larger project in the house... and it shows, the craftsmanship being just hideous...
Anyway, you can see on the right what we started with, minus the furnitures of course. It started actually with the cupboard doors from ikea and the whole storage was build around it.

I will not go much into details but:

Everyone is screwed with brackets (which shows from the inside)
The top is all poorly cut ply (with a jigsaw) the angles are ugly, even after painting
I added twin matching side tables on each side and painted the bed with a similar paint

All in all, ugly to look at from up close but very practical and looking at the whole, it is well assorted/coordinated. But really, when I think back on it, after few year experience, I can't believe how stupid I was to things the way I did... I did not know any better I guess...

Industrial Custom Desk

Industrial inspired should I say... Back when we moved in our new place, the retro/industrial style was very much in vogue so instead of buying a new desk from Ikea, I decided to make my own.

Easy on paper, and actually quite easy to build as well:

A wood panel from Bunnings cut to size
A couple of table legs from Ikea
A couple of Square supports from Ikea as well

After that it was quite simple:

"age" the panel with a bit of stain, white paint squirts, some staples straight into the wood, some burn marks with a soldering iron and a few good hammer hits ...
Build the shelf with 2 pieces of pine I had laying around, same aging treatment as above
install a flat metal lining (I found it in the hardware/carpentry section at Mitre10) on the edge secured with nice matching colors screws
Install the Square support and the shelf
install the legs
Install the some cable trunking from Ikea (again) under the panel to tidy up all cables
And finally had some painted numbers and words with a stencil and finish with wax: voila!

You can see the finish product right on the left: works well, still going strong after 8 years while it is used daily!

100% success then? not quite:

I designed it for the equipment I had at the time, it has changed and now this shelf is useless and actually an impediment. But I installed it so well that I can't remove it without literally destroying part of the desk:-(
The legs are dining table legs, which I realized in hindsight were too low... I had to wood blocks to raise the whole thing and it looks weirdish... and as you can see, they were wider than the panel so I had to install them at an angle.
It is huge and heavy as a beast: if I ever have to move it, I will have to disassemble it, it won't fit through the door

Not bad in the end, especially for a newbie project, but it confirms that good planning is key to success... lesson learnt... I hope ;-)

World Dining Table

Probably one of the tedious job I ever did... no kidding.

As we moved in our new place, it turns out some very dear friends were leaving the country, leaving behind some furniture, including a dining table that they had found on the street and restored. We always liked this table, with a withe table top and colorful legs (orange, pink, purple...) and since it was a bit smaller than ours and thus would fit better in our new place, we took it in...

Honestly, if it was not for the paint that had bubbled on the top (fondue accident), I probably wouldn't have touched but here I was, with a table to fix...

I simply though I would sand the bubbled area, repaint and boom ! done. Fate decided otherwise: as I was removing/sanding the affected area, more was coming off, over and over again, so much so that I ended, several hours of hard labor after, with a bare table top...

I suppose I could have just repainted it white but, against all odds, I was struck with a creative epiphany: I would turn this table into a piece of art! there started all my troubles...

I first applied a bland undercoat and then a coat of black paint. So far so good! I then applied some crackling medium all over (works actually well, can be found in most arts and craft shops).

After the crackling medium did his thing and the whole thing was dry, I took a world map wall sticker I had bought without any idea where to put it and stuck it on the table. I then simply applied 2 coats of white paint over the whole thing. You must have guessed by now, the idea was to peel off the sticker to reveal a crackled world map underneath. Little did I thought it would be so hard to peel. Took me ages...

Finally, I was left with what you can see on the top right here: good, but bland I thought... that is when "creativity" struck a second time: why not super impose all the cities and town that hold a particular significance for the family?

I thought it would be easy with a stencil, but it was smearing all over and I could never get a "clean" result. I had to resolve to more drastic measures: I covered the whole thing with masking tape, drew all the letters (after carefully calculating the spacing of course) with a pencil and cut all the letter I drew with a utility knife... Yes, you can count, that is about 67 letters to cut out. It took ages, literally, but was done eventually. After that, I just had to apply black paint, let dry and remove the masking tape.

By then I had enough of this table and was ready to burn it to ashes... But I carried on, in haste (did I mention I was really fed up?) and instead of taking my time applying a polyurethane clear finish properly (thin layers one after the other) I just put 2 very thick layers, not leaving enough time to dry... It was OK at first, but was always a bit tacky and eventually, after a couple fo years, it started to peel of... I had to go back, sand back the top layer and apply a new finish... or so I thought... I managed to remove Australia all together in the process, had find a way to fix it, then struggle applying an epoxy finish... another nightmare, but that is another story.

To be continued...

World Dining Table 2.0

So There I was with top coat/finish that needed to be removed and replaced.

I started by sanding it off... or trying to sand it should I say because it was so badly applied the first time around, it would not accept sanding (paper clogging...) so I resorted to peel it off. It was fine until I realized that he bottom layer was coming with... This is how I lost Australia, ironically, it was not planned, this is just the area I started with... (see how I managed to save Tasmania and New Zealand)

With Australia off the map, I really thought I was done for, but eventually I found that if I carefully cut around all letter, islands and continents with a hobby knife, I could peel most of it with limited damage. Easier said than done, it took hours and hours and hours...

After that the plan was simple: sand all I could "smoothish" and coat it with epoxy. Of course it did not go according to plan...

What I had not realized is that white paint that was left after peeling was actually the original primer, so sure enough I burned through it and revealed the bare wood. There was no way I was painting it again so I made the most of it: Sanding it bare at some places to give it a used/damaged look. I had to do the same with the continents and letters and in the end it was sort of fine. Not great but it was the only viable alternative

Australia was still missing though... I decided to try to replicate some Aboriginal art from a series of paintings from William King Jungala I had bought years ago in Port Douglas after a long and tough negotiation aided by my mates Steevy and Rem. They still proudly stand in our living room and I really love them. I hope I did them justice in my counterfeiting enterprise.

It was then time to do the epoxy coat! Believe it or not, it was the first time I was actually using epoxy on such a large surface (only did surfboards ding repairs before) but I thought "pfff, how hard can it be?" ... the answer is Bloody F..ing hard !!!!!!!

1 st mistake, I did not put the table on a horizontal plane... Epoxy is naturally self leveling so of course, it was dripping on 1 side and I kept working it with a brush until it was set... sort of. 2nd mistake, I did not get the air bubbles out (with a torch of a heat gun), because I did not know... In any case, I was too busy trying to stop the drips that I would not have time to do it... 3rd mistake, no sanding in between coats. It can be fine if you do it quick enough, which I of course did not.

So after 2 coats, I was left with a truly disgusting finish full of bumps, fish eyes... any common issue with epoxy, you name it I had it. So onto Sanding it was again, I took my time and although I never reached perfection, I stopped when it good enough.