Friday 26 December 2008

Curtains be gone

I'm always fascinated as to what made me so
interested in Interior design and more specifically
in curtains, I remember every time my mother
redecorated any of our 'downstairs' rooms it would
often consist of a mail order catalogue being
ordered from a company called Listers this would
include rows and rows of columns indicating the
cost of different sized curtains and a waterfall of
tiny colour samples of the actual velvet fabrics. I loved looking at these for hours and looking at all the different rich shades and planning in my head room scenes for the different colours, as I knew by all the rooms in our house my mother would fall in love with a blue shade and that is what would be ordered, she rarely deviated away from the colour blue! I can remember this room clearly it would have been in the early 80's and consisted of a blue/ivory damask style flocked wallpaper, a blue Dralon sofa with a matching tasseled trim, blue velvet curtains with cream tassle tiebacks on a teak pole and a very busy blue patterned axminster carpet which my mother often reminded us were very expensive! I even remember the five arm brass light fitting with matching blue silk tasselled shades, which my Aunt informed my mother looked as though it had been taken from draculas castle! Well once again I have waffled on the point being What had happened to Listers? as I couldn't believe anybody would still be ordering velvet curtains in 2008! Sadly I was right the mills had been abandoned in 1992 due to a change in trends and stiff foreign competition, sad to think that the company that had once made the velvet robes for King George v's coronation, and new drapes for the white house in the 70's was no more. The only good to come from such an amazing history is that the former mill building's have been converted to beautiful apartments, I do hope there is a museum or something on the site to tell of the buildings great heritage. LONG LIVE THE CURTAIN!

Sofa so good



I've been watching this Kingcome sofa for sale on Ebay for day's I absolutely adore sofa's and this one would be amazingly comfortable, I imagine recovering it in a beige faux suede piped in chocolate, but being the last week in december and allready having overspent I think I am going to have to resist, it amazes me to think what once cost thousands of pounds can cost a few quid years later, I love Ebay.

Wednesday 24 December 2008

He Didn't turn up....


Yes you guessed it the chap who agreed to turn up and fit the flue liner didn't turn up! So determined to sit in front of it on christmas eve, I sat the burner in the stove fitted the 3' of rigid piping and lit it! so far so good i'm sure it's not burning as effeciently as it will when it has a proper flue but the flickering flames are doing it for me! Merry Christmas to one and all!

Is everything green?

I was getting to thinking that every room in my house was green! but luckily the hallway is a taupe colour and my bedroom is grey so not quite! I think my choice of green in so many rooms is a rebellion against my mother who absolutely hates anything green.

Nearly Finished!


Here is the nearly completed Breakfast room end of the Kitchen
hope to have the table and chairs back in the next couple of days, must try and find some nice handles for those doors!

Tuesday 23 December 2008

Ralph and the log burner



This should have been my first post, whilst looking for inspiration for fitting a log burner I stumbled on a blog of somebody proudly showing pics of their gorgeous log burner! Well it's the night before christmas eve, and I am hoping at 7am tomorrow morning somebody is going to climb onto my roof and install a flue liner and connect up my burner! then a large scale clean up and a quick paint job on the new plaster saxon green from F&B seems to be the one, I seem to have inheriited a brown leather sofa, and most of the houses I see have this combination of paint colour and it looks amazing! Might mean i'll need new curtains but he ho! And then all I need to do is get the last tree in the garden centre and get a bit of christmas spirit going in the place, luckily nobody is dropping in till New years Eve, so hopefully it will start to look half decent by then! On top of that the kitchen is just receiving it's final coats of paint meaning i can get the table and chairs out of the shed finally! Ralph shown in the pic loves the log burner at my parents so I'm hoping it's going to be a favourite spot for him.

The American Dream


I am such an anorak it's scary! But I love my Kirby 'Ultimate G' I recently bought off Ebay, it really is the most complicated and heaviest thing you can imagine, but it does have good suction and I am liking it's robustness compared to the 3 dysons I owned previously. It also has every attachment known to man, it even has a wood sander and polisher attachment! It's going to keep me quite for hours! I have attached the picture from the actual Ebay advert, I understand all I need do now is book a Kirby service and it will be as good as new! This service also includes a buff and polish to the metalwork...... How sad!

Casement Cloth



Such a simple idea, cheap casement cloth from JL approx £5m with a chocolate brown linen central panel, I can't tell you how many windows I have dressed with this stuff, it looks amazing with suede, linen or checked borders.

Monday 22 December 2008

Another Bedroom



I loved this bedroom this was 4 house's ago, I have re-used most of the things you see the suede headboard and cushions and the lamps they are all currently in different rooms in my current house. I have made everything you see in the room as I origanaly trained as an upholsterer and curtain maker.