How (not) to build a house - Part 10

I can't believe seventeen months have passed since I last wrote a "How Not to Build a House" blog post. I suppose living with builders has become the norm for us as we are now into our fifth year of it! You can catch up on past instalments here.

We are approaching the three-year anniversary of moving into our house and the time has flown by. I am just so grateful, and pathetically happy to be living here after multiple house moves and renting misery.

I'm ashamed to admit we still haven't quite finished decorating the house, although I have managed to eliminate some of the bare bulbs which were really letting the side down. These beautiful lampshades were specially commissioned with the ceramic artist Peter Sparrey, who I found on Instagram and is supremely talented. I often catch myself gazing in wonder at them (although we do hit our heads on them regularly as they are a bit low). Peter mostly makes stunning raku pots and bowls and it was my idea to turn his hand to lampshades, which I think proved to be a bit of nightmare in the end with lots of kiln catastrophes. 

The biggest development has been with our 'garden'. After two and a half years of looking out at rubble in the central courtyard, we finally had enough money for the landscaping, which was done by our (now after working for us so much) friend Salty, the one with the carrot-eating dog (see previous blog post). There is a 150 year old London Plane tree growing in our neighbour's garden, the trunk of which had knocked down our wall, and the enormous roots meant we have had to create raised decking in the middle of the courtyard—otherwise we would have had problems in future with the paving stones lifting. All our visitors think we have built a mini stage to do performances on, but I am hoping when all the plants have grown it won't be quite so prominent.

Left: Red, Salty's gorgeous and well behaved dog who will do anything for a carrot.

Right: The massive Plane tree that has watched over our street for 150 years.

Salty created three staggered flower beds and put in a spiral staircase so that we could easily collect the monumental pile of dead leaves that gather on our flat roof. I'm also hoping to grow some vegetables and flowers for cutting up there, but that will be next year's project.

Bertie project managing Sam as he puts in a window.

We purchased a beautiful garden sofa from Kettler, but unfortunately have ended up keeping the cover on it most of the time due to bird droppings and torrential leaf fall. Maybe my next product development needs to be designing outdoor chair covers, as it is so ugly and really killing the fairy den garden vibe I am going for. When planting the front garden I just free-wheeled it in the garden centre, which I do regret slightly, so for the back I did get advice from a professional gardener. The drought has meant the plants have struggled a bit so it is not quite the abundant jungle I have in my mind's eye. Yet.

The front garden of our house has now started to grow up nicely. It's been two years since it was planted, and it's beginning to get the wild look I've been dreaming of. My 10 second commute to work is a joy, but a little bit less gratifying on the step-count front. I suppose I have made up for this with endless lugging of watering cans since the hose-pipe ban.

I cannot quite believe that five years on, we're still living with builders in our midst. The end of the studio was meant to only take one year to turn into a self-contained flat, but we're now nearly hitting the two-year mark. To be fair, we have changed our minds on building matters multiple times, much to the frustration of Sam, our lovely builder.

Left; The total dump that was the back of the studio. Right; Revealed the huge space once all the partitions had been ripped out.

The plan all along for this part of the building was to keep the decor cheap and cheerful. LOL! I stumbled at the first hurdle with me falling for these expensive electric blue Moroccan Zellige tiles, which I needed to have after seeing them in a magazine. Unfortunately, they didn't really go with anything else I had on my mood board, but never mind. It proved to be difficult to decide what to pair these tiles with, as aside form the cost of using the blue tiles on all the walls, the white basin and loo would have shone out like a lighthouse in the dark against them. So I decided to try and mix the blue with some marble-effect white and blue tiles. I chose terracotta for the floor. To be honest, I'm not sure I'm 100% satisfied with the overall look, but there we are — you live and learn. When I build my next house I will know.

As usual, choosing colours for my own home proved to be something I appear to be almost incapable of doing. It's so much easier advising other people on their schemes. I knew I wanted to tie in the terracotta colour of the bathroom floor into the main room, as I'm naturally drawn to warm hues, but could not find the exact terracotta colour I wanted, as a lot of the beautiful ones on the market were far too dark. So of course this meant I had to mix my own, which is Dulux DX-QKHZF715D5, if you're interested (I think you can give that code and it will be mixed up at any Dulux colour centre!) Initially, to try and create some flow from the blue tiles in the bathroom into the main room, I painted the walls in the rest of the space a very soft sky blue, which I rather loved, but my husband claimed he hated it and would do exaggerated shivers when looking at it to demonstrate how cold it made the room feel, and to be fair, it didn't sit very well with the terracotta. So we've now moved to this clotted cream colour, which matches Stanley's fur perfectly. I'm also planning on wallpapering one or two walls with my brand-new Gypsophila wallpaper in Vanilla & Pewter.

By far the most beautiful element in the space is our terrazzo kitchen worktop, from Diespeker (blowing the budget again! Eeek). We spent a day visiting their fascinating showroom and workshop in South London, where I discovered I could design my very own unique terrazzo, which I had to be physically restrained from doing as it was going to be more than twice the price than their off the shelf options. But can you imagine how fun that would be?! We still need to decide what to use for the splashback behind the hob and sink, but I suspect we will use the same terrazzo again… more expense 😩. The cupboards are going to be painted a delicious dark, inky green which you can just see in the picture above right.

Left; All the slabs at Diespeker are made in their London workshop. Right; a bespoke sample made in their studio. Can virtually put anything into the plaster, and of course that can be dyed any colour you want as well. The possibilities are endless. 

So there you have it... we have been very busy and I hope are nearly at the end. I am aiming to do a big reveal before Christmas, so that is something to aim for!