The 1930s House: Living Room Renovation Complete!

Today I can finally reveal pictures of our completed lounge renovation, after two years of on-off work.  Despite our house being built in the 1930s, our lounge had a distinct '70s feel when we moved in.  It was quite a challenge to transform the biggest room in the house into something cosy, inviting and more in keeping with the age of the house.  We didn't go for a 1930s' period look, but we did incorporate some Deco touches.  The majority of work was done solely by my husband, who bravely took on challenges such as laying parquet flooring.  Read on to find out what we did, and how much it cost.

Before...
The room was very white and plain, with a beige carpet that was sun-bleached in parts.  Textured walls, a feature stone wall with built-in mirrored knick-knack shelf and an electric fire all made it feel very outdated, and not in a good vintagey way.  The room had been extended in the '70s, so an additional problem was that the lovely original parquet flooring stopped two-thirds of the way along the room, with the new section having a particularly horrid lino flooring. 

Above and below: How the living room looked when we viewed the house

DIY Update

My post last week on vintage inspired Christmas decorations was a bit of wishful thinking, as we don't have any decorations up ourselves yet.  There's a bit of a DIY saga behind this.  Do you remember the great pre-Christmas DIY debacle of 2014?  No?  Let me remind you.  It was the day before Christmas last year, and our living room looked like this:

Wonky Walls & An AWOL Workman

Today, we're supposed to be having our lounge plastered.  I say 'supposed to' because our plasterer is currently driving around the neighbourhood to suspected haunts, searching for his labourer, who is not answering his phone.  This wouldn't have anything to do with the Wales v All Blacks rugby match that was on last night, would it?  Hmm...

So here's how far we've got with the lounge.  That lovely thick '60s style wallpaper is now stripped off (it had to go, sorry to those of you that liked it!!).  The uneven concrete in the fireplace has been chipped out, and we've laid new cement there to give a nice even surface for when we put down a new hearth.  The room has been prepped for plastering, with holes filled, and the shape of the fireplace opening properly revealed (I like the slightly curved top, I hope we can keep it).

The Revelation of the 1930's Parquet Flooring

It was another weekend of steaming ahead with the DIY.  And look what we have revealed in the lounge - a lovely bit of parquet!



We knew that there was some parquet under there, but weren't sure of its condition.  It's pretty good!  It's a different colour around the edges, and splattered with paint, so will need sanding back with wire wool, reglazing and waxing.  But it should come up lovely with a bit of care!

Martinis to Celebrate the Dismantling of the 70's FIreplace

I had been looking forward to our next DIY project, erasing yet another '70s touch from our house by dismantling this feature wall, with built in mirrored knick-knack shelf.  It was with great relish and gusto that we got out the sledge hammer, chisels, and steel toe-capped boots.

Before...

The 1930s House: Interiors on a Budget

What's been happening in the 1930's house then?  Well, a few small things since the installation of the art-deco inspired shelving and the dining table refurbishment.  I think I mentioned before that this is going to be a slowburner of a house and garden makeover, as we have a teeny-tiny budget and limited time outside of our respective work to fit it all in.

Vintage Dressing Table Project

I've had a dream of sitting in front of a vintage dressing table, brushing my Veronica Lake like locks whilst wearing a peignoir.  Now, I may have to work on the hair and I don't own anything as fancy as a peignoir, but I now have the vintage dressing table!

In our local council run recycling centre, where to be honest we've sourced most things to furnish our house, I came across this little dressing table.  A little shabby looking, with a huge mirror, but it was just £10.  Perhaps some magic could restore this to something glorious?  I consulted my personal furniture restoration expert (the other half!) and he was enthusiastic that something could be done.  The mirror would need replacing, and I also found an art deco mirror in the same shop for £15.  It gets even better, because they did a deal for me, so I got the two items for £20!

The bedroom where the dressing table was to go already has some pine chest of drawers in, so I didn't want the new piece of furniture to dominate the room - a decision was made to paint it white.  I know it's a shame to paint wood sometimes (there's nothing like the feel of lovingly waxed and polished quality timber - see my previous post about the dining room table restoration we undertook last year) but it just wouldn't have worked in its new setting.

Table Restoration: Changing Wood Colour

You'll have to excuse another post about our 1930's house and our attempts at furniture!  It's so expensive to buy brand new of any quality, so therefore much of our time is spent drawing out plans, looking at antique furniture in charity shops and car boot sales, and talking about what type of wax polish would give the best finish!  We are completely obsessed, and it doesn't help that we're both perfectionists, ditherers and that there's not much left in the budget.

If you too have a dislike for modern, mass-produced, plastic coated furniture, this might interest you.

When we bought our dining room table, we loved the shape (the curves echo our bay window) and the size, but we didn't like the colour.  It was a sort of 1970's teak colour, which wouldn't have suited our dining room.  Then we happened to buy a set of 6 chairs, which were a sort of mahogany or rosewood, and we knew we just had to try and get them to match.

How do you get a teak table to match mahogany chairs?!

Here's how...

Firstly, you can't have sky high expectations.  We spoke to some professional furniture restorers whilst researching techniques, and even they can't guarantee a 100% colour match.  But you can get it in the same general tone, and match how light or dark it is.

Secondly, the better quality products you use, the better the finish will be.  We used products from Fiddes, which are excellent quality, and though pricey, a little goes a long way.  Their experts in store are very knowledgeable and helpful.

Step 1: Sanding back the surface
A finished piece of furniture can have many layers of wax, varnish, sealant, polish and such like on its surface, and these all need to be stripped off so that you can apply new layers.  For a large piece of furniture you will need to use some power tools, such as a rotary sander attached to a drill, or a belt sander.  Be very careful - a lot of furniture that looks like solid wood, is actually a 'veneer', where a thin layer of proper wood is simply glued onto a base made of MDF or chipboard, or something else cheap and unattractive looking.  The picture below shows the table with the two end sections sanded, and the middle yet to be done (so it's the orginal orangey colour).

Step 2: Prepare your surface
The freshly sanded surface will have lots of tiny 'bits' attached to it.  You'll need to wipe down the entire table by hand with a damp cloth.

Step 3: Stain your wood
The choice of stain doesn't have to be exact, think of it as a 'foundation', or a colour wash that an artist would apply to a canvas first before adding other colours.  It's a base coat.  We used Fiddes Wood Dye in 'Walnut', which is applied with a cloth.  After we'd stained our table, it was terrifyingly dark.  We hadn't yet bought any wax or other finishing products, and I'm glad, because we were able to look at the dark colour and decide then 'it's not got enough brown or red in it', and then we could go out and buy a wax with brown and red in it for step 5.

Step 4: Glaze your wood
We used Fiddes Clear Glaze, which was brushed on, and the excess wiped off with a cloth so that no brush marks remained.  This step adds extra durability to surfaces that are subject to wear and tear, like floors, tables etc.  We chose a satin finish, but it's available also in gloss and matt.

Step 5: Wax your wood
A fine wire wool is used to work the wax into the table, and you then buff the surface with a cloth afterwards.  We used Fiddes Supreme Wax in 'Cherry'.  The wax can be built up in layers, so if you have a piece of furniture with a few chips and scratches, the wax can help fill them and give a better finish.  There's also a colourless 'mellow' wax available if you don't want to add any additional colour to your wood.

As you can see, this kind of thing takes a lot of man hours, but it really does give a lovely new lease of life to something that was a perfectly good piece of furniture, but didn't quite fit the 'colour scheme'.


So, in total, here's what we spent:
Dining table = £10
Set of 6 chairs = £40
Fiddes wood stain =£13.01
Fiddes glaze = £15.39
Fiddes wax polish = £7.85

We have used tiny amounts of the dye, glaze and polish - they will go on to restore many more items of furniture.  So let's generously overestimate that we've used a fifth of all these products, that's only £7.25 to refinish a lovely table!  Total cost about £57.25 for the table and chairs we wanted.

I'll leave you with some pictures on the finished result, we're really pleased with it!  The top photo shows the table extended, you'll notice that the middle section is ever so slightly darker - this is because that section was initially darker when we started out, there will always be little quirks like that.

Can you spot the odd-one-out chair?

Have any of you attempted to upcycle any furniture?