19th century modern squared

We’ve been in 2 weeks and have had a few really lucky period features finds.  First, the hall floor…

We always suspected there may have been a lovely minton tiled floor undereath the hideous blue carpet.  On completion day, once I had run around from top to bottom like an excited toddler, I set straight to tearing up a corner of carpet.  Here’s what I found (excuse the dodgy photography):

Today I returned while things were quiet to remove the carpet gripper rods that had been nail-gunned into the tiles :(.  There wasn’t too much damage, and when the budget allows, we’ll get a proper restoration job.  While I was grubbing around the skirting boards with a chisel I thought I’d explore the lino that someone had laid over the last two feet of hallway.  By explore, I mean take a chisel to it – it was rather exciting and about as far as I’ll get to an Indiana Jones-style archeological dig.  I half expected to find concrete or worse, but can you believe somebody laid linoleum over this beauty?!

It seems the Victorians were into chevrons too.

Coming up, a minging bathtub, a concealed fireplace full of bird poo, and a kitchen cupboard full of mould.  Yum.

The fire was lit which is always a treat and as always they wrapped our purchased books in brown paper and tied them with string which i love!

I bought two cook books, one cake and one curry and an old book called “The House next Door” by A&C Askew.

B, I’ll have to take you there when you visit!  I hope things are taking shape at the new house!

Nx

Here’s a few pics of our old flat, we lived there for 5 and half years.  We contributed a new kitchen, a lick of paint, some new carpets and curtains and some general TLC.  Like B and hubby, we too left a few projects for the next custodians, namely the unpleasant bathroom and the anaglypta in the spare room.

The living room was my favourite room in the flat, mostly because of it’s size, the beautiful gothic windows and door that took us ages to restore back to their former glory and that wonderful original stone fireplace!

Next, the kitchen, although it’s small we felt we made it perfectly formed with floor to ceiling storage, high gloss cupboards with no handles and natural slate on the floor and as a splash back.

Then the master bedroom.

This is the second bedroom, watch out for the anaglypta however it looks much better white than it did when we moved in when it was a dark mauve colour (i reffered to it as sicky purple for quite some time!)

And finally the bathroom.

And so ends the tour of our old place.

Next post i’ll intro the new project, our 19th centruy house in need of sympathethic modernisation!

Nx

Okay, so I didn’t get round to taking some aesthetically pleasing pictures of the house before I started packing it into boxes.  Most of these are the pictures I took for the estate agent with my unmodified and unprofessional iPhone camera (and therefore are more about fitting as much into one shot and making it look as large as possible).  But before I start posting pictures of artex, lilac bathrooms and peeling wallpaper in our new home here’s a few snaps of what we’ve left behind.

Front reception room: hall, dining room and study all rolled into one

Middle reception (with baby gate for extra glamour!)

Postage stamp kitchen (with exposed pipework from 11th hour boiler replacement)

Master (if you can call it that) bedroom

Second bedroom

Our replace-the-taps-and-live-with-it bathroom

And a little garden

The new place is terrifyingly more substantial.  But hopefully it should keep me in ‘projects’ for the next decade so perhaps that’s no bad thing.

Well, having finally set aside some time to overcome my computer illiteracy I am all logged on and ready to go!

I’m left feeling a little melancholy after reading your recent post “Parting is such sweet sorrow”.  Your departure from the city village we have both inhabited since 2006 (and you for longer) really signifies the end of an era with us having already departed last November.    It reminds me of slow roasted lamb shoulder with pomegranate and mint, home-grown sorrel (I really must grow my own this year) and your cosy living room with its especially small sofas that complimented it’s small but perfectly formed space.  And it’s got me thinking about the things I’ll miss the most apart from living round the corner from you!  Our favourite pub with its miss matching lamp shades and furniture, plentiful quality ciders on tap and wicked veggie burgers.  Not to mention the monthly farmers market with its ostrich burgers, organic veggies and beautiful dahlia flower stall, I’ll be growing my own this year!

And then a mention of the home we’ve left behind, after the harassed and hectic manner with which we said goodbye, it’s reassuring to start to remember our beautiful gothic flat for the wonderful home we made it rather than the box filled, fraught space it was for the last 3 months of our time there.

Heres to the start of our parrallel journeys to restore and revive our new homes!

Nx

We’re up to our eyes in boxes here.  And official-looking correspondence.  And scary-looking surveyor’s reports.  After 6 years in our lilliputian house and 15 years living in the middle of a big city we’re off to a new place in market town suburbia. Call it entry-level countryside for soft townies, if you will.

This little house has seen us through a lot, but we’ve only been its custodians for a small part of its 111 year lifetime.  Oh, to take a tour, ghost-of-Christmas-past-style, of what this house has seen, and how it was used.  Tin baths, cast iron ranges, front parlours and kids crammed into every available drawer.  Followed later by gas fires and meat and two veg.  Now wireless radio has become wireless internet.  The phone box on the corner has been rendered redundant by the iPhone in the pocket.  But the trains still chug quietly at the bottom of the embankment, the church bells still ring on a Sunday, and the twit-twoo of owls can still be heard at night as they hunt for city rats on the train line.

We hope we’ve served you well.  You are now a laminate-free zone.  And your chimney is warmed by real flames again.  Your clean but crooked angles are no longer sullied by cheap yellowing pine.  However, I must apologise for not sorting the anaglypta.  If it’s any consolation I hate it as much as you do.

We will miss you little house.

So here it is.  Somewhere for B and N to keep in touch and play virtual house.  A little outlet for friendship and creativity.  Now we just need to start posting.  Where to begin?

x