Condensation

As you can see from the photograph this is a wonderful image of condensation. Being a double glazed window theoretically we shouldn't get much condensation but they are old (for PVC) and clearly we do.

The kitchen

Behind the sink

As I've said before, our house is still very much a work in progress. There are times that I wish that we had found a more modern home that only required a lick of paint.

Decorating again!

I've not even posted the finished pictures from the bathroom yet and I'm already moving onto something new. Actually the bathroom isn't quite finished though I have completed my bit so I'll have some after pics up soon.

Doing up the bathroom: floor

I'm sure that I said that I wanted this project to just be a big clean up. I did, didn't I? I'm positive that I made that statement. Well, here is the bathroom now. J decided to become involved.

Bathroom, before I start

Bathroom when we first moved in.

Our bathroom is a mess. It has a good simple white suite but there is a dodgy old airing cupboard that used to house a tank and large built in chest that is far too close to the toilet for a household with boys. It hasn't helped that though the walls used to be a smart dark blue the edges of the wallpaper were curling, far too tempting for little fingers. It has been in this state for the last six months. I was silly enough to voice that painting this room would be my next big project and for some reason people heard this as, 'peel off the wallpaper'. Hmm. Time to tackle it, I think.

Long term there are a few changes that I would like to make to this room but I don't feel any urgent need to do this immediately. I want this to be a quick clean up, not another big mess to sort out one day in the future, we already have a few of these. So my plan is to remove the old fan and wall light, strip the wallpaper, bleach the woodwork and paint the walls. J asked me what colour which made me laugh as I haven't been thinking in terms of colour. We have multiple pots of white bathroom paint to use (thank you, closing down sale of Focus) therefore a white bathroom it will be!

New dishcloths

Yarn for dishcloths, 5.5mm hook

Two of my dishcloths have holes in the middle. Time for a quick and easy craft! I bought this cotton rich yarn on offer a while ago specifically for making new cloths. This style dishcloth works so well and I love them, they also last well until some child (who will remain nameless) cleans a sharp knife with them and slices through the cloth, grrr.

Crocheted dishcloths

I like to make them with a large hook, the one shown is 5.5mm. This produces big holes that are great for scrubbing plates clean. Two years ago I made a pile of these in pretty yarns as gifts for Christmas, they are so easy to make in the winter evenings whilst watching TV. The recipients were somewhat surprised to be getting dishcloths, my mother still refuses to use them properly and has them as pretty heat mats instead.

Bookshelves

Books on the book shelf

Getting books onto our shelves in the revamped spare/music room has really helped to make it feel like a lived in space. The top shelf has my overly large selection of language learning materials. The second is for 'boring' reference books. The bottom shelf is our large selection of children's non-fiction.

I have tried organising the children's books by category before, this doesn't work as books never get put back where they ought to be. Obvious really to most people with children and I really ought to have been grateful that books were put away at all; I think that it was just my inner librarian trying to break out for a few minutes. This time I opted for the rainbow style of shelf organisation. It makes us smile.

A little bit of history

I was recently given these two old jars that came from my gran's house. I can't help but wonder what is the history of these two objects. I believe that she has kept them for many years and they must have been important to her as they stayed even when she drastically downsized everything for her last house. Were they from her first marriage? Her mothers? Or just something that she always loved?

Can I find a use for them without adding more clutter to my home?!

Rearranging living space

The room 'before'

We have had a rethink on renting out a room. We would love the cash but don't really want to have a stranger in our home, this is probably one of the reasons it has taken so long to get the room finished. So rather than continue to drag our feet over this and lose the use of a decent size room we have decided that it is to become the spare/music/office room. Hopefully everything should fit in!



The sludgy brown is wallpaper that went across the whole back.

This frees up our current spare room, a lovely little bedroom at the back of the house. My eldest is beginning to need more space now but my youngest is not yet ready to move out of their bedroom. So my solution is to create a dressing room/playroom for my youngest. It is actually a fully dressed bedroom but nobody is admitting this! It is good to get the large toys out of their shared room and the new space is getting a lot of play, I like to see my little one sneak away for a quiet hour in his own room.


After

The new spare room is on the ground floor and the décor was inspired by No.1 Royal Crescent in Bath, specifically this room. The Edwardian fire surround was found by J's mother who had planned to use it in her own house but it wouldn't work. It nearly didn't work here, the proportions seemed odd until I did some googling and noticed that in every photo I found this style fire surround in the rooms also had picture rails. So up went the rails and it now looks as if it has always been here.

Another after.

This room has been almost finished for a while. This past weekend I moved our books onto the shelves in there (part of rearranging our living room). Now it actually feels complete, a proper room rather than an odd 'doesn't get used often' room. You may spot that there is no desk in here yet,  eventually it will sit in front of the window where the keyboard is. Where I'm going to put the keyboard then I don't know!

Solar water

When we first moved into this house we refused to turn on the heating. The central heating for this old four bedroom house was supplied by an eighties inefficient Rayburn powered with gas bottles. I love Rayburns but we both knew that this was not the way to go.

After a lot of research my partner installed a biomass boiler with accumulator tank in the garage, this is fuelled by logs and does a good job of heating our home and hot water. We had one solar panel that we had purchased for our previous property but had never got around to installing. This was put up on our garage roof and, along with it's own smaller accumulator tank, was installed to pre-heat our hot water before it's pipe goes through the larger tank.

We now have 5 more panels to add to the mix. This will hopefully supply all of our hot water needs throughout the summer and actually make a bit of a dent in the winter too. The frames are up, just a little more plumbing to do and hopefully it will be good to go!

Dancing in the rain

Here it is, my finished masterpiece that is already hanging over my bed. I had a lot of fun making this and learning to appreciate it's naivety was part of that. I could have lined up the letters better, I could have definitely improved on the splash. But part of this exercise was just to complete the thing and enjoy the process rather than forever plan perfection.

Despite it being a large canvas the square size does make it look a little lost on the empty wall so at some point it will need to be joined by more art. For now I get to enjoy, ponder and look out for more inspiration.

Original post can be found here: Quotation Art

New storage for winter wear

Individual storage

I finally did it, our big old hamper of miscellaneous hats, scarves and whatevers has been sorted into individual boxes for each of us. We are lucky enough to have a utility room and in this space I have a large Ikea Expedit bookcase in which we store all manner of useful stuff. I have been looking out for suitable sized baskets to sit in the spaces but cannot afford the lovely wicker ones that I prefer so was left hunting in Homebase. Alas, whilst they had a reasonable selection some months ago all those available now look pretty but were clearly not designed for durability. Instead a multipack of 5 boxes was purchased and are now sitting very neatly in their cubby holes.

These boxes will not only hold winter extras but also cycle helmets and clips, reflective vests and (importantly) those nerf gun bullets that I'm constantly picking up throughout the house. I still need to sort through each of them but as winter will be coming to a close soon I am putting off that task for now.

I'm not keen on plastic storage boxes. Whilst they have their uses I find that over time my children tend to split them. I was going to cover up some cardboard boxes with fabric for a cheap fix, after all this is what most of those I saw in the shops were. But the thought of investing time into this project when they will have to put up with some heavy use made me decide reluctantly in favour of the cheap plastic for now. I will continue to keep my eyes peeled for a better solution.

This follows on from There is no bad weather only bad clothing

Tripping over no more

Living room floor with most of the floorboards back in place.

I hate cables lying around on the floor. I consider them accidents waiting to happen. When we first moved in cables were laid, temporarily, around the edge of the rooms to allow internet access. Finally, finally, finally something is happening. It is happening slowly but surely. One day I will have a living room without network cables to trip me up.

Having floorboards up also gave me the opportunity to clean out under some of them. There is an area under the stairs which was once used to dispose of broken bottles. With this fully excavated there is no longer any damp there. An unlooked for success!