Sods law...

Says that when you have time off from work so does the sun! We spent a chilly morning in the garden sowing seeds and building a table for the allotment out of scrap wood, so T and I consoled ourselves with a late lunch at the Souk Kitchen.

Lamb kofta tagine.

Rosewater flavoured cous-cous, caramelised onions and pomegranate syrup.

Chicken, green olive and fennel tagine.

The lush food we found there put a smile back on our face, but I'm hoping the sun comes back and puts some hours in soon.

Christmas and a year living in no. 75

We moved in Christmas Eve last year. Yes, crappy planning, but our defence it took over six months to complete the sale of the house and we didn't get the keys until the end of November.


We've managed to paint the sitting room a couple of months ago and I persuaded T to let me pull up the carpets downstairs.

I've also just finished painting the dining room. I couldn't stand the yellow custard scheme any more (no wall paper to strip here so we were stuck with it!). There was also an element of should be studying, but painting is way more interesting... as was the retail therapy that followed.









It's looking more lived in with all the Xmas decorations, but back boiler. I despair at your presence!

Creating a blank canvas...

We took a week off in April to strip all of the woodchip and dodgy wallpaper. That green had to go!






We could have done this room by room, decorating and finishing each one before moving onto the next. We probably should have done this room by room - T has a new job, I'm working full-time and doing an MSc, which means that making this house feel like ours is going to take some time.

I figured that blitzing the whole house like a pair of wallpaper addicted locusts would mean that over time we'd become "blind" to old white plaster walls rather than the horrendous colour scheme we have now.

The upside of this house is that there are still quite a few original features, the original doors (although 2 were hiding under hardboard cladding), rim locks on most of them and 1930s ovolo mouldings.


Unfortunately the previous owners had a teak-fetish phase, guessing sometime in the 70's, and the windowsills (all teak-clad) and staircase didn't fair so well.

Anyway in the front bedroom one thing led to another, and then another! The wallpaper continued on behind some built-in cupboards. Useful for storage, but not so easy on the eye.




So out they came. Along with the plasterboard that was covering up the fireplace...


Alas no fire surround hiding under there, but the fire brick is in good nick:


Our surprise discovery was the remnants of old wallpaper giving a hint of how the room used to look. Not sure, but guessing this might have been the original 1930s/1940s décor. Took lots of photos and kept a few bits of the wallpaper for posterity.






Even the decorator's marks were there:


Empty and ready for painting:


I've also spied the original black and white brick tiles in the kitchen still visible behind one of the cabinets. They've been tiled over, but I'm hoping that we might be able to restore them.