Georgian study

Just a few photos I took on my iPhone of my Dad's study. He likes Georgian colours and furniture, so it's quite cosy, with darker colours than elsewhere in my parents house. It's also quite lived-in as you can see by his built-in bookcase, stuffed full of art history books!






Most of the room is panelled, painted in Farrow and Ball, 'Vert de Terre' eggshell paint. The fireplace wall is covered in Farrow and Ball's 'Bees' wallpaper in the Arsenic colourway, I think. The colour scheme with all the giltwood is quite Napoleonic, especially with the Bees wallpaper-apparently the bee was the personal emblem of Napoleon!
I also like the antique french mirror and pelmet above the curtains, even though they are quite shabby!

Venetian mirrors...

The first two photos are courtesy of google images- I just typed in Venetian mirrors, and they came up! I really like how pickled the first mirror is, it's obviously antique. The second photo shows reproduction mirrors, but I like the placement over the twin sinks.

The last two photos are my own- sorry about the poor quality iPhone snaps!
Just to show a current project going on in our home amidst a million other unfinished jobs! We've just put up these pink Venetian mirrors in our hallway, which we are about to redecorate, hence all the black smudges and marks over the walls! We will have to take down the mirrors, whilst we decorate, but that's easy enough to do. It's hard to get a shot that's straight because the angle of our hallway is very narrow. The new colour will be the colour of the painted patch around the light switch, it's an off-white, and the woodwork, will be Cornforth White eggshell. I'd also like to change the light switch and its position too....

The mirrors are about 100 years old, and have some pickling, especially the one on the right hand side. They're a pale, peachy pink and are nice and sparkly. They're not identical, but you would have to look really carefully to spot the slight differences between them. I haven't often seen pink ones about, so it's nice to have a pair. If we won the lottery, and moved to a big house, I would love to put them above his and hers matching marble topped sinks!

Funnily enough, we bought one in Holland, and the second one, only a week later when we came back home in a local antique shop. They were both similarly priced too! They need a very good clean at the moment-another job to add to my list....

Things I like...

Hope you all had a lovely Xmas and New Year!
Just a few photos of things I really like at the moment! The first is the frosted faux ivy and eucalyptus wreath that my mum bought me in The White Company sale. It's half price at the moment, and I love it. It has a very light frosted effect, and it's a decent size. I like simple wreaths made of foliage, so I think I'll leave it undecorated and plain.
The second thing I love is the vintage letter 'S' on my mantlepiece. It's really chunky and is pale grey and chrome. It even still lights up if you want it too. I love old advertising letters and this was quite reasonable for £15. There were other letters made out of the same stuff and I was so tempted to buy more, even though they weren't my initials! But my post Xmas bank account wouldn't allow it!!
Next I really am pleased with my new radiator shelf! The OH rested an old leftover piece of Victorian marble we had in the shed onto the radiator behind my new sofa, and lo and behold I have an instant shelf! It's a good place to put my cup of tea, and the cats love sitting on it too! It doesn't block much heat, as I've left enough room for the air to circulate still. An added bonus is that it hides the top of my ugly radiator, which was paint splattered and hideous.
Lastly, I was lucky enough to get an ipad mini for a joint birthday and Xmas present from my family, and it's brilliant. I read every night on the Kindle app, and am forever downloading free books to read off Amazon. The two cameras are quite good, the second one is 5 megapixels, which is fine for taking quick photos. I love all the magazines you can get from the US, like Romantic Homes that you can't get here.
I also love the oilcloth case I got on Amazon, made by Tuff luv. I really wanted an oilcloth case, with an elastic band that holds it shut, and Cath Kidston hasn't made one yet for the mini ipad!

(First photo by The White Company)

Corner of my room...

I've changed a few things around in my little sitting room and I've put this little grey table in the corner for now. I'd really like a more Swedish/French style one but I already had this one, so it will do for now! It's just the right height though and my gilded carved lamp looks pretty on it. The little jewelled star was a birthday present from my sister- I love stars and have them all over my house!
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Christmas at Petersham Nurseries in Richmond

Just thought I'd post a few photos I took on my iPhone recently at Petersham Nurseries in Richmond, London. It's such a lovely place to visit. I never buy much, as the things I like are way out of my budget, but I like to have a look around and have a cup of tea and a piece of their homemade cake.
I love their styling, and the fact that although it's primary a nursery for plants, you can buy the antiques and loads of gifts and decorative items for your home. There's also a lovely restaurant and another tea- room you can visit too. It's very rustic and all the antiques are very weathered and have definitely been chosen to fit in with their faded colour palette. The ground inside all the rooms is just soil, as they are placed inside huge glass conservatories- it's a good idea to wear boots or wellies!

Farrow and Ball Cornforth White Kitchen part two...

A few more photos of some of the changes we made to our kitchen-apologies if you've already seen some of them!
The first two photos are of my dream oven for the space we had- the 60cm Aga Companion. It's made of cast iron and comes in a wide variety of colours. Perfect if you hanker after the look of a full-size Aga range, but haven't the space.
I would have loved this in black for my little kitchen, but the price is way out of my league. I think it's over £3,000....
So I looked for similar mini-ranges that were in my budget, and found the Mini Gourmet 60cm range by Leisure. Leisure used to be part of the Aga-Rangemaster group until only a few years ago, and you can tell that from the classic styling of their range cookers. It has more or less the same oven functions, plus a handy griddle and swing out cooking tray, and is available in black, cream or red, and in a gas or electric model. It also has similar chunky doors, but best of all, it only cost around £420....
As a joke, in reference to my wanting a real Aga, I bought one of the spare enamel Aga badges on EBay for £7 and put it on the oven to see if my husband would notice. It had two little prongs on the back which fit into holes on the real Aga's door, so I sawed them off with my junior hacksaw and glued a piece of flexible magnet on the back! It worked perfectly- the magnet must be strong!
Well, the funny thing is, we ended up leaving it on and everyone who sees our oven always think it's a real Aga and asks if it was very expensive. It always makes me laugh when I tell them the story. My dad thinks I'm mad though!





Another recent change we made to our kitchen was replacing the top two panels of the original pine door to glass. One of the panels had split and there was an ugly crack going right across it, but the main reason we did it was to introduce more light into the narrow hallway behind it. Victorian hallways can be quite long and gloomy, so now we get a lot more light into it from the kitchen. The two bits of glass only cost about £10 to be cut to size, and then I covered them with one of my favourite finds- etched glass effect window film from Peels of London in Dulwich pattern (£16 for a large sheet). You choose whether you want it to be frosted or non frosted (I always pick frosted as it obscures the left-over mess in the kitchen, whilst still allowing all the light to come through).
It looks more like a scullery door now. Another favourite design is called Crystal which is a Victorian etched star pattern. I have used this all over my house- in my conservatory to obscure the top windows to allow more privacy from overlooking houses, on my front door, the bathroom window-all over my house. It's so easy to cut it and fit, and it looks just like real etched Victorian glass but at a fraction of the price.

You can see the etched star pattern called Crystal in the black and white photo. You can also just see the top windows of the conservatory behind, which I covered in it too. At night, I don't like the thought of being overlooked when eating, so this was the perfect solution. Also it looks pretty, and gave my UPVC conservatory a more vintage look in keeping with the rest of our house.

These are the polished chrome handles we used all from EBay. The pull cup handles were supposedly Mark Wilkinson spares, and they do feel very good quality. They were so cheap too.

We also replaced all the white plastic plug sockets and light switches for polished chrome ones-again very cheap from EBay. You can see the old white ones in the photo below, and in the photo beneath that, the chrome ones.


In fact, most things for our new kitchen came from EBay apart from the wood and paint!
And just to finish off, here's the photo of our kitchen from the Estate Agents brochure before we bought the house. All good quality solid oak, but we fancied something a bit different!
It also just goes to show how influential the blogging world is-after I saw how lovely Joni from Cote de Texas' kitchen looked after she painted it grey, I knew I wanted a grey kitchen too! In the UK the grey kitchen trend has really caught on too now, but quite a while after it did in the Sates. It's interesting how trends can be global isn't it?

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Farrow and Ball Cornforth White Kitchen photos...part 1

Just looking back at photos of one of my favourite home makeovers-sorry about the long post! We finally did finish our kitchen makeover- I must take some more photos of it.
I still love the cabinet colour which is Farrow and Ball's Cornforth White. It's a very, very pale light gray, but it's a soft, warm grey. We used acrylic eggshell paint, and it's held up really well.
Looking back, I can't believe we ever got this makeover finished! The reason it took so long was because the OH did it all himself, from start to finish, after work and on weekends. He made the cabinets, collected and fitted the granite worktops, fitted the sink and taps, laid the floor, made the false chimney breast to hide the oven extractor hood-literally everything!
He's not a carpenter by trade, just self-taught and very handy at most DIY things. Usually he loves projects, but this one really started to grind us down, because there was so much to do! We really did lose enthusiasm and motivation three-quarters of the way through. Still, a lack of funds meant that if we wanted a bespoke-style kitchen on our tiny budget, we would have to do it ourselves...
It's not perfect, it's fairly small, but we like it. And similar inset wooden kitchens in magazines usually seem to have cost at least £15,000 upwards, whereas ours cost about £1200 including the granite work tops.
To save money, we kept a lot of things we already had, but improvised and improved them. For instance, we couldn't afford to change our white washing machine, dishwasher and fridge freezer so we sprayed them with Plasticote chrome appliance spray. Also, they worked perfectly, so I couldn't justify replacing them, even if we'd had the funds. The cans of spray paint are brilliant- there's not a chip on anything we sprayed a couple of years down the line.
We were so impressed with the chrome spray paint, we sprayed our gold ceiling spotlights with it too. Now they are chrome, and look much more modern. And it was a lot easier and cheaper then replacing them. We also sprayed the cabinet hinges and the brown fan heater in the cabinet plinths chrome too. Just make sure you get the heat resistant spray designed to spray ovens!
The granite work tops cost £240 if I remember correctly on eBay for three 3m lengths. Luckily, it was a grey colour that went with our colour scheme. We had to collect them ourselves but only from 10 miles away. Lifting them onto our van was an experience I won't forget in a long time....
We got them cut at our local stonemasons yard- the OH drew a detailed template plan of where to cut them, and where to put the sink cut outs and tap holes. I held my breath when they came back, but they were perfect. Best of all, they only charged £150- I suppose it made a change from doing gravestones.
We had just enough work top to do our kitchen, down to the last cm. If money were no object, I would love white Carrara marble work tops, but I am more than satisfied with the grey granite, plus it's very tough!
Part 2 tomorrow!
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