Caroline: The major problems I had with this cupboard are too numerous to mention. When I got the cupboard, the veneer was missing on one side, the doors were stuck and there were splashes of white paint. Just the "undoing" of the cupboard took 8 hours - there was a huge amount of sandpapering, "spackling" the side without veneer, sandpapering again and gluing other parts of the veneer. But later...don't get me started on watching paint dry! The inside was done by decoupaging with pages from Sigmund Freud's book "Psychopathology of Everyday Life" - the book was found on the street. I am quite pleased with it - please check out the picture gallery below and let me know what you think.
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Caroline: Some quick and easy shelves were made this week. The first one Kitchen Blues Shelf started out as a piece of wood lying by the side of the road. And the second shelf was made from some old wooden drawers that I took from a beautiful large rustic table that was too heavy for me to take home. A little sawing, a little paint, a few screws and some nails and as they say in Israel - chick chack - there you have new storage. Click on the pictures to view. Caroline: As Swedes, we are spoiled by a lot of things that one cannot get in Israel: free education, free water, easy internet banking and 50 cm long cucumbers. We are also spoiled by the amount of options in shops. When I was in Sweden last, I counted to 24 different balsamic vinegars in one supermarket! Linnea and I go to DIY stores often. In Sweden, a DIY store is a HUGE warehouse of 6 000 square meters, yes it is true! The aisles for paint are at least 50meters floor to ceiling shelves and if you want a paintbrush you will have at least 10 meters of different kinds of paintbrushes for all sorts of stuff. In Israel, a DIY store is about as big as your living room. You can get 2 brands of paint and 3 kinds of paint brushes: super cheap and shitty, expensive and super expensive. In most DIY store you can only buy SHINY oil based paint…YES this is also true! (In Sweden most of the paint is water based and you can get all kinds of sheens) One of my first visits to the DIY store in Israel went like this: I walked into the tiny DIY shop. Inside were 7 rough looking men. 3 behind something that looked like a counter and 4 milling around near it. They were all deep in conversation when I walked in and then – SILENCE! All 7 pair of male eyes stared in a confused way at me and I smiled to disarm them -it didn’t work. So I walked around the VERY dirty and disorganized shop trying to find paint that I needed whilst 7 pair of eyes followed me around. The silence was only broken when one of the men behind the counter barked out aggressively “Can I help you?” I said in English “Yes, I would like some white paint” The man sighed as if disturbed from his winter sleep and walked around the counter to give me a can of paint. I look at it bewildered by all the Hebrew text and ask “Is it water based?” The man replied, “WHAT?! Water based?! No!! Why?” “Well, I want water based.” I say. “Why?! What is it for?” he asks incredulously. “Furniture. Wood.” “Well” he says irritated “This is oil based and best for furniture” “Ok… thank you, but I want water based.” I say The man sighed again and made fun of me in Hebrew to the other men in the store, who laughed. Then he got a can of paint and shoved it into my hand and went back to the counter. I do actually read Hebrew but slowly and I read on the can “קיר” which is “wall”, so I trot after the man and say, “This is wall paint!” The man barked at me “SO?! You can use it on furniture - a lot of professionals use it!” That is when I had had enough and I barked back at him angrily “Well you can also paint with SHIT and if someone is using this on furniture then I would not call them professional!!” There was an even bigger silence in the shop then a lot of laughter and a smile of embarrassment on the man’s face and after that I got the help I wanted. I go to the DIY store at least once a week in Israel and I have still NEVER seen a woman in it. After the incident above I am quite good friends with the owner Asi and his Armenian helper/friend, Ohan. They call me Happy Face. :) Caroline: I was given some stringed electric lights that I did not dare to use since I didn't know how old they were. They were the kind you see everywhere in Thailand, simple orbs made of cotton string covering a little light. Then my drying rack broke and I cut off all the white metal spokes to use for something. The picture in my head of little string orbs hanging in the air made me think of the wind chimes the hill tribes in northern Thailand make to ward off evil spirits. They thread colourful cotton string round and round and create these square "eyes" and put bells on the bottom so that when they sway in the wind it creates a nice tinkling sound which also wards off evil spirits. One can see these wind chimes if one is lucky to be invited to stay with the hill tribes. Anyhow I made my own talisman against evil by recycling the drying rack and string orbs. Gallery of photos - click one to enlarge and use arrows. Caroline: I found a chair. Someone had taken it into a little wood on a rising and sat it there to enjoy the view. I took it home. The green paint on the metal and wood was peeling and it was beginning to rust in places. After cleaning it up and painting it glossy black, I decided on decoupage - which is the art of decorating an item by gluing cutout paper on to it and varnishing over and over again. According to Wikipedia decoupage was first done by tribes in eastern Siberia a long long time ago. Personally I was inspired by it by an artist friend in Waiheke, New Zealand. All who know me, know that I have a soft spot for comics and superheroes and since the strips of wood on the chair reminded me of comic strips it naturally became The Strip (Comic) Chair. I cut out superheroes, mix them up and glue them on, making my own stories by changing the speech balloons. It takes a long time to make them fit more or less right and I promise the stories are not what you'd expect of the superheroes. Don't tell Marvel. Gallery of pictures - click on one to enlarge and then use the arrows. Caroline:
A little old lady passed away. We were cleaning out her apartment and I found this old basket news paper collector in the hallway. Probably it was supposed to be thrown away since there was no way it could function as anything practical as it was. Since I was curious about how to weave baskets I decided to give it a try. To give it a recycled theme I had to find a medium to recycle - I thought of plastic bags and those plastic straps you can find around cardboard boxes. In the end, I settled for cables just because I had some speaker wire lying around. Speaker cable is a cable with 2 thinner wires joined together, they are easy to separate and they are thin enough to weave. To find speaker cable I hunted around in dumpsters near my office and at friend's houses, in the end I had collected a lot but no where near enough for the whole basket. It takes many many metres of wire to weave a basket, much more than I was aware of. So I did cheat a bit and bought some extra cable. To cut a long story short, it was much harder than I thought to weave, I unraveled it all at least 3 times, but now that I have learned, weaving will be a piece of cake in future. Below is a photo gallery of the Musical Collector before and after renovation (click on one to open up and then use the arrows) Caroline:
To begin I have to find stuff to redo, undo or just renovate. I suppose I could also buy stuff in the flea market but the best and cheapest flea market is in Haifa and a long way away. So I have had to begin with some odds and ends that I have found lying around. I have no great plan yet as to how these objects will look after I am finished with them but here are the before pictures: |
Linnea & Caroline2 foreigners in Israel trying to find their space. Up-cycling furniture and clothes for a better environment and future. Check us out on Instagram:
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