Attic24

Better

This weekend has been low key and uneventful, a few days of nothing much and it has been wonderful. I've stayed close to home, only heading out for an hour this morning to go and get essential food supplies. I've slept rather a lot, falling asleep at odd times on the sofa with the Little People coming and going around me. It's as if my physical needs just took over and for once I allowed it to happen. I feel much better. My head is clearing (finally) and my finger....well, it is better but not better. I can crochet in short bursts, but only if I hold my yarn/work in a different way, so it's a bit slow going. But better than last week, yes, loads better.

I picked flowers just now you know. A most scrumptious little posy gathered from the front garden (a rose, alchemilla and geranium) and the back yard (honeysuckle, daisies and chives). Oh so good to have those stems in my hand!

I love that precise moment when a little jug is filled with water and the posy is popped into it just exactly as it was held in my hand. Pop! Then ta-dah!

Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.

I've had some renewed energy in my mind and body this afternoon so I decided to put it to good use and paint. Yeah, and why not? I bought this super-cute little pine shelf hand made by Les the Woodman last week and it was delivered on Saturday. I'm so pleased with it, it's exactly what I've been looking for as a photo-prop for the studio. I'm going to hang it on the wall near my window so I can use it for photographing my crochet items, either on the shelf or hanging from the shaker-style pegs underneath.

I blagged the half-tin of paint from Tracy, she's already used it to paint a couple pieces of furniture in the studio and I thought it would be lovely if my shelf was the same colour. It's an absolutely drop-dead gorgeous shade of blue called Blue Ground by Farrow & Ball. I have totally fallen in love with it and have had to stop myself going off around the house to paint random pieces of furniture in Blue Ground.

It has felt good to do this today, I am so glad to be feeling a bit better. A bit more on top, a bit more *me* again.

A funny thing happened earlier. As I was uploading these photographs to my laptop I had a sudden memory of repetition. Sure enough, when I looked back through my archives I discovered an almost identical jug of flowers on almost the exact same date in June last year. Not only that, but the whole post from last year contained pretty much the exact same feelings that I've been experiencing this past week. I can't make up my mind whether this weird repetitive annual rhythm is a good thing or a bad thing, but truthfully I don't suppose it matters. So long as life is on the up, then that has to be good.

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Upcycling

I bought these delightful little "sol d'or" narcissi from the market yesterday, it was the gorgeous colour of them that grabbed my attention (am I right in thinking that sol d'or translates to golden sun in English?). But oh my goodness, I really hadn't bargained on the scent of them, and as I sit at my desk to write this morning, there is the most incredible scent of Spring in the air. It's absolutely knockout! Thinking that three vessels on the table is possibly a little excessive so I'll be moving one of the little jugs up to scent my bedroom later. I've already got some in the bathroom....ahhh, you can never have too many fresh flowers in the house.

Anyhow....this post isn't supposed to be about the whiff of flowers, I got distracted a bit there, sorry. What I want to yarn on about today is my recent upcycling exploits. I've kind of grown to like the word Upcycle, even though it annoyed me for a while with it's trendiness. I used to think why say upcycle when it's just about giving something a makeover? It's the same with vintage and retro, which is really just a trendy way of saying old isn't it?

I bought this last weekend, on a complete whim when I went out to buy eggs. Instead of going straight to the butcher, I detoured past the second hand shop and saw this quirky little (vintage? retro? old?) wire veggie rack sitting forlornly on the pavement amongst the second hand furniture. It called out to me, begged me to take it home and love it. And for the price of £6 how could I refuse the call? So I came home to the Attic with half a dozen eggs, a bunch of daffodils and a wire veggie rack tucked under my arm.

On Thursday I was lucky enough to have a precious child-free day and the weather was gorgeously bright and sunny, so out into the back yard I went to put my upcycling plans in motion. First stage, a good ol' rub down with some hot soapy water.

Second stage, lots of newspaper and a can of spray enamel paint bought in the sale from a local discount shop. Teal Treasure indeed. My favourite colour of all time (although I prefer to call it "Tiffany"). I don't have any experience of using this spray stuff, and truthfully I didn't do a very good job. I didn't listen to the words on the can and was a bit heavy handed with it. So it dripped a little, and also the can ran out before I had truly finished covering all that wire. So the upcycling is a little bit patchy and blobby. But the colour............oh the colour!!! Look see.......................

......isn't it lovely? So much more appealing than mucky old cream.

I do believe I managed to transform this unwanted item into a colourful thing of beauty. A real treasure. Useful too....can you guess what I'm going to use it for? What do you suppose those wire baskets will be crammed with? Of course......yarn, glorious yarn!!! Yippeeeeeee for the thought of a whole colourful rack of yarn that can be maneuvered about on dinky little wheels! I will of course bombard you with pictures when I've got around to filling the baskets, it'll be a visual feast.

This was my other spontaneous upcycling project this week, yesterday to be precise. Another impulse buy, this (vintage? retro? old?) wooden cutlery tray was sitting in the window of the Oxfam shop as I walked past, price £2.99. I do happen to like aged wood, but I am not too keen on the colour brown. So after lunch yesterday, I set to work with my upcycling plans. I have a modest stash of Decopatch papers left over from previous projects, so I trimmed some to size and finally managed to wrestle the lid off the top of my decopatch glue. It worked a treat...the decopatch papers are very thin, a bit like tissue paper, but the magic glue transforms it. Not only does it easily stick the paper down, but it provides a very durable finish, making the whole thing very hard wearing and practical.

So this old wooden tray has been successfully upcycled and repurposed at the same time, how about that? I'm going to be using it as a desk tidy, to hold essential bits and pieces on my new " Lovely Shabby Chic Solid Pine Farmhouse Kitchen Table with Farrow and Ball Painted Legs!"...haha, LOVE the dramatic Ebay descriptions with Lots Of Capital Letters! Yes, I have a new piece of furniture being delivered later today after a frantic, nail biting finale to an Ebay auction a few days ago. Oh the drama of those last 30 seconds!

The farmhouse kitchen table is not going to be living in the Attic though. Nor is the upcycled wire yarn rack, or the upcycled wooden tray, no no. They are all destined to go and live in my new studio. Studio. St-u-di-o. Oh that word!!! Makes my heart flutter, it still seems so dreamlike and unreal! I am desperately desperate to tell you the whole tale, but whilst we (my studio buddie and I) are busy renovating the room we will be sharing together, I feel inclined to keep it under wraps. There will be an overexcited post all about it very soon though, as soon as we have finished the dirty work. There has been much hard graft going on. Lots of cleaning, scraping, sanding and oiling (the floor), and now lots of filling, sanding, priming and painting (the rest of the room). Soon though.

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Edit to add :: Interesting article HERE about defining antique/vintage/retro (be sure to read the comments!).

I think the rough conclusion is thus ::

Antique = at least 100 years old
Vintage = 20-99 years old, from the era it represents
Retro = newer, but made to look like an item from the older era.

 

 

 

 

Bathroom update

Progress on anything in our house is always slow. We take our sweet, pondering, indecisive time here at Attic24. The bathroom is a prime example. The refurb began in January and should really and truly be completed by now, but we have ground to a halt. The issue currently undergoing hot debate is the windows. We need to replace the windows before we can decorate, and yet we are unable it seems to decide on what exactly we want to do with the windows. Currently we have single glazed wooden windows, with the top opening about 1/3 of the way down. We want to have double glazed ones fitted but cannot decide whether to re-instate Victorian style sash windows (wooden, double glazed, sliding up and down), or have wooden, double glazed top-openers made.
Its a big decision because it costs a hellava lot of dosh to buy new windows. Thousands and thousands. And we want to get it right. So for now we are sitting and scratching our heads and having a jolly good ponder.

However, besides the walls and the windows being unfinished, the rest of this little room is giving me a lot of pleasure.
I am really, really enjoying some hot deep bubble baths amidst lots of shiny white ceramic.
I am enjoying sparkling chrome fixtures.
I am enjoying fluffy new towels warmed on our new chrome towel radiator.
And I am enjoying a new wooden toilet seat.

Oh, and I'm also huuugely enjoying Multicoloured Stripes and Pompoms.
We had our new flooring laid a couple weeks ago...it's a cushioned vinyl which looks like worn whitewashed planks and I happen to think it's rather nice. Makes me think of beach huts and driftwood, of summer days by the sea.
Our old bathmat was plain white and I felt everything in the bathroom was starting to look very bland and well....white. So I googled "striped bath mat" and found this stripy pompom edged beauty...isn't it funky??!!

I get rather a thrill from standing on it whilst wearing my new socks.

And here we have more Stripy thrills destined for the bathroom, courtesy of the Deckchair Stripes company. I heard about this company via Janet Bell, and I was immediately smitten. Their website is a colourful, glorious celebration of all things jaunty and stripy. Take a look at their interior stripes page and feast your eyes on all that scrumptious stripyness!

You can order up to five samples of their fabric, which of course I had to do...and of course I am now pondering and scratching my head and trying to make yet another decision. Its hard work this decorating business! Which stripes should I go for? I want to make a blind for the window and possibly a little bit of something else...
Oh, and as well as gorgeous stripy fabric they also sell this adorable pompom bobble fringe, oh my heart skips a beat when I look at all that colourful bobbly pompom stuff! Love love love it.

Another current love of mine is this particular shade of summer blue. Today in fact I am wearing a jumper this colour, and I've been painting some bits and pieces too. It just sings to me of summer skies, of lazy, relaxed, warm days. Wonderful.
You can see above I've painted a shelf already for the bathroom (although we've not put it up yet).
 

The bathroom walls are currently painted in this shade of aqua, the choice of the previous house owners which I happen to like quite a lot. But as many of the walls had to be replastered when the bathroom was being pulled apart, it's in desperate need of re painting. I'm thinking of choosing a similar shade of aqua but a little paler :: sort of a seaglass colour, if you can imagine that.

Now maybe you could help me out with yet another decision here?
Above photo is of the current wall cabinet, stained a horrid green by the previous owners. Rather than sling it out and replace it, I figured I could repaint it and put on new knobs, kind of give it a new lease of life.
But what colour to paint it?
Bare in mind there is a lot of white already in the bathroom...the suite and the tiles (all around the room to dado height, and to ceiling height above the bath) are all sparkling, shiny white. The floor as you have seen is a distressed white. Walls (above dado/tile height) will be seaglass aqua.
So should it be sky blue to match the painted shelf?
Or white?
Or another colour entirely?
Any input gratefully received.....
....thank you so much :: I love the idea of using you (in the nicest possible way) to make my decorating decisions, a sort of Global Colour Selection Panel.
:o)
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Home

Home :: don't you think that word is one of the most heart warming words ever ever ever?? Doesn't it just make you think of warmth and comfort and security and happiness, of love and laughter and contentment?
I adore my home. I love being at home, love my days spent here at number 24, pottering around within these solid, warm, old stone walls. Can think of no place I would rather be (well excepting on certain days when I long to be beside the sea). I feel blessed by my love of All Things Home as it serves me well and provides easy-to-come-by satisfaction and happiness 365days of the year. I am a true, natural born Home Bird, with an intense love of Domestic Pottering. I do not ever feel the need to go take a job in order to find stimulation or interaction or satisfaction or sociability (is that a word?). For me, HOME is where it's at. I know it's not for everybody, but for me, yup, I am one very happy stay-at-home bird.

I have to tell you I'm getting quite giddily excited about all things h.o.m.e around here, excited that home improvements are at last happening, and excited thinking about our future Big Plans for this humble dwelling of ours.
And talking of home improvements, I have to say a big ((thank you)) for all your recent inquiries about our new bathroom and I'm sorry that I am not quite able to reveal it's makeover just yet. All is going well :: the two bathroom blokes vacated the building on Tuesday, and in their place today we have a Sparky. Just the one, a very nice electrician called Len who whistles while he works. Who I hope is not afraid of spiders because there appears to be the mother of all cobwebs in residence across the electrical spaghetti-junction down in the cellar. After Len has finished trailing cables, hoiking up floorboards and doing his wiry pluggy things, there will be a floor-fitting man and a window-fitting man to come. 

Oh, and then the walls will also need to be painted. Its uncertain yet whether I will have to get jiggy with a paint brush or whether we can try and eek a few more pennies out of the coffers to pay for a decorator to do the job professionally. Its the high ceilings, especially above the bath, which makes me think it's a no-can-do for me, and truth be told, I am not a very good decorator. No, I get far to giddy to make a good job of it. But what I do plan on doing next week is repainting the old streaky green wooden shelf and bathroom cabinet in suitably fresh, bright, jaunty colours and making a blind/curtain for the bathroom window. Those things I can do without risk of breaking my neck up a ladder with a paintbrush. I shall keep my feet on the ground and stick to prettifying. I am quite good at prettifying. Yes creating/purchasing things to make a room look homely is one of my talents.

And talking of purchasing, I am off to London City tomorrow on an inspirational shopping jaunt with my wonderful friend Lovely C. VERY excited oooeeeee, yes I am!!!!!!

The train leaves the station at 6:42am.

Hope I can transform myself from a Home Bird into an Early Bird.

Have a fabulous weekend one and all :: see you next week for Tales from the City.
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Magnetic

Good morning, hows things? All good here, thanks for asking. Now before I get going can I just say a warm ((thank you)) to you for calling by the Attic to see me, I am always so pleased that day after day you choose to stop by to see what I'm up to. I do enjoy having visitors, even the silent ones amongst you, my stats tell me you are there, and I am glad.

So :: pretty things today. See those magnets up above there? Aren't they  the most gorgeously beautiful and desirable magnets you have ever seen? Aren't they just? Of course when I was browsing my local shops the other week, I wasn't in any way looking out for magnets. I was actually in the shop to buy soap, but you know how it goes, you go in looking for handmade soap and come out with delicious but expensive magnets and approximately one quarter of the weeks grocery money suddenly  spent. I simply could not walk away and leave these beauties behind and oh the joy! YEs! They are worth every penny and I do adore them wholeheartedly.

So what to do with these delicious magnets? They are too pretty to be put on the fridge and quite frankly cost too damn much money to be placed at a level accessible by Little Fingers.

So I decide on a magentic notice board (a high up out of reach notice board), and go forthwith to our local DIY store to spend more of the weeks grocery money. And some paint. This is fast becoming a chain of expensive events, but no matter :: the outcome will be both pretty and practical :: a winning combination. Actually, the notice board and the paint combined costs less than half the price of the magnets, so I am quite pleased.

The notice board, as you can see, is plain and functional. It is no match for the gorgeous, desirable magnets, so I set to work giving it a suitable makeover.

I paint the wooden frame of the notice board using  a small tester pot of sky blue paint. I choose pretty fabric, sweet ribbon trim and some old vintage buttons to cover the magnetic bit. And I also employ this marvelous invention, of which I have a stash left over from my textile art days.

Its a little tricky actually ironing the fabric to the notice board, but I manage, I am determined.

I am really thrilled with my new magnetic notice board. I know the ribbon is a little wonky, and one of the pearl buttons fell off during the tricksy and rather brutal ironing process, but hey, it's got that authentic handmade quality which i find appealing.

And this is where the notice board now lives :: a little corner of the hallway reserved for "being organised". Note the calendar with vital dates and reminders, the hooks for keys, the wire heart which usually holds the days in-coming post. And on the shelf is a little shoe box I covered in pretty wallpaper (a rather large sample I managed to "aquire"), it holds shoe polish for that inevitable last minute pre-school removal of scuffs.

And while I had some paint to hand, I also gave a few wooden pegs a makeover, and strung them up on ribbon to make a small gallery for current Little People Artwork.

The noticeboard is currently doing sterling work and is already pretty much hidden behind school letters, reminders, party invites, business cards, telephone numbers.

Oh I do enjoy a pretty makeover, makes me feel all industrious and proud of myself.

Basket case

An old basket, picked up last week in an antiques/collectors place in my town.
It cost £4.50.
I love the shape and the oldness of it, but it is brown and I don't much care for brown.
I decide to give it a makeover.

I remember seeing this, and remember that I have Duck Egg Blue paint in the cellar left over from my painting phase in April.
I get busy painting.
It takes over the dining table for quite a few days and we have to eat dinner with it.

The painting (three coats) finally gets finished and order restored to the table.
I need to make a lining, and I immediately want Greengate.
I raid the tea towel stash. Get the heebiejeebies cutting it up.
But I stay focused and it goes well and I am so pleased with the way it turns out.

I love my newly vamped basket very much.
I spend quite a lot of time looking at it and carrying it around the house.
I decide this lovely Greengatey basket is going to be for my new wool.

And my latest WIP, started on Monday night.

Round and round, its going to become a bag, inspired by one made last week by Lovely C.
I realise we are probably going to arrive at Knit and Natter with matching bags.

Crochet bags to transport our crochet.
Love that.

Shelves and Cupboards

A few of you have been asking if I'd show you more photos of my home. Well I don't suppose this was exactly what you were expecting?! You can see how my photos up until now have been veeeeeeeery carefully selective about precisely how much they show of my home. Truth is, I am slightly embarrassed to show you the above photograph of our dining room in it's current state, but I'm throwing caution to the wind here and hoping you won't think too badly of me.

In my mind you know I live in a light, spacious, warm, appealing family home. A pleasure wherever you look, calm and serene vistas of sunlight-filled lovliness. But the reality you see is a little different. The reality is that for one thing I am a grade A hoarder, a messy, unorganised individual and the rest of my family tends to follow in my footsteps. And for another thing, we are in the middle of trying to deal with a serious lack of storage around here, trying to find a way to deal with all the accumulated stuff of daily family life which simply has nowhere to go. We are living amongst dangerously teetering piles of books, magazines, catalogues, craft materials, colouring books, stationary, crochet, documents, files, directories, bills, letters, photographs, wrapping paper, writing paper, leaflets.
Some sort of method is needed in here to keep dangerous piles under control, in other words Shelves and Cupboards. One thing about houses with fireplaces, the alcoves either side of the chimney breast are taylor-made for built in storage solutions.

When in need of interior inspiration for just such intended storage solutions I turn to my collection of magazines (in a huge, teetering pile, naturally). I spend a whole weekend dragging them around, rifling through the pages in search of pictures of shelving. I snippety snip pictures out and study them intently, show them to my rather disinterested other half. And gradually over the course of a week or two, we come up with a design for our alcoves. Good size cupboards at the bottom, strong shelves to hold books and pretty things above. A bit of beading on the doors, pretty ceramic knobs, and maybe an arch over the top like that one there in the magazine. And painted white, yes lets paint it white and make it look all light and bright and wonderful.

I take the clippings to my father-in-law, the man who can do wonders with wood and scary tools. He has been champing at the bit for months, waiting for us to get our act together and ask for his assistance but not wanting to rush us or interfere (wonderful man that he is). He loves nothing better than a project on the go, some woodworking and DIY, yes, he's our man for the job. Straight talking Yorkshire man that he is, he tells me upfront that he doesn't like the arch idea, but says he can do it if it's what I really want, and I say yes pleeeease, its what i really want. We study the magazine clippings some more and make pencil sketches on bits of paper, do some measuring. Wood is brought in and a temporary workshop set up in the cellar.
Work eventually gets underway and I am drafted in for frequent quality control ("ooo you're a fussy-britches" he says when I tell him it's not quite level/smooth enough/high enough). I'm consulted on shelf spacing and the such like, and then I get on with my job which is priming and painting. I don't mind painting really, I got me some new paint brushes and used a water based satin paint which is nice to paint with and easy to clean up. I'm a messy painter and get a lot of paint on me. I also frequently lose track of time and end up almost forgetting to collect the Little People from nursery/school on numerous occasions, dashing across town in my painty clothes and arriving hot and sweaty and well, painty. Then of course I have to stand amongst a group of well-groomed Mummies knowing full well that I look a total mess. But it's oh-so-worth-it because I know I am making progress.

And finally last Wednesday, ta-dah!!!! The first alcove was finished and I am mighty pleased with how it turned out. Time to put stuff on the shelves :: Oh, I did enjoy this bit, yes I really, really did! My lovely books which were still in their packing boxes in the cellar have now got a beautiful place to live.
Books, books, don't you just love 'em? This alcove mainly has our non-fiction books in :: gardening, wildlife, travel, he-books (war/universe) and she-books (domestic/interiors).The alcove on the other side when we finish it is going to have all our cookery books (we have a LOT of those), a small stereo and the fiction books. We decided that my craft/art books and his computer/geek books are all going to live in the attic because that is where we respectively do crafty/geeky things.

I do love my little collection of domestic books very much and have read every one of them cover to cover. See how when the roses are gone there is a cleverly left decent sized space for oooh maybe eleven more books? Which is the current length of my Amazon Wish List. A girl can dream.

Paint power

Over the past few weeks I've been working with my wonderful father-in-law on some home improvements.  He's been building us some shelves and cupboards into the alcoves either side of the chimney breast in our dining room. He does the skilled complicated stuff with wood and scary tools and I follow on behind with a tin of white paint and a brush. One of the alcoves was finally finished last  week (I'll show you  pictures tomorrow) and I found I had really gotten into the painting groove. Sometimes I find painting stuff a chore, but last week I was loving it. What I should have been doing was dealing with the humungous pile of papers and books and general chaos in our dining room which is seriously hindering our movement around the room, but instead I really had the urge to paint. So inspired by Clairey's newly painted Duck Egg Blue wall I toddled off to Laura Ashley to look at the paint.  The colour pallette they have is not huge, but oh so lovely! Really easy-to-live-with colours that are just suited to my taste :: not too wishywashy, not too sludgy and generally very tasteful.

First up for the paint treatment was a small wooden Ikea side table. I can't tell you how much the finished result pleases me, it was hard to photograph to show the true colour, but trust me it is beautiful. The duck egg blue is not too blue, and not too pastely with a sophisticated hint of grey. Normally this little table is covered in newspapers and library books but I did a special tidy up for the photo and put my jug of roses on it for good measure, I guess you could say I styled it. But it was only after I'd uploaded the photo's onto the computer that I noticed the windowsill in the background. Look, there's Snow White galavanting with some Sylvanian family members and a toy car or two. The Little People always find a way to remind me of their presence.

As well as the duck egg blue I also bought a tin of pale eau de nil, which is similar to the DEB but with a slightly more green tone. I decided to have a go at painting a bit of wall in my nastily-decorated kitchen. The kitchen, like most other parts of our house it's in desperate need of some TLC. Actually, I don't think TLC will cut the mustard here, a complete overhaul is needed. No doubt the previous owners thought the scheme was tickety-boo but quite frankly I think it sucks. You can see the dodgy wall tiles in the picture, which are beautifully complimented by vinyl wallpaper in a silvery grey with textured silver streaks running through it. Nice.

Anyways, back to the point...remember on my shopping trip to London last month I bought a clock from the Conran shop? Well I really wanted to put it in the kitchen because it goes so well with my crockery and I thought it would cheer the whole room up a bit. But I simply could NOT bring myself to stick my lovely, funky clock on such dubious wallpaper, hence the eau de nil. I am pleased with the way it came out, although it makes the rest of the kitchen look even more drab. Maybe when I've finished painting my second alcove I might have an eau de nil fest and paint the rest of the kitchen walls. Maybe I might just put the kettle on instead and go and look at my lovely new bookshelves...can't wait to show you them  tomorrow, there's something really satisfying about a Before and After project that actually reaches the After stage.