How to save money whilst doing a renovation

I've been working hard over the last few days - although it's all quite invisible!

One of the big commitments I made to myself with this house is that I would try and save as much as I could on costs, and help the environment at the same time by upcycling and re-using things that other people want to get rid of. It's fun to go treasure digging in second hand stores and there are many websites that are used by folks to move on their no longer needed items in an easy, eco-friendly way.It's great to know I've saved something from adding to the growing landfill mountain. Here in the Netherlands, I'm an avid user of Marktplaats.nl, and in the UK I used Gumtree & eBay pretty frequently. [Disclosure : I am an eBay employee, however these are my personal opinions - I work there because I *like* what they offer to people]. Facebook groups are interesting to browse, but I find that if you don't spend inordinate amounts of time glued to your electronic device, it's pretty impossible to find listed items you want - very hit and miss at the moment. Salvage yards, charity shops, 'kringloopwinkels' here in the Netherlands, and carboot sales are all grist to the mill.

And of course, the carboot sale to end all carboot sales is coming up again in a few months : King's Day! To celebrate the King's birthday, the Dutch turn out en masse as a nation to sell and buy secondhand goods from every available piece of pavement space, wearing lovely joyous Dutch orange colors and relax with friends and family.

Whilst all these ways are wonderful fun, to take the most advantage of them, it's vital to have a comprehensive 'I want' list. Items come up at random, so you have to be able to grab them well in advance of the date you need to have them. You can't guarantee to find stuff on the day you need it, and that usually means full price shopping as a result.

So the last few days we've been planning out what we want to achieve in 2016 and what we will need to do it. The list is really quite scary ( Evernote is my friend, again  - easy to share between W and myself) - growing every day, and easily over a hundred items already, with bold statements like 'build a shed' & 'repair the barn' amongst them!  Pinterest has been browsed extensively to get inspiration and ideas , and we've been starting to drill down into the item level detail  'we need 30 feet of coving' . Whilst it seems frustrating and a bit of waste of time when you could be out in the garden playing with plants or wielding a power tool, actually planning out what you need, and making sure it's on hand saves loads of time and frustration when it actually comes to 'doing time'.

We've also been checking out the January sales - not as extensive as they are in the UK or the US, but present nonetheless. If we can get something we need now, at half price, rather than in 4-6 months it feels like a good bargain. But of course, remember - it's not a bargain if you don't really need it and it just collects dust and adds to your collection of 'stuff that never gets touched'.

Lastly we've started to watch auctions - sometimes great value when you see the entire stocks of companies that have gone bankrupt being auctioned off for pennies. I just missed a lovely set of travertine tiles for an absolute steal - but as I hadn't measured up and wasn't willing to gamble on such a large expensive purchase, I'll just have to find it again another time.

I've also been starting to hunt for items - and researching how to do new DIY work that we haven't done before. It's made more complex in that I need to research it in English (my Dutch is quite terrible), ask W what the Dutch translation of a highly technical term is, only to discover that he doesn't know the English, and then spend an hour or more with lots of dictionaries before I can start to hunt for the goodies!

We've started to see results already - we knew we wanted some new dining room chairs and up came a lovely set of  6 pre-1900 Belgian carved hardwood chairs that were being got rid of because the rattan seats were falling apart and the owners didn't want to repair them. Instead, they just wanted to get rid, and would probably have sent them to the tip if they hadn't been taken.  At 60 euros for the chairs and about another 20  more for some on sale fabric, some foam, and some plywood we have the makings of a lovely new dining room set!

How do you find your upcycling gems?

Button art that's full of heart

We had a busy day today! We are building new gates over the next few days so we did the final shopping run to collect all the bits we needed to complete them. W acquired a biscuit maker - we will have to wait and see how well it works out, but he's super happy with it at the moment. IDD, who is acting as coach and mentor for the week, also spent a happy couple of hours drooling over toys whilst they chose what they needed.

I wanted to unwind a little after such a busy day and decided to do a little button art. I have a large collection of buttons from various car boot sales and elderly relative hand me downs. In today's world I rarely replace or change large numbers of buttons - and i wanted to find a good use for them.

Starting equipment is my trusty Dremel glue gun , an art board from a pound shop, an ikea Ribba frame, and a bundle of buttons. I had to wash my buttons, as they had about 20+ years of collected dust on them, but once dried, they gleamed beautifully.

I marked out the edges of the mount onto the board and drew a light heart form in the centre of the square. With hindsight I should probably have just marked the corners with dots to help centre the image as the marks really didnt want to come off. I then played around for about half an hour with different combinations of buttons to work out the best pattens and how to fill the spaces most effectively. Having found a pattern I liked, I then proceeded to glue down the buttons, one at a time. Inevitably there needed to be some improvisation as the buttons didn't quite glue where they had originally been.  In my collection, i have some beautiful floral buttons with raised backs - I decided to use these to make a second level to the button art, covering the white spaces and giving depth to the design. With a glue gun, this is super quick - glueing down can't have taken more than 20 minutes.

Once the design was complete and the glue had cooled ( it doesnt take long!) it was time to assemble the art board into the picture frame. Et voila! Button art heart in no time at all. A lovely quick project for when you have an hour to spare. It's a bit like mosaic'ing with buttons!

I'll update this picture once I've had the opportunity to take a picture in daylight - promise!

Making paper

I've never made paper before! Today is make my own note paper for writing all those lovely memos and reminders down on. I was given a paper making kit for Xmas years and years ago, and it's time that it saw the light of day and got put to use.

Having read through the *brief* instructions in the kit, I decided that I wasn't going to invest in all the other gubbins it called for, and invent as I go along. First, pulp creation - lots of A4 paper,cut or torn up into lovely small strips, and soaked for hours. Note to the clumsy : don't attempt to remove the tip of your finger with the scissors as you cut the paper up. Now, I have a soupy mush with a hint of blood tinting it - and whilst it may have some strange mystical meaning behind it, it really isnt a very attractive color. So, cooking expertise to the fore : what's the one spice you want going absolutely no where except for directly into it's chosen dish or container - tumeric! I added a generous dollop to the mush and it's tinted it a pleasant shade of yellow. I have also found a use for all those 'orts' ( tail ends and bits of colored threads from changing colors in your tapestry) you collect as you stitch and knit  : a generous handful of woolen orts makes for beautiful red/gold inclusions across the paper.

I can't wait til it's dry to show you, so here's the drying out version! 10 sheets of A4 computer paper made enough pulp for 4 sheets of A5 thick crafting paper. You could probably do better, and get thinner paper if you dipped in the mulch vat instead of pouring out of a mug into the draining frame but nonetheless, I'm happy with the results.

It's not easy being Green

I've been reading my way through blog after blog of 'how to recycle cheap junk' over the last few days, and I have some serious craving to try some of those ideas out. It's probably very appropriate given my current straitened circumstances , and the economic climate, plus it feeds an innate desire to be a bit less consumer driven than I have been in the past.

Whilst in my native habitat (UK), that's not such a difficult thing to do, since charity shops and cheap shops abound - all the more so since the crisis has caused so many other shops to close down, and landlords are desperate to fill shop space. However, I'm currently in Rotterdam, NL and it's remarkable difficult to find out what thrift shops are called when you don't speak the lingo! I've managed to trace down 'kringeloopwinkel'  as a common term for recycling shops, and identified that the dutch don't seem to do the charity shop thing, it's all commercial recycling in 'circle of life' shops. Interestingly, the Dutch are the best at recycling in Europe, hitting an awesome 70% recycled target compared to the UK's 35%. They are so good at recycling their waste now, that they don't have enough combustible waste generated to fuel their waste-combusting powerstations  and have to import from surrounding countries.

So, what to try? I don't have a sewing machine handy, and I was never terribly good at dressmaking. There isnt a lot of space out here to fill with pretty 'clutter' projects and actually utilitarian items such as furniture might be of more use to me at the moment. That said, I've also decided I have a real dislike of painting lovely natural wood and woodstained items  in pastel colors and declaring it to be 'gorgeous'. So I guess I'm not going to make it big on the refashionista circuit anytime yet with 'easy' 1 hour furniture projects!

 I've self imposed myself a limit of €10 per project, and a max of 3 crafting projects in progress at anyone time (with knitting and beading projects in flight that limits me to 1!), so now with my extremely abundant project float, I'm going thrift-shop hunting.
So, off to try and trawl the grey rainy streets to see if I can spot some by eye!