Life is beautiful, love is everywhere: お家改装、小物編。House renovation, small things.

お家改装はいつまでも続きます（笑）。なんせ人の手を一切借りず、二人だけ、いや、夫ほぼ一人だけの作業ですからねぇ。

リビング／キッチンが奇麗になるにつれ、益々そのみすぼらしさを際立たせていたドア。このドアはいずれ丸ごと取り替えるつもりなのでお金をかけたくはないのですが、それもいつになるか分からないでの何とかしたい。そして．．．

Our house renovation is still continuing. As we, only 2...well, only my husband the most of time, is a worker for the renovation, so it would take forever. Lol.

Anyways, since our riving room/ kitchen area is becoming clean looking, the old ugly door even more stands out. However, we plan to exchange whole door in the future when we add some space there. So we don't want to spend money on it. On the other hand we know that cosmetic of door is very effective to the entire of ambience so...

こうなりました！まるで舞台装置のそうなハリボテチック、１日でしあがりましたが、お部屋の雰囲気は雲泥の差になりました。

We found a solution like this and made it in one day! It was kind like instant procedure, like faux as just covered it by ply wood though, but the atmosphere improved a lot.

その行程は左からこんな感じに。私のお仕事はもちろんペイントです。

A picture above is the process from left to right. Painting was my job as well.

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そしてエリアラグ。ずいぶん長い事かかりましたがやっと完成。

サイズや色にこだわりがあると、探しまわるより作った方が早いかと。いえ、ちっともは早くなんかなかったんですけど欲しいものに近いものは確実に得られるかと。

And an area rug. It took so long time to finish.

When you have very specific colour and size/shape preference, it would be faster to make it by yourself than looking around every shops. Well, it turned out that was not so faster, lol. Anyways, One things for sure is that you can end up getting what you wanted, I guess.

材料は手芸屋で柔らかいパイピング様のコットンロープの様なコードを２０mくらい買い、手持ちの毛糸やコットンの糸でぐるぐると渦巻きに鍵編み。

I bought soft, thick cotton-ish cord for piping for 20m, and used left over yarns to crochet it spiral.

いつもの様に、レシピもなく適当に始めるので、何度もほどいてはやり直しになります。最初はこんなでしたが、このままだと欲しい楕円形にはならず、限りなく円に近づく事が分かり、もっと大きくなってからほどく事２回。

As well as I had no recipe of it so I had to learn by trial and error. The first attempt turned out that was too round. I realized it when it became much bigger than the picture.

そしてもっと細長く始めて．．．

So started over again with much longer shape...

ようやく（ほぼ）狙っていた形になりました。手作りの良さは、例えばこれは、クッションカバーとの同じ材料の使い回しでお揃い感が出る事。お部屋の色味の統一はあか抜けさせるこつです。

And finally became almost exact shape that I wanted to. The best part of hand made like this is that you can use the same materials with others, like pillow covers or so, to get matching colours. When you manage to stick with your colour scheme through the house, it would become very sophisticated.

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そしてこれ。トップの分厚い一枚板は、前の家で暖炉のマントルを作るとき、夫の従兄弟がわざわざ自分の敷地から切り出して来てくれて、家具職人の我が弟が生木から仕上げてくれた物。こんな分厚く良い木を買ったらとても高いものだと思います。なので、一緒に持て来ました。（前の家には似た色合いの板で、箱の様に同じサイズのマントルを作り、設置してきました。）

The top shelf of it was a mantle of a fire-place in our former house. When we had fire-place makeover there, my hubby's cousin cut the tree form his property and gave it to us. And my brother who is a furniture maker finished it up from raw material. If you bought this tick of nice wood, it would be very pricy. We didn't want to give up on it so we made similar one (like a box) for that fire place when we moved out that house.

この家には暖炉がないので（そのかわりに鉄のストーブ）飾り棚として使うべく、夫が下の部分を作りました。この白い鉄格子はガーデンショップで買ったフェンスです。

ちなみに上に乗っている小さなお家も夫作です。本当はバードハウスとして作ったはずですが、外に置くのがもったいなくなったようです。

Since we have no fire-place in this house (we have a nice iron-ish stove), we made it into a display shelf. That white part is a iron fence for gardening. By the way, a small house on top of the shelf is also made by my husband. He made it as a bird house but he feels it too good to put outside.

ちょっとづつですが、お家が整って行くのは本当に楽しいものです。

It's so slow but we really enjoy making our house nicer and nicer day by day.