Life, Love & Freedom in a Little City
Well, now it’s up! I think the bed needs a whole load of sumptuous pillows underneath (sumptuous is so my favourite word right now) to really carry it, since it’s sitting quite high up but nonetheless … isn’t it fabulous?
UPDATED to include pics with more pillows and closeups of the bedhead:
This morning, I was woken by a wet nose in my ear as my dog decided it was time for me to wake up, and I’d been lying in for far too long and I found myself springing out of bed like a gazelle. Not, for once, for fear of what the dogs would do if I didn’t but because I felt energetic. I don’t know about other people, but I find that whenever I am overcome by emotion, be it for good or for bad, once I have settled a bit, I always have a lot of energy left over, and being a practical sort, rather than go out for a ride or a walk, I chanelled my energy into some of the things around the house I’ve been meaning to do for ages and somehow never quite got round to.
Post snow, Somerset decided that a nice winter storm was clearly the way to blow out the cobwebs and provided us with an enchanting performance on Friday night around midnight as I huddled in bed listening to (and feeling) the howling wind and listening to the rain splatter against the windows. It really opened my eyes to the draughts in older houses. After draught proofing the gaps in the doors and windows, I decided the gaps at the bottom of the door needed serious tackling and a draught excluder was called for.
Being a thrifty sort, I was loath to pay for one, so I looked up ideas on the internet, and decided that it looked so painfully simple that even I could tackle it without hesitation. I had a hunt through my fabric chest and noticed a couple of old pillowcases that didn’t match anything and decided that it was the perfect lazy woman’s solution. I took the pillow case, turned it inside out and sewed a line stright down the middle. Since I was using gingham, I already had a straight line mapped out for me so it really couldn’t have been easier. After stuffing it with old bits of unused fabric, I sewed up the end et voila:
Blue Gingham Draught Excluder
Since I was in a sewing mood, anyway, I decided that it was about time I got around to making cushion covers for some more of the cushion inserts that were lurking in my trunk so I picked out a few choice scraps (see if you can guess which one used to be a pair of curtains) and made up a couple, using the envelope technique from Kirsty’s homemade home, which is much quicker and easier than bothering with zips and the like.
Handmade Cushions
After all the hauling around of furniture that occurred on Friday, I have a serious yen to get my bedroom finally finished so tomorrow will be a mad whirling experience of smartwear buying (ick), painting and general creativity but I promise to post some pics as soon as we’re all done.
I’ve also finally sanded back and waxed the windowframe I’ll be using for my headboard and am just waiting to hear from a friend with a handy drill and wire locating device to give me a hand putting it up (it’s big, okay?). Hang fire, the end result is a secret until it’s up and finished but seriously, it looks FABULOUS. I’m so proud.
I was colour-scheming last week, having decided that my poor old living room was looking a little bit tired and bland. It has been suffering old-cottage-itis, which is generally speaking where it gets painted cream, gets a little bit grubby the way cream-coloured stuff does and began to slowly blend in with all the other similar shades and tones in the room, by looking generally bland and nondescript.
It was a CATASTROPHE! Spring Cottage is not a nondescript sort of a place. It’s a kick your shoes of, hi there love and how’s it going sort of a place. So after a bit of umming and ahhing, I embarked upon a trip to B&Q (as an aside, you have to love this place. It’s a DIY shop where the employees don’t know what a mirror plate is) for lots of sample colour pots in varying shades of blue. Just incase you hadn’t gathered from the pictures of the kitchen, I REALLY love blue. I’d even got the chap in the shop to mix me up some paint shades that weren’t already premixed.
With a foolhardy attitude of ‘well, if I don’t like it, I can always paint it back’, I embarked upon the colour squares. The wall metamorphosed from a scruffy white to a patchwork of every shade of light and mid-blue under the rainbow. I wanted a nice light blue, a few shades lighter than the kitchen that wasn’t a particularly cold blue but one that would lighten the room and give the other elements of the room a real lift. I settled on a colour-mix shade called Holiday Blue (6), went to get the mixed up pot and got cracking. (For those contemplating how much paint you need to paint a room, a 250ml can should do the trick)
Since I was clearly in the mood for adding to the room, I knocked up a couple of quick cushions a la Kirsty’s Homemade Home to highlight the ambience as well with old fabrics I was given through Freecycle.
A day and a half later (and post paint fume induced craziness), here are some pictures of the results (the blue’s faily subtle so you probably don’t get the full benefit through the photos):
New walls, curtains and new cushion
The mantlepiece, newly decorated with contrasting flowers, picture frames, candles & funky tissue box.
Some of the new cushions with the family pink woollen rug
The sofa, complete with cushions, throws and blankets. The bookcases stand out well against the walls now, rather than fading into the background.
The dogs, enjoying the fruits of my labours
In getting the kitchen sorted out post-flood, my attentions have rather wandered from the rest of the house, which is nagging me and sending occasional reminders my way that it could cheerfully do with a little attention. It’s the decorating curse: once you have one room as you want it, all the others look shabby by comparison. It grows and grows until you are locked into a situation like the Severn Bridge where by the time it’s finished, it’s time to start again. *sigh*
Although there is plenty to be done in the bedroom, my attention has particularly been grabbed by the living room. Since I put up my new curtains (the ones I made myself), it has struck me how drab the rest of the room looks in comparison. There are, somewhat accidentally, a lot of brown and neutral tones in the room and it’s coming out a little bland.The walls are cream, the carpets a mottled beige, the sofas are brown corduroy,the bookcases are a dark cream and I have a lovely teak blanket box that sits in the middle of the room.
Bland has never been an accusation to be levelled at me, and I have no intentions of letting it begin now! It all began when the bookcases were painted cream instead of the pale blue I requested. Since they were already a month late, I was just too overjoyed to have them to be worried about their colour. They slid into place like a dream and have been settling in there ever since.
So, in my ambitions to cheer things up a bit, I am debating what colour to paint the walls. The question was never whether I should paint the walls or not, as the answer to that is clearly obvious but colour is the matter in question. It looks beautiful in the kitchen, despite all my doubts and fears about putting colour on the walls in old houses (well, they ALWAYS seem to be painted cream. I thought there might be some kind of etiquette forbidding you from painting them fun colours!). I don’t think I’d want to paint the walls the same colour as the kitchen, maybe a touch paler so you just get a hint of colour and a little something from a different colour palette to highlight the other blues in the room.
I am painting a number of cheap ikea picture frames in bold colours and they should bring out and contrast with the other shades in the room. Some are bright, shocking pink, some in a bold turquoise, and others in a classic duck egg blue. I am doing my second degree reiki course in a fortnight, so hopefully it should be another thing for the wall in an exciting coloured frame. Woo!
So questions, questions. If you were going to brighten up my living room, what would YOU do?
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:
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.
Hello fellow bloggers,
I’ve been busy fantasy window shopping again. A danger to myself and my wallet without a will of iron but so far I’ve survived unscathed. A subtle hint to some of my beloved family and friends would be to look at some of the GORGEOUS items below on my wish list :0) Hope you enjoy them:
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…
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)
With a double day off mid-week, I decided that it was time to get cracking with painting the kitchen, as the current mix of old ivory paint, bluey green bathroom paint and brown plaster is slightly less than fetching decor. Actually deciding on the shade has been an interesting experience. I frankly never knew I was so indecisive. With a choice of four similar shades, I narrowed it down to two and spent the next fortnight dithering over which one I really wanted. Thinking I’d finally made a decision, I would wake up the next morning, having changed my mind.
So this morning, out came the dustsheets, the masking tape, paint, brushes, rollers and a collection of singalong songs and I got to work. I’ve only done about a third of the kitchen but it’s looking really yummy and will look really fab when it’s finished. More pictures as it all starts to come together … but in anticipation of the finished product, here are some pics to keep you all going :0)
Take care all and keep well.
I had a little bit of a shopping spree yesterday. None of it was vintage or second hand (apart from the bed head idea but I’ll come to that later) but it WAS lovely … so here are some pics of the loveliness.
Les Fleurs
Gorgeous Retro Postcard Print
Old friezes of the Beatrix Potter stories, which I brought with me from home and now hang above the sink ...
A Charlotte Watson Bread Crock. I wanted something that said old fashioned and cottagey without being too kitch, and I really liked this one.
Framed pictures of various herbs. It's actually a set of 4 but the glass in one broke and I am waiting for it to be repaired. I think they complement the growing herb garden nicely!
Then I made the fateful mistake of going to the local reclamation yard, to look for a kitchen table, having decided that the lovely freecycled round table is actually a bit small for the kitchen as it stands. Not only did I find a lovely 6′ table, but I also found this:
From window to headboard...
I know, you’re probably thinking WTF, but when I saw it I just HAD to have it. You see, I had been perusing the Shabby Chair blog (which is alas no longer) when it did a piece on Sleep Chic, about interesting headboards, which inspired me to think about doing something with my bed, which is currently sans-headboard. What a perfect opportunity! So I picked up this little gem and whipped him home before anyone else could lay a paw on him.
I know that an old window frame doesn’t automatically link to ‘ooh, fab headboard’ in most people’s vocabulary but the advantage to having a slightly messy, non conformist sort of brain is that it sometimes makes connections other people don’t. So, the plan is to paint him white and distress him a bit, get him tuck to the wall and then use the spaces to create a sort of patchwork paint effect. It actually works quite well given that my duvet covers are also patchwork so it adds a whole cohesive element to the room.
I know, I know. I have a whole kitchen and a bathroom to paint before I can even think about that, but everyone’s got to have something to look forward to.
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!
It’s been ages since I managed to post anything here. Everything has been slightly bonkers with about a million things going on at once, and it totally slipped my mind to keep all up to date. News is minimal, what with working for a living and all … but excitingly I managed to find a ten gallon milk churn on ebay which will be perfect for keeping the dog food in, don’t you think? Photo of it in situ when it arrives tomorrow but in the meantime, here’s a photo of it with it’s previous family:
Although I am by nature, a very practical and down-to-earth sort of person, I have a slightly more whimsical side to my nature which I enjoy indulging from time to time and a mid seventeenth century cottage seems to be the perfect place to do so.
Since I was a little child, I have loved the flower fairies (name a young girl of my generation who didn’t?). I find the art beautiful and the notion charming so I got some of my favourite flower fairies blown up to fit some old 8″ x 6″ wooden frames and hung them in the stairway. Despite the angles of the first picture, they are evenly spaced, I promise…
PS ….
Oh and many thanks to C over at Second Hand Shopper for her kind comments on my organisational skills. A friend of mine describes me as a hobbit as I need my little hobbit hole to be ordered and I do like my second breakfast and afternoon tea! The painting is going well – 3/4 of the study done with two coats and hopefully soon the first set of curtains will be done and ready to hang and show off!
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.
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.
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?
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…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.
It’s a lovely spring morning in Somerset, and so I took the dogs out to play whilst delivering some postcards to local businesses, plugging my new website. If you happen to know of anyone in need of a good web designer, I’m your gal. A shameless plug, I know … but a girl’s got to do what she can.
I’ve been quite bad about updating this blog, haven’t I? SO much to do, and I’ve spent the last couple of days just feeling incredibly drained and tired. I don’t know why, I haven’t really been pushing myself too hard of late but there you go.
So things are cracking on at the cottage. The kitchen arrived last Thursday, which could only be described as a massive relief. Originally, the kitchen company told me that the kitchen would come flatpacked, one of their guys would assemble it and then my chap could fit it. What they meant to say was that they’re a lying bunch of toerags, who you wouldn’t want to leave your Grandmother with, who would try to screw me over the minute they laid eyes on me. Bad luck for them that they didn’t know who they were dealing with *wry grin*. So this leaves us with a set of flat packed boxes, no instructions and a customer helpline that would be better run by a group of mentally deficient pigeons. My builder and his good lady, being the good people that they are, take a deep breath and tell me not to worry, they can deal with it, not a problem at all. (Here’s a pic of the dynamic duo in progress)
So, on they go, assembling units, oiling my worktops and so on until we realise that the kitchen designer (who most definitely needs psychiatric attention) has not ordered any drawer handles but instead used the door handles for both, which would have been fine IF they were multi-purpose handles, which they clearly are not. So I ring up the mentally deficient customer care line to be told that we cannot do a straight swap, I have to pay for the new ones (and bankrupt myself in the process) and then post the others back before being refunded. So … slowly now so that we can all understand … I am paying because their designer messed up. Yes, it makes perfect sense to me too.
However, my bookshelves arrived on Friday evening – A day early! I thnk I might have frightened the poor chap with my rant about poor customer service and how customers shouldn’t have to pay the price for their incompetence. I dare say I might have gone off the deep end a bit, but I’m not in the slightest apologetic about it. If you take someone’s money to provide goods or services then they should get what they ordered in good condition within the timeframe specified. In basic language – don’t make promises you can’t keep! But anyway …
They arrived, and the delivery chaps were the same two lovely chaps who delivered my bedroom furniture (pictures to follow once the final piece arrives…), veyr pleasant young Irish chaps in their mid-twenties, who were the epitome of ‘amenable’. God bless them. and found that they look spectacular in place, and fit like a glove and I couldn’t be happier with them. So here come some photos of the living room with the lovely bookshelves.
It sounds ridiculous really, but I feel so much better with the bookshelves up and the books out of boxes. It really makes a difference and the place starts to feel a lot more like home, instantly. It has been suggested before that I could be addicted to books. There is a strong possibility it could be true. I love stories, no matter whether they’re old stories, new stories, poems, songs, they’re all stories in their own way. In the same way that we’re all stories in our own ways, and we use these stories as a way of connecting with one another … weaving ourselves into each other’s lives and sharing our thoughts, and dreams and opinions. So I suppose you could say that they’re almost like old friends, that you can connect with any time you like, and it DOES make me feel better, seeing them there.
So, feeling a bit inspired at the weekend, I decided to do something with the bits of driftwood I picked up in the US when I went to see my friend Dragonboy and figured that since I could use somewhere to store various bits of jewellery, I could perhaps get started by creating somewhere to store my necklackes … so here’s what I came up with:
Right, now I must away as I just sliced open my finger when I went to make a cup of tea. Long story but drawer got stuck and I sliced my hand open trying to open it. Now I’m dripping blood. I CANNOT wait for my new kitchen!!
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 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
The plasterers have been at work in the kitchen as well as the bathroom (and still are) and here are some photos of them at work. Lovely chaps the both of them, while Martin and Sue, my lovely builders have been insulating the loft and getting the first section of kitchen tiles in and ready for the kitchen to arrive any minute now. Hopefully, providing they haven’t messed up again (fingers crossed) so here are some pics of what’s happening now:
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.
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