Indigo-go

Navy is my black - I have so much of it in my wardrobe, you could be forgiven for thinking that it was all dip-dyed in one fail swoop. It's my neutral, it is softer on the skin tones than black and, as my best mate teases me, it brings out my eyes (top tip, if you have blue eyes, wear blue. It took me until my third decade to realise this). It was obvious that deep blue was likely to feature in the house in various ways, but what I hadn't realised was that I would want to use it so much and that, by returning to it again and again (I hope) it has given the place a cohesive feel. 

It started with the deep blue kitchen cabinets, which I love - they're pained Hicks Blue from Little Greene, which is a definite navy, the navy of dark denim and linen. We wanted to carry it on through to the walls of the dining room next door to the kitchen, but it felt like quite a bold statement, one we hesitated to make. For months the walls were covered with a patchwork of different tones, from deep ultramarine to pale wedgewood, while we decided. Certain members of the family raised an eyebrow or two, but delicately refrained from outright condemnation. Did we dare? The dining room is pretty small, the oldest part of this 16th century cottage, housing huge hulking beams and a deep red-brick inglenook. We feared that a dark paint might make the space seem small and measly. Our lovely decorator suggested lime washing the beams, which made a tremendous difference and lifted their dark oppressiveness, so we felt emboldened to press on. We finally chose Woad, again from Little Greene - it's more of a true blue, lighter than the Hicks and softer and sweeter - it has a milky edge that makes it feel like a very traditional colour, which suited the room's old bones.

Now it's done and I couldn't be happier - I'm glad we didn't play safe and make it neutral. It's bold and beautiful, it doesn't shrink the room at all, but gives it depth and character. The room is still a work in progress as we want it to function both as a withdrawing room and a dining room (can anyone recommend an 8 - 10 seater dining table you can store away?!) It's also got built in cabinets along one whole wall to house my beloved's significant vinyl habit and our collection of psychedelic music prints, so it has many jobs to do, but it can carry it off. It's no shrinking violet...

 

    

A room of our own...

I like to think that I'm not too curmudgeonly, but I'm not keen on a house that's totally overrun by kid's plastic toys; they are so often unsightly to the eye and ear. Despite this, most rooms have toys and play spaces and there's plenty of evidence of the small Borrower who lives with us everywhere (like a Borrower she believes that everything should be hers and the big people are just here to service her needs. She's constantly trying to persuade me that anything pretty I possess should be handed over to her and not above above secretly sequestering things she particularly likes).  

The Sitting Room, however, is OUR space - it's totally grown up and is resisting the tide of toys. It's not quite finished - I have rather dramatic plans for one wall in the future - but it is fit for purpose. It's pale French Grey walls are cool but characterful, changing in the different lights. Two massively comfy, low and soft Loaf Souffle sofas hunker down in a beautiful pale grey cloth by Linwood Fabrics. My anally retentive side fell hard for the Souffle - I love cushions on sofas, but I prefer the sofas themselves without cushions.

I once had the pleasure of spending a lot of time in the most beautiful house I've ever seen - Cothay Manor in Somerset. It has the most fabulous gardens, but it was the interior that inspired me so much. They had one room which was dark, low ceilinged, treasures on each table - they called this room their "Winter Cosy". Although our sitting room is really nothing like it, that's just the atmosphere I'm going for.  We've got a gorgeous old wood burning stove in here and I'm planning on a ladder shelf in the corner which will be stacked with blankets, cushions and eiderdowns; it's a place for the family to nestle down together, the very home of hygge.

Kitchenalia

The kitchen is nearly, not quite complete, but the light today was so pretty and me and the Smalls were having a quiet hang at home, so I couldn't resist taking a few pictures. 

Our old kitchen was full of art, but we want to keep this room quite pared back to feature really special pieces - so far we've just put up a magical nordic treescape by our talented friend Dan at www.seecreatures.co.uk , but there are a few more to come. 

The grey lights are from Rockett St George, while the dark blue enamel ones are vintage from Lassco, a bit of a find as they pick up the tone of the Hick's Blue (Little Greene Paint Library) cabinets and island. We went for Carrara marble worktops, which will get scratched and aged as it's such a soft material, but I actually can't wait - I want this room to feel lived in and ageless. Our limestone floor tiles are meant to achieve the same feel. On the window seat we've used a vintage Hungarian grain sack from www.beyondfrance.co.uk as a cushion cover. I also have the pantry cupboard of my dreams.

This is the room that has taken the most work and the longest time. I kind of really, totally, utterly and absolutely love it...

Putting The Boot In

Slowly, but slowly things are coming together in the Hatted House. With the obvious caveat that we have a snag list as long as Mr Tickle's arm, there are finally whole rooms coming into service. One of my favourites is our lovely utility and boot rooms - in a space where we once housed almost everything we owned and our only bathroom, we now have a lovely space for storage and stowage. I am far from minimalist, but I relish the chance to give everything a HOME, so that it is where you need it, when you need it. This has never been possible before, so my mind is fairly blown. I keep going in and folding towels and wiping down sides and hanging things up and just relishing putting things away.

We reused our old kitchen sink and worktop, but we've had a lovely new oak bench and some raw oak shelves from Garden Trading fitted. We've had a booze fridge put in, which is a very heaven and should be included in the hierarchy of needs. The walls are Gauze and the woodwork Dark Gauze from Little Greene, which feels cool and restful. Right now it looks incredibly sparse and pared back, which won't last, but there's room for everything to have a proper place. Happy Darrens.

A slice of kitchen

The kitchen is not yet finished (maybe someday my plinths will come) but in the meantime, here's a few slices of kitchenalia that are keeping me going while I await the big reveal...

The camera never lies...

This house always looks best in the summer; hunkering down, all wrapped up and softened by greenery with a few flushes of floral colour, so thought I'd share this lovely sight...

But, lest you should be too nauseated by all this quaint and quintessentially English prettiness, round the corner is the reality check... 

Our clever builders realised that the outside of the house was higher than the inside and virtually surrounded by concrete, which may have explained why there was a certain amount of damp. So, we're lowering the exterior and digging out all the concrete.

In its place, reclaimed red brick which I'm hoping to soften by seeding with chamomile and moss. It's all going to be worth it, but right now I think I need to put some blinkers on my rose tinted glasses...

Brace for Landing

Like a very lovely virus, the finish is spreading out from the Shower Room - the next stage to reach (almost) completion is the landing outside the bathroom. It's a link between our room and our daughters, so I wanted it to feel a bit magical for her as she makes her way to bed. It also contains a partition wall, so straight lines aplenty and a chance to wallpaper - hurrah!

I've never been much of a fan of wallpaper before, which seems crazy considering my love of all things graphic, but I'm making up for lost time now. After much deliberation we went for the classic black and white Woods from Cole & Sons - it echoes the monochrome colour scheme of the shower room and the botanical design of the dresser. It was designed originally as a screenprint by Michael Clark in 1959, but it feels utterly timeless to me.

It's a dark, cosy space, so we've gone for two tiny Rockett St George wall lamps in  a rustic brass. The lovely patination makes them feel like a reclaimed find and the light they throw down makes it really atmospheric.

One done!

Our first room is finally done, only the rest of the entire house to go! I am a little bit in love with it, in the day with the window open and birds singing, at night with the low glow of the ceramic lamps. It's been a labour of love, what with the dresser that I (rather foolishly) decided to paint and hand decorate. 

We wanted a monochrome palette to work with the Cole & Sons Woods wallpaper we've put up on the landing and which you pass by as you enter the room (of which more later), so the dresser was painted with a chalk paint in charcoal. From there I hunted high and low for a very simple, oval basin to sit on the marble top and echo the shape of the glass fronted decorative design - Fired Earth Nagoya was the only one to fit the bill and it's cool, composite surface sucks up the light, just like the chalk paint. 

I'm afraid I have yet to take a good picture of the shower, but it is a doozy - big, strong and fabulous. The tiles are Fired Earth Carnival Ramon, charcoal grey grout. Black handles and hinges on the frameless glass shower enclosure tie it all together. The walls are French Grey Pale and the woodwork French Grey by Little Greene Paint Library.

Final touches, though there are more to come, include a triptych mirror from Refound Objects, a vintage First Aid box and a lovely battered barn star from Beyond France. Dressed with pebbles collected at Lantivet Bay in Fowey on a very special day with the best of friends.  

 

Buried Treasure

There is not much beauty to be found in building work, in fact it is kind of spirit sapping. I am trying to keep my eye on the eventual prize, but there are a few consolations, such as these pretty glass bottles dug up during groundwork and this newspaper from 1924, which helps us date when some of the last work was done. The headlines include, "Chrome Sheep", "Polite Stranger: Coast People Duped By Disguised Man" and my very favourite, "Girl Dressed As Carrot".

Dressing up...

It all started so innocently; my fondness for Pinterest lead me to believe that a vintage dresser with a basin would be the perfect thing for our new bathroom. I didn't want a regular sink and stand and we couldn't afford a really lovely cabinet from a posh bathroom shop, so a bit of upcycling seemed just the ticket. I browsed Etsy for several weeks until a very likely looking, marble topped dresser came up at the right price, it all seemed oh so simple...

Fast forward three months and I am now the proud owner of a dresser and basin that's taken me many, many hours of labour and more stages than Glastonbury. It's nearly there now, so I thought I'd share how I did it, in case you were foolhardy enough to consider it yourself! 

Take one vintage, not antique dresser. Buy it online, get it delivered and then decide that, on closer inspection, it's looking a little more shabby than chic. Don't panic, you can simply spruce it up with a little chalk paint! Take it to pieces to prep for paint and realise that you really don't like the fabric backdrop. Decide that it would look much better with a distressed mirror backdrop, spend hours trawling the web for somewhere that makes and cuts same, get some quotes in, turn very pale and reconsider. Remember that you used to consider yourself pretty tasty with a paintbrush and think, how hard can it be to come up with a simple botanical design and paint it on? Spend every spare minute you have over the next three weeks painting and fretting that you have bitten off more than you can chew whilst thumbing flower books for inspiration. Make a random, Charlotte's Web inspired decision to add in a spiders web which makes the whole design look less Angie Lewin, more James Herbert. Paint it out and start again. Eventually decide that more tinkering is unlikely to improve it; stop painting. Get someone to cut an oval of glass for it, based on a cardboard cut out you've provided. Get the cut glass back and realise you probably should have remembered that drawing around a shape would make the template bigger than the original thing. Borrow power sander to make required hole bigger, to fit the now too big glass. Ensure power sander breaks the dresser in three places. Take deep breath, ask a friendly carpenter to help you fix with wood glue. Conclude several months of trawling the world for basins that echo the shapes of the dresser only to find one that is nearly as expensive as the original dresser. Buy a tap you're not convinced about.  Send off to a professional to cut holes in marble, get a plumber to plumb in and voila, simplicity itself!

With all the time and money spent a trip to a posh bathroom shop would probably have proved to be a bargain, but I am glad to be able to put my own little stamp on this project.

Two Becomes One...

Seven years ago my beloved and I bought a little semi-detatched, thatched cottage in Hampshire; it was a rural idyll, a place for us to start a family and live in a way we have longed dreamed of, closer to the country. It was all very romantic; thatched roof, roses and wisteria around the door, inglenooks and old beams (eg: all utterly lovely and totally impractical). It was and is our dream home, but we are certainly not minimalists and with the addition of a small child we saturated the little place in no time flat.

We longed to turn our small cottage into a proper and practical family home that we could live in for years to come. And then, finally, that chance came and we were able to buy the small cottage next door and begin the long process of seeking Listed Building consent, then planning and now building, to turn those two cottages into one. We're  decorating and remodelling throughout, mixing our slightly eclectic tastes with a very traditional bone structure - from mid-century wallpaper next to flint walls, to an oak, glass and zinc structure on the 500 year old core of our home. It's a bit of a tired trope to say that we feel like we're just the current guardians of this place, not owners in a possessive way, but it's still true. 

This part of Peony & Praxis is going to chart that journey with all it's ups and downs; from the wrong choice of paint to the right choice of builders. I'll be talking about my newfound love of wallpaper and my desire to go deep, dark and delicious in the dining room. Vintage finds and new build, traditional details and modern materials - We're one in a long, long line of occupants, but this is one of the biggest changes in this home's long history and we so want to get it right.