joseph joseph - so good they named it twice

I previously blogged about the joseph joseph index chopping boards I got given for Christmas [thanks, Emma!]. I have not used them, preferring to save them for the new house. Now, the new house has seen some buying power - kitchens, carpets, bathroom suites etc all take investment - but we have been very restrained and not splurged on 'furnishings and household items' as I term it. So, we haven't bought anything that isn't integral to the building itself. We have held back and been sensible - we have not stockpiled cushions, crockery or ornaments. This weekend we broke with that just a wee tiny bit. We ordered some dining chairs to brighten up the dining table and some bar stools for the breakfast bar. We have also ordered pots and pans [new induction hob = new cooking pots] but that is a whole other post. We also indulged in some joseph joseph! So I have new utensils on their way -


And critically, two new worktop savers for our new breakfast bar/Kitchen surfaces. The house has a lot of sleek lines and neutral colours but everyone needs some fun and we spotted some cool worktop savers at Sterling Mills.

Andy gets the tractor -


I get the sheep on the hill -


We managed to not buy the entire range, or give in to new knives, or any number of amazing things. So we have been restrained - honest!

busy busy busy

Sometimes life gets very busy and while most of the busyness has been good it is tiring and I am starting to look forward to a week or two of calm post-move.

First off is that the house is now lurching forward at a scary pace. We are three weeks out from moving - decisions about paint, conversations with lawyers, forms to fill, carpets to finally order, packing to be done.

The house is looking almost like a proper ready-to-move in house - we get very excited every time we visit. It has always, even in it's shell-like state, felt like home but now there is actually a visibly recognisable house there.


Yes, it has gone so far that I now gaze at freshly painted walls for hours on end...

The walls are painted and the windows sealed and there are wires for our lights.



The bathroom is in and almost done.



The stained glass is being cleaned and restored.



And sometimes it is the little things - our front door is finished, the handles are on the internal doors.




On top of that, work has been pretty manic. We had a day long meeting on Tuesday on peer support for people living with diabetes [followed by dinner with the lovely Ruth Wilson - our Peer Support Manager who works out of the Cardiff office] and launched the Live for It! project on Thursday. Friday was 'work from home day' which means I get to catch up on all of the paperwork and emailing the week generates. And I get to do it sitting in my jeans and hoody and playing my music loud. It also means I can multi task to make our lovely builders some cakes - this week they got cherry and chocolate muffins. In the space of our hour on site they had cleaned out the whole batch...

To round it all off I finally got somewhere with my shoulder and saw the GP and got some pain relief. The worst thing about the pain has been the exhaustion that has come with it and not being able to concentrate when it gets really bad. When everything looks like it is at the end of a long tunnel because the pain is at crazy levels it makes it difficult to be as productive as usual. But - now it is under control I managed a full Saturday awake - for the past four or five weeks I have crashed out post-house visit for most of the day - not great for packing and getting stuff done!

Now I just need to make it through the next three weeks and it will be move in day!

placemats

I like slate placemats - simple, robust and easy to clean. In particular I like these ones from London Kills Me - they have a dandelion pattern so it breaks up the slate and stops it looking to harsh. Also, their website pointed out you can use chalk to write dinner guests names on as place settings which I hadn't thought of!

the project - site visit

Stairs from 1st floor to mezzanine

Things move very slowly then suddenly speed up. The past few weeks has seen a flurry of emails to sign off the final-final-final plans for the kitchen, bathroom and flooring. It is amazing that you can think you have thought of everything and then suddenly there is a teeny tiny detail you missed that is incredibly important and must be agreed, like, right now.


Beam reaching up from 1st to mezzanine floor, wee bit of dining platform

The big jobs are also being done - the inside is now all plasterboarded with wires poking through and plug socket spaces appearing. It is at this point you realise that there isn't a plug socket just where you will need one because seeing it 3-d is very different to a paper plan.


Andy standing at the bathroom door, down the corridor towards the two bedrooms

We are also beginning to see the space and get a better feel for it now the windows are all in and the house is a lot lighter. This means the mezzanine seems huge but the bedrooms smaller. The dining platform is taller than we imagined and the garden a bigger space. It is like Alice in Wonderland - sizes and shapes change with every visit. But luckily, so far, we haven't thought 'oh my God we don't like it' - more 'oh my God why can we not move in tomorrow'!


Andy in his hard hat and fetching yellow vest...

However, it is a conversion which means the secret hidey holes we had in the old place and our current rented accommodation will not be available. Two challenges for me - to be a lot tidier and to not hoard. Those who know me well will understand the challenge this poses. The clear out we did a year ago needs to be repeated with an even harsher edit. So I need to see this as a fresh beginning and a chance to declutter rather than a hard and emotional break up with shoes I haven't worn since university and 'archiving' every single card, postcard and letter I have ever been sent.


Where the stained glass window will be put back in as part of the internal wall that encloses the dining platform - as you walk down from the mezzanine or sit at the dining table you will be able to look through the stained glass

And if I manage to do this, and perhaps make some ebay money too, then I can invest in this lovely simple but quirky Keith Brymer Jones 'word' crockery...I particularly like the 'what comes first the chicken or the egg' egg cups and the 'porridge' bowl.

tea towels

I like the traditional tea towels you get - plain white with a coloured stripe - but I also like graphic ones. Not chintzy ones with scenes of the countryside. Blackline drawings and domestic themes that are not pink and girly [pink is not my favourite colour]. Here are some I have seen recently -

Biscuit tea towel by Charlotte Farmer from Bloomsbury Store - there are also tea cups, cakes and tea spoon ones -


Cassette tape tea towel from Rockett St George where you can also get ones with a typewriter, Eiffel tower and cutlery themes




Of course if I was a really proud housewife I would buy this tea towel commemorating the Royal Wedding!

precious things

I love good design-led shelving for books and the objects - a vase, cup, picture etc - that are special to us. made.com champions young designers and gives them a space to showcase their designs. The Polygon collection by Luca Stepan is simple but stylish and my favourite piece is the white oak bookshelves.


Very functional but the shape of the wood and the pigeon hole style is visually arresting while not overtaking their purpose - to keep your treasured possessions safe, sorted and accessible.

carpets

We have never had to buy carpets - our old house had original wood floors so the only flooring we have ever had to decide upon was the wee bit of floor in our bathroom and kitchen. So we have had to enter the world of carpets - which to a newby is quite bewildering.

We went to Sterling Furniture Warehouse in Tillicoultry - on recommendation from friends and the people doing our house. And thankfully when we arrived we found a guy who could explain all the different types of carpets. He was good because he didn't steer us towards the most expensive and try and get us to shell out wads of cash but also didn't just abandon us because we probably wouldn't be after hand-woven-by-maidens floor coverings. He picked up that that given we will be outlaying for a whole house at once we wanted good quality and nice but not to the point where we will be gazing at our amazing carpet from makeshift furniture made out of cardboard boxes while eating beans on toast. We also want it to work with the building - a church conversion.

We learned about the different wool mixes and types of carpets - what carpets are a pain to hoover [important for us - safe to say hoovering isn't a hobby of ours] and what carpet is better for hardwearing areas and what is better for looking smart and posh.


Being colour blind is always a challenge so I have to rely on Andy making sure that what we pick matches our planned interiors but also that it looks okay to my eyes as well as to everyone elses.

We like simple modern interiors but with splashes of strong colours. All the walls will be paint - no wallpaper - and will be in very neutral colours except perhaps for a feature wall or two. The 1st floor will be wood - maple - and any other flooring will be pattern free - so we reckoned we could go for something a bit stronger in colour for the carpets.



So it looks like olive green for the guest bedroom, aubergine for our bedroom, a grey that apparently has purples through it that I can't see and blueberry for the mezzanine! Here are close ups of the samples -

site visit

We went and saw how things were going down at the house at the weekend - our house hasn't seen much movement but the 'mirror' house on the other side of the church is further along and Bobby showed us round to get an idea of how ours will look in a few weeks time.

This is one of the beams in the main bedroom coming through the 1st floor -


This picture shows the way the ceiling copes with the very large church window - when you stand under it you are under a pointed roof bit and although I couldn't quite capture it here there is a lot of space between the lower part of the ceiling and the window.


This picture is of the ground floor stairs entry to the 1st floor [on the right] and the stairs going up to the mezzanine [on the left]. The 1st floor is where the kitchen, dining and reading/quite area will be.


Looking down from the mezzanine onto the first floor you can see the raised dining area and Andy in the pic gives it a bit of scale - there is a lot of height in the building. The beam you can see is the one in the previous pic that started off in the main bedroom.


And here is that same beam stretching right up into the mezzanine...


Andy is standing on the raised dining room area...


I love the shape the beams make high up in the roof...


This is the 1st floor looking at it standing on the raised dining area - the doorway goes through into the utility room and WC. The bit you can see under the mezzanine is where I will have my books and reading area. And the kitchen will be against the back wall and come out to teh far side of the beam from where I am standing taking this pic and the pine mezzanine pillar. The bit between teh beam and pillar will be a breakfast bar.


So, although this isn't our house it gave us a good feel, albeit the opposite way round, for how ours will be. It has been quite interesting because each house has taken ideas from each other and so while they will be different there are probably things we wouldn't have thought of ourselves and vice versa. For example, the raised dining area came from our house but the idea of a stained glass panel in the stair partition to capture light in the dining area came from our neighbour.

What we are quite pleased about though is that in a few weeks our house will look like this and then the site team will be focusing on our side of the building and we should be ready earlier than other houses for moving in. Right now that moment can't come soon enough!

motifs

I don't go in for a lot of motifs but I like owls and I also like stags and thistles. Stags and thistles could end up being a bit stereotype scottish or a bit huntin', shootin', fishin'. Timorous Beasties has long been a favourite with me because of their modern take on traditional styles and designs and I am chuffed they have brought out this amazing thistle wall paper and textiles -

Wallpaper - small


Wallpaper - large


Cushion

lighting

We have been um-ming and ah-ing about lighting for the kitchen and dining areas on the first floor. This is the latest thought - copper shades by Tom Dixon -

flooring

We haven't quite decided on flooring for the bathroom yet. We know we don't want carpet, lino or wood. We like the flooring we had in our wee flat but am not sure how well it will go with the tiles we think we will go for. So, it is a bit different but I saw cool floor covering by The Rubber Floor Company. It is very modern but then the bathroom is a modern design - and it is better just going for it than putting in pseudo materials.

They do a variety of textures -

Smooth

Grid


Stud


Slate

textiles

I am working on some ideas on creating a cosy, relaxed nook in the mezzanine area of the new house. I want a space where I can have my books, laptop, magazines and card making stuff and have as a chill out zone. So while I am not a 'girly' girl I do want it to be softer in design than other parts of the house.

The kitchen is a very sleek and glossy space and the dining and living areas will be quite modern in style. I do not want old fashioned funriture but I do want something that is more mid century than modern.

I also like textile designs that are colourful but are more naive in design - like Marimekko and Donna Wilson.

Donna is a Scottish artist who now works in London and has managed to grow her business without going the overblown way of Cath Kidston and Orla Kiely - both of whom have achieved hugely and in some ways had radical impacts on interiors over the past 20 years [and don't get me wrong, some of their textile designs are lovely]. However, while you can recognise a Donna Wilson design the same way you can a Kidston, it is not as ubiquitous. Wilson has managed to retain a sense of the handmade - mainly because she hasn't succumbed to factory production - and of not causing her customers to bump into the designs the way you do with an Orla covered laptop and Kidston patterned suitcases.

I love the owl and robin cushions -



I also like the seventies-esque flower cushion


And you must have a cosy blanket and I like this one which is called 'up the garden path' -



And while having a thundersome cushion may not seem nice and cosy I do like the cloud range of cushions -