Last House But One

It’s Friday and dry January is over so it must be cocktail time…We somehow missed out on the cocktail revival the first time round (probably because of having the boys), but are now ardent fans, thanks to lots of experimentation at the fabulous Arch Rivals, just around the corner from home.

We can’t match the Rivals’ mixology skills but we’re learning. And of course having a professional setting helps…

Once you get into cocktails there are an inordinate number of bottles required, leaving aside shakers, ice buckets, sugar cubes etc.  And we also had a collection of martini glasses to house.

I’d been hunting for a midcentury sideboard on eBay for some months, and there was almost too much choice. But we’d have struggled for space, whereas this tidy mid-century cocktail  cabinet fits neatly. I was a bit lukewarm on the formica lining but it’s grown on me – hope to get the light rewired and working at some point too. Compared to sideboards these are pretty thin on the ground, so worth snapping up if you see one you like.

Wanstead Flats looks beautiful in the frost. One of the things I love about Forest Gate is that I can be part of London, and also right next to nature. Waking up and coming home to these views each day is a real boost.

So this post is part of my occasional Wednesday – ‘What went wrong’ series, intended to warn and reassure in equal parts. Hopefully I can help you avoid making the same mistakes I did, but the lesson I’ve learned from this project (and read elsewhere) is that there will always be some mistakes. And you can pretty much always live with them.

This is the floor of my loft wetroom, with beautiful encaustics made to my own colour scheme. Unfortunately, as you can see, the encaustics don’t really like being in a wet room and are progressively fading – starting with the areas closest to the shower.

I’m not really sure what went wrong…It might be that we didn’t seal the surface of the tiles properly, it might be that they’re reacting badly with the shower gel etc creeping in via the cut edges around the wet room grate. Or it might be…and this is probably the real reason, that I was so in love with the idea of putting my own colours together that this company offered, that I avoided asking the question about wet room compatibility in case I got the wrong answer.

Anyway it’s done now, and you know what, I can live with it. I just tell myself that it helps the house look more lived in/ appropriately aged. And I can always sneak downstairs and see how they’re meant to look in the guest room ensuite.

 

 

The good thing about the houses in our little block is that they all come with a downstairs loo – the bad news is that it’s outside. And not always in the best of condition…

A lot of our friends and neighbours have had the very good idea of incorporating it into the house, by closing up the outside door and knocking through the connecting wall into the kitchen. But that wasn’t going to work for us because we planned to extend the kitchen into the side return, so we needed to carve out some space elsewhere.

We played around for a bit but eventually settled on borrowing around a metre from the kitchen itself for the body of the space, which helped square off the kitchen too. As with our bathrooms we wall-hung everything possible and went for a short projection loo. The narrow door opens outwards into the passageway and it’s actually a surprisingly comfortable space. Little things like having a towel rail integrated into the basin really help save space and a large IKEA facecloth serves as a handtowel.

 

Decor-wise I was persuaded by interiors gurus like Kate Watson-Smyth of Mad About The House that you can afford to go dark and intense in such a small room, and I’m glad I did. The setting provides a great home for our vintage light from Archive Furniture just down the road in Clapton and for a mirror inherited from my parents which has followed us from house to house. The wallpaper was left over after papering a couple of walls on the way up to the loft but works really well here – helping to bounce the light around. And the ledge created by the concealed cistern is another place to prop a piece of Bathroom Art.

 

 

I don’t think there’s a nicer bacon around than the smoked streaky from the Marsh Farms stall at Woodgrange Market. It’s cut to a nice thickness and unlike supermarket bacon it’s not pumped full of water, so lends itself to being baked in the oven – saving the stress and smell of frying while you’re trying to coordinate eggs, pancakes, coffee etc.

 

Today’s brunch vanished too fast for pictures but this rainy Sunday afternoon I’m treating myself to dripping from the baking pan – with sourdough toast from Wild Goose Forest Gate

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had some fun today when a friend who likes the way I’ve laid out the house, but has more traditional taste in furnishings, asked for ideas for her new sitting room. The brief was early 20th century, with colours taking a lead from the curtains (her first purchase, shown here on the John Lewis website) and to complement the lovely warm wood floor she’d had laid.

The house still had both its fireplaces and one of the alcoves is perfect for a reading nook, which set me off looking for a vintage-style standard lamp and suitable chair. It’s not a massive room so a conventional armchair wouldn’t work – we’re talking accent chair or small footprint upright arm chair. And I fell in love with idea of Edwardian style fringing on the lamp.

At the moment I’m strongly preferring the pink or green velvet (both from Made.Com) to the leather (John Lewis), which I think might look ‘rustic’ beaten up rather than ‘vintage’ worn in real life. But this is a hypothetical project for now, so I don’t have to worry just yet. Also you’ll have noticed that the chair colours don’t exactly match the curtain colours – but since they’d be a good couple of metres away from each other I think that’s fine, and it also gives you some other colours to pick up in smaller decorative items. Two of the shades are from Decor Harrogate and the lamp base is from Home Lights Direct.

There’s also a dining table dilemma. There would be plenty of space in its traditional home in the back half of the room, except that it has to share it with a piano. So I’m favouring an old style gateleg with turned or barley sugar twist legs which can be put up or down or halfway as required. Fortunately there are tons of these on ebay – to be snapped up now before the ‘brown furniture revival’ really takes flight.

 

I rather like this sofa too – from IKEA along with a couple of the cushions, the others being John Lewis, Dunelm and Housing Units. It’s affordable so fits the brief in that regard, and also on legs which will help the room look more spacious. I think she could go one of two ways for the cushions – lux to complement the lightshades, or floral to pick up the curtains- or maybe a bit of both.

 

There are basically three types of Edwardian/Victorian house in Forest Gate – the two bedroom terraced cottages in what the lovely Eve of Wilkinsons has dubbed the Lanes area, the three bedroom homes that make up most of the stock bordering Wanstead Flats, and the beautiful double-fronted villas of the Woodgrange Estate.

It was the latter that first made us fall in love with the area eighteen years ago, but even with a Stoke Newington flat to sell they were outside our budget. Instead we found a three bed on Sidney Road – right by the Flats and beautifully spacious, except for the hallway. Love it as I did, I couldn’t help a bit of wide-hall-envy whenever I visited friends with a different set up and space for a family’s worth of coats and shoes.

So where to start with the new hall  – the same dimensions as the previous one? We’d already decided to dispense with the first entrance to the living room, to set a family sized sofa along that wall. And we were lucky(?) that said wall had to be demolished and rebuilt. So I asked the builders to make a ply-lined alcove, with coat hooks inset.

 

 

 

By chance the new radiator was exactly the width of an IKEA Mosslanda picture ledge – providing a cheap and slimline home for letters, loose change and the odd cactus. Roy the joiner came back to custom make us a shoe cabinet and a large mirror, on sale from West Elm, finished the space and helped bounce the light around.

 

 

It was really nice to read author Eimear McBride’s praise for local favourites Wanstead Tap and Wild Goose Bakery in last weekend’s Observer.  I’ve featured some Wild Goose goodies in previous article FG Food and one of the pictures in this week’s Friday blog was bought at the Wanstead Tap – at one of the regular E7 Craft Collective fairs.

This article is about another local gem – our new zero-waste organic grocery store Cups & Jars on Woodgrange Road. Alongside the fabulous food they’re making it  easier for Gaters to go green, by offering grocery staples in bulk. I’m still running down my supermarket stocks of dried goods, but the last fortnight saw us at the end of our shower gel and washing up liquid, so it was time to refill.

Cecile and Everson have thought hard about making it as easy as possible, with a collection of donated second hand bottles available in store.  So if you run out midweek don’t want to carry your own bottles to work and back, it’s not the end of the world (just remember to return the bottles when you’re done with them). The products themselves are kinder to the environment too, and generally no more expensive than supermarket equivalents.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This blog was my ten year old Ben’s idea – he wanted me to write about our pictures. We’ve collected, in an opportunistic way, for years, and lots of them have local and personal connections.  This digitally drawn map of the neighbourhood is by local artist Alice Clarke (yes it is on a rug, but  there were too many reflections in its regular home under the kitchen skylight).

Some of our collection is ‘proper’ art and lots of it isn’t, see Art in the Bath(room). Wrapping paper aside we’ve got a mix of originals, prints and junk store finds. Pretty much anything can look good, the secret is in the hanging (or propping).

In our bedroom I’ve got a couple of small pieces propped against a wall, where larger things wouldn’t or couldn’t go. This tiny flower picture helps pep up my dressing table, and the small tree picture on the radiator helps bring the eye down, rather than fighting with, or drawing attention to, the a/c unit above.

On the wall they should be hung at eye level to be properly seen and enjoyed. And framing is important too. The darker walls of our sitting room provide their own frame for this small oil painting and let the colours sing. By contrast, I picked a bright frame (after much agonising at our very patient local framers) for this delicate print, to ensure it could hold its own in the hallway against the bright colours of the front door.

 

 

 

 

I love the mid-century standard lamp in my loft – a great find from my friends at Number 8 – on Sebert Road in Forest Gate. But it’s actually a bit of a fake. The stand was gorgeous but the  shade just a little bit too authentic: dirty cream with appliqued brown and orange strips, and some visibly aged yellow glue.

I bought the lamp in February, and six months later I gave up the search for a new shade. Everything was low and wide*, whereas I wanted to respect the original cylinder-style proportions.

I decided to make my own but couldn’t even source a kit the right shape. So with the help of my good friend and neighbour Kirsten we stripped off the original fabric and reused the wire structure . The new ‘vintage’ shade is made of a remnant of Sanderson Wrappings wallpaper (now discontinued) from another project. It was a little fiddly and it definitely helped to have two people but it was a surprisingly quick project – around an hour from start to finish.

The paper is meant to be hung with the stripes running vertically, but I think the horizontal look works (and made things a lot easier as we had a straight edge to line up with). Hope you like the finished result Andie and Geoff.

*This was in 2014, much improved selection of tall narrow shades available now, from Heals and Tamasyn Gambell to name but two.