How To Sharpen Your Tools

Really, that's not a euphemism. You may think we're all about croissants on Sunday mornings, long snowy walks in the local park, and cute crafty projects here in the Nest - but let me tell you, we sure like our power tools too.

So far on the power tool front our kitchen, bathroom and garden renovations have required a jigsaw, circular saw (awesome tool - very, very loud, and weirdly pungent), cordless drill, electric screwdriver, tile cutter (super-loud and messy - it spurts tile-dust-infused water absolutely everywhere), several sanders, and an electric plane.

We have masses of traditional tools, too - everything from hammers and saws to those cool measuring thingies that enable you to pencil a straight line down the side of a piece of wood that needs a bit cutting off. Liking it.

Problem is - over time, a lot of these traditional tools lose their sharpness, especially when you do silly things like using specialist wood chisels to prise hideous fifty-year old tiles in your bathroom:

Gotta like a picture featuring a chisel and a Mason Pearson hairbrush (in the white bag) in the same shot. And yes, those pink work gloves are mine :-)

And also in your kitchen:

We didn't think the tiles in the kitchen were fifty years old. They looked to be twenty years old. But when we chiseled 'em off, we found - you've guessed it, a layer of fifty year old tiles underneath. Nuthin' like screwing future homeowners over by tiling on top of tiles.

Anyway, after all that tile removal, our chisels and screwdrivers (yep, I also used the occasional screwdriver to chip off a particularly recalcitrant tile) were looking a little sorry for themselves. Enter The Grinder...

The Grinder is our latest power tool. It's used for sharpening tools. Check it out:

Just hold your chisel blade against one of those twin spinning wheels and watch the sparks fly:

Pretty cool, eh. Plus it's made by Draper, which makes me think of Mad Men, which pleases me even more. Naturally, I wasn't allowed to use it. Andre banned me from all power tools after I dropped a gate on my foot. His argument being, if I'm not safe with a garden gate, I'm probably not safe with 18v of DeWalt power. He may have a point.

By the way, you can see what our bathroom looks like now by clicking here, and what our kitchen looks like by clicking here.  

Well, I think it's the weekend now. Have fun, and I'll see you again next week!

Psst! If you like this, you may also like:

DIY: Kitchen installation guide - figure out your budget

Interiors: Room design based on romantic London home

Recipe: Paris bistro-style salad

Simply The Nest DIY Before And After Round-Up

I thought I'd round off 2009 with an overview of the main Simply The Nest before and after DIY transformations that I've shared on the blog so far. I do like a nice before and after. Everyone likes a nice before and after.

Here's our kitchen:

Here's our bathroom:

And here's our garden:

You can see all these pictures in a photo gallery here.

And here's a photo of Miss Penelope wearing a pretty festive necklace to honour the New Year celebrations:

Cuteness.

Happy New Year one and all. Have a good 'un. See you next year! Same time, same place.

Psst! If you liked this post, you may also like...

DIY: Our kitchen inspiration board

Interiors: Black, white and pink Swedish-style home

Family: A Sunday morning tour of our neighbourhood

One Tiny Bathroom, One Huge Transformation

Today I'd like to introduce you to our bathoom. Now, at under 3 metres square, our bathroom is quite literally the smallest bathroom in the world. When Andre, Penny, Enrique and I are all in there at night, scrambling for a turn in front of the mirror with our toothbrushes, it can be a VERY tight squeeze.

So to compensate for its super-tiny proportions, we decided to go all-out on the luxury factor.

Getting straight to the point, here's how grim the bathroom looked when we first moved in:

Yup - the previous owners decided that the best way to deal with The World's Smallest Bathroom was by hanging the door from the right-hand side of the door-frame, in order to cleverly reduce the size of the room by half. Genius.

They also decided it would be a great idea to install the world's largest sink - so large, in fact, that it overhangs the bath by some not inconsiderable distance, thus being ideally placed for the purposes of banging your knee against it when getting in and out of the shower: 

The bathroom had no radiator, so they installed an electric heater under the bath (now there's a nice safety feature), and placed the ceiling light on a very long cord so the bare bulb nestled against the top of the shower curtain.

Readers, I can't quite believe we did it, but we put up with that bathroom for well over a year while we installed the kitchen, and transformed the garden - details coming soon! But with our wedding fast approaching (we got married in our very own Nest last summer - again, more details coming up!) and my obvious concern that our hideous bathroom wasn't quite going to co-ordinate with my beautiful vintage lace dress, our hand-sewn silk bunting, and our handmade invitations, we got stuck into that bathroom (literally, actually - two adults, two jack russells who insist on participating thoroughly in all DIY activities, and a new bath that didn't quite fit through the door didn't exactly leave us with much room to manoeuvre) and completely went to town on that bad boy!

Here are the gorgeous after photos:

I can hardly believe it's the same room. The smallest room in the house is now my favourite room - and with the underfloor heating, the dogs absolutely love it too - I often find them in there, spotted tummies pressed to the floor, luxuriating in the warmth.

Here's another before and after set:

And yes - this bathroom transformation was entirely DIY'd. You can view all the bathroom before and after photos, along with the kitchen before and afters, by checking out our photo gallery - when you flip between the photos you can really appreciate the difference!

I have tons more photos of the bathroom in progress - including the Day We Bought A Brand New Bath And Promptly Drilled Holes In It - stay tuned!