A little upcycle project – Mummascribbles

When we moved into our house this time last year, we had all of these ideas and plans. The house itself was perfect for us, it hadn’t long had a new kitchen, bathroom and flooring and the walls were all magnolia which meant all we had to do was furnish and colour the walls to our taste. We knew we couldn’t do everything in one go so in our heads we had a little list of what we wanted to do. One of those things was to replace the awful garden furniture that had been left behind by the previous owners.

Unfortunately everything took a slight change when our cat got very poorly and sadly died. We had suddenly had to fork out the money we ‘d saved for this stuff on vets fees! Don’t get me wrong, we had insurance but there were certain things they just didn’t pay out on and so suddenly our money starting disappearing to the point where we could no longer do the things we had planned.

Not long after we moved in, my sister asked us if we wanted her old garden table. At the time, I wasn’t sure whether we did but we said yes just in case. I am very glad that I said yes now as the glass table that came with the house broke and was dangerous, so we got rid and then we discovered we couldn’t buy new ones just yet. Said table has sat at the bottom of the garden for the last year and we decided to put it together and see if we could give it a makeover. It was my little project once the other half had nailed it all together – of course, after that we found all the nuts and bolts that we had actually needed!

We’d been to Homebase and picked up varnish and already had an electric sander at home so we were all set.

This is the before photo!

I then took the electric sander to it which slowly transformed it!

  

Then it was time to varnish! I’d chosen mahogany for its darkness as it had quite a bit to hide. I started from the bottom up…

Then I moved onto the main table starting from the outside in…

And by the end of the first coat, I looked like this…

I then let it dry, cooked and ate a shepherd’s pie and went back out with a very full belly to do the second coat!

And the finished product…

And while I was busy doing this, the other half was Brillo padding the chairs that had also been left behind. They definitely look better than they did and we now have a (slightly mismatched) garden set that we can make do with throughout the summer until we can buy a new one.

Sometimes you just have to make do with what you have and I’ve enjoyed my first little upcycle project

I wonder what could be next?!

Have you had any fun upcycling projects?