SITTING ROOM: BEFORE AND AFTER

This is the first before and after! A year ago we moved into our new house. It's a brick terrace built in about 1910. When we arrived the front room was a little dark and run down. It had unfortunately lost its fireplace which we decided not to replace in the end. It's quite a narrow room and we have a lot of stuff so we just thought make it feel small. Plus it's the perfect size for the T.V.

First, we had some shelving and cupboards built in the alcoves which fits every book we own. The cupboards are still waiting to be filled! We went a little eccentric on the door inspired by a trip to A la Ronde!

Shelves and woodwork: Crown Alliance Matt
Walls: Farrow and Ball House White Estate Emulsion
Floor: Homebase Slate Grey Silk

The curtains were given to me by my aunt and uncle who recently redecorated. The fabric could have looked a little chintzy but teamed with the other colours I think (hope) it works.

LATEST FINDS IV: DESCENT INTO KITSCH

A slight(ly huge) hiatus in blogging. Sorry about that! The house is progressing nicely and I thought I'd share a couple of lovely items recently purchased from eBay. I suspect we have passed by vintage and retro and are heading down the difficult road to full on kitsch with my latest items. Kitsch is difficult to control. I now have the overwhelming urge to fill my house with brightly coloured plastic animals and have a slight obsession with wall mounted flying birds. Oh god help me. The first, a flying saucer like fifties (?) lampshade for the spare room.

Then we have THE BEST LAMP EVER. We found the spun fibre glass lampshade in the loft and already had it on a very dodgy base...but then perhaps this new one is even dodgier? 

Who couldn't love dried flowers and a shell suspended to perfection in resin?

Of course a shopping spree wouldn't be complete without another broken vintage clock. This is a westclox cream enamelled metal case with curved glass, complete with originally complicated winding mechanism. It tick tocks so we keep it wound down.

Happy Hunting!

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ALL SAINTS CHURCH YORK

A few months ago I travelled up to York for my brother's wedding and whilst there he gave me a tour of his latest archaeological training dig location. If, like me, you can't quite bring yourself to pay £10-15 to see York Minster perhaps All Saints Church is for you! Although small it has a lovely tiled floor that has been painstakingly reconstructed and some stunning medieval stained glass. A bonus is that the dig is sometimes open to the public and the best finds are on display in the church!

The tiles were copied from ones found on site and were made in Bulgaria, the only place they could find the techniques involved still being used. The result is beautiful. Here you can see an original tile that was recently found on the archaeological dig at the church.

The colours in the stained glass are wonderful and I'm tempted to start redecorating my house (despite only just finishing) in rich blood red, royal blue and golden yellow!

The window above depicts the apocalypse including stars falling, everybody dead and the world on fire. Charming!

For more history see their website (All Saints Church North Street) and for all you time team geeks check out the archaeological dig twitter feed (Archaeology Live Twitter). Some of their most exciting finds are on view at the moment.

VINTAGE LACE AND EMBROIDERY COLLECTION

I should probably start trying harder with my titles! They are rather matter of fact. I should try being whimsical or witty but I'm not sure I'm either of those things. I only come up with naff ones like 'Racy Lace' (which would attract people interested in VERY different things) or 'Embrace Embroidery'. Ugh. If you have a better title for this post please comment and I'll change it to the best suggestion!

I thought I would share some of my growing lace and embroidery (and crochet and linen etc.) collection. The majority was bought when I was 15 at auction. It has since been stuck in a box at the bottom of the wardrobe. I can't bear having it hidden away any more so have chosen a few to put around the house. My house is starting to look more and more like my great grandmother's but hey, she probably had great taste.

A little crumpled and delicate but my sister says if a pin the doilies out on a board (like they do when making them?) it'll straighten it out.  

My FAVOURITE is the pansies :)

LONG LIVE THE DOILY

LATEST FINDS III: IN THE PINK

Life has been totally crazy recently hence the lack of posts. End of summer term always tends to consume what little time left over. I have been meaning to share these three items for a while. I definitely would NOT consider myself girly in any way, but I seem to be gradually turning my bedroom into a pink boudoir! Next post I will have painted it soft pink and bought a mirrored dressing table complete with feather boa flung over the top and Martini glass on the side. I've always wanted one of those fantastic vintage gauzy dressing gowns and slip on high-heeled slippers. They even make rollers look glamorous! Okay, perhaps I am secretly a little girly :)

So, first we have a thirties pink glass lamp shade. After falling in love with my blue one (Latest Finds II) I couldn't help getting another. Then comes the slightly crazy bedside cabinet. I was assured that a crazy person has not attacked it with spray gold paint and this is how it would've been originally. I've got used to it and now quite like the gold.

Finally, one of my all time favourite items in the whole world. This has been my bedside lamp since I was about fourteen and had pride of place in my beautiful childhood home. A home I miss like mad now so this is even more precious. The only thing I haven't managed to do is find a fitting lampshade for this glorious base. That's next on my list.

Oh how I love you lamp!

LATEST FINDS II

Matte paint looks so beautiful, unfortunately it is also extremely impractical. But thankfully that just means I get to buy some awesome finger plates off ebay to hide the greasy finger marks :) I think they are 1930s enamelled tin. 

My little brother got married this week! I turned to ebay again for the present. Originally I looked at silver photo frames but I can't imagine it would ever have been polished so I settled on this rather brilliant deco-style one. Perfect for their first wedding photo.

I'm getting round to decorating my dining room. I have decided 'Parma Grey' Farrow and Ball paint for the walls so when I saw this I thought it'd be perfect! I love the pattern and shape. 

Happy Hunting!

RESTORING A MINTON TILE FLOOR

Exciting news!

We have bought ourselves a house! We decided to buy a doer upper (is that how it's spelled?). A few of my posts will therefore be about this. At first I worried I was deviating from the subject of my blog and then found this article 'At Home with the Georgians' about the Georgians' obsession with home improvement and interior design. Therefore it is actually essential to my blog!

I originally thought my new house had a Minton tiled hallway. It turns out it has a partial one :( but hey ho that's life. I made the most of what I had and set about restoring the adhesive infused tiles and concrete. It took a LONG time, but it is definitely worth it.

The adhesive was difficult to remove. We tried tile cleaner, boiling water and vinegar and found that the most effective was boiling water. It softened the adhesive just enough to scrape it off the tiles with a paint scraper like this one Amazon Stanley Paint Scraper. Then Mr F dealt with concrete using a steel brush, boiling water and elbow grease. It took HOURS so we cancelled our gym membership :)

There were a few holes in the concrete that we filled in. The recipe for concrete is shown below (approach it like an experimental bake). I did not use any tools when filling the hole. HANDS ARE THE BEST TOOL!

RECIPE

Serves as many as you like - just use the same ratio!

• 1 cup water
• 2 cups cement
• 3 cups builder's sand

1. Mix the dry ingredients well in a bucket with a stick/spoon or anything you don't mind getting covered in concrete.

2. Add the water a little at a time until the concrete is 'workable'. Mine looked like porridge (oatmeal) and seemed to work fine.

The last thing we did was paint the concrete and seal the tiles. We used an ordinary white wall paint as a base coat and then a mixture of tile red and terracotta Ronseal Diamond Hard Floor Paint (to match the colour of the tiles). We used HG tile cleaner before sealing with Vitrex Tile Sealer.

Here are the finished results!

Happy Experimenting!