The Re-decorating Frenzie....

The Re-decorating Frenzie


So after a morning of breakfast at a german cafe, "forest treasure hunting" &  shopping at the Fundgrube in Kusel....I excitedly drove home to partake in 3 things:  1.  Clean up the back patio & make it look more inviting 2. take all the clutter out of my kitchen and re-decorate and 3.  Clean up and re-paint my bookshelf back to its vibrant white.  All were completed and then some.

 

Back Patio getting cleaned up


I scrubbed the tile with good ' ol fashioned soap and water and then bleached the wall/patio.  Since my business is also in my home, it's important that when I use harsh cleaners such as bleach that I either rinse it all away or re-rinse with a pet friendly cleaner.  I chose to use vinegar.  Works great & the bugs hate the smell!  Though honestly, I'm with the bugs....something about being a kid and my mom rinsing my hair with vinegar left a gagging memory burned into my brain.  Lol....The patio table broke not even a few month after we purchased it so nothing like strong duct tape to keep it all together.  A lot of times we have a table cloth on the table anyway, so no one even sees it.  The umbrella I found at the Fundrube in Kusel for 8Euro!  The same one I had seen for 20.00usd at the base.  Way to save 10bucks!

My beautiful wooden Chandelier find from my favorite store nestled around the town of Idar-Oberstein.  It was down in a basement, wooden and looking slightly dusty.  At first glance, I turned up my nose and kept on walking.  A friend with a talented eye saw more...much, much more & by the end convinced me to make my purchase of wait for it.......20EURO!!!!  Did I meantion it worked?!  Yup, that's right, now the way it was wired only every other socket works, but with as much light as it puts out, I'm 100% ok with that.  Anway, back to my story.....I cleaned it up, went to the local hardware store, here the store is called Hela, in the states they would be something such as Lowe's or Home Depot....and went to purchase my paint.  Haha, easy enough right?  Did you know there are more than 6 cream choices???  I figured 2 cream glossy or cream matte...well finally after about 10minutes of deciding, I walked out with my 11euro can of spray paint.  Man spray paint is expensive...I thought.  A few days later I realized if I had looked through a few more of the isles I would have come across spray paint for under 6euro, which is about 7.50usd.  The paint I had purchased was for vehicles!  No wonder it was so flippin' expensive...hahaha...
So after spending 20.00euro for the working chandelier, 11euro spray paint & 4 ikea light bulbs I already had at the house....my gorgeous chandelier cost me a grand total of 31EUROS...which is equivalent to $38.08!

Ever bought something gotten it home and then end up not using it?  Well almost 4yrs ago that happened to me.  But I finally found a use for it.  If you look closely there is a silver bar that I nailed into the wall, used the matching hooks that I just happened to have in a drawer, still in the ikea packaging and hung my coffee cups on them.  I would recommend using 2 hooks for each cup.  I can't remember for sure but I believe the bar was about 5euros or less and the hooks I honestly can't even remember how much they cost, but they too weren't expensive.  Since my walls are concrete I did have to rummage through my husbands nail stash...but other than that this little project took me a whole 15minutes.  Not to shabby for a girl who is anal about making sure things look straight.  :o)  In the same photo:  I re-painted my bookshelf the same color, white with left over ceiling paint I had in the house.  It really brightened up the kitchen!  I had used it for extra storage, but it ended up becoming more of a catch all.  Kind of an eye sore!  Not anymore though, wine glasses that I used to have to search through my cabinets for are now easily accessible & used quite frequently.  My plates were on the counter in a 3 tier rack, but not all the plates would fit, so they too were scattered, now they all fit on the bookshelf, are easily accessible & look great to boot!  I have a metal basket with potatoes and a polish pottery bowl that holds my onions.  The 2nd to last shelf holds ALL of my cookbooks and the bottom I added a wine crate to store my coffee pot and other extras.  

 My dinning room.  It's not completed but the working metal chandelier I found for 10euros, I added potted fake orange flowers to the table , the back bar has pots that I have collected throughout the years all at flomarkts and all for under 10euros each and on the back wall will be a chalkboard.  That's another one of those bought and never used it items.  A few years ago my husband and I went to a flomarkt in Homburg, Germany and there was a man selling frames.  We had been looking for a large frame for a painting we had won on our honeymoon cruise but ironically hadn't been able to find a large enough frame.  Of course the specialty shops had them for a nice chunk of money, but for a painting we won was not something I was willing to spend over $200.00 for!  Anyway, So we purchased this frame for 40.00euros got home and IT WAS TOO BIG! Ugh, really?  Now what the heck do we do with this thing, its huge!  The only thing we could do, put it in the storage closet...until now :o) All I need now is to get over to the Hela with my exact measurements for the wood, make a stop at the arts and crafts store to buy some chalk board paint and then fit into the frame like a piece of glass.  For now it's a great conversation starter!!!!!

A closer look...

 Had a foam medallion on my ceiling that I finally took off.  Ugh, that was a nightmare.  I had a round light fixture that blew and needed to be replaced.  Well as you can see we replaced it, but then the medallion looked strange around this basic light fixture.  It took me 2 1/2 hours of trying to scrape this thing off!!!!  Foam and plaster were flying everywhere & my dog kept trying to eat it!  So after finally grabbing a baby gate and keeping him out of the living room and dinning room, which I might add, Orian was pissed off about....I went to scraping again....by the end I had foam pieces in my hair, down my shirt, somehow in my shorts, some had flown in my eye & of course all over my living room this was the end result.  As of right now, YES it does still look like this, it will probably take another week or me starring at it and then avoiding it to finish it.  It's definitely been a love hate kinda project.  I know I'll love it once finished but for now, I've hated the whole process!


So as you can see I've been in a re-decorating frenzie....literally!!!!  I've pulled all nighters running on excitement of wanting to see it all done & coffee.....lots of coffee.  I have several more projects in mind and are already in the works & will be sure to blog again soon with updates.  Until then, thank you so much for reading my blog!!!!!


Bev :o)