New bathroom!

As promised, the new bathroom.  As a small reminder, here is the old one:

• Tiny bathroom cabinet with the doors on upside down so the pull-handles are at the top - check
• 3 backsplash tiles above fugly sink, placed at a 5 degree angle - check
• Enourmous bulbous shower-bath in a tiny bathroom - check
• Glass screen with broken handle - check
• Ugly round flourescent lights that belong in a railway underpass - check
• Space for 2 people to brush their teeth - check (provided 1 person stands in the hallway)

 

Wow, that's an image that is so familiar, and yet reminds me of so much pain. I almost miss it.

Even GG is having 2 showers a day!  Its a far cry from the final death throes of our old bathroom - only scalding hot water available from the bath tap which meant filling it an hour before and then washing your hair with an ice cream container.  For once I was loving working away from home!

Sorry the photos are a bit dark.  

The glass shelf isn't actually glued down yet, there are a couple of wonky tiles that the builder has promised to fix, and will be done when the tiler comes back to do the kitchen splashback.

And the shower tray was a major drama. However in the few intervening weeks what seemed like the biggest disaster at the time has now receded from memory.  Suffice to say, originally we wanted black, now we're totally happy with the white, and there was a bit of extra work and messing about to get it to fit. It creaks a tiny bit at the open end, which is pretty annoying but given whats underneath it, I guess we can't have expected much else.  I will say, it is fascinating knowing exactly how you're bathroom has been put together under all those shiny tiles and neat groutlines.

And we couldn't decide whether to go for grey grout or white, but in the end went for white since it could have been a bit overpowering with floor to ceiling tiles... Still undecided but its too late now. Maybe we'll splash out on the kitchen.

You can't quite see it in the pics, but we spent a disproportionate amount of time deciding on a toilet brush (compared to say, the fridge and freezer, worth 10 times as much).  Its from Labour and Wait, my favourite little homewares store on Redchurch st in Shoreditch.  Everything was so shiny and modern in there that I wanted to rustic it up a bit.

I was also hunting for a nice handwash dispenser.  GG was all for the Vipp, but at £85 we thought it a bit steep. Particularly as GG doesn't seem to use handwash but I try not to think about it too much.

But I found the perfect soap dispenser when I was out shopping in Shoreditch, and happened upon Aesop, an Australian apothecary, whatever that means.  Bath stuff, as far as I can tell.  And I picked this up, recommended by Remodelista, in spectacular oldy worldy type packaging.  

Unfortunately the bottle is plastic, not glass.  Even more unfortunately the price wasn't marked, and I went slightly pale as she said the price was £25, but was too shocked to back out of it while standing there with my card in hand.  I don't know what I thought the shop assistant would think of me if I put it back - probably 'smart girl' rather than 'rich twat' like she was actually thinking. Oh well, its there now, it looks great, and I guess I'll just keep refilling it with cheap stuff once its empty.  But my hands do smell nice in the meantime.

Progress

Wow, its amazing how much progress can be made, when you have 6 guys crawling your flat with brushes, electric tile saws and wirecutters... Then again, its amazing how much progress can be made when its 45 degrees and you're just a lone ranger in your underpants.

Anyway, lets put the discussion of time and DIY talent shortfalls aside, and move onto talking about paint. White paint to be exact.  I have to say, I didn't look at a single colour swatch in order to choose the colour white.  Some may say that's madness. I say I'm not enough of an connoisseur to tell the difference.  GG and I talk in the most technical of terms.  Brightness.  GG: "Do you think its too bright?"  Me: "Nah, I think it should have been even brighter."  And then silence for a while before moving onto look at something else.

So, in chronological order we have plastering complete and first lick of paint applied.  Again, sorry for the photo quality, the camera is buried in the bedroom somewhere...

The painting continued and the place really started to take shape:

My favourite photo shows the difference between old and new paint behind where the kitchen cabinets will go:

We've decided to paint the radiators as well, a suggestion made by the decorators.  Hard to tell here, but they look decidedly crappy next to the white walls.

And in the last couple of days the kitchen has started to take shape...  that funny cabinet on the wall will be our pantry/extra storage, since by the time we jammed in a sink, dishwasher, fridge, freezer and oven, there was only space for 1 set of drawers.  And I've previously ranted about my aversion to overhead cupboards.  However, we were daydreaming in BoConcept one day and I spotted this vertical single wall cabinet which floats on the wall and I loved it.  Ours will have 4 handleless doors and is made of 2 stacked wall cabinets from Ikea.  It looks quite large in this photo but I'm hoping once the white doors are revealed and the rest of the furniture is in the room you won't notice it too much.

Here is GG inspecting the new oven. Finally! We we will soon be able to cook baked goods. If only I knew how to bake.  Since we never hooked up the electrics for our old standalone cooker, we've been surviving solely on stove top culinary delights for 18 months now.  Oh, and of course our portable grill, "George".  

And the beast itself.  We splurged a little on the visible appliances in the kitchen.  Since we ended up going with Ikea cabinets and hidden appliances, thought it might be nice to up the ante on the hob and oven.  Both have glass rather than stainless steel surfaces. I can't wait to try them out!  Might just need to invest in a new kettle, since the old one might find his self esteem a little shaken as he stares down at his chipped reflection all day...

Here is the matching hob, the photo isn't that great unfortunately but that didn't stop us basing our purchasing decision for both the oven and hob solely on the one crappy picture below.  Slightly scary buying some of the biggest ticket items without having clapped eyes on them in person, but that's pretty much been the theme of our approach to both flat-hunting (stepped inside a total of 7 flats, 1 of which was just for funsies pre-deposit) and reno fitout.  Ah, the intertubes, how we love you.

 

All in all, everything starting to look good there!

Later this week, an update on the bathroom, which is nearly done! We even think we might have moved back in next week...

I love lamp

I also love Anchorman, but that's another story.

For the last month we have literally been on a spending spree for everything we are fitting in the flat.  I never thought I'd say this, but I'm actually a little tired of it.  The list of outstanding items is shrinking though (just as the bottom line of what we've spent is expanding!).  One of the most fun things we've bought recently is the lighting for the kitchen and dining room.  

I've been obsessing over vintage industrial lampshades for the past 2 years, and have been scouting antique shops and the like for a while. Remember these?  We even made a trip to Berlin, in which I promised myself and GG we would source the perfect lamps for less than half the cost of what we could get them for in the UK... only to come home empty handed having realised we both needed to travel directly to work in different locations the next day.  Didn't think my clients would really understand if I turned up with a battered old lampshade under my arm, not to mention the difficulty of (either one of us) single handedly lugging several of those things around.

And then before we knew it, crunch time. The builder was asking us exactly where the light fittings would go, what they looked like, connections etc and we were totally undecided!!  I started looking on the internet, found some excellent market research by the Mouse Hunter, which exactly mirrored my own dilemmas, and somehow from that blog, ended up at Historic Lighting.  

Hoorah!  They ticked all the boxes of awesome lamp designs for both dining and kitchen, they sell all the fittings, cable and chain, are located in the UK, and do free shipping.  But guys, here's a tip - INCLUDE VAT IN YOUR PRICES! You nearly lost me at the checkout.  I know, I know - if you go back and look at each page it says 'subject to VAT', but honestly when there's one of these georgous beauties staring at you from the page, my peepholes get a little distracted.

But that's not the one we bought in the end.  We got 3 of these in black, because they are slightly smaller, and we can fit 3 of them between the beams on the ceiling directly above the dining table.  Had a minor moment of panic as I realised we would have to fix the dining table in place for good, given that I have been having recurring daydreams about the different ways we could position the furniture in the flat.  GG, being a creature of habit, was shocked to think I would even consider moving an item of furniture from its home of 1.5 years.  Anyway, I'm still not entirely comfortable with it, but its probably something we should have experimented with before we stacked up all the furniture and gave the builder our keys.

Actually, they're kind of small in real life. Almost too small. Oh well, we'll just whack them up and see, we can actually replace them fairly easily if we wanted to sell these ones later...

In the meantime, here's a few teaser shots of the place.  Completed plaster walls on the exterior of the bathroom and hallway:

And tiled shower wall:

Our little subway tiles aren't looking so little after all (we could have gone a smaller size)... but given how long its taking the tiler (2 days work at this point!), I don't think we would have wanted to pay for the extra time...  Starting to look a little lighter and brighter in there.

Today there were 6 guys working in there! That's a lot of people to have in our small flat. They're even working out in the communal hallway, cutting up tiles with a noisy saw, and the hallway is rammed full of our stuff.  Good thing GG didn't come along or he would have had a conniption.  He's a little worried that the lovely young lady upstairs will take her revenge when we move back in by kick starting her little 2am parties again.

Apparently the painters will be done by Monday. Yikes. Then things will really look different.  GG and I have the fun job tonight of going around to the flat and packing up the bedroom a bit more orderly so they can move the stuff out and into the living area in order to paint it...  Fun Friday night times.

Hope you all have a great weekend!

 

Hallway updates

Well, as promised, here are some photos of the new addition to the hallway. We got this guy off ebay for £150 + £40 delivery, so not exactly the deal of the century, but to be honest it was a bit spur of the moment.  I was tired of our hallway looking like Selfridges on Boxing Day. Here is it after I've tidied up:

And, here is the guy we bought, sitting in the stairwell. He looked so good out there I was tempted to leave him.  We really, really need to paint our walls white.

The ebay sellers were brilliant, helping GG get up the stairs, and even giving us a 2 hour delivery window on a Sunday. I love that kind of service.  You can also see here, his brother, the double width version in his native habitat:

Actually this photo is scary, its a little too kitsch for me, and GG and I are both not 100% sure that he's the right solution to our problem yet.
Nevertheless, we moved him inside and loaded him up with shoes.  I sorted through all the boxes, picked 4 nice ones to keep since not everything would fit inside the cabinet, selected 5 pairs of too-pointy heels leftover from 2003 (that I stupidly lugged all the way from Melbourne and haven't worn since) for Good Sammys.  Detour: For those of you who don't know - 'Good Sammys', short for 'Good Samaritan', is the nickname that Australians give to all charity shops in Perth (of any organisation), mostly because it has this cute and memorable seal on the shopsigns:

And, voila! Shoes under control, ideal dumping ground for keys, wallet, phone - and some space to display random stuff including an utterly pretentious selection of books. Yay!

We're still getting used to walking in the room and BAM! seeing a hulking great piece of furniture sitting in there. Not sure how long this guy will live in our house for (probably forever if we take as long to address this situation as we are the bathroom).
We might end up going for something simpler, more modern, and less space hungry (probably less practical too, but that's never been my strong point) - such as this long bench from Ikea:

 

When we eventually have a real wardrobe, most of the shoes can go in there, and we could get a 1 or 2 square baskets to slide under the bench for shoes we wear every day.  It also leaves space for coat hooks above, and all in all would look a lot better. Sorry g plan.

Booty

Today GG and I trekked out to Wimbledon (15 minute bike ride, 15 min wait for the train, 15 min train, 15 min walk) to Wimbledon Stadium, where they run greyhounds or 'the Dogs' as they are called.  Not, of course, to witness this travesty of barbarian entertainment (although judging from the posters around the joint it is a très classy event). Instead we went to check out the weekly car boot sale.

A car boot sale is a strangely UK phenomena. It involves everyone driving into a large dodgy looking carpark or field with their boot full of stuff that to get rid of, opening up said boot to display wares, and playing trashy dance music from crappy car speakers.  I think it might only be this last part that is unique to this country.

And did we bring home some booty.  Well, as much as you can get for the grand sum of £6.50.

Item 1, a small 1970's metallic drinks tray featuring a map of the Maltese islands, 50p. Super exciting because we have been there but would never considering purchasing such a tacky souvenir, yet somehow it seems so right 3 years later and right in our home town.

Item 2, a Midwinter green and gold stripe tea cup, £1.  Hardly a standout, but it is green, and I felt bad after the lady rummaged around to pull out a whole box full of the stuff after I picked it up for a quick squiz.

Item 3, the crowning glory, a drawing of a Rough Legged Buzzard, £5.  I've since discovered this is a hawk found in Europe, Asia and North America, with an average wingspan of 134cm and an average total length of 53cm. Thankyou Wikipedia. Its special because its the only hawk of its size to regularly hover over one spot, which (aside from those awesome beaks) is what makes hawks so interesting in the first place. Woe is the hawk who can't even hover. What a loser. This guy was part of a pair, but the his partner wasn't so cool and so he got left behind.

He's hanging in the hallway, which you may never have seen before now. A sunless, dog-legged room with 5 doorways and a warped floor thanks to the leaking roof issue before we moved in. This is the view looking towards our bedroom at the back of the flat.

 

You might have noticed GG's little addition to spice up the hallway decor, a postcard of Rocky, in which it looks like Rocky is holding hands with Michael Jackson circa 2006 wearing a long skirt.

And while I was getting busy with the screwdriver in the hallway, I thought screw it, why not hang the mirror that's been sitting in the corner of the room on a chair for the last 14 months (seen most clearly here, behind the dining room table)?  After all, doesn't matter how many pock marks we put in the walls, they're all getting a new paint job in the next few.

Voila! £35 from Camden market when we first moved over here and I got confused and thought £35 was cheap.  Its a great shape though, and will hopefully reflect a little more light around the place.

Are you loving the industrial-ness of those pipes in the hallway?  They're similar to the one running through our bedroom, but they all originate outside our flat, and are probably whisking away the cooking fumes from all the other tennants.  They all disappear into the laundry cupboard (around the corner to the right in this photo), which is a veritable spaghetti mess of gas, water and electricity pipes and meters, along with the upstairs neighbours poo shute. The joys of apartment living.

Additions

A couple of weeks ago GG and I went to midcentury.modern, the annual fair for all things design from this era.  Apart from the weather, which was pissing it down as is typical of London, it was spectacular.

Even the location, Christison Hall at Dulwich College was spectacular. I forgot to take my camera, but you can see Dan Hill's photos from a previous fair here, and I've just discovered he also has a pretty cool blog called City of Sound.  Coincidentally, Dan is also Australian and based in Sydney.


So, back to the design fair.  Almost all the stalls were familiar stores who had carted their wares down for the event. It must be a nightmare to organise, moving everything in and out just for 1 day. But at £7/person entry fee, and judging from the number of 'sold' stickers on everything at the end of the day, I'd say its a pretty wise investment.

We were pretty happy to find these 2 Kaiser Idell lamps, which we've been searching for on eBay for ages.  Typically they go for about £160 (although there's 1 on ebay now from France which is going for £220!), but we got these for £80 each. 2 for the price of 1. Ours a bit beat up, but I think that adds to the charm. As did the sticker I found on the base of one of them after we got home that says £3.85.  Oh well, one man's junk...

The Fleas

We recently spent a couple of days in Paris, and I had been very much looking forward to searching out a few bargains at the markets in Porte de Clignancourt.  Officially called Les Puces de Saint-Ouen, but more commonly referred to as Les Puces, or 'the fleas'. 

It was our first stop (after dropping bags off).  We traipsed through the Parisian ghetto in the pelting rain, got ripped on a street side umbrella purchase (15euro, which we then accidentally left in a cafe a couple of days later) to reach the market, then squelched through endless alleys of  imitation american clothes to get to the antiques section... Unfortunately August is the time when many Parisiens go on holidays (probably to escape the tourists), and so this is what we found:

Oh how my heart broke.  Only about 10% of the stalls were open, and they were mostly full of baroque style antiques. I had half expected it, but it was still a major downer. I had dreamed of buying 2 or maybe 3 lamp shades for above our dining table, since everything in London is a complete and utter rip off.  Case in point:

This guy is retailing for £235 here.  I'm still kicking myself for not buying a few of the ones I saw for about 40euro in  a Berlin flea market.  And then selling them on ebay over here.  I could have bought so many beautiful things with my squillions of profit.  Next trip will definitely be to Berlin to go thrifting, that place is a goldmine.

In the end I came home with just these, dated 1905.  Unfortunately they all seemed to be from the same collection, somewhere near Chambon-sur-Lac, so no early images of Paris, but I love the handwriting.  These days I can pretty much only type.  Not sure how I'm going to frame them yet.

The next day, while GG lay at home in bed one day with Paris-belly, I went for a shopping trip, stopping for lunch at the legendary Les Deux Magots, home of the existentialists - its a shame GG wasn't there to soak up the atmosphere of his predecessors.  

Next stop was Le Bon Marche.  Oh the homewares. The homewares!  I managed to restrain myself (mainly due to transportation issues), and came home with just this one small but perfectly formed tea cup to add to my collection:

 

I'm sure most French people would argue that this cup was intended for coffee, but let me tell you, tea never tasted so good.