A wallpaper time capsule...

When we stripped all the old plasterboard off the stud walls in the old part of the house we found a treasure trove of wallpapers trapped beneath....

In the hall there was this very yellow floral number.

This green and gold glitzy number was in the living room.



Some more sparkle, this time a leafy design with lots of silver dots.



This one was a little more subtle and one of the only ones that wasn't floral.  Its a sort of chain design with a touch of gold.



This one looks quite tropical!



This one looks quite hawaiian  or surfy!



These roses were in the dining room and are quite dramatic when seen on a whole wall scale!



I can't remember where this was but it's very pink...



This one would give Cath Kidston a run for her money!



This is the last one we found and it's quite delicate with pink cornflowers on a white background.



All the stud walls in the old part of our house are made of tongue and groove.  They had been papered with old newspapers first - I think probably to stop the ridges of the wood from showing through on the wall paper.

We've stripped the wallpaper right back and have repaired bits of the wood that were rotten or simply missing.  There's still lots of work to do before we can paint but I can't help dreaming of what colours to use!  Having stripped all the wallpaper off I'm definitely going to steer clear of putting anymore up, paint all the way!

I've no idea what date any of the wallpapers are from, do leave me a comment if you recognise any of them or know when they might be from!

Renovations!

The old part of our house was built in 1918 and now that we have a new extension (which we pretty much live in) we really notice how cold the old bit feels in comparison.  So now the new bit is more or less finished, we have started to turn our attention to the old bit.

The first thing we needed to do was take down a few walls and strip off all the old plasterboard and ceilings....

This was the hall after the first evening of demolishing.  The hall is going completely and becoming part of the living room, which is how it was originally.

Thankfully we have a handy helper who we can put to work doing all the tidying up!

We had to move all the contents of the old house into the new bit and now it looks like a very disorganised junk shop!

Once we removed the top layer of plasterboard we uncovered a treasure trove of wallpapers from throughout the 20th Century (a detailed post of the wallpaper time capsule to follow!)

There is a new roof to go on and lots of new insulation to keep the place nice and warm, it's a shame we have to cover up the lovely structure of the roof but it will be worth it for the extra heat!



Our stud walls were all originally tongue and groove so we have taken the wood off and hope to be able to reuse it as much as possible.






We decided to reinstate the wall between the front room and the old dining room at the back but rather than just re tongue and groove it all we thought a window would look nice.  We had a look on gumtree and managed to find this one which just happens to fit almost perfectly in the gap that used to be the hall!  It has a broken pane but I'm hoping it won't be too hard to fix.

Although we have been spending most evenings and weekends demolishing, pulling out nails and stripping wallpaper, a tasty hot chocolate and the promise of a much warmer house makes it all worthwhile!

Birthday Party!

At the weekend it was someone specials first ever birthday party!  Naturally that meant the bunting and balloons had to come out!

It wouldn't be a proper birthday party without balloons on the gatepost!

I love these marbled balloons from the pound shop!  They don't look very promising in the bag but once you blow them up they look lovely.

More bunting, you really can never have too much in my opinion!

Cheerful top hats.

Pretty butterfly buns.

Some personalised bunting.

This bunting was recycled from my surprise baby shower. 

Even the hall didn't escape buntingification!

A very happy birthday boy!

Unfortunately my massive hair is obscuring the birthday boy in this action cake shot!

This is the inside of the cake, it was rather more massive than I had intended.  The bottom layer is banana, the middle layer is banana and peanut butter and the top layer is banana and nutella.  It was lovely even if I say so myself!

Everyone was so generous, now I just have to find somewhere to put all this!

Lately....

So as usual I haven’t posted in a quite a while but I have been up lots of stuff so have plenty of photos…



Things finally starting to bloom in the garden and also finally some sunshine in which to enjoy the garden - bench, cushions, book or magazine, radio and either a cup of tea or a cold beer depending on what time of the day it is, is my idea of a rather perfect day!



Every spring I worry that I might have killed the apple trees off during the winter so its always a relied when the leaves and flowers begin to appear!



Been adding to my tin tower with some lovely additions from St Georges Market (the two top ones)

Shed studio progress…



So the studio shed has been progressing nicely.  Had to clear all of our rubbish out of it first though, the least fun part of the transformation!



Almost cleared.



My very skilled other half clad the inside walls and floor with polystyrene and wooden board so it will be nice and cosy in the winter.



He put this slab down and left this corner to do with fireproofed boards as I’m hoping to have a little wood burning stove in here in the future when i can afford it as although its been roasting this week i know its probably going to be pretty chilly come the autumn or winter (or in fact a normal summers day here!)



painting the walls.

painting some furniture to go in the shed



my helper having a snooze in the sun on top of the glass that I still haven’t put back in the glasshouse since it was moved!



Painting some shelves for the shed.  Its almost finished now but its taking me quite a while to get all my stuff in it put away in some sort of order, I never realised I had quite so much.  As I want to debut it at its best I’ll wait to take photos when its all finished and organised - hopefully it won’t take me too long!






I went to the lovely wedding of my dear friends Sarah and Dave, they had really beautiful weather and above is a shot of the bride’s gorgeous bouquet.  I have weddings on the brain now as I’m getting married at the end of June so I might post a few weddingy things in the next few weeks but I promise not to go too mad!



And finally I spotted this sign in the ice cream shop on a lovely sunny outing to newcastle.  Made me smile so much… Moose thick butterscotch sauce anyone?