Small home updates
BIG impact. Lights! Art and a downstairs loo
It sometimes feels we have slowed to a standstill with the finishing touches at home. But I’m tired and attempting to enjoy some calm to my nervous system after the upheaval of the last 18 months, we’re finally settled and I don’t think I can quite believe it. It has taken a lot of negotiating with my brain to finally let myself relax. And although we’re not moving at lightning speed we’ve accomplished some tasks worth celebrating:
We hung some art and lights! We realised that if we waited until after we’d finished painting, everything would be on the floor for another year or so…
It feels so good to be filling rooms with Art, creativity and colour. Most of our pictures has been wrapped up since we left our last place and it’s incredible how it has injected so much personality into our living space.
The stripe globe light is from Albie & Pearl (small) and the paper lamp is £12 from Dunelm*. The stripe lamp hangs at the top of the loft stairs and is a lovely signal that you are now in the kids’ domain.
We bought these light cables from Dunelm* which come in many colours (we went for antique brass with a red or brown cord) and they help make most ceiling lights (especially affordable paper ones, of which we have a few!) look more interesting.
I’m still on the fence with the loft bathroom, in certain lights I love it and then at other times the yellow sink really jars with me but..! Adding a mirror has given it some much needed depth (we bought this one from Mileage vintage in Deal many years ago), it bounces light around and feels more cohesive. Are my children tall enough to see their reflection? No! But it’ll be worth the wait. The rotating wall soap is something I’ve always loved: planet friendly and the kids enjoy washing their hands with it.
I will never underestimate the power of a good shelf with your belongings at eye level, we added this Cox & Cox one (we’ve had for a few years) to our main bathroom and it has made my evening routine 100x more pleasurable. Thankfully, Chris’s skincare routine is just a supermarket own brand pot he keeps by the bed - the shelf is accepted as my territory.
And in our bid to simply Get Stuff Off The Floor we have rehoused this shelving unit we found on FB Marketplace and it has proved adequate in storing things we don’t want to deal with right now:
I am back wallpapering my daughter’s room and it’s definitely a marathon not a sprint (it has been 2 months and I’m yet to finish one wall):
And last week my parents stayed to help us recondition our front door. And by recondition I mean replace. We were quoted £3000 by a company to strip, repair and bring our front door to a decent standard (and that was before the glass!) and to be honest? The door layout wasn’t my favourite and the stained glass was completely cracked on the verge of dangerous. So we sold our door and bought another, more attractive (IMO) door on FB Marketplace that had already been stripped for £100 and my dad came to the rescue. It ended up being a horrible job that took 3 full days and is still unfinished. We bought ribbed reinforced glass (roughly £150 for all the panels), my dad brought spare remnants of wood he had in his garage and he spent half a week sanding, planing, gluing, filling, packing out and basically carving a new door.
But it’s getting there and I’m so excited to have light in our hall after a year of being boarded up.
And finally the downstairs toilet…the straw that broke my back (almost literally! I was in bed for two days post panel painting):
My dad panelled the toilet using a Wickes tongue and groove panelling kit, plenty of patience and a ton of glue (most of the walls have pipes behind so screwing wasn’t an option):
The paint is Farrow & Ball ‘India Yellow’ (inspired by Frances Costelloe’s bathroom) and we will match the skirting boards at some point. Deceptively, the panelling doesn’t come with the moulding on top so we’ve bought that separately and is another job on the list. Soap dispenser is from Etsy* and the lock is from my family’s shop Saxon Security. We are still undecided whether we paint the sliding door the same or a contrasting colour, but I would very much like to wallpaper the top half of the room (because I like to punish myself and my back by only wallpapering awkward spaces). I am thinking something like this:
No Frugality Film Club review this month because Billy Elliott had gone from ITV when I went to watch it! I have still never seen this movie and it seems the universe doesn’t want me to. So next month’s movie will be….
’Wuthering Heights’ (Andrea Arnold, 2011) on Channel 4
We only have 18 days to watch this, not to put too much pressure on, as we know this is the least serious film club, but snooze and you lose (as I discovered with Billy!)
Love seeing the updates. The yellow downstairs loo looks so cute. The colour works so well in a small space. I love it at night the most. Would you ever think about painting the toilet seat in the kids bathroom. Maybe a pale blue in the same hue as the toilet. Like Kakelugn by Farrow and Ball. I think because the floor tiles are a warm yellow orange and the sink is cool another colour could help with balance. So cute though. The sink is very sweet. x
It all looks great. I particularly like the Murano ceiling light, beautiful. The kids bathroom is eclectic and cool. I think if you changed it to a different basin it would lose something and you’d possibly regret it. Embrace the friction!