Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

Despite having lived in our current house for eight years and having done a huge amount of work to it, it has been sadly lacking in some of the finishing touches that would make it feel really like home. We took another small step towards rectifying this last month.

February gives us Valentines Day and for my husband and I, a wedding anniversary to celebrate.

We decided to commemorate these romantic occasions by purchasing a new mirror to hang over the fireplace in our front room.

Just before Christmas I bought a mirror for our living room. I always imagined buying something oak framed to match the fireplace but when I saw a spangly mosaic framed mirror in a local warehouse, I had to have it. I had no idea if it would work in the room or if my husband would take one look at it and refuse to hang it but I took the risk. My worries were unfounded. My husband loved it and I think it looks gorgeous.

Buying a second mirror to live up to this one was a big task. I wanted something grand and ostentatious.  The sort of mirror that you could imagine finding dusty and forgotten in a dark and unwelcoming antique shop with a creepy owner. The sort of mirror that may hold dark mysteries.

Unbelievably, I found it.

We went to the same warehouse (which is rapidly becoming one of my favourite places for a browse). It wasn't instant love. I had reservations that the finish of the frame would not complement the colour of the chimney breast. There was an easy solution. I re-painted the chimney breast.

I  absolutely love my new mirror, pictured here while the paint was drying and then in pride of place.

I do feel that I have taken another small step towards the home I want.

Snapfish Canvas Review

We have been in our current house for about 6 years now. We have done a lot of work to it to get it how we want it and still have a few projects yet to do. One of the little things that we have never really got round to is hanging pictures. This is something I want to rectify because it is such an easy way to turn a house into a home - a home that reflects who you are.

When I was offered a canvas to review from the online digital photo printing service Snapfish, I thought it would be an ideal way to get started.

I have thousands of digital photographs stored on my computer, many of which I have used on this blog. There are some that I love and some that even have some technical merit that would have made good candidates for the canvas. However, rather than trawling through the library of images, I decided to create something brand new. We were about to go on holiday which would no doubt present a  photo opportunity or two.

We were so incredibly lucky with the weather. Beautiful clear blue skies against the golden sand dunes at Camber Sands in Sussex made a fantastic background for a photograph. All I had to do was add my subjects - two adventurous little children - point and shoot. Ideally I would have liked a photograph with both my little ones in it but it didn't work out that way. The image that I fell in love with and knew was going to be the one to make into my canvas was this one of my boy.

I love the colours and the way the dried grass seed heads are the same shade as the sand. I love the way the curve of his little body is mirrored by the curve of the grass. Most of all I love how, to me, it captures a truly lovely day at the beach.

The thing to remember about choosing a photograph to be made into a canvas is the the picture needs to be cropped quite generously to allow for the canvas that wraps around the wooden framework. If I could have this moment in the sand again, I would have allowed a little more negative space on the bottom margin so my boy's feet could be included in the finished print. As it was, I had to make a small compromise.

I am always filled with a sense of dread whenever I use online digital printing services. It can be quite a mission to upload the photographs from your computer to their site. In this instance with Snapfish, it was completely painless - very quick and efficient. Maybe that was because I was only uploading one image. Choosing the right sized canvas and cropping the photograph were also very straightforward. There was a very good 3D effect product view feature that gave a sense of how the canvas would look.

I chose a 16x12 inch canvas that would have cost me £34.99 plus £6.99 p&p. As soon as I had sent my order, I received a confirmation email so there was no anxious wait to see if I had done it correctly!

I placed my order on the Saturday before I left for my second holiday and the package had been delivered by the time I returned the following Thursday. It was securely wrapped in protective packaging and strong cardboard  and it did feel a bit like Christmas as I opened it!

The quality of the product is superb - sturdily made with a true colour reproduction.

It is no doubt more expensive than buying off the shelf canvases but this is original and very personal to me which I think makes it excellent value for money.

Now I just need to decide where to hang it!

The Battle against Condensation

The average UK household, apparently, produces 12 litres of unwanted humidity per day. Judging by the amount of condensation that has been dripping down my windows during this cold weather, I think I must be an above average UK household.

I am guilty of drying clothes over radiators, forgetting to turn on the extractor fan when I'm cooking and  boiling the kettle several times a day to satisfy my caffeine needs. There is also a lot of showering that occurs during the course of the week and all of these activities are going to create humidity.

The best remedy would be to throw open the windows and give the house a good airing but who wants to lose all their precious heat on a cold winter's day? And if it is miserable and rainy, throwing open the window isn't likely to help much anyway.

As well as the condensation, I have had occasional problems with mould and musty smells and am willing to believe the likelihood of increased air borne allergens.

The Humidity Absorber by Unibond claims to reduce the amount of humidity in a room by up to 30%. I was sent the small Humidity Absorber (RRP £13.99) to try.

I was wondering where was the best place to position my Humidity Absorber to put it to the test when my daughter ran into a condensation problem in her new house worse than anything I was experiencing. The condensation on one cold wall had caused the newly applied emulsion to drip down onto the skirting board. We decided that the Humidity Absorber would be put to best use there.

The unit has three components: the tank with a level window so you can see how much liquid has collected, the top of the device with a slatted grid for air circulation and the 2in1 Power Tab that fits into the top. The Power Tab is the important bit that actually converts any excess humidity into a salty solution which then collects in the tank. The 2in1 aspect is that it also neutralises odour. It is an irritant so care must be taken when handling and it is vital that it is kept  out of reach of children.

One Power Tab should last approximately 6-8 weeks and two are provided. Additional Power Tabs can be purchased in twin packs (RRP £7.99)

The components fitted together into a sturdy unit that sat relatively discretely on the window sill where we left it to do its job. The blue liquid collecting in the tank is evidence that something is happening!

When the Tab is fully dissolved, the tank can be emptied and a replacement Tab inserted into the top.

It is too early to say how effective it will be in combatting the condensation problem in this particular room but it is obviously going to go some way towards improving it.

I imagine that in musty rooms with poor air circulation this would offer a huge benefit.

A large Humidity Absorber designed for rooms up to 20 square metres is also available at the RRP of £19.99 (Tab refills £9.99) at leading home stores and supermarkets.

Soothing White

I can still remember the master bedroom of a house I moved into back in the late eighties. It had woodchip wallpaper painted dusty pink with a pale pink ceiling. I remember lying in bed looking up at that ceiling and wondering why anybody would want a ceiling any colour other than crisp, light reflecting white. I'm sure there will be many that disagree with this opinion and think I am missing out on a world of decorating possibilities by limiting my colour palette, but for me there is nothing to rival a clean, white ceiling (with the possible exception of the Sistine Chapel).

This weekend, my husband laid a new floor in my en-suite bathroom. We opted for wood effect vinyl which is a massive improvement on the existing carpet that had got soggy that many times it was starting to smell. In readiness for the new flooring, I glossed all the skirting boards and painted the ceiling. The ceiling had a few small cracks so I used a basecoat that promised to not just fill the cracks but prevent them ever returning. It did a really good job of providing a perfect finish to top coat. It is only a small room and it does get somewhat steamy in there so my final job before I let my husband loose on the project was to apply Brilliant White moisture and steam resistant bathroom paint. Unfortunately, I ran out of time to get this done so I entrusted my husband to buy the paint and finish off while I took the children shopping for new outfits for a forthcoming wedding.

My husband is colour blind.

I'm not sure colour blindness is really an excuse for what he did.

Instead of Brilliant White paint, he bought Soothing White. I'm not entirely sure why it was the 'soothing' white that found its way into his shopping basket rather than any of the other romantically named shades from the 'whites with a hint of ' range or an even bigger mystery, why he didn't just buy the bog standard (and cheaper) Brilliant White that I wanted. Nevertheless, that is what happened.

I would have imagined that as soon as he opened the tin he would have realised his mistake - or if not, then surely when he began rolling it onto the pure white base coat.

If he did notice the discrepancy between his white and my white, he chose to ignore it and painted the whole thing. He didn't actually paint it very well either.

When I came home from my shopping trip I was horrified by the transformation of my flawless white  ceiling into a patchy, tinted mess. I could have cried. 

I didn't cry. I fumed a little but I didn't cry. 

As luck would have it, Soothing White is the colour my daughter has chosen to paint the bathroom in her new house so I can give the nearly full tin of paint to her and feel that it wasn't a complete waste of money.

Today, I bought the Brilliant White moisture and steam resistant paint that I wanted from the start and the Gods were smiling because the Dulux variety was half price in my local Wilkinsons.

I repainted my ceiling.

With every roll of the roller, I felt my calm return. 

I did have a bit of an "oh ****" moment when I over extended to reach a corner and inadvertently allowed the paint tray I was holding to tip up. It made a quite lovely sound as the contents of the tray splopped to the floor. Thankfully, I had covered the new vinyl properly with dust sheets which protected it from my mishap completely.

I may need a second coat to obliterate every last trace of the Soothing White, which quite frankly, did not soothe me one tiny bit! Brilliant Whiteness will soon be restored to reflect light back onto my now smelly carpet-less bathroom.

How Clean is Your House?

The people that my daughter and her boyfriend bought their house from were a lovely couple with a little girl the same age as my Addy. They left a good luck card to wish as much happiness in their new home as they themselves had had and a tin of Roses chocolates (which has proved invaluable to restore flagging energy levels during the process of redecorating and preparing to move in).

I went around this morning to help out for a few hours. Liberty was cleaning the paintwork in the living room ready to gloss so I busied myself in the freshly painted kitchen, packing away the decorating equipment we had been using and giving everything a good clean. It was all coming together beautifully and I was hopeful that we would have a finished room to show off to Liberty's boyfriend (who is still having trouble visualising how lovely it is all going to be).

Then I came to the oven.

The oven was a brushed steel De Longhi built in appliance that didn't appear to be very old. It is a total mystery to me how it could possibly have got into the state that it was inside.

In all the time that Liberty had spent in the house, she had never opened the oven. This is what we found when we did.

My photograph doesn't really capture the full horror of it all. The heavy, rank smell of old grease was stomach churning.

Liberty went to Morrisons in search of propriety oven cleaner - the stronger the better. She returned with Mr Muscle and Oven Pride (and some cheese pasties and muffins to sustain us through what was likely to be a long day).

I got to work on the inside with Mr Muscle while Liberty put the grease and carbon encrusted racks and grill in the bag supplied and added the Oven Pride magic chemical. This needs to be left overnight so I don't know yet how effective it will be but I was impressed that it made an instant impact, turning the clear liquid  black and tarry like the images used to put people off smoking.

I struggled to make much impact at all. The very edges of the oven wiped clean easily to reveal bright, shiny metal that seemed to confirm our suspicion that this was not an old appliance. The thick, carbonised deposits on the glass door and inside the body of the oven were barely touched despite repeated applications of the Mr Muscle spray (which served mostly to burn my nasal linings and little else).

It was dark before I left. I scrubbed until my hands were sore. I attacked it with a steam cleaner. I even took to scraping at it with a wallpaper scraper. I made a small amount of progress but I am a long way off being able to show before and after photographs.

Searching the internet has given me the idea to use baking soda mixed to a paste with water which is applied to the filth and left to soften it. I want to find a plastic scraper which will do the job without damaging the oven surface and I want to make that oven gleam!

I will make that oven gleam!!

It did occur to me that I haven't paid a great deal of attention to the state of cleanliness of my own oven recently. I checked when I got home. I was very happy with what I found.

Christmas Decoration?

Just before Christmas, my eldest daughter was handed the keys to the house she and her boyfriend have bought together.

Currently, they are living in a brand new, pristine two bedroomed flat so I was quite surprised that they opted to purchase an older property that was in need of some work to turn into a home. I absolutely love the house with its high ceilings and original features that add character. I am especially envious of the Minton tiled floor in their rather elegant hallway, which although in need of some restoration, is going to be absolutely beautiful.

So, this Christmas, as well as the usual entertaining - eating, drinking and being merry - I have been spending a lot of time helping my daughter get a good start on the decorating before they move in.

I really enjoy decorating and having owned six different houses over the years, I have become reasonably proficient at it.

Back in the nineties, I couldn't get enough of the home style programme Changing Rooms with the wonderfully flamboyant designer Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen. I think I stencilled and 'paint effected' every room to within an inch of its life. My favourite project was a dungeon inspired dining room. It was a painstaking process to create the trompe l'oeil stonework effect but it was a labour of love and I certainly did love that room. A little of it is visible in this photograph of a wedding anniversary dinner with my first husband which, if my memory serves me correctly, was a miserable affair!

The decorating style I have adopted now is much less ambitious but I do still enjoy picking out colours and love the painty smell of a freshly decorated room. Once my daughter has finished with me at her house, I will turn my attention to my own and give the rooms a much needed freshen up. This does of course rely on me having an ounce of energy left - otherwise I will be joining my two little ones on the sofa!

The Gallery - Week 76 - Home

I am a very home loving person. I enjoy travel and adventures more than I ever have but if there is one place I would always rather be it is within my own four walls, with my nearest and dearest.

There are so many images that spring to mind when I try and think of 'home' and what it means to me but the one that best encapsulates the feeling of warmth, safety and belonging has to be my bed.

From my first waking moments with my morning tea to last thing at night tucked up with a warm husband, my bed is my special place. I love when my little ones snuggle under the covers with me and I especially love the rarer moments when my grown up girls join us for lazy chats and together time. We somehow always find room for everyone.

The luxury zebra print cushions are evidence of my continuing Mid Life Cushion Crisis and were a  bargain at £12.99 from TK Maxx.

Nosey Blogger

Apology

I have been advised to remove this post by my daughter's Policeman boyfriend.

It is a shame that we have to even consider that information that we share with Blogger friends could fall into the wrong hands and be used to our detriment but hey, that's life now :(

It was fun while it lasted.