Sitting room back in action

It’s been an up and down journey for our sitting room.

sitting room before we moved in

When we first moved in we essentially lived in this room alone. It was a bit drab but it had heating and the kitchen at the time was on this floor and accessed from this room.

Then we had to move out for the plumbing and re-wiring to take place.

And then of course the ceiling collapsed which we have only recently had fixed. Plus we had to give the fireplace some serious attention.

And now we have finally got to a point where we can give it a lick of paint. Ultimately I think we’ll wallpaper this room, but we wanted to give it a quick fix. So we bought some Dukes Blue by Crown Period Paint and this is how it’s looking now.

You’ll notice it’s not exactly finished. Despite the potentially nice floorboards we’ve decided to carpet this room and have chosen a very neutral colour which we’ll have rugs on top of. We just want one room at least that is a bit cosy.

You can see how this room used to have a large rug in the centre with stained boards round the outside. We’re going for a kind of modern version of that arrangement.

To ready the room for this Klaus has made a new hearth area. We now need to buy a new grate and get the chimney swept. The carpet is on order and after the sad demise of our old sofa we have also ordered a new sofa bed.

I also can’t stand these dull curtains, they came with the house. They are actually pretty odd as they come in a total of seven sections. Presumably there’s some logic to this but I can’t work it out.

But curtains are so expensive that like the others in the house we’ll just have to live with them for now. Plus if we are going to wallpaper we’ll have to think clearly about what we’ll replace them with.

There’s not exactly enough furniture for this room but adding all the extra bits we’ll now need is fun enough and something we can take our time over. But this time next week it will be a fully functioning room again, which if we wanted to we could just leave.

But we won’t…

 

 

A partial garden office

Some time ago we posted plans for our garden, but at the time we knew we were some way off. We couldn’t justify spending time outside when there’s so much needing our attention inside. However much of my art equipment is currently stored downstairs and I have a nomadic existence in the house, having to move from room to room as work is happening around me.

 

art supplies stored in basement

 

We hope to start working downstairs soon. That means I will I have to keep moving the pieces I am working on and my “stock” as well, not to mention all the boxed up books, utensils etc that are down there.

With that in mind we decided to press on with the garden office plans so I can move all my art related belongings out there and have a permanent place to work.

We had a garden office in our last house. We had a much smaller garden then and so we had the office designed to fit our space and made and installed by a specialist company. It was great but to honest when we saw how easy it was to install we realised we could have done much of it ourselves.

And so this time we chose a ready-made office that you construct yourself. After much internet searching we chose Dunster House. This also had the advantage of being much a much cheaper option. The office arrived earlier this week. Klaus was there to meet it and when he saw the lorry he thought they were delivering several offices, but it turned out it was all for us.

We (well I say “we” I mean Klaus) have partially constructed the office in our original planned location – halfway down the garden and I (and I mean “I”) primed it with some wood preservative so it wasn’t ruined by the October weather.

However we have reconsidered. Our neighbours started this off by expressing some “deep concerns regarding their Georgian view” – a little odd considering we back onto a 80s housing estate and 70s school, but there we know what they mean. However that made us think about moving it to the back more seriously. We’d avoided it because there was a huge mound of earth at the end which needed levelling and we couldn’t face it. But having the office where it currently is does cut off much of the garden and make it seem much smaller. So change of plan, agree with neighbours, lets move it.

Given the amount of earth we needed to shift we knew we needed some outside brawn so we placed an ad for the job on mybuilder.com where you describe your project and builders or in this case landscape gardeners quote for the project. The next day we had a reasonable quote and the day after they were round making it happen.

There’s a lot of earth so we will probably end up with the garden on two, now flat levels. We have found a watering can, part of a bed, some kind of metal planter and many many bricks.

The next steps are to partially dismantle the office and move it back to its new spot. Then shape the garden around it and paint the office some more interesting colours and get settled in.  So we’re about halfway through.

Uncovering the fireplace and recovering the ceiling

As the weather turns colder we’ve been thinking about getting our fireplaces sorted. We need a complete new grate and surround for the dining room fire and for the sitting room we have a surround but need a new grate to make it useable. 

The sitting room fireplace is in a classic Georgian design and we’ll probably get something similar for downstairs. However the one in the sitting room is covered in thick white paint. When we bought the house it was mentioned to us that this was a marble fireplace underneath. So we’ve had a quick look using a heat gun to peel away a bit of the paint. 

What’s was really surprising at this stage was that it seemed to be two colours. A normal pale tone and what looked like a lime green outer section.

Removing the paint with a heat gun was probably not the best idea from a health point of view as we don’t know how old it is (lead is a worry) plus the smell is truly terrible. So we ordered some specialist products to take the paint off and fully reveal what lies beneath. You have to keep it under clingfilm to keep the moisture in. 

and it worked. 

This was the results after leaving the paste on for one week. A few bits still on but we can sort those and the lime green has strangely vanished. We’re so pleased this has turned out well as replacing this like for like would have been really costly.

 Now, still in the same room but looking up.

You may remember this disaster where the ceiling collapsed.

Here’s the original post about what happened. We also had that repaired this week.

Here’s an action shot.

Nice technique.

And the ceiling all done afterwards – original features intact.

And so now we’re in a position to start decorating this room. We think we’re going with carpet in here, but otherwise we have no firm ideas.

Chalking it up

In our last house we had a small section of wall painted with blackboard paint. The idea was to have a shopping list / to do list on there. In reality we used it to draw silly pictures and to keep a tally of who preferred The Holy Grail to The Big Lebowski (Holy Grail had it). Since as I’m sure you can tell this was so useful we decided to recreate it. This time we have used panels on the folding doors which we can use to section off the kitchen from what will be the dinning room.

from the dinning end of the room looking at back at some of our temporary kitchen

from the kitchen end looking towards the front of the house

There’s one single door and a two panel folding side. We have them open all the time at the moment but they’re really handy as it means you can easily create another distinct room. 

In other news we paid a visit to Ikea recently to buy kitchen shelves as mentioned here. We also impulse bought a rug for our bedroom. Considering we spent about 30 seconds considering it I think it works quite well and makes the room feel cosy.

I’ve posted some shots of our room on here before but I didn’t properly include an image that showed how we have our clothes. We don’t have any storage for them at the moment and so they are on open rails. Given that we have so much else to do in the house I think they’ll stay like this for some time. Also we just haven’t made up our minds how to finally arrange this room.

  

So thank you once again Ikea.

Kitchen update

This weekend we paid a visit to Ikea. We had to pick up a few things and also collected a few things we didn’t really intend to buy as seems to be the way with Ikea. 

We were mainly looking for some shelves to go around our cooker. We’re quite pleased with the look of this area after going through all this….

Seriously dusty and surprisingly time-consuming. And so we want to make the most of it. On the cheap of course. 

We found some inexpensive small shelves of the right size. They were £2.50 each and a bit dull but we bought six took them home and I carefully painted them all Farrow and Ball Cinder Rose. 

I’ve suggested pink again and again after cutting out these images from some magazines.  

And finally we’re in agreement to go ahead and that it works. 

We’ve using them for the ingredients we use the most. It looks a bit like we’re playing shop. We also added a metal bar to hang pots from, so they’re always in easy reach and because they take up so much space. 

And we inch forwards a bit more. 

Ingestre Pavillion

I’ve been on another short break this time in the UK. We stayed along with some friends in an unusual property near Stafford which belongs to the Landmark Trust. The Landmark Trust only has quirky properties on its books and the money from the holiday rentals goes towards the upkeep. Ours had a very imposing facade but actually a much newer and modest property behind making it quite cosy for a few days and probably brilliant in the winter or for Christmas.

Here are some shots of the exterior and the fantastic view. 

And some interior images. The sitting room is the most striking and has a balcony giving great views from above. I really like the strong red they’ve used. 

 

The bedrooms were simple but also really attractive. 

Not keen on the 80s paint effect on the walls though. 

And then some nice touches and details around the property. 

A bit of an advert for The Landmark Trust.

The house was very beautiful and they have many more interesting places to try. I think we’ll try and stay in some more at some point.

Channeling my inner little old lady

This project has given Klaus much amusement as it’s so twee and apparently doesn’t fit with my image but I have been trying out a bit of embroidery for the first time. I bought some plain coasters from Zara in the sale and just started out.

To make it easier you can mark on the pattern or just doodle onto the material with a fabric pencil. I did have a starter book so I could work out some different stitches, but all the ones I have used are really easy.

I’ve done  three and have one to finish. Since they are a bit slapdash they take no time at all, just an evening in front of the TV.

And here they are doing their thing with more flowers but this time the real thing.

In the back here you can see a new candle stick holder. It’s quite a clever one I bought in Stockholm which has the matches stored inside.

Once the matches are slotted in you can still strike a match on the side of the box. I think it’s pretty neat. A kind of matches version of those mugs you can get with a slot to put your biscuit in.

There’s no doubt these coasters are pretty cheesy but I’ve quite enjoyed working on them and it’s a very easy way to add a bit of interest to a cheap / bland piece of fabric.

I have an idea for a set of napkins and placemats with the faces of our most recent Prime Ministers on them, one on each. I haven’t started yet but I have collected some images so we’ll see if it works out.

Swedish Style

I’ve just come back from a long weekend in Stockholm with some friends. I knew it would be a great design destination but we genuinely saw great style pretty much everywhere we went.

From neat touches just on the street.

To pretty much every cafe we went into.

These tiles are quite similar to some I had been considering for our bathroom but were ultimately too pricey.

It all felt very effortless as and though were you Swedish you just wouldn’t notice that much.

This picture was just in a clothes shop. I think it’s actually a photo printed onto chipboard, but I thought it was really effective. And probably not that hard to get done. 

But what I really noticed was the range and options in terms of light fittings. They feel very very samey here sometimes but the following images are either lights from antique / second-hand shops or in cafes, restaurants and bars we went to. 

We saw a lot in a similar style to the light fitting in our sitting room, which was pretty pleasing. 

And if all that is a bit to tasteful how about an owl with glowing red eyes? I admit I was very tempted.

We didn’t really seek out any furniture or antique shops these were more ones we came by so I think it would be well worth another visit.

An evening in

Since the ceiling fell in upstairs in the sitting room we’ve been forced to have a re-jig. We have moved our remaining settee downstairs and the fatally injured one out the front ready for the final trip – to the dump. 

The dogs seem to be carrying out a survey to find the best place to snooze. 

This is the settee that we really need to re-upholster. We bought it for very little in an antiques shop in Rye but just haven’t got round to it. Plus the cost of having something beautifully upholstered is way more than the settee cost. You can do these things yourself – I made the red headboard in our bedroom. But in this case I think we need a professional job. When we find the final home in the house for this settee we’ll make a decision about the look and get it done. 

This chair we bought years ago in Greenwich market. Klaus is pleased as it is starting to look a bit worn. The rug is a simple one from Ikea.

The fireplace is still empty. The slightly ridiculous dogs’ bed is tucked in here and they seem to like it.

Waiting for the dust to settle

Yesterday we had a long conversation about the ceiling in our sitting room. There were cracks in the ceiling plaster when we moved in and we knew it was an issue. We looked at the floor from above to check it was the plaster rather than the whole floor which it was. With that in mind and on the basis that the plaster had been up for the best part of two hundred years, two world wars (and one world cup) it was on the list of things to fix “some time next year”‘. Non-urgent.

Then this evening it fell in.

I was just about to go up and watch some TV but thought I’d go into the garden with the dogs first. Otherwise this would have landed on my head. 

As you can see the sofa is now an ex-sofa. 

Everything else seems like dust damage only. And there’s a lot of dust which is partly why we hadn’t looked at this before. 

Fortunately the cornicing looks OK. 

We hadn’t done anything to this room yet so it’s not like it’s ruined all our hard work, but it’s not exactly ideal. Now we just have to figure out the best way to fix it.