Project #2 for 2012- Sunroom Make-over

Do you have a dingy room your house? One that you'd rather not linger in? One that you tend to dump stuff in and forget about?

Well I used to!

That was until a couple of weeks ago when I cracked it and went on a cleaning rampage. My dirty-little-secret room was the sun-room. A room not only full of stuff, but bearing the scars of teenage abuse. Several layers of stickers, posters, photos fastened to the walls with blu-tack, sticky tape, glue etc. Marks in biro, texta, paint.... All manner of substance spilled, dried and crusted over.

I didn't take a 'before' photo, mainly because I was too embarrassed.

So the room was cleared. What didn't go to the op-shop went out in the hard rubbish. The small amount that couldn't be thrown out fitted into three boxes, (would you believe it?)  These fitted nicely into the cupboard where some of my fabric used to be pre-studio.

Next step was to add a splash of colour, and what better place to go for that than the miss-tint bin at our local paint shop. After much dilly-dallying I chose 'Gold Dust', but as it was a miss-tint we have renamed it 'gold-dust-gone-wrong'.

My good friend Rob kindly donated some paint that he had in his shed. It was called 'Regency White' and it was fabulous for the trim and the doors.

He also donated a lot of his time and energy helping me with the job. Rob is not only a dab hand at renovating, but a creative and lateral thinker. The result was far better than I had ever envisaged.

And it was fun. What would have been a boring job was filled with crack-ups, belly laughs and silly banter.
 

And so we scrubbed, filled, sanded, painted........

All was going well, and Ted, a mutual friend, offered us his whiz-bang fancy-pants sander for the tired and grotty old floor. Rob spent a good part of the day on all fours sanding up a storm. I had no idea how stunning the wood was underneath.

Ted gave us his magic recipe for treating floorboards, linseed oil and turps. As you can see, they came up a treat.

For those of you wishing to try this at home, make sure you get Pale Boiled Linseed Oil and Mineral Turps. The ratio is 2 parts L: 1 part T

Re-apply when dry.  Give it a good few coats, it really makes a difference.

Sadly we had to pull apart a once glorious Edwardian wardrobe. Not only was it battered and unstable, but it has been sitting in the main walkway for about eleven years.

Then Rob had yet another flash of brilliance. We used the panels to line the wall.

Another magic formula, this time linseed oil, turps and metho was in order. (Same mixture, we just added 1 part metho). We rubbed it down with steel wool and watched in wonder as all the marks and scratches disappeared.

Now it is a room that we can be proud of.