The Living Room

The Living Room

I’ve had a nice couple of days off work, Mr A’s birthday was last Wednesday so I came home from work on Tuesday night so we could spend some time together J  As always we have managed to cram loads in!  Including birthday celebrations (obviously), the Home Building and Renovation Show up in Harrogate which lead to an impromptu visit to Mr A’s Great Aunt, family fireworks, Christmas shopping and sofa testing!

More on the Home Building and Renovation Show another time, I had good intentions of taking loads of photos for my blog, but I got overawed by all the shiny things on show.  So I’m going to have to do a bit of internet trawling so I can show you the awesome things we saw!

Which leads me to the living room, first a quick tour of what it was like when we moved in and there was no furniture.

This one is looking from the front of the house to the back……

…… this one is the opposite way, I just love those curved walls on the bay J …….

……. And this one shows the doors that lead into the living room.  The furthest is to the front door and the stairs and the nearest one is to the kitchen.

Mr A was getting fed up of looking at where the previous owners pictures used to be, so we took a trip to B&Q to invest in some supplies.  The idea being that some temporary decorating would be good for cheering the place up and it would be good for trying some of our ideas out.

After Mr A’s hard work, this is how our living room currently looks.

The paint used on the feature wall is by the B&Q Colours Matt range and is called Cool Slate, we really like how this has turned out and will be using it for the final version of the room.

Due to the fact that we have such high ceilings (I’m nowhere near reaching them, even if I’m stood on my tip toes on one leg, with my arm fully stretched up!), we have decided to be brave and are going to have feature ceilings too!

This is also from the B&Q Colours Matt range and is called Clear Ocean.  The beam that can be seen on some of the photos (it’s about half way down the room and is from an internal dividing wall originally) this will stay white and we plan to replace the coving with some more traditional cornicing which will be wider into the ceiling (hopefully that makes sense).  We do have some nice original features in the house, unfortunately not in the living room though, I’ll cover these in their own post, were they can shine properly J  This cornicing will also be white and should hopefully provide a nice separation between the walls and the ceiling.

With all this in mind we decided to go and have a look at some sofas (a nice birthday treat for Mr A!), we went to Sofaworks as they seem to have a nice range of funky sofas and they aren’t just traditional or leather recliners.  The plan is to have a corner sofa but without the arms all the way round, I believe these are called a chaise group (it sounds very fancy).  We tried a couple in store, cue photos of sofas…..

Our thoughts on this one is that it would be too small for our living room.

As you can see this one makes me look like a hobbit and without sounding too like Goldilocks, this one was too big.

This one was just right ;) and is the one we are going to go for, just need to find time to go and order it!  We aren’t going for the orange though (it would clash with my hair!), we are going for the black and blue mix, it should really bring out the colour for the ceiling.

All of this excitement of picking sofas, lead us to marking out where to sofas would fit in the living room.  We must be mad as this followed a day of Christmas shopping in Hanley on the day when everyone else in the world seemed to be there!  So here are the photos of the marked out sofas (you can just see the brown tape)…..

This is just the chaise group sofa marked out, which fits nice and snug between the two doors.  As we are both sitting on the same sofa we are also going to get a footstool, so that we can both put our feet up J

The three seater sofa that we would also get is magically the same size as our other existing sofa, so we were able to just move that about to show us what space there would be between them for getting to the kitchen door.

So that’s about it for now, I covered some of our ideas for the living room in my last post and will put together an update post when we are a bit further along with the decisions, and when the sofa arrives of course!!

If there’s anybody out there, bye for now!

Netty J

The Update, The Plan & The Random Sewing Alteration

The past couple of weekends have been busy as usual and I have been trying to cram in too much, as I do!  I’ve have also been having issues with connecting my phone to my laptop for internet so haven’t been able to get onto the Blogger site to write my blog L But as of next Tuesday we will have fancy new internet complete with wifi! Wahoo J

The Update

I thought I would do an update about what we have been up to the pass couple of weeks.

We are still slowly shuffling through the boxes to try to find / unpack stuff as we need it, this has jumped up the priority list as it is slowly driving me mad every time I want to find something….do we have envelops? Yeap there were on the printer shelf, look in the printer shelf box, denied! Do we have any string? Yes somewhere…oh it must still be in a box, Doh!  You get the picture!  There are still loads and I must get on with it L

On a happier note, my Mum, Dad, Little Sister and nephew the Little Bean came round one Sunday, so that me and Little Sister could have a good luck at the Vogue 1419 Pattern (I’m totally shitting myself!).  We had a good morning and it was fun showing the Little Sister and the Little Bean around the house, and the Little Bean even had ago on Mr A’s drum kit J

He is so cute (I might be slightly bias).

Last weekend was definitely a music based weekend, I had the Friday off work and on Thursday after a drive home, a quick change, dinner by a certain Ronald on the go in the car and picking up the A-Laws, we made our way to Chester to see Tony Wright (from Terrorvision) and Milly (not our cat Milly) for an Acoustic set at The Live Rooms.  It was a small intimate gig, but it is up there in my top 10, the atmosphere was amazing and Tony was very funny.  One of our friends (Simon Dunkerley) who is also a photographer was there and very kindly took our photo with Tony.

This was followed by a well deserved lay-in (for me anyway, poor Mr A had work) and a day of rest on the Friday.  Saturday started to ramp up again, after a nice visit from our friend and his Dad, and then some boring house stuff, it was off to another gig in the evening.  This time it was Soil at the Manchester Club Academy, and it was yet again another awesome gig J  and may again have been followed by a visit to a certain Ronald (yeap there’s a bit of a theme to our eating habits but in our defence it was late and we were starving!).

Sunday saw me massively over estimating how much I can fit into a day.  I’m very good at this over estimating both at home and at work, which leads too much frustration on my part.  This is probably unnecessary and if I was better at estimating I would likely save myself from a lot of self imposed stress!

So my Sunday target was to peel the windfall apples from the weekend before and start to sort through some boxes.  I though I would put my lunch in the microwave (not Ronald related this time) and go to see if there were any more apples on the ground….three large baking bowls full later!  I managed to fill the sink, the little drainer sink thing and the bowl was still overflowing, I wish I had taken a photo!  After lunch around 2pm I made a start with the peeling and chopping, which I though would take an hour or two, at 3:50pm I stopped to have a brew and rest my feet.  When I came back I had a count of the apples that were left (it’s always good to have a target so you know you’ve made progress) and stopped after I got to 30 apples as it was looking like a mammoth task!  Finally after about a total of 70 apples and at 7pm, I finally finished!! As you can imagine after this nothing else was done!  If anyone knows of any better way to store apples over winter, rather than peeling and chopping for freezing please let me know!  Also if you have any good apple related recipes that would be good, as I have quite a few apples ;)

And then there was the surprise Trick or Treat visit from my nephew and niece (the Little Man and the Cheeky Monkey) this Friday J

The Plan

During the time Mr A and I have been together, there has been an overarching theme of us mostly spending time together in the car.  We seem to do a lot of travelling around, visiting family, going to H9 gigs, going to other gigs, shopping, etc.  This is where we do most of our catching up (ignoring the daily military style debriefs), organising, future planning, discussing ideas and now house planning.  So while on a journey to somewhere, we agreed the start of an outline for the house plan.

There are some ideas that we are currently toying with that effect what happens to certain rooms, such as do we pitch the flat roof or do we build up another storey.

There are also certain refurbishment works that affect the whole house, electrics, windows, etc.

So working through these and thinking about the rooms that would be least effected by these decisions and the ones that we are using most often, and would put a smile on our faces if they were tidy, finished and relaxing!  With all this in mind, this is the current starting point for the plan:

-          Electrics

o   We need a survey of the whole system, the fuse board is a little on the old side and there are sockets in the house that don’t have on or off switches!

o   This is the whole house and should be completed before any redecorating and such like.

o   If the house needs re-wiring that is our whole pot of renovation money blown in one go and we would need to start saving again before anything else major was done.

-          Windows

o   We have a range of original sash windows, wooden frames and uPVC framed windows.

o   The plan is to restore the sash windows, although the actual condition is extremely good and they are very well balanced.  Then the remaining windows we want to replace, most likely with black or grey aluminium frames (this is still under discussion, as we haven’t really looked properly yet), but triple glazing will be a must!

o   There might also be a bi-fold door in the plan too!

o   If we don’t need to re-wire the house, then we will be looking to do the windows, again this would be a massive chunk of the budget!

-          Master Bedroom

o   This room is only affected by the electrics so once that is sorted we are ready to roll for redecorating.

o   There is no ‘extreme decorating’ as Mr A likes to refer to it, in this room.  Just choosing paint and what sort of theme we want, and we can restore the sash window in the summer without causing any damage to what we have achieved J  Also it should be on the cheaper end of the scale to sort out.

-          Living Room

o   So this room needs the electrics looking at like the rest of the house, and there are also two windows that required replacing as well as the restoration of the sash windows (I love the sash windows, they are one of my favourite features!).

o   The plans include a photo wall, a wood burning stove, underfloor heating, bi-fold door, funky lighting, a feature wall and reclaiming Mr A’s piano from the A-Laws.

So there we go, the outline of a plan J  In other news, I’ve decided exactly want I want to do with the laundry room, but that will have to wait for now!

The Random Sewing Alteration

I was sorting through the sales at Tesco a few weeks ago and spotted what I thought was a top, which I liked and thought would be a good addition to my work wardrobe (I struggle with work clothes, but more on that at another time).  On closer inspection it was a playsuit, I am reliably informed by the Little Sister that this is what they are called….

….. I still really liked it, just not the shorts part of it.  On considering what to do, I thought to myself, I’m supposed to be making a coat, if I can’t alter this into a top I don’t stand a chance!

So very slowly I have measured, cut and machine sewed (the sewing machine is a scary creature) and Ta Da!!

Suffice to say I am very chuffed with myself J

If there’s anybody out there, bye for now!

Netty J

P.S.  Don’t forget to let me know if you’ve got any apple ideas