At the Bar­ras in Glas­gow, in an under­cover area behind the stalls selling tow­els, cheap clothes and Bob Mar­ley posters is the Glas­gow Antiques and Col­lect­ibles Mar­ket: a treas­ure trove (or junk yard, depend­ing on your out­look) of antique and not-quite-so-antique bits and bobs. Dis­carded dec­or­a­tions from gen­er­a­tions of Glas­gow homes  are piled high on tables, hid­den in boxes, hanging from ceil­ings and perched pre­cari­ously on wobbly shelves and while it’s unlikely you’ll find the next Antiques Road­show record breaker here, there’s def­in­itely a few dia­monds in the rough to be unearthed.

A couple of months ago I went in search of some inter­est­ing prints for the flat accom­pan­ied by my father who, des­pite liv­ing in Lon­don for most of the last twenty years, seemed to fall straight back into the Glaswe­gian swing of things upon passing under the iconic iron gates of the Bar­ras. Rifling through a huge box of prints, I stumbled across a dusty framed print of a paint­ing of Glas­gow Uni­ver­sity by Mal­colm Butts. I’d been look­ing for a nice print of the Uni­ver­sity, and while I’d con­sidered Adrian McMurchie’s illus­tra­tion of the tower, Butts’ more tra­di­tional depic­tion of the South Front seemed more fit­ting for my alma mater. I left it to Kane Snr. to haggle with the stern look­ing woman presid­ing over the stall and walked away happy after pay­ing a por­tion of the stickered price.

As happy as I was with the print itself, the huge gold frame (which my father, prob­ably cor­rectly, sur­mises is worth more than the print itself) really wasn’t my thing and found itself the first tar­get of my home improve­ment pro­ject. Armed with a col­our of spray paint whose name prac­tic­ally guar­an­tees it won’t be used in any wrong­do­ing (I don’t think there’s any streetcred to be had in car­ry­ing a can of ‘Espresso’), I set to work:

The paint doesn’t quite match the purple-brown hue the can sug­gests, which is quite for­tu­nate, and after three sep­ar­ate coats the gaudy gold is ban­ished. I need to tidy up the mount­ing a little (it’s remark­ably dif­fi­cult to get it straight), but I think over­all it’s an improvement:

When I moved into my flat just over a year ago, every­one com­men­ted on how new everything seemed: at less than three years old it still man­aged to look good with its ori­ginal coat of paint and stand­ard, builder designed décor. It was a bless­ing at a time when my ‘house’ budget was barely stretch­ing to sofas, and lux­ur­ies like paint were just a pipe-dream, but now that I’ve had time to get used to it (and time to notice that the walls are, in fact, painted magno­lia) I find myself increas­ingly want­ing to change things. Not huge things, but little pro­jects to make my mark on my sur­round­ings and make it feel a little more homely.

On the cards so far:

• Stain my post­card frames — there are cur­rently 12 of these on my wall but they don’t look up to much at the moment. I’m plan­ning to just lightly stain them so they don’t scream PINE! so much.

• Do some­thing with the frame that came with the Glas­gow Uni­ver­sity print I got at the Bar­ras. The frame is gold and very much not my scene, but it’s actu­ally quite a nice shape so hope­fully I can paint it/stain it and hang it in my bedroom.

• Fin­ish the book­case in the hall — a white Billy book­case from Ikea I’m hop­ing to make a bit more sub­stan­tial. It’s mostly done, just need to find a way to secure the top wood and find some nice wallpaper/wrapping paper for the insides.

• Tidy up my ‘new’ cof­fee table. I bought it for £35 on Gumtree and I love it, but I think it’s a little too rus­tic for my fairly mod­ern house. My plan for it at the moment is to sand it back a bit to lighten the wood, repair some of the dings and wax it to fin­ish it off. Any sug­ges­tions for other/better ways to treat it are welcome!

• Find some­thing bet­ter for my TV to sit on. It cur­rently lives on this which I still like the shape of, but the Ikea lam­in­ate looks awful next to the reclaimed wood cof­fee table. I’m won­der­ing about paint­ing it: I know the pit­falls of paint­ing lam­in­ated Ikea fur­niture, but from what I’ve read it’s pos­sible as long as you use enough primer.  But what col­our? It’s either that or buy some more reclaimed wood from Glas­gow Wood Recyc­ling and cus­tom build some­thing myself, which could prove rather chal­len­ging but would undoubtedly leave me with a bet­ter piece of fur­niture. We’ll put this in the ‘dis­tant future’ pile, shall we?

• Sort out the desk situ­ation in the study/guest bed­room. A couple of years ago I bought a desk on Bof­fer for £20 and though solid, it’s def­in­itely bar­gain base­ment stuff. That’s not to say I’m about to go out and drop a load of cash on a desk but I would like some­thing a bit nicer and more suited to the room. I briefly con­sidered buy­ing a bur­eau, but much as I would love one it’s not entirely prac­tical since I need some­where for a mon­itor. I’m toy­ing with the idea of build­ing my own desk out of salvaged lam­in­ated chip­board from my recently replaced cof­fee table — Ikea sell legs cheaply and I reckon there’s enough mater­ial there for some­thing along the lines of this stu­dio desk. Def­in­itely a major pro­ject, but I’m encour­aged to move a little quicker on this one by the old cof­fee table sit­ting tak­ing up room until I decide.

• Do all the little things I’ve been mean­ing to do: fix the skirt­ing boards (inex­plic­ably fall­ing apart), replace lounge roller blinds with vene­tian blinds, tile the bath­room floors, get some (any!) bath­room fit­tings & shelves, fix the crow­bar dam­age to the front door (the joys of buy­ing a repos­sessed house), find a rug for the bed­room and a big­ger one for the lounge, invest­ig­ate cur­tains for the bed­rooms. (I can’t believe I just quite ser­i­ously typed “invest­ig­ate cur­tains”… what has become of my life?)

• Last, but def­in­itely not least: paint the whole flat. This is dif­fi­cult, because the one and only time I’ve ever been allowed to choose my own paint col­our (my teen­age bed­room) I chose a hor­rible ter­ra­cotta that I regret­ted imme­di­ately — though admit­tedly it was a whole lot less embar­rass­ing that the black I had inten­ded to paint it. So, I think I’d just like to paint everything white. Not bril­liant white, but one of the baff­ling num­ber of other whites that seem to exist in the home dec­or­at­ing world. I have no idea where to start with that one.

I think that’s it for now. Easy, right? Hints, tips and sug­ges­tions will be grate­fully received!