@thecuriousglasshouse Lifestyle Blog by Oxford Cottage Gardener
Lifestyle, interiors and gardening – Follow on Instagram @thecuriousglasshouse for daily updates
When we moved into our house we inherited a play house shed which was filled with spiders and leaked quite badly. It was also sited in the most inconvenient place obscuring the view down the garden when you were in the room at the back of the garage which we had wanted to turn into a gym.
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I love to create fresh arrangements at Christmas and what else is as timeless and decorative as a fireplace garland, a staircase garland and a table centre and what’s more as soon as Christmas is over it can all go on the compost heap and your room can return to normal.
Sunday – We’ve picked ourselves up after the last disappointment and have got back onto Rightmove with gusto, the only trouble is I don’t think there is anything there in our price range in the area we want. It doesn’t matter how many times a day I go on to look, no new houses that match our criteria are being added! Are we really that picky or do houses with good size (I really big BIG) gardens not exist?
Monday – Ooh wait, I just spotted a possibility, hmmm I’m rather put off by the artex ceilings and the property seems to be surrounded on all sides by well manicured but clearly hard work to maintain, conifer hedging! That would be two expensive items we’d have to get rid of before we start.
But on the plus side the garden, without the encroaching conifer hedge, is massive and already contains 2 very large greenhouse and a poly tunnel, they get big ticks from me, you can see where my priorities lie!
It would need a big extension and completing remodelling with a new kitchen and bathroom but that’s fine.
Definitely worth a view, just a question of when. The evenings are too dark now for an evening viewing and travelling next Saturday would be a long way from Oxford.
Tuesday – I rang the estate agent to arrange a viewing, the property has already sold within hours of it going on the market apparently! I’m starting to get the distinct impression things are not going our way, oh well good luck with the artex whoever has bought it, not that I’m bitter.
Another super one came on the market today, so as soon as I saw it, I thought I’ll ring the agent and arrange a viewing clearly this area is popular and things are selling fast, only to be told after placing her house on the market for 2 hours the seller has got cold feet over the timings and has withdrawn her property for sale.
This is definitely not my week, but what is it with sellers getting cold feet, this property buying and selling is turning out to be the most impossible job! I would just leave trying to buy all together for a while but we continue to pay ‘dead money’ for rent on the weekday flat which I’d rather not, so I’ll continue looking, let’s see what gets added tomorrow.
We like to create unique pieces of furniture from everyday items. So when the opportunity came to renovate our dining chairs, we wanted to do something different.
We have some very comfy cream leather dining chairs which when we bought them, looked perfect with our light oak dining table. When we moved house and the large dining table no longer fitted or matched with our gloss white and black granite kitchen we were in a dilemma as to what to do with the chairs.
We had bought a gloss black dining table from Next but the cost of 8 chairs to go with it was another £1000! We decided on a temporary solution of some black stretch covers which we imported from America and they looked fine for the time being.
Last year, having seen Pinterest articles about painting leather with Annie Sloane paint, we thought, why not give it a go. We started with just one and used that for a good 6months before committing, what would happen with the heavy traffic of Christmas or when boys with jeans squirmed on them?
Perfect, the one test chair lived up to the demands so we went ahead with the rest and painted several coats of AS Pure, it went on perfectly covering the cream leather with ease. We also painted the light oak legs with AS Paris Grey……they looked and matched beautifully.
Our last flourish was to add our own stamp on the chairs with a little bit of stencilling. We brought a couple of stencils from Hobbycraft so we could choose and customise our own design.
Armed with a stiff brush, a ceramic tile and the AS paint in Paris Grey,
we found the centre line of the chair and stencilled the design evenly on each chair.
We combined designs from three different stencils to give the chairs their own unique look.
The stencilling didn’t take very long at all, and I am very pleased with what we’ve achieved, a French vintage look.
Of course that was 4 years and since then we have added this painted grey bookcase bureau and have replaced most of the white stools with grey. Just recently I’ve started to think the bright colour is beginning to look quite dated and every time I look at it I think perhaps it’s time for a refresh. The trouble is what colour to choose?
I like the Laura Ashley pale duck egg on the other three walls so really we need to blend in with that. The white fireplace and gloss white cupboards also need a colour to sit against. We like grey and have grey in nearly all the other rooms in the house in various Farrow and Ball colours, so wonder if another room painted grey would be a bit too much?
Out with the paint charts and glass of wine and let’s see if we can make any progress and come to any conclusions, Wish me luck!
