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This post was rather inpired by Lauren, over at A Typical Atypical, who recently blogged about money and budgeting in her Rags to Riches post. It’s a subject near and dear to my heart, as I’m sure the world and its wife knows1 by now, but Lauren’s post inspired me to look at it from a new perspective.
With credit-crunchitis in full swing, we have all felt the need to tighten our belts a notch or two, and most of the time we look at budgeting in much the same way as we do dieting: with a sense of obligation and doing what we must and very little enthusiasm for the task, which probably accounts for why, as with dieting, we tend to break after a while and have a little splurge.
I chose to give up a well paid job, work fewer hours for a lower wage and I’m happy with my choice because it’s given me freedom to do the things that I’ve wanted to do and so my choice to budget is equally my choice and I’m enjoying what I’m doing. Then, it occurred to me that there was something perhaps a little unusual in ENJOYING budgeting and I began to consider why it was that I find budgeting and being thrifty enjoyable.
Largely, I find the experience particularly creative. That sounds unusual, but it is without question the right word. I couldn’t deny that it’s occasionally difficult and juggling bills can be an issue but the thought and creativity that goes into finding alternatives to purchasing the expensive things you want can be a very exciting and creative process, and very often, the sense of pride that comes with the solution outstrips any retail thrill and your pride and delight in it is renewed every time you see it.
My current example would be my curtains. I searched high and low for a relatively cheap pair of curtains from somewhere like John Lewis or Next that suited what I wanted for the cottage but nowhere could I find exactly what I wanted. So I looked at getting curtains custom made and realised that I couldn’t afford that as an option either as 3 sets of curtains would set me back well over a £1,000.
So I was left with the options saved over a thousand pounds by making them myself just adds to that.of buying curtains that I didn’t really like and customising them or buying some fabric, overcoming my fear of sewing something so vast and unwieldy and trying to make them myself. Being foolhardy and a little creative, I decided that I wanted the perfect curtains and I was going to make them myself if it killed me.
So I bought the fabric and lining for a fraction of the cost of a pair of curtains, looked up instructions on the web and got cracking. It has been, in turn, terrifying and vastly rewarding. I’ll happily admit that the first time I picked up my fabric and sewing machine, I was absolutely petrified:
- What if I got it all wrong?
- What if it looked awful?
- How the hell did you use a sewing machine properly?
Memories of tangled lumps of fabric and an irate sewing mistress at school lurked at the back of my mind as I considered my new project, so I sat down with a cup of tea and considered my reservations. What if I got it all wrong? Well, what if I did? It wasn’t going to be the end of the world, it was just a pair of curtains! Step by step – what I was doing was essentially sewing two rectanles of fabric together – not so difficult. To make it easier, I was using striped fabric, so essentially I had built in rulers (woo). So far so good. I was breathing a bit easier. So, I didn’t have to start sewing straight away, I could mock it all up first: iron the creases, pin and tack where I would later stitch and it looked alright.
So, what if I got it all wrong once I started stitching and it ended up looking all lumpy like my stitchwork at school? I was introduced by a friend to the magic of the quicker unpicker and I decided that if worst came to worst and my first attempt looked awful, I could always unpick it and start again. Reassuring. So far so good and here comes the scary bit. The sewing maching was looming in front of me, looking scary and complicated, with seemingly infinite number of stitches and tightness. How was I supposed to know what to use? I decided to stick with the default settings until I was more sure of myself, which turned out pretty well and step by step the curtains started to take shape. I checked them at every stage to monitor my progress (and see if I needed to redo anyof them but each stage seemed to yield positive results, which boosted my confidence no end.
My first pair of curtains are now lying over the kitchen door, waiting for the header tape (the bit you stick the hooks in) to be applied before I give them a final iron and hang them for the very first time. Nothing I ever buy will rival the sense of pride I have in that one set of curtains, and knowing that I have saved hundreds of pounds in the making just adds to the pleasure.
After trying to train myself into a more frugal mindset for the last few months, I surprised myself on a meander around town this morning. I’d lost my makeup case and wanted a new one. Just a little thing to cart the bare essentials around with me. It was one of those shopping trips where nothing quite fit the bill. The affordable ones were generally a bit tacky and the nicer ones were waaaayy out of my price range. In my previous mindset, I’d probably have settled for one I wasn’t mad about and paid the extra but today I had the make-do-and-mend angel on my shoulder, reminding me that it wouldn’t take more than an hour or so to make one myself using some of the lovely fabrics I have at home for a fraction of the price and yet again end up with something unique and perfect. So that’s what I shall do.
I have the same reaction to my clothes now. When I am bored of an old v neck top, I sew a bit of coloured lace into the V, or decorate the V and sleeves in a bit of lace, broderie anglaise or beading. Voila, a pretty much brand new top for next to nothing, and I know that nobody will be wearing the same as me!
It is a liberating realisation to know that I am not restricted to owning what I am told to buy at the shops, but that the only restriction on me is my imagination … and I haven’t even come close to plumbing the depths of that yet.
So I’m off to finish my curtains and have a cup of tea. I will be posting pictures of my new curtains as soon as I have hung them up. Wish me luck.
August 10, 2009
An acquaintance popped round earlier on this week, bearing as a gift, a bottle of plonk, which has rather inspired the musings for this post.
Contrary to its title, this post is less about drinking and more about abstinence, for I personally am not a big drinker. To those who knew me at University, this may trigger a moment or two of hilarity but it is nonetheless the truth. I don’t have a personal problem with alcohol, the drinking of it doesn’t upset me and I’m happy enough to have a glass if one is plonked in front of me, but truthfully, I’d probably rather have a cup of tea.
During my formative years, as we have all done, I experimented with alcohol, found my limits and occasionally exceeded them with less than desirable results. Somehow, over the years, it just stopped being a part of my life. I’m not a solitary drinker so I have always tended to keep the drink for presents or when I have guests and as someone who lives alone (well to all intents and purposes until I get my new lodger) I simply got into a habit of drinking fruit juice, tea or whatever else when I fancied something to drink, rather than reaching for the plonk.
That has its upsides. Drinking, for me, doesn’t have the associations it has for many of my age group – of relaxation and recreation, or of solace after a hard day and so I tend to enjoy what I do drink, however occasionally, on its own merits.
I find the current culture of drinking for the end result (getting drunk) rather than for the taste and experience of what you’re drinking completely alien. If you’ve ever been the sober one amongst a seething mass of drunks, it really can alter your perceptions of the human race, or indeed a few episodes of Booze Britain tends to have the same effect. I have no problems with the occasionally tipsy, particularly the slightly shambling but always amenable type, but what I can’t fathom is how from it being acceptable to be occasionally tipsy but always civil, it has become the norm to be loud, lairy, falling all over the place, vomiting copiously and generally creating an unpleasant effect on those around you.
As I was pondering, I thought I’d have a meander through some articles on binge drinking and a thread of comments particularly caught my eye. After some discussion about the weekly limits for men and women, somebody commented that as a woman, that meant that you could only safely drink one standard (175ml) glass of wine a night and that was ridiculous. It particularly caught my attention because my initial reaction was to question why exactly it was ridiculous.
I have quite often found, if going out to dinner with friends (and most of my friends are not antisocial or big drinkers) or colleagues, I am by far and away the slowest drinker amongst them. I rarely accept a top up (because I’m that much slower a drinker) and upon occasion I get a gentle ribbing for ‘nursing’ a drink all night, and I always have a couple of glasses of water with it. It’s all in good humour and luckily for me, my friends know me and would never be the sort of people to pressure me into drinking more. They know my limits as well as I do and accept them as much as they accept me. It’s not a requirement for a good time.
That said even I, at times, feel a pressure to be more like other people and perhaps stretch to that extra glass. I felt ever so slightly guilty for being a bit of a stick in the mud but when you think about it, there’s nothing to feel guilty about. I drink in moderation, know and stick to my limits and enjoy what I drink. That doesn’t seem in the least ridiculous to me.
July 31, 2009
A word in your ear, dear readers? Thanking you kindly.
It has recently come to my attention, that I am at last becoming a grown up, or a least that is how I appear to my contemporaries and the public at large. We’ll perhaps adress my inner workings another time. There are certain characteristics that seem to have developed in my life since morphing from a ‘youth’ to an adult, and one of those characteristics is the one I’d like to talk about today: personal responsibility.
Personal responsibility seems, much like common sense, to be one of those things that you assume everyone has until you are rudely proven wrong; as the universe saw fit to inform me by blowing an exceedingly large rasperry at me recently. Ppppfffffttttttt!
For those unfamiliar with the concept, we’ll start at the beginning with the foundations of personal responsibility, the basic building blocks of it, if you prefer. The keystone, for me at least, is consideration. Indeed for some, we are already jumping the gun. Consideration involves thinking about other people. Yes indeed. A tricky and foreign concept to many but a skill necessary for a harmonious existence (although if you’re one of the people who seem to rub along fine without it, you probably don’t care and obliviously leave trails of angry and frustrated people in your wake. Jolly good for you.).
It is a small thing, reader, that takes a mere moment but it requires us to use our brains (however large or small) to consider that other people exist and also consider how our actions impact on them. It’s a tricky one I’ll grant you but one that ought to be mastered perhaps by … say … the age of five. If you’re a latecomer to the notion, however, you might want to apply yourself to a practical excercise such as monitoring your actions for a day and trying to think of how this might affect the people around you. The next step is to alter your actions so that you affect people in a positive way and not a negative way, so add an extra column to your list from the previous excercise and in it, write what you could do to minimise the impact of your actions on those around you.
Once we’ve mastered this, you may (being the intellectually and emotionally advanced sort) want to consider moving on to the next stage in the game, which we’ll call anticipation. Now this one really is complicated. It really requires psychic ability of staggering proportions but for you, we’ll try and simplify things down a little. Anticipation involves looking to the future (yup that psychic bit). For those of you who are sadly not psychic though, we have devised a canny shortcut, called hypothesising. So, the basic technique involves looking to the future and trying to work out what is likely to happen based on our actions and alter them accordingly. I could give you a real world example, if it would help.
1. I have 2 dogs
2. I ask you to keep the cupboard doors shut to stop the dogs reaching things they shouldn’t
So would it be considerate to ensure the cupboards were closed. Quite right, dear reader! Well done, my you’re catching on quick., and if we were to add a little hypothesising into the mix we could perhaps attain a number of possible scenarios based on this example. So, if we were to leave the cupboard open, wih food inside, is it likely that:
A) A dog would look at the easily accessible food and say to itself ‘oh no, better not, I should wait til someone tells me to’
B) A dog would look at a tin of biscuits and think ‘oh no, better resist, they’ll go straight to my belly’
C) A dog would look at a tin of biscuits and think ‘WHEEEEEEEE. FOOOOOOOOOOOD!!!!’
The answer there would be C folks. If you know dogs it was obvious, but if you don’t, here’s a clue ‘I asked you to keep the cupboard shut’ so logically there would be a reason for that, making C the most probable answer.
So to put it all together, let’s assume for some reason (perhaps you just sliced off the tip of your finger and weren’t thinking straight, or perhaps you saw a yeti out of the kitchen window.) you completely ignored what I asked you to do. You then completely failed to anticipate the most likely outcome of your actions and take steps to avoid it. Well, fair enough it happens to us all (and this is where personal responsibility really kicks in) … so you just hold your hands up and say ‘Hey, you know what? I forgot. I’m sorry’. You actually take it upon yourself and figure, Hey, well, I could have stopped that small thing happening and I didn’t. Oops. My bad‘. It’s not the end of the world.
What you don’t do is to make up a lie like “Oh the dogs unlocked the cupboard and pulled the door open with their teeth and then ate the biscuits … AND I WATCHED THEM DO IT AND DIDN’T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT. Even though they’ve never done that before in their lives. No, really, they did. It totally had nothing to do with me“.
Why don’t you do that?? A number of small reasons:
- It’s transparent (you know you’re lying and I know you’re lying)
- Your excuse makes you seem like more of a jackass than simply admitting to a mistake
- It is just ever so slightly pathetic and childish
- … and finally you’re a grown-up so grow up!
Now go forth and share the joy.
July 26, 2009
May I be frank? … I’ll take that as a yes. If you are muttering ‘no’ at the computer right now, knowing what’s coming you’d better turn away now. You’re probably right.
Dating as your approach your thirties is a hazardous experience. Let’s be honest, dating as a fresh-faced, dewy-eyed youngster was no bundle of joy either – akin to swimming with ravenous sharks wih a sign around your neck saying ‘My heart’s fair game’. As you get that bit older, you find that suddenly, while you were out of the dating game, the universe subtly altered the rules and forgot to tell you. (Can you see God sitting up there having a right old laugh at your expense? Can you??)
Life as a single woman – well Bridget Jones has that well and truly wrapped up. Almost every one of my friends and family is in a long term relationship and you up for one of the twice yearly visits and conversation invariably turns, if not to your appearance and career, to your relationship status (just a quick aside: WHEN did it become acceptable to pry into somebody’s very personal life like this?) …
“So, have you found the right chap yet?”
“Still single eh, old girl? Not to worry, he’ll turn up” (and variations of)
“Well my dear, looking like that it’s little surprise you haven’t hooked yourself a fella.”
and the universal favourite, “tick, tock eh? Mustn’t forget the old biological clock”
All infused with eau-de-smug. You can almost see it oozing out of their pores, that air of I-have-a-lovely-fella-look-how-perfect-my-life-is-I-feel-so-sorry-for-you-being-unwanted. The ever-so-subtle hints that if you are still single as the big 30 approches you are either an emotionally stunted freak or so unlucky in life and love that you might as well weigh your coat down with stones and hurl yourself into the river.
Personally, I like being single. I find it easier to know myself and, to be unashamedly selfish, I enjoy being able to indulge my own tastes without constantly taking into account the likes and dislikes of another person. I find that my actions and choices are my own. I have grown to appreciate my views, choices and tastes and I enjoy the lack of compromise. I find relationships a LOT of work, the compromise, the understanding, the working to try and maintaince your independence and individuality and not just become X&Y. Perhaps that is a little selfish, but I don’t see it as something to apologise for. If we don’t understand, love and appreciate ourselves and be true to that, how can anyone else?
Those of us who have escaped the shackles of spectacularly unsuccessful relationships, or if you’d rather, suffered the indignity of spectacularly successful breakups as an adult in our late twenties and early thirties perhaps begin to contemplate dipping a toe into the water. Just to see if it’s anything like we remember.
Naturally, it’s not.
If we thought dating in our rose tinted youth was a hair raising experience, doing it as an adult is a whole new ball game. The youthful idealism and hopeful looks to the future that seemed to make much of the conversation when we were younger seem to be replaced by more cynical observations on life, we seem slightly more defeated, slightly less willing to hold up our lofty ideals and say ‘to hell with reality, this is what I want’. There is less of a sense of the moment and the air seems more dense with unasked questions about previous loves, children and emotional baggage. People seem more desperate, to grab hold of anyone just to avoid being left on the cart. Personally, I don’t get it. Entering your thirties (I have a few months yet) it seems to me that you’re finally hitting your stride (or so it seems to me). You know yourself, you know what you want out of life and are in a perfect place to make it happen. Hang loose, let it happen.
Guys you would have crossed the road to avoid are now the men that you find yourself being sent on blind dates with. Oh yes.
I found myself on one such blind date a few months ago. He wasn’t much of a talker, but I’m counting that as a point in his favour, because when he decided to have a go, it made me want to stick forks in my ears to try and perforate my eardrums. An example of a funny story he told me, was how one of his colleagues taunted a Muslim colleague with food during Ramadan and then pranced round the office saying ‘nar-ne-nar-ne-nar-nar you can’t have any, you’re fasting’ and he thought this was FUNNY??!! It was tempting to castrate him then and there and save the gene pool yet another idiot, but being the class act that I am, I shot him a withering look, gathered my things and left before things could take a grimmer turn.
There was the landscape gardner who threw me in the sea fully clothed for a laugh and then left me to walk 5 miles home at 12.30 in the morning on my own, because apparently asking for a lift made me high maintenance and not the sort of girl he could date.
There was the serial boyfriend, who was morbidly phobic about being single and charted the ratio of time he had spent being single vs being in a relationship since he was 18. The results weren’t good.
There was the Moroccan tour guide who recited poetry to me all the way up a mountain and when I resisted his advances and suggestion that we live up the mountain, have a million kids and a few goats, abandoned me at the top of the mountain to find my own way down. What a lucky escape THAT was.
There are definitely worse things in life and love than being single. I’m cool with that.
July 22, 2009
God, I’m exhausted. Just a short one really, partly to prove to myself that I am actually not dead or asleep.
Day-to-day things have generally been taking over, not leaving as much time as I would like for things of a more creative and/or decorative nature. Well that and my addiction to the new series of Numb3rs, which takes up a hefty old chunk of time (oops, my bad) but I have recently painted most of the bathroom, which I have some photos of to share. I say most of as I have neglected to do the ceiling, and the tongue and groove as I have a new light being put in this week, so I figured it would be easier to do post-installation of the light. OK, you caught me. I’m lazy. Hold my hands up, you caught me fair and square. But here are some photos of the work so far (and if you ignore the edging and the splodge of plaster on the roof, it looks pretty good) … I’ll be putting some more pictures up in there soon.
Work on the roof starts tomorrow. I forget if I’ve mentioned this before but this work would be on account of the fact that my surveyor is a lazy, half assed bum who appears to be more than happy to take my money off me but not do his job properly. He could, by all accounts, climb up a ladder and lift up a tile or two at the back of the house to make sure that the roof was in decent repair (he got it wrong but at least he managed to get up the ladder) but apparently he was utterly unable to do the same at the front of the house. Because putting a ladder against the house and climbing it is such a difficult thing to do.On a more positive front, it does at least mean that I get to see my favourite builders, Martin and Sue, again for a few days, and while I’m on the subject – Sue is now a proud Grandmama. Congratulations!
So, for the time being, there’s a bathroom ceiling to paint, various other rooms to paint, a headboard to put up, skirting and edging to do, external windows to paint plus the curtains which I just never seem to have time for. Tick tock, tick tock…
June 28, 2009
About halfway through the kitchen as I’ve been at work for the last few days and haven’t had a chance to get into my scruffs and get cracking on the walls but here are some photos of progress … (The kitchen currently looks like it has a split personality. One side’s finished and the other half hasn’t even been started yet)
May 19, 2009
Golly Gee Whizz. What a week. It’s been a bit of a week, altogether! The lovely builders finished the last bits and pieces off for me this week … grouted the kitchen floor, and put up some curtain poles for me, which is rather lovely.
Unfortunately, it now means that everything that’s left is down to me!
So, the last couple of days off I had were spent tackling the kitchen ceiling. Honestly, you just don’t realise how incredibly difficult it is to paint a ceiling until you’re standing on your own in the kitchen brandishing a roller attached to a pole at a space above your head and hoping that it doesn’t drip into your hair! Three quarters of it has been painted now, which just leaves all the fiddly bits around the cupboard to deal with before I can crack on with the walls and then I will finally have a fully functional and attractive kitchen. Woo! I’ve the next four days off which will hopefully be enough time to get it all done. Pictures as soon as I can manage!
May 2, 2009
It’s been quite a harrowing and highly stressful week for a number of reasons that I can’t really talk about in a public forum such as a blog, but given that it was I decided that today was going to be a bit of a break from the madness of building, painting, decorating and sewing. So after a leisurely breakfast, reading my new book, the Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley I decided that since the weather was nice that I would take the dogs out for a nice long walk over Tor Woods, which stretch out towards Glastonbury and the Mendip hills.
Along the way, I caught up with a lady who lives down the road and has a beagle and wandered off into the woods for fun times and conversation. While we were down there, we discovered acres of wild garlic, carpeting the woodland floor. It was astonishingly beautiful mixed in with clumps of wood anenomes and primroses and the scent … well you couldn’t have missed it for miles! I’m quite excited, as it’s the first real patch of wild garlic that I’ve found and though I have eaten it before and found it delicious, I’ve never cooked with it and have been excitingly looking for recipes that I can use it in. I found a great one for minute steak with wild garlic and lemon mayonnaise, which I am definitely going to have to try. It sounds heavenly.
While we were out, we also found some great hedgerows with blackberry bushes, which bodes well for my jam and liqueur season next autumn. Now all I need to do is find some blackthorn bushes for sloe season and I’m pretty much set, although I have a hankering to find out more about mushrooms, because this strikes me as a fairly ideal sort of location if only I knew a bit more about which mushroom was which. I am still slightly nervous of picking the wrong ones!
Since I seem to be in the mood for plants and flowers and things of that nature (no pun intended), I went herb shopping at yesterday’s market for herbs that grow well in shade as I don’t get much direct sunlight. So I have some lovage, sorrel, apple mint, oregano and lemon balm, and I’m really looking forward to experimenting with them and really livening up my palate!
Clearly, I must be fated to have a greenfingered weekend as a lady a couple of villages along is giving away an old traditional rosebush for replanting and I cannot think of anything more beautiful to plant in the garden. Fingers crossed for it, that it lives through the ordeal.
So, please keep your fingers crossed for me as it’s the first day of my new job tomorrow and I’m slightly nervous. Possibly less so about the job than leaving the hounds but it has to be done! I will endeavour to get some photos up of the painting and building as it progresses this week (hopefully the new boiler will be in by Wednesday!) but in the meantime, bear with me!
Love to all.
April 5, 2009
With great gusto, the painting has begun. I still haven’t quite decided on the colours of the bathroom/kitchen, although there is a front runner but I’ve settled on a nice ivory shade for the walls in all the other rooms. Whereas Magnolia is slightly more peachy, the ivory has slightly more of a yellow hue to it and sits really well with the rough-hewn walls. It’s about a shade darker than what’s on the walls at the moment but going on well and I’m just waiting for my first wall to dry as I write this. Everything is coming along leaps and bounds and I couldn’t be more pleased.
My paint should be about dry so time to go and see how it’s coming along.
April 2, 2009
You know, it’s so gratifying when you can begin to see things coming together.
I always had a feeling that things would work out well here but it was entirely down to instinct and no small amount of optimism. It’s been a lovely experience, getting to know people, watching the house come together and getting used to things. People say that it’s all fine and good haring off to a part of the country where you don’t know anyone on a whim but it’s not practical or rational or sensible but sometimes you just have to go with the gut. As various walls come down and units go up, it’s like a metamorphosis. In some ways, I feel a little bit as if they are reflecting changes in me, building a life as much as a house. I am slowly making friends and starting to recognise faces around the place, getting to know the area and the walks and coming to grips with owning the house. I start a new job a week on Monday, in a fun shop with what seem to be very nice people indeed. It all seems to be settling down and coming together and the foundation that’s creating makes me very happy.
There is still plenty to keep me busy, enough for months yet and I’m grateful for it because I am not the sort of person who deals well boredom. There are curtains to be made (at least when I have fathomed the method of it) and cushions to be sewn together, walls to be painted and bits all over the place to be touched up.
Now that the kitchen units are installed, it really gives me an idea of the size and scale of the kitchen, and I have developed a yearning for a round table. It’s perfect for the kitchen and suits the wonky, wavy dynamics of the kitchen. Not to mention that I don’t live far from Glastonbury in what was once the mystical Isle of Avalon, so it’s very fitting to have a round table. So, bearing in mind budgets and other such tedious things, I started scouring ebay for round kitchen tables but not a lot was coming up, and then as if by magic one popped up on Freecycle. I LOVE Freecycle – it’s genius and free which fits with my attempts to be ethical and recycle more and not spend lots of money. So M kindly offered to come with me and let me use his van to transport it home and it fits perfectly. In fairness, it was covered with that disgusting orange varnish that a lot of modern wooden furniture uses but it’s coming off quite easily in between the paint stripper and the odd bit of sanding. I’m going to oil and wax it soon when I get the last of the varnish off and it’ll be perfect with my little painted wooden stools and a nice vase of flowers in the middle. Not enough to fit 12 knights around, but I’m not greedy – I can make do with four!
I saw a genius idea that I am planning to steal from The Shabby Chair on headboards that may have me nipping down to the local reclamation yards in Wells and Glastonbury at some point to see if I can find some old doors so I can create a fab headboard for my bed based on some of these ideas. And that’s before I seriously get down to the photography and start planning greater and grander things.
Perhaps things aren’t perfect, perhaps perfect doesn’t exist. But here and now, in my little cottage, in my little city – it’s all close enough to perfect for me.
March 25, 2009
Sorry to be a bit remiss with the posting, but the last couple of weeks have largey been spent trying to make some sense of the kitchen units, sans instructions and getting the tiles down. Progress has been a bit slow but here are the photos of progress so far:
Chaos in the kitchen as the old kitchen sink is pulled out to make way for the new one…
The new worktop, base units and double oven along the far wall. Waiting for the space for the hob to be cut out.
Workstation in along the far wall and about half the kitchen tiled is roughly how we’ve been living for a couple of weeks… A little untidy but livable
You could amost imagine it was finished, couldn’t you?
Another photo of the back wall in progress.
Martin, my lovely builder, laying more tiles for the floor.
Martin and Sue getting the new sink area ready for installation
Lovely new plug sockets to go with the lovely new worktops…
March 20, 2009
In a mad bid to get the kitchen finished this week, my fabulous builders Martin and Sue from the Green Earth Construction Co have been working late and especially hard. I think they are two of the loveliest people on God’s earth and I am SO glad I got them to do the work on the house. There has been a lot of tiling, oiling of worktops and fixing cabinets to the wall. This means that hopefully I’ll be able to get my stuff into the cupboards today (and perhaps even manage to hook up the cooker!) so the rest can be merceliessly ripped out and the remaining tiling done and kitchen units dropped in on Friday.
March 11, 2009
In search of contrition for my absence for my absence from blogland, I offer a full confession to you. It’s been utterly chaotic for the last couple of days, and my camera ceased to function, which sadly resulted in no photos for your edification and delight, and me collapsing into bed last night with a migraine and cursing the chaos.
In a slightly more pain free and altogether brighter state of mind, I’m happy to bring you all up to date with the happenings at the cottage
The bathroom is nearly finished. The plasterers are in there at the moment covering up a few holes caused by ripping out some outdated boxing, and then all that’s left is to create the tongue and groove panelling that’s going to box in the pipes, replace the current light with a waterproof light and extractor fan and get to grips with the painting, which is not especially difficult or a lot to do. Here are some pics of it before the final finish:
The loo, sink and shelving that used to be a window
The bath, with tiled splashback (the bath is the size of a small pool and just wonderful…)
A slightly more closeup view of the bath and tiling
March 5, 2009
Not a long one today as utterly exhausted. Came home on Friday to find the kitchen wall demolished and the downstairs bathroom totally taken out – woop! See photos below. My builder and his girlfriend are wonderful people.
On a not so cheery-making note, the company who’s supplying my furniture ‘forgot’ to make my bookcases so they’re a week late and the kitchen company apparently had no record on their system that they were supposed to be delivering tomorrow, and have had to delay until Thursday AND the guy who was supposed to be replacing the boiler apparently didn’t get my acceptance email and now can’t do anything until the end of the month.
I find it ASTONISHING. Is bad customer service par for the course these days or is this just bad luck? Clearly a delayed Friday 13th effect. Humph.
March 2, 2009
Reading February’s edition of English Homes, I found a wonderful quote by an interior designer called Mark Wilkinson, which articulately encapsulates many of my feelings about the way I choose to decorate and organise my home:
“Minimalism is a kind of emotional bankruptcy … a refuge for those who do not understand the grammar of ornamentation and the symbolism of colour”
Wherever you are in the world right now: Mark Wilkinson, I take my hat off to you.
At a time when I am making these decisions, defining my space and creating my home, I naturally found that I resonated with this. I am the sort of person that doesn’t want to come home to clean lines and minimalist perfection, where I have to take my shoes off at the door. I want to come home to a place that says “Bloody good to see you love, kick off your shoes and have a cuppa”.
I want a house that doesn’t mind if there’s the odd pile of books piled higgledy piggledy on the coffee table, or that the dog thundered in the door with muddy paws but is more concerned with whether you can sit down for a cup of tea. Where it doesn’t matter if all of the seats match as long as they work together, are fun and you enjoy them. My home doesn’t have to be perfect, in fact, I think a large part of its charm is that it ISN’T perfect but it’s comfortable.
I was chatting to my builder and his wife today as they were having their lunch (post demolition of half a wall) and I seem to somehow be coming to the conclusion that I’m not a keep everything varying shades of cream sort of person. I’m not sure I could afford to be with two dogs that like to go romping in muddy puddles before careering into the house, muddy paws and all, and even without the dogs, I’m far too messy and clumsy for it. I’d be petrified of spillages, which are an inevitable part of my life. Even now, I’m courting disaster by perching a cup of tea on the arm of my brand new sofa as I type. Does that stop me? No, of course not.
And so it leads me to inevitable thoughts of colour schemes and paint. I am excited by colour. It’s articulate. It speaks where I don’t, in its subtlety and boldness. And there’s so much choice I barely know which way to turn. Do I keep the walls plain and rely on accessories and furniture for colour or go a bit wild? Decisions, decisions.
In the meantime, the bathroom is now fully functional and tiled (despite the wonky walls) and is just awaiting the shower door and bath panel, and for the pipes to be boxed in and that’s that sorted. Even more excitingly, demolition has begun, and you just wouldn’t credit how much bigger the place looks and feels with half the wall down. Photos to follow shortly.
Toodle pip.
February 25, 2009
Since my hands are a little tied with the actual decoration of the house (on account of small things like building and demolition) I have been fiddling with small, pretty things…
My kitchen table and chairs arrived the other week. That is to say, being strictly accurate, that my table arrived, along with some sticks of wood. The chap who sold it to me doesn’t seem even vaguely interested in sorting it out (I feel like I ought to be suprised, but somehow, I’m not) so in the meantime I picked up a few lovely kitchen stools at the Wells trading post for a mere £8 each and painted them aquamarine, which you can see below.
I’ve also been busy, putting up mirrors and generally picking up lovely bargains and digging things out of boxes and hanging them on walls. Lots of fun, especially when I end up covered in paint. There is something about being covered in paint that irrevocably takes you back to childhood …
The rather sweet rocking chair I picked up at the Trading Post. Eventually, it’s going to go in the bathroom
A slightly fabulous find, again from the trading post. It’s a vintage 40′s cabinet and the colours go perfectly with my colour scheme.
This used to be a really dull old corkboard. I think the fruity fabric really livens it up – it looks so cute, I almost don’t want to hang anything on it!
I got this mirror from ebay from a guy who does this sort of work down in Cornwall. It looks great in the evening with the candles balanced on the sticking out bits and the flames reflected in the mirror
This is my bedroom mantelpiece, with the lovely mirror that my sister got me hanging on the wall, and some of my favourite photos in the frames she got me on the mantel. Awe 
February 21, 2009
The chap from building control arrived this morning, to get to grips with the drainage situation for the new bathroom. It got a little complicated when we discovered a second drain hidden under the flagstones (bad, bad previous owners!) and this is the current state of my rear courtyard. Touch wood, it will be all sorted by the end of Tuesday…
The bathroom suite has now been mastic-ed in place and has been drying over the weekend so here are some photos of how it looks at the moment – not painted, tiled or decorated yet but there’s plenty of time…
February 20, 2009
It is, of course, utterly impossible that anything can go smoothly. In my life, things just don’t. They bump along, getting caught in jams and pickles, scraping their knees and courting disaster at every turn. This is nothing new, but simply one more thing to accept with a hidden grimace, whilst fervently praying under your breath for no more disasters.
Tuesday and Wednesday were caught up with the bathroom floorboards. As I mentioned last time, we discovered the original boards under the carpet in the bathroom and thought cheerfully ‘oh what-ho, original floorboards, won’t they be teriffic?’ HA! A bit of thumping and heaving up floorboards to access pipes and we discover that actually quite a few of them aren’t actually safe because of an old woodworm infestion (thankfully no longer) so with a bit of ingenious sawing and shoving, the wonderful builder and his good lady have managed to salvage enough boards for the floor and will put the bath on hidden moisture-proof chipboard so we’ll all be happy.
Of course, that wasn’t the end of it. Because of the worm holes, it made the sanding of the wood far more difficult than you would credit and they’ve spent the last couple of days sorting that out, and oiling and waxing the boards – for preservation and strength. Hopefully the last coat tomorrow and then they can start the bathroom installation. Goody!
Naturally, today’s house improvement installation has been equally dramatic. I would have expected nothing less. Today, we drilled a hole through from the study through the outside wall to accomodate the soil pipe from the bathroom next door (relatively smooth) and then the lovely builder started digging holes in the courtyard for something to do with the drains – and uncovered a drain that had been covered over with paving slabs that nobody knew was there, which has slightly thrown a spanner in the works. So we’re waiting on a chap from building control tomorrow to come and advise on what to do, and until then everything has ground to a halt. So here are some photos of the disarray.
The living room & entrance to the house has turned into an obstacle course. What fun – you should see the state of us when someone knocks on the door
This is the floor in the (soon to be) bathroom as it was being sanded. What a difference, eh?
This is where the the bath’s going to go. Sadly no floorboards here but better that than several tons of bath falling through the floor!
February 19, 2009
Well the builders are here, they are lifting carpets, and hammering the hell out of various stud walls, to work out where various pipes go and whether they’re needed … so I’m letting them get on with it.
The good news is that we’ve discovered original floorboards under the (soon to be) bathroom, so the carpet’s getting ripped up and we’re going to treat them. I’m so pleased as I’ve always loved original floorboardsand hoped that I’d be able to have them, and now I can
And here are some photos of the bathroom after a bit of labour ….
Tomorrow, they’re removing the extractor fan vents from the downstairs bathroom, replacing the tiles on the roof from where the vent exits, doing all the underfloor plumbing for the bathroom, replacing the floorboards, sanding them down and treating them.
Oh isn’t it exciting?
February 16, 2009
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