Ah Home

around ours, at the mome(nt)

I hate those timber blinds. Anthony loves them, and although I've tried my very hardest to convince him to let me ditch them, he will not budge, so I'm stuck with the bloody (dusty) things!

(extra points if you've noticed our cowhide is looking a bit flasher than usual. It's a 'new' one, op-shopped for thirty bucks a couple of weeks ago. Its predecessor (the one I found on the side of the road not long after we bought this house) has been moved to our bedroom)

We are repainting the walls in this room (only two are papered. DON'T ask why! It'll stir up a hornets nest!) As I type, the first coat's drying. It's a tricky job because we have taken a leaf from Abigail Ahern* (she likes her colours dark), and chosen this:

which looks completely different on the walls. Much richer and darker.

Cutting in without getting paint on the wallpaper and trims has required the patience of a saint and the skill of an Old Master. Of which, I have neither! So far, so good though...touch wood.

pssst we are going shopping for something special for this room tomorrow, of the Danish/teak variety...To be continued.

Ficas Lyrata (Fiddle Leaf Fig) in West German planter

(those binds may be ugly, but they do make nice shadows)

Another Ficas and more detail of our plywood steps. I love those steps. We built them with the left-over bits of ply from my desk. They are wearing six coats of Tung Oil. Applied with a brush and sanded in between! Beautiful to walk on in bare feet. We are tempted to lay ply floors in the rest of this part of the house, but I think (hope!) we'll end up going with polished concrete which is a pretty good alternative (some things are worth splurging on, aren't they Anth?)

Here's a before pic

(from the real estate listing - it was not love at first sight!)

It looks much 'nicer' (and cleaner) than it did in real life too!

(there was an identical (and equally useless!) space on the other side of that wall before we pulled it down)

 

Btw, those curtains have gold cupids all over them!

And none of the windows opened or were made of proper window glass. Some of the panes, and I use that term poetically, were even broken.

Here's what it looked like sans carpet and wall, coat of white paint (no more custard Mel!), and the gap between steps patched up.

 

You can see where that wall used to be. We're stuck with the beams though, because it would cost a fortune to remove them. At first I hated them, but they've grown on me and I kind-of like them now.

We like to kid ourselves that we've got a bit of a warehouse thing going on is this part of the house (ha!). What we're trying to do is make the best of a series of bad cobbled-on extensions without going into debt in the process. 

  

Now, want to see something really ugly???

This

is our bathroom door. We have to stick a screw driver in a hole where the knob used to be (before it fell off!) to open it.

(it has a matching window! It doesn't open either)

But don't worry, it's going.

I've told Anth, it's goodbye door (and window), or goodbye me!

 

I'll show you what's behind the door another day, when I'm feeling stronger...it's pretty bad. Disgusting is a word that gets bandied around here, revolting, and (my fave) repulsive, are others.

On a happier note, here's what my Ficus are going to look like when they're all grown-up

nice eh?

pic from Decorating with Indoor Plants, A Sunset Book, published 1980.

(if you ever see old Sunset Books on your travels, grab them. The pics are great and they're full of handy info - especially if you like a bit of retro in your house and garden)

x

* Gosh I like the way she writes, and her design philosophy - basically she throws all the 'rules' out the window - I like that too (but I'm still not keeping that door!)

 

p.s. and on plywood ?