Side Verandah Makeover: One Week Challenge - Week Five

It's week five of the One Room Challenge and this has been a productive week, a nice contrast to the week four slump.  I think finishing the stenciling was a major morale boost, as I can now begin to put things back on to the side verandah and begin to arrange the space.

I'm taking part in the One Room Challenge, a design event where 20 featured designers and countless guest participants transform a single space over 6 weeks.  Check out all the other great designs at the One Room Challenge blog.

Catch up with previous weeks of my side verandah plans
Week One            Week Two          Week Three             Week Four 


Before we leap into its current state, let's have a quick reminder of where it started - the side verandah in its initial cluttered role as a general dumping ground and storage area.

Back at the start of the One Room Challenge

Now here it is with the stenciling finished. It makes a tremendous difference. 

The stenciling done, finally! The neighbouring trees did their best to disrupt it. I had to constantly sweep before stenciling a new square. 

I adore the stencil pattern. The paving paint was very difficult to work with, and because the concrete, despite my patching, is still uneven in parts, the stenciling isn't perfect and I can see a lot of mistakes. The overall impression is fabulous though, and I'm just glad that it's finished, to be honest! 

A close up of the stencil pattern

It even makes the ugly gas metre corner look smarter

The area that I've been concentrating on this week is the 'working area' of the verandah. In my initial plans, I was going to repaint two existing old kitchen units - one a cabinet and one a dresser - into a storage cupboard and a potting bench.  While the dresser has turned into an excellent potting bench, the cabinet wasn't in great shape and while trying to clean it up it fell apart. I instead splurged on a new IVAR cabinet from Ikea.   

I painted the potting bench in left over cream and Brunswick green exterior paint from the last time the house was painted. As the green was for trim, it is a glossier finish than I would have liked, but I'm happy to have saved the money.  I had seen some kitchens on Pinterest with dark green cupboards and light shelves, so wanted to try that colour scheme.  I found the baskets at an op-shop, and I'm going to keep an eye out for more that are the dark colour. 

Potting bench beginning to be filled back up with my gardening gear.
(The second drawer is being repaired; it will be back by week six!)

The IVAR I painted in the Taubmans Blue Tang which I'd chosen for my mood board based on some art nouveau tile colour schemes.  I used their Sun Proof Exterior paint. I'm not totally happy with how the colour has come out, it looks far lighter and cheerier than I'd wanted - it doesn't help that the stencil pattern on the doors is in only one coat over a cream base -  but it is growing on me.  The stencil for the doors belongs to a friend who offered it to me, and I gratefully accepted. I wanted it to look like trellis panels set into the top and bottom of the doors, and I also added handles (salvaged from the previous doors of the kitchen dresser).  The IVAR doesn't need handles because of the way the doors are edged, but I want to be able to lock the doors as I will storing tools in them. 

A brighter Mediterranean blue than I'd planned, but it looks good with the other colours still. 

The boy wanted to 'pose'. 

I'm so happy with this work area!

I still haven't found the 'right' table and chair yet, but I have some 'not quite perfect' options that I can fall back on if it gets down to the wire. Although as it is only a week to go, I might be at the wire and not realise it yet!

Jeans shouldn't be this difficult

All I wanted was new jeans. Both the pairs I was wearing pre-pregnancy and returned to after N's birth have worn through at the thighs, and even though I'm planning on patching them, I still wanted new jeans, for those occasions when wearing patchy jeans didn't seem quite the thing. I have one brand and style of jeans that I've been buying since I was 19, so although it isn't the most ethical choice, at least I know that I will wear them all the time. Normally I'd just trot out and buy a new pair, unhappily aware that it won't count towards my ethical fashion quota for the year. But times, my friends, they are not normal, and so obtaining new jeans has turned into a bit of a saga.

To start with, they stopped making my jeans sometime when I was wearing maternity jeans. Now they have some other style options in bootcut jeans that are not the same, and don't fit well. Rats. I decided that if I was going to start from scratch finding a new style of jeans that I liked, I should investigate ethical options.

Result of investigation: disappointing. Even if I could get past buying jeans from a 'collection', the vast majority of the ethically produced jeans on the market are designer jeans and intended for skinnier people than I. Possible there are ethically produced size 16 jeans out there, but my google-fu could not find them.
This was a somewhat depressing moment, and resulted in a binge of ethical clothes buying for N, which I shall detail in a later post.

So I went the op-shop route. Found a very nice pair of soft denim in a local op-shop for $8. Because I had N I couldn't try them on, but I figured if they were a terrible fit I'd just re-donate them. They fit fine, but there was a problem with the zip - it wouldn't stay up. This really irritates me. People, thrift shops are for clothes in good condition that don't fit you, or don't suit your needs or your taste anymore. They aren't a dumping ground for clothes with problems. Grrrr.  Took to a local alterations place and got the zip replaced. Cost more than the jeans did, but all up less than a brand new pair would have cost.

I feel good that I finally have a pair of jeans (which are to me a wardrobe staple) that I can say are a fairly ethical choice, being second hand, a bit ashamed that it took my regular jeans disappearing from production before I made that switch, and still irritated at whoever donated those jeans with the dodgy zip.