Pass the chair

My mum bought this chair second-hand as a student in London in the late '60s. It was a leather armchair then and apparently she planned on reupholstering it but never got round to it. When she told me she was throwing it out - she had literally dumped it in the back garden - I said I'd sell it on ebay for her. But when I saw it, I felt I needed to rescue it myself. It is not in the greatest nick.

It could look amazing with a really brightly coloured floral fabric. I love these from Bluebelle Grey.

I want them all! 
I adore these designs by Zoe Barker 

 How fabulous is this deer?

Or this one from Designers Guild

There is something quite hideous but also strangely appealing about this one also from Designers Guild.

Maybe not.
These delphiniums on yellow by Harlequin are rather cheerful.

Or something more retro. How gorgeous are these Josef Frank fabrics in Ben Pentreath's London flat?

I am in love! 
This fabric with the pomegranates by Harlequin is not dissimilar.

Or this large leaf design from Harlequin again.

Not as colourful, but I love these ferns from Sanderson.

Decisions, decisions. I have a niggling feeling that I may have taken this chair on with the same intentions my mum had forty plus years ago and that they may remain just that - ideas. Maybe another forty years down the line little P will rescue this chair from me full of plans to revive it. It could just become a family tradition of pass the chair. Why not!?

Bathroom revamp: we can wash again!

We are almost there with the new bathroom. It feels like we've had so many delays. M injured his foot and wasn't able to do anything for a few weeks, so the plan to whip out the old bath and put in the new one soon after, didn't quite come off. But it's all in place now and looking great.

Look at that neat plumbing!

We were looking for a sleek and simple contemporary light to go over the mirror but could we find anything under £100? Oh no! We finally settled on the IKEA skepp light (still not that cheap at £47). It looked okay in the picture, but in real life, my goodness, it is huge! It looks like some alien spaceship has landed on the bathroom wall. 

I am not in love with it at all but we just can't afford to overspend. We still have another bathroom and the kitchen to do once this is out of the way!

Bathroom revamp: back to black

We did it. We went for the black wall. I hummed and hahed all week until M told me to hurry up and make a decision because he wanted to finish the tiling. I made a series of frantic phone calls to local suppliers. They were mostly able to get us the tiles within a couple of days but M was adamant he wanted to get to work right away. Topps Tiles were the only company to have them in stock, ready to collect, so we went with them, even though they weren't the cheapest.They are a slightly elongated black gloss tile, no bevelling.

I love them! 

I have found myself looking around everywhere to see where I can introduce more black. I feel like have rediscovered a colour. How could I let black slip out of my life? It is so dramatic and moody and chic. White suddenly seems boring and grey is just wishy washy in comparison. I am all enthused about getting black ceiling lamps, hanging a blackboard in the kitchen and even painting the summer house black - oooh and I could plant black roses too!

Take a look at these amazing black interiors and exteriors.

I love the yellow window frames of this black timber house in this photo by Helen Ogbourn.

Black walls and a black ceiling in this fabulous house at 24 Park Av.

I love the giant blackboard in this Australian cafe.

Hot pink and mustard against charcoal.

Welcome back black!

Bathroom revamp: tiles

M is going great guns with the bathroom. He has removed one of the doors - we knocked two small rooms into one - and blocked it up with hardboard. All the remnants of the old bathroom are now bagged up in a very messy pile by the garden gate waiting for the skip. After what seems like endless patching and prepping the first tiles are up. Woo hoo!

I had a slight wobble when I first saw the tiles as I'd imagined them going up in a brick-style pattern rather than a grid. Then I started to wonder whether they should be placed vertically rather than horizontally. Anyway they are up and M has done an amazing job, so I kept my uncertainties to myself - mainly. All in all it was better that he just cracked on with it because I would have agonized for days about correct tile placement.

I did start worrying again about our overall plan, that rather than looking simple and stylish our all white bathroom could end up looking cold and clinical. I had yet another flip through my mountain of interiors magazines and found this...

It belongs to a family who live in a bungalow in Sydney and I absolutely love it. The rest of the house is gorgeous too! It is the first bathroom that I've seen that I could actually imagine working for us. And amazingly their white wall tiles are pretty similar to ours.

M liked it too which I knew he would. He is a sucker for black. So now we have to decide what to do. The black gloss tiles are more expensive than our white ones. £40 per metre for the black ones compared to £7.99 per metre for the white tiles (and we got a further discount on that!) We would only need enough to cover one wall though. Another issue I'd not considered is that black tiles show up water stains and would need more tlc to keep them looking shiny. Arrggghhh, decisions!

M says he is happy either way. He is leaving the back wall until last and I have a week to decide whether we stay all white or add a contrast wall.

Bathroom revamp: gutted

Things have to look worse before they look better, right?

M has been holed up in the bathroom every spare minute clad in his beanie hat and a light sprinkling of dust chipping away at the old tiles.

He left the bath in until the very last minute so our shower-phobic kids could still use it. I did manage to coax them into the en suite shower and first time round it all went amazingly well. They thought the water was tickely and it was fun. Second time around the novelty had worn off and they both screamed blue murder whilst being washed. I am skipping nightly washes - just can't face the agro - and washing them only when they look visibly grimy ie when they are caked head to toe in suncream, melted ice cream and sand from the beach.

When we finally got around to removing the bath, it weighed a ton and we couldn't lift it even with help from his father. M ended up smashing it to pieces so we could get it out the house in several pieces. It was a real shame because although it was old and knackered, it was a decent quality enamel bath, far better than anything we can afford to buy.

We've finally chosen and ordered our tiles and bathroom suite - large plain white tiles from Wickes and the Positano bathroom suite also from Wickes. 

It is useless trying to make a choice online as they all look exactly the same and you can't judge the dimensions or the quality. We had a wander round the store and fortunately both liked pretty much the same thing. The one we finally settled on was boxed up so we couldn't actually see it but it was the only one that ticked all of our boxes - high, deep basin, unfussy design, sleek(!) loo (some are really odd bulbous shapes). We got a pretty decent discount as we bought two sinks, two loos and extra tiles for when we get around to the en suite. I have a feeling they may sit in the garage for a while.

Bathroom revamp: destruction

Things have to look worse before they look better, right? I'm hoping that's true. Big M set to work with a vengeance on the bathrooms, well bathroom as two are now knocked into one. This is what it looked like before he attacked the partition wall with a sledge hammer.

Loo on one side, bath and sink on the other. Did you spot my inadequate attempt to make the bathroom look more homely with a pretty shower curtain? Didn't work. The children and I shipped out for a couple of days to my parent's house, so M could raise up a dust storm on his own. Little M has asthma and there was no way I wanted to risk an attack.

Yay! Here he is breaking through to the other side!

As well as knocking down the wall, he pulled up the floor, removed both radiators and capped off the flow and return pipes, took the light switches off the wall and set up a temporary switch in the hall. Oh and he kindly put the camera on timer so he could record the wall coming down. This is how things looked when we got back.

As soon as I saw the room I instantly dropped all my plans for a new layout. Far too much work and the existing set up works just fine. M is going to leave the bath in until the very last minute as the kids hate showers. They don't like water on their heads or faces. You can imagine how much fun hair washing is in our house! At least the weather is good right now. Maybe I can hose them down in the garden...?

Bathroom revamp: dreaming

The truth is I am not really a bathroom kinda girl. Check out my pinterest boards and you’ll see 131 kitchens at the last count and only 6 bathrooms. There a few more tucked away on my decorate board but only because I thought the tiles had potential for a kitchen renovation. I don’t dream of recreating some luxury spa experience I had in Thailand. I hate massages. I’m not into beauty treatments. My favourite product is nivea soft because it does the job and it's cheap. I see the bathroom as a very functional room, not somewhere to linger. The truth is I am finding it difficult to visualise what my dream bathroom could look like.

I do however have a list of criteria; clean, simple, light, contemporary, inexpensive and no subway tiles. I am not a fan. It is more an association thing than a style prejudice. My husband loves them but then he hasn’t spent great swathes of his life travelling up and down the Northern Line. I can’t imagine anything worse than relaxing in a hot bath glancing at your tiles and suddenly being transported to the stink, heat and airlessness of the underground at rush hour.

The reality is we have almost no money to spend on this project and I am slightly fearful that if our design choices are too simple, the bathroom could end up looking purely functional verging on institutional. I prised myself away from the many beautiful kitchens seducing me online and trawled about for some bathrooms to get excited about. And guess what? I did get excited. How amazing is that flamingo above the bath? Only for most of these bathrooms you would need a pretty hefty budget and to live in some amazing high-ceilinged period house chock full of original features. So that rules out our boxy practical 1970s house then. Still I found plenty to inspire me. (All images are credited below where possible). Which ones do you like?

Images from top to bottom:

Charlie's bathroom

Sydney home of Jodi and Brendan York

originally pinned from Pretty Plum Sugar
Chic Design Investments
Bad pinterest link. Can't find original source.

Made a mano

Can't find this last one either. Let me know if you do!

Bathroom revamp: meet the bathrooms

When we moved into this house almost two years ago, top of our to do list was to get rid of all the weird textured metallic wallpaper and paint every room white. The next job was to rip out the bathrooms. “There is no way I can live with those bathrooms for even a month,” I seem to remember saying. Well two years on we have the white walls but the family bathroom, en suite and downstairs loo are just the same. Okay we tore up the carpet in the loo and replaced it with lino when the smell of stale pee became overpowering but otherwise not much has changed.

I am guessing from the swamp green floral tiles that this bathroom was put in sometime during the 80s. It is dark, dull and depressing and never feels properly clean. 

 

The family bathroom is split into two rooms – bath and sink in one room and loo in the other. It's a ridiculously inconvenient layout so we are going to knock down the dividing wall and block up one of the doorways to create one big light-filled room.

Then we may swing the bath around so instead of being wedged in against the short wall, it runs along the external wall under the windows. And we desperately need some storage. At the moment all our shampoos, shower gels and bubble baths are crowded along the windowsill.

We are on an extremely tight budget in the sense that we really don’t have any money to spend at all. Big M is going to do all the work himself on weekends and after work – well that’s the idea anyway. We are already looking out for bathroom suites and tiles that don't break the bank but are still relatively stylish. In a dream world I'd be going to made a mano for tiles but I think the reality is more Wickes and Topps Tiles.

Wish us luck!

New year, new house

We are not moving but I am harnessing my new year energy and enthusiasm to completely blitz the house. We were away Christmas and New Year and when we got home and I walked in through the front door I thought everything looked a bit drab and bleugh. The banisters still need painting, those cheap brown doors are not getting any prettier and the bookcase in the hallway seems to have accumulated even more clutter.

Being away for a week really gives you a fresh perspective on your home. All those little niggles and faults that you’ve become accustomed to leap out at you again demanding attention.

So time for big changes. I’ve signed up for the January Cure at Apartment Therapy to give me added momentum. The first task is to assess your problem areas room by room. It was pretty disheartening. I had about ten things on my list for the entryway. The kitchen and bathrooms basically need ripping out and doing over. The study is a MESS. It goes on.

What I did figure out was the clutter hotspots like the kids’ artwork stacked up on top of the stereo and the pile of books and magazines gathering dust in our bedroom are there because we lack decent storage. So while I would prefer too spend money on cute cushions or new bedlinen, what we really need are more bookcases and cupboards.

Big M has agreed to tackle the bathrooms and paint the stairs. We are all set for a major makeover.

In the meantime a vase of fresh flowers makes everything look instantly better.