Archive | Home improovements

How to create your own palette using paint

By Rasa Pelham on February 27, 2019 in Art, Arty Love, Home improovements, Inspiration, Learn something new

Colour palettes are useful little things when designing, especially interior design. Colour palettes are a selection of colours kept on a board or paper as a reference, ready mixed for specific project/artwork. It helps you to keep focus on the selection of the colours that create concept consistency through the design/painting process. There are many ways you can create a colour palette. You can use different material swatches or magazine cutouts to create 3D colour palette. Computer generated swatches are quite useful too and easy to create. However today we are talking how to make a colour palette by mixing your own paint. This technique is especially useful when you need to use some colours to create wall artwork or want a specific paint colour when painting the walls or furniture (of course these swatches can be successfully scanned at the paint shop for a larger quantity paint).Recently I visited the Lithuanian seaside that I get constantly inspired by. I blogged about it many times across different seasons. This time I visited when there was still a little snow left! I used the photos I took as my inspiration.So how do I create a colour palette using paint? First step is of course to choose the paint. Any type of paint can be used for this purpose, but acrylic is probably the easiest to handle. I used a mix of acrylic paint and also some kids washable water based paint because I did not have a good selection of acrylics. It is important that you have the primary colours (yellow, green, blue and red), plus black and white. The rest of the colours can be mixed. To create the colour palette you really need to have a good understanding of a colour wheel. When you understand how to achieve secondary and intermediate colours from primary colours you unlock so many other colours. Once those colours are unlocked they can be further developed by adding adding white or black to lighten or darken them. Just remember that black and white also dull the colours as well. But first, before you begin creating the palette, you need to find an inspiration. You can either use photos like I did or pick an object (like a rug or patterned fabric) that has a colour combination you like. Mixing colours take practice, but it’s so fun when you get the right shade! Once I achieve the right shade I simply transfer them onto a clean piece of paper and let it dry. I particularly enjoy naming those colours, claiming ownership over them. Hope you found this inspiring!

Rasa xoxo

How to install a gallery wall in five easy steps

By Rasa Pelham on January 9, 2019 in Arty Love, Home improovements, Home-sweet-home

One of my last years goal was to fill the walls with art, and thanks to my watercolour challenge I kinda did! Except the wall space above our fireplace stayed empty for a while. I planned a wall gallery here with family pics and I have been putting this task off for a while. Why? Because I must admit making a gallery wall is challenging to me too. It’s overwhelming, so many pics to add, how to decide on frames (there are so many available!), how to arrange them. I get you! I got the same feelings too!

After doing some research and remembering what I learned in the past when doing other wall galleries at my old house I came up with a step by step plan that made arranging the frames on the wall much much easer. Creating this gallery was such an easy job after all! Which is why I decided to share these 5 easy steps with you!

First thing I learned about creating a gallery wall is to deal with one component at the time. It soon get’s very overwhelming if you try to visualise everything in one go. My starting point is often choosing the frames maybe with one main photo installed in it. You can think what pictures to install in what frame later.

1. Create picture frame layout. When you remove one distraction is so much easer to focus on another aspect of creating gallery wall. Lay the frames you choose on the floor and keep rearranging and taking pictures of different layouts till you have at least 3 variations. Have fun! 2. Arrange pictures/photos into the frames. After you have decided on the picture frame layout you can begin arranging pictures into it. I found using photoshop or other photo editing program to arrange the images into frame so much easer. That way you know what sizes to aim for when you do actually print it out. I used this technique when making our wedding album and that helped me to visualise the end result much better!

My Tip: Aim for balance between pictures and photos (or at least different type of photos). It looks a bit boring when all you have on the wall are pictures of people faces (as lovely as they are). 3. Print and and frame the pictures/photos. It is that simple once you have the layout designed! This is when you can decide how much of white area you want to have around the photo in the frame. 4. Transfer the layout onto the wall. Using cheap craft paper (in my case it was pattern cutting paper that I have loads of) trace around each frame and title each of them so you know what is what when you paste it on the wall. Cut the frame shapes out of the paper. Using sticky tape (not too strong as you don’t want to rip the wall paint off) arrange the cut-out frames onto the wall according to your original layout design.

Joni tip: Mark the centre on each cut-out frame so you know where to insert the nail/hook to hang the frame (usually in the centre). 5. Finally, hang the frames on the wall. And that is all! Don’t worry if the frames are slightly off the level. I think as long as it is pleasing to the eye then it’s ok. Hope you found this super useful!

Rasa xoxo

Our new kitchen reveal

By Rasa Pelham on December 15, 2018 in Home improovements, Home-sweet-home, Organisation

If you knew how long it took us to build this kitchen then you would understand how excited I am right now when it is finally finished! We started this project two years ago, just few months before Tomas was born.

Originally this was a study or a front room (pic bellow). We have our office upstairs so this has been used for various things such as storage, laundry, Lukas playpen and Joni desk was kept here at some point too. From very early on we have decided this space was perfect for the kitchen. We pretty much copied this idea (but not the layout) from next door neighbours who also transformed their so called front room into the kitchen.

Initially the chimney has been knocked down that took over so much space and then of course there were a break when Tomas was born. Once Tomas turned five months Joni started fixing floor and then we both were tiling (hexagonal tiles again). Then Joni’s dad helped us out to build the kitchen and then we got somebody to install the worktops. After that very hot summer came and I have been doing more gardening then DIY. I came back to painting and tiling walls by the end of summer thankfully. Only recently Joni finished installing shelves and now I am working on the organisation. If you think moving into new kitchen is easy, think again! Through this time we have been using our old kitchen and now we are so used to it that it is hard to change and start using our new kitchen. I am sure we will get into the habit very soon!I always liked the idea of shelves in the kitchen. I think above counter storage needs to be clear to see and because it is not hidden by the doors this storage needs to be ascetically pleasing too. This is why I organised my dry ingredients into jars (read how I did that here) and then I had cook books stored on other shelves. If you have any space left then you can always add little things such as vases or potted plants. I love my Fittonia that my friend gave, it does really well in the warm kitchens I think. On the shelves that are little hidden by the fridge we stored our microwave and other essentials for microwaving kids milk and porridge. It felt only natural to also store plates, bowls and glasses here too! My new planner is also ready for the next year ;-).Now we probably need to work on our dining room which happened to be in the same room as kitchen. Painting walls are in order hopefully soon!Thanks for letting me share!

Rasa xoxo

How we upholstered our bed

By Rasa Pelham on October 3, 2017 in Home improovements, Home-sweet-home, Upholstery

You might be shocked to know that I have been planning this project for very very long time. It took me one whole year to choose the fabric and then three months to actually start the job after ordering the bits and bobs (including pretty pegs). The design changed millions of times (only joking), but thank goodness the choice of materials stayed the same. Interestingly, the project itself was quick and simple once I got it started. So here is where it all started. I had this double bed (because it is IKEA so slightly bigger than standard double) since I bought my first house. When we moved to our current house, the bed needed to change. As you can imagine new building interior style no longer matched this plain looking bed. The bed of my dreams was out of my budget, so I did the next best thing and upholstered the one we had. I am actually very glad we had to “renew” our bed. Look at all the corners, damaged by our cat :o. The upholstery started with the bed base. I measured bed depth, length and width and then cut out 4X40cm wide strips (2X202cm long for the length and 2X142cm long for the width). I stitched them all together to make one long strip of fabric. I applied this long strip of fabric all around the bed base.I loooove my staple gun. Serious upholstery professionals would probably judge me for using it so much, but all I care about the convenience and the end of result. Never mind it is not considered a proper tool to attach the fabric to the furniture. In this case I used staple gun to secure the fabric on the bed base from inside as you can see here in the picture bellow. Next we turned the bed upside down so we could attach these pretty pegs. They were quite expensive, but it was worth it I think. Once the legs were on, I finished securing the base bed fabric at the bottom of the bed. Next up is the headboard. I spend a lot of thought on how to upholster this! I liked all the curvy headboards and unfortunately I could not change the shape of it. Ikea headboards are made of honeycomb structure inside so it could not be cut in any way. The insides are hollow (well almost)! So I decided to add more interesting details by adding decorative nails (will speak about it more later).

So to begin with I used a spray glue to secure a piece of wadding onto the headboard where I wanted to be cushiony. I added another layer of wadding and wrapped it around the headboard to make it look softer. I used the staple gun of course ;-).Finally I used the fabric to wrap around the headboard(almost like a gift). Again, I secured the fabric at the back with more staples. As I mentioned before, I used these decorative nails to make the headboard pretty and “curvy”. I was risking here a bit, was not sure how the nails will hold as it is a hollow headboard (with honeycomb structure inside like I said). I ended up using staple gun to hold the fabric “dipped” where I liked and then applied strip of decorative nails on top. Why did I use a strip of nails rather than single nails? Because of the same issue (hollow headboard), did not want to hammer every single nail down in case it does not hold. Besides if one nail comes out at least the strip is going to be held by other nails. So far so good! Phew! And here is the result, I am very very pleased :-). Hope you found my story inspirational ;-)

Rasa xoxo

IKEA hack: custom laundry baskets

By Rasa Pelham on May 27, 2017 in Budget £, Embroidery, Home improovements, Organisation, Projects

Well…. hello here looking through my never ending laundry pics. I never quite manage to have all baskets empty completely! This is why I was looking for ways to organise my dirty clothes while I work my way through it if you know what I mean. I thought under the sink in the bathroom would be the most convenient for them since this is where we get undressed and changed most often. Except I struggled for a while to find a right size baskets…. until one day it occurred to me that the storage boxes from Ikea we already have fit perfectly! I know I know, they are storage boxes, not a laundry baskets, but I saw a vision how I could alter them a little. All it needed are some handles, a little bit of lettering embroidery and its done! Yey! So this is how I did it. I purchased some fabric storage from Ikea. I know I know I said I had them already, but wanted in different colour and it’s not like £2.50 breaks the bank! Then I found my fabric pencil, embroidery tread & needle + some ribbon to match. First I marked the writing I wanted to embroider. You don’t have to use special pencil for it, but it helps since you can rub it off if you make mistake. Otherwise regular pen mark would be hidden behind the stitches (I have gone this risky route too many times before).For embroidery I chose my favourite stitch which is the chain stitch. You can get more inspiration for your embroidery here. Next I stitched the handles. I folded the ribbon at the ends so it does not fray ;-). Hope you found this inspiring

Rasa xoxo

How we tiled the bathroom with hexagon tiles

By Rasa Pelham on February 2, 2017 in Home improovements, Home-sweet-home

So if you were following me on Instagram than you probably have seen these hexagon tiles pop up quite a few times. When I was choosing tiles for the bathroom I was not thinking how to make my tiling complicated, but my exact thought was “oh this has a very nice pattern and does not cost a fortune!”. But in return it was a very, very complicated job. It took us three whole months to complete the project even when working as a team!

To give you some background neither Joni or I had done any tiling in the past. I felt slightly more experienced since I watched somebody doing the tiles and did some tile mending in my last house. But oh dear that was not enough expertise to prep you for hexagonal tiles! I would strongly advise not to start with this kind of shape if you are a beginner in tiling. Will tell you why more soon why, but if you are about to enter this kind of project I hope you find this post inspiring. In the very beginning when I fell in love with this hexagon tile at the first site, I made a visionary picture of our bathroom. I used a editing program to roughly plant the tiles in the exciting bathroom pic, which as you can see may not be the most professional CAD out there. But it was enough for me to see if tiling both walls and floors would not overwhelm overall look of the new bathroom. Some details changed trough the process, but there were a lot of things that stayed. I am very pleased with end result and I must admit I may not have achieved it without this very primitive visionary board. So when we created a clear plan we started stripping the bathroom…. quite literally! Everything had to go, even the sink and bathroom. After that walls needed to be repaired and very firm floors installed (we used 22mm WBP plywood that was resistant to water). This took longer than we planned, which left us with only one sink in the whole house for few weeks (had to go to my friends for showers). Thank goodness this is a distant memory now! Once Joni installed the bath and fixed all the plumbing that took longer than we thought, I could then start to tile. Although it was not so straight forward! It took me a while to figure where to start and how to plan the tiling out exactly so it does not end anywhere awkwardly. This is when I realised that hexagon tiles are pain in the butt! We have been recommended to start tiling from the top but that did not make any sense since the tiles would slide when tiled on the wall. We watched plenty of YouTube videos on tiling, but that only gave us a rough idea how to start as they were all based on rectangular tiles. Seriously? No one produced a video for how to tile hexagon tiles? Eventually we used piece of wood that we screwed on the wall as a baton to stop all the tiles sliding down. We started round the middle of the wall, however I sometimes wonder what would have happened if we started from skirting board?! Would that make the tiling super uneven?This is how much we roughly done in a day. Everything took sooo much longer than we expected! Unlike in the tiling YouTube videos somehow they manage to do the wall in 10min. The other challenge I came across when tiling is the uneven gaps between the tiles. I can blame the awkward shape of hexagon here again! It was hard to keep the tiles straight considering they were resting on the baton just by one corner. Unlike rectangular tiles has the whole edge to itself! Luckily the grout have made it less visible so it’s all good! Tiling round the window was another difficulty. We were suppose to use edge tile trims to cover the tile edges, but I find them not very aesthetically pleasing. Somebody suggested we go without and instead leave the gap for the grout. However it ended up to be a very large gap which made me worry if the grout would be strong enough to stay there. Luckily it did! And I am very pleased we took the risk here :).

I applied the grout with the grout float which was much easer than tiling itself! I chose medium grey which I feel was a great choice for the tiles. I believe this is what hidden all the small mistakes I previously made in tiling. Yey! After grouting there were so much to clean that I only finished doing last week. Ooops! Hope you found our journey in tiling useful, maybe you will be the first to create a tutorial how to tile hexagon?

Rasa xoxo

Lukas room update: changing unit with tray

By Rasa Pelham on May 3, 2016 in For little ones :), Home improovements

So here we are! Lukas room have been painted (not perfectly, but it will do for now) and furniture moved in. There are still plenty things to get done here, but at least it is functional and Lukas does not seem to be complaining. Probably the most used furniture right now is the changing unit that have had it’s makeover long long time ago (about one month before Lukas was born). Finally I am able to share about the process how I got it to current state.It was once a chest of drawers and it was in very bad state. It did not need to have huge makeover, but it did needed some tlc… The main thing I changed are the drawers. I lined them and replaced the knobs to something more exciting.

Once the drawers were ready we decided to build the tray that could hold the changing mat. Joni pointed out that the tray could be removed and used as the drawer once we finished with the nappy changing season (even if it seem it would never end). All sounds good,although there were a slight issue with this idea. The changing mat was hanging over… I have been reassured that hanging over changing tray would not be a problem. Here are the wood pieces Joni used to make the custom box that were suppose to fit the chest of drawers. Luckily there were some space on the side for extra miscellaneous compartment. Currently it holds the wet wipes, cream and other very necessary stuff that is very handy (I am sure all mums out there would appreciate). And this is how we fixed the issue of the tray hanging over the drawers. This anti slip mat that you usually use for car is exactly what made it very stable (believe me, we tested it before changing Lukas nappy on it). I of course used my ultimate tool to fix it in (the stapler). Hope you found this inspiring :)

Rasa xoxo

Our bedroom update: curtains

By Rasa Pelham on March 11, 2016 in Home improovements, Home-sweet-home, Sewing

Our bedroom has been painted last year, but we only have moved in from our spare room in February. What took us so long? The fact we did not have any curtains! I could not find the ones I liked, so I went trough make-your-own process instead. Which delayed our moving in date too many times! Anyways, I am really glad they are there and although it was a project on more challenging side (dealing with large amounts of fabric is not my thing I guess), I love the fabric I chose.

These are basic lined curtains that is good to know how to make. The instructions on how I made them are here ;-). Have a lovely weekend everyone

Rasa xx

How we fitted a light fitting (+upcycled an old glass lamp shade)

By Rasa Pelham on November 30, 2015 in Budget £, Home improovements, Home-sweet-home, Upcycle

As you may all know that we are working our bedroom to be while sleeping in our future office/craft room/guest room. Can’t wait till we move into our actual bedroom!

Today I would like to share about our lamp fittings that we installed recently. they only costed us few pennies (under £10 to be specific)! Yey! Thats because we reused some lampshades that we had in the corridor (I love to be able to use whats already in the house!). All I needed to do is buy the basic lamp fitting ;-). Neither of us are electricians so this is not a step by step guide how to wire the light fitting. Every house can have a different wiring so it would be pretty difficult to cover all here anyways. I fitted light fitting before which was pretty basic as it was a very similar one to the one I had to replace. I remember just removing old fitting wires and replacing with the new fitting wires in exact same way as it was. I guess I was lucky that time as that light fitting was not connected to any other light fitting in the house.

Before you begin it is very important!!

to switch off the lights and the electricity on the distribution board (that box with the switches).
start working (touching the wires) with the right hand, not both!

So to replace the light fitting in our new house we had to follow very a similar routine (even though the wiring is completely different and very very old). First we removed the cover and bit by bit unscrew the little screws on the connector that were holding all the wires. Eventually the light fitting base got freed! Then we connected the ceiling wires back to the new connector. Joni used this guide in order to connect old type of wires with new.When the wires on the ceiling were ready, we had to prepare the light fitting we bought for the fitting. Unfortunately it was a very long fitting perfect for high ceilings or landings, but not so good for our bedroom. Luckily Joni was able to adjust the length of it! He pulled the wire cord inwards, then cut it to required length and stripped the insulation leaving two wires open (neutral and live).We then attached the light fitting bracket onto the ceiling that suppose to hold the fitting itself (don’t worry, this comes with the fitting you buy). After fitting wires have been connected to the connector on the ceiling we closed it off by attaching the light fitting itself onto the bracket.Finally we are ready to hang the lampshade on the light fitting. Our lampshade was a glass ones so to restore it all we needed to do is to clean it! I dipped the lampshades into the soapy water, wiped it with the soft sponge and carefully dried it with the clean tea towel.To hang the lampshade I used shade reducer. I unscrew the light fitting skirt, inserted the lampshade then the reducer and finally put the skirt back on. I hope you found this useful!