Category: Interior Design

#1082 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Interior Design, SerendipityLeave a comment

As the dark mornings stealthily shorten daylight hours I am more and more thrilled by the cloud  of crumpled paper that has replaced the ghastly chandelier in the bedroom. The wonder that is IKEA’s imaginative  design for a mass produced item.

We are in the midst of our own Octoberfest. No beers or cutesy German themed servers wearing  lederhosen and low cut shirts. Our Octoberfest is all about ‘Spring’ cleaning the house and some redecorating.

The studio has also had its chandelier replaced by a paper cloud. So much more conducive to creativity. The parchment-coloured wall is new; the blue one will change to dark teal. We want to reflect the colour of our local sea.  Oktoberfesting the studio is a mammoth task.  There are still materials left over from my Fine Arts degree 16 years ago. I have moved them around the country in case random things were ever needed. I have promised myself a proper sort out and rationalisation of art materials. My fabric stache took the hit yesterday. I need a full day of recovery before I tackle paints.

#843 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Interior Design2 Comments

Yesterday the last piece of our accidental style of interior design arrived. We have lived in this house for nearly 3 years. Having designed every inch of the actual Old Mortuary ourselves, it has been a challenge living in a house designed by someone else with the express purpose of selling the house. Obviously their strategy worked, as we bought it . Most of the house was refurbished very sympathetically to its 150 year old bones. The family bathroom, not so much. The bathroom was an industrial fantasy of communal bathing. A grey homage to the interior design of the Starship Enterprise. If the bridge of the Enterprise had a crew bathroom where the crew could go for off duty fun that was exactly our bathroom. The shower and the bath can comfortably hold 4 people.

It has been a head-scratcher of a project, made all the more complex by every house plant we own choosing to live in the bathroom as a reference to death. The plants obviously softened the look but without ripping out everything and starting again we have been a bit lost.

Reading this book was our lightbulb moment.

Beata says that the secret to living in an old house is to represent every era that the house has lived through when you redecorate and redesign.

We replaced the industrial grey flooring with soft green Victorian Tiles. Bought an Art Deco mirror on Facebook Marketplace.

And yesterday took delivery of a Nathan mid-century modern turntable unit , with a drop-down door and sliding-out shelves. Which makes a perfect bathroom cabinet and plant holder. Thanks to ebay and HookeandTaylor.

https://www.instagram.com/stories/hookeandtaylor/3320946114200509313?utm_source=ig_story_item_share&igsh=YXF0ZzU4bWI2OTEx

I’m not certain which of these two retro pieces is the game changer for the room but the turntable cabinet warms my heart more than I imagined. My parents were mid-century modern sort of people and owned a whole room of this Nathan furniture. When they died I was not able to house any of it and gave it all to a distant relation. But their love of this furniture and my Dad’s obsession with his record collection and Hi-fi equipment made me know exactly what was needed as a quirky and safe bathroom cabinet. ( We have three grand-daughters for whom the bathroom is their happy place) Nobody under 10 will work out that the door is a drop-down rather than the usual side opening.

No more head scratching for us. The bathroom has a new personality and the plants are very happy.

#820 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Interior Design1 Comment

Saturday dawns and the urge to decorate and Spring clean has abated. Not that we have completely finished but two rooms are just about done. Time even for a good book on a Saturday morning.

The bathroom is as done as it can be until a little mid-century treasure arrives from E-bay.

Somewhere to store towels and products for humans, and possibly some baby bio for the house plants who prefer this room to any other.

Circling nicely back to David Bowie I am slightly tempted to frame this photograph of a print that I took in a pub near Barts Hospital. Original artwork by James Mylne.

Framed this might be rather an homage to two British icons. The plants might like it.

#816 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Daft Questions, Interior Design2 Comments

What’s afoot? Not what we had hoped. Our DIY phase has entered a  ‘get someone in phase’  This footprint should be on a floor that looks like a Victorian bathroom. But, when the flooring was delivered, there was a flaw and now we await a new delivery.  Once again our minor renovation of the house is slowed down. Which turns out to be a thing! Unknown to us we are part of a new trend in home decorating.

Slow Decorating is a ‘thing’

Our slowness is circumstantial, financial and serendipitous. Some of it is unplanned, like the bathroom floor. Other times we are waiting to find the right thing for the right place.  Wherever possible we find second hand or recycled items. Very much as this article suggests.

https://www.houseandgarden.co.uk/article/why-we-should-all-be-slow-decorating?utm_campaign=dashhudson&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=instagram

Magazine article homes are all very well but when the photographer and journalist leave, these homes have to be lived in. Stuff needs to move in and find a home.

Part of our bathroom refurbishment is required because nearly all of the houseplants have decided they want to live in the west facing bathroom . The previous owners had wanted an all grey pleasure dome. We just need to be clean human beings. Juggling these three different design needs has taken us some time to puzzle out. Ripping out all of the new fixtures and fittings would have been the easiest but least ethical or affordable solution. The party bath is currently hosting the plants while they wait for the new floor. It will all work out in the end. Which brings me nicely to today’s blogging prompt, daft question.

If there was a biography about you, what would the title be?

She worked it all out, in the end.

#813 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Interior Design, Interior design inspiration, Serendipity1 Comment

Write about your dream home.

A good weekend for this prompt. We are in the midst of wallpapering. Not exactly to turn our current home into a dream home but maybe to turn our existing spaces into something more beautiful. When we bought the house it had been done up to attract buyers. It is full of original features and the materials used are mostly of very good quality. We have spent two and a half years trying to love an expensive French style wallpaper chosen by the previous owners.  Love has not overwhelmed us and the pale blue birds on pale blue twigs on a pale gold background have been replaced. A hugely different, concrete, abstract paper burnished with a soft bronze has silenced the already mute birds.  The concrete, just like the birds reflect the morning light from the East.

By this time tomorrow those irritating birds will be gone. One person’s dream eclipsed by another.

#805 theoldmortuary ponders.

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Bobbing, dog walks, Interior Design1 Comment
©Jenna Bobber

The first bob of February was achieved yesterday morning. It was a somewhat monochromatic day. And for no particular reason quite a brutally cold swim at Tranquility Bay. There were only four bobbers, two bystanders and two dogs. A small highpoint was waving to the sailors on the deck deck and them waving back. An excellent way for us all to warm up.

Monochrome was the flavour of our outdoor life yesterday.

Two barrel hoops had dropped off a barrel near the Cooperage.

And much to the disappointment of Lola, one of her favourite cafes was shut.

Which leads me to today’s prompt rather nicely.

Something on your “to-do list” that never gets done.

February sees us back in home DIY mood. We are fired up by a very arty weekend away in Penzance.

Every inch of our previous home. The actual old Mortuary was designed and created by us and two wonderful builders, Jason and Dave who humoured our maddest ideas while still rebuilding a mortuary and attached cottage into a wonderfully comfortable home.

But fate took a turn in good ways and bad. We became the family hub and our family, which had been shrinking for many years, started to grow.

To paraphrase Chief Martin Brody in Jaws. We were going to need a bigger house. Our current home is an old Townhouse that had been owned by the same family for 60 years. It had been ‘done up’ to sell but has many original features. Without ripping out perfectly good things we are slowly remodelling the house to better represent and accommodate us. The to-do list will never be done. And we are just fine with that.

#538 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Interior Design, Serendipity1 Comment
©Dowsing and Reynolds

Glimpsing this advert over the weekend I realised, with horror, that I suffer from a complete absence of personality. No knobs on my cupboards. Please excuse the brief blog while I take some time-out to process this revelation.

I have worked in jobs where problems have been excused as ‘personality clashes’ On one occasion I memorably retorted that it was,

” Hard to have a clash of personality with someone who doesn’t have one”

Little realising that the person who had spiked my ire was simply a woman without knobs. I thought she was a controlling, bullying witch without a bone of genuine kindness. If only I had known that instead of attempting to find some soul in her I could simply have gone to a hardware store and bought her some interesting knobs.

Just imagine what this simple revelation could do in so many human interactions.

Knobs…

Who knew!

No knob, no personality.

#41 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Interior Design, SerendipityLeave a comment

A deliberately late blog today because we were off on a rug buying adventure and I knew that there would be some gorgeous colours to share. Rug shopping can also be a great experience for the nose if you shop in the right places. Really a rug department that only sells natural fibres is the absolute best. Liberty of London has the best smelling rug department that I know. There are smells gathered there that have travelled from all over the world. Closer to home, currently, is the rug department of Trago Mills. Possibly the most eccentric shopping experience Britain has to offer. Never the less their rug department is a close second to Liberty for fragrance and choice of rug.

We were seeking a rug the colour of a winter sea. It has been a quest for the last few months.

Not feeling particularly hopeful amongst all these gorgeous but unsealike colours we dug through a pile of rugs from India and found this gorgeous chap.

Sea-like in both colour and texture and made of jute and cotton and, as we discovered, a perfect place for excitable dogs.

#30 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Interior DesignLeave a comment

A wet Monday morning in November. Quite the opening sentence! Halloween ( eugh) and Firework Night ( yay) both over for another year. Remembrance Day next Sunday is one more significant day in a month that I have always loved. There is something relaxing about November once the frenetic first week is over.

The morning sea was very inviting.

But we had another full day of wallpapering to do!

Finished with half an hour of natural daylight to spare but no residual energy for an evening swim. There is always tomorrow for a quick dip.

Pandemic Pondering #84

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Interior DesignLeave a comment

This is quite the ponder. Yesterday I cleared out the studio for three reasons.

1. It was in a mighty pickle.

2 I needed to find the blackboard.

3 We needed a garden gathering space for inclement weather.

None of these inspired a blog but like all good things, the accidental find is the most interesting. This is the story of my life. My working life would not exist without X-rays, one of histories great accidental finds. The link below explains radiography alongside 9 other valuable accidents. But I digress.

https://www.mnn.com/leaderboard/stories/10-accidental-inventions-that-changed-the-world

My accidental find in the studio was a Disco glitter ball. It’s big and used to live in a cupboard for eleven months of the year and then hang disco style from the decorative finial thingy that hung down from the bottom of a newel post on my landing.

It came into my family life by accident . We walked past Next one Christmas Eve as the shop was closing. Window dressers were stripping the festive window and prepping for the sales. We were gifted this ball straight out of the window.

Since acquiring a studio the glitter ball has given year round pleasure. Twinkling in the sunshine.

I felt like dropping into the Google rabbit hole chasing glitterballs for information for the blog.

A mirror ball hanging over the Louisiana Five in 1919.

The first mention, in literature, of a glitter ball was in Boston in 1897. The first patent was issued to Louis Bernard Woeste. He patented it as the Myriad Reflector , his trade name for it, he did not patent it as the inventor. It was reproduced by his company, and sold to ballrooms, jazz clubs and dance halls. His promotional material claimed.

“The newest novelty is one that will change a hall into a brilliant fairyland of flashing, changing, living colors – a place of a million-colored sparks, darting and dancing, chasing one another into every nook and corner – filling the hall with dancing fireflies of a thousand hues.”

Mirror balls became hugely popular in dancehalls in the 1920’s . I met them in the 70’s starting with the School Disco at Margaret Tabor Secondary Modern School in Braitree, Essex. Then The Viking nightclub in Castle Headingham and then finally the bright lights and dark nights of living and working in London and Brighton. Here in the 21st century the Strictly Come Dancing global franchise brings glitterballs into countless homes worldwide that have no notion of nightclubs.

Glitterball imagery is iconic in the music industry. The Grateful Dead, Yes, Madonna, Pink Floyd have used it extensively.

The Bee Gees soundtrack for Saturday Night Fever crosses the glitterball path between music and film. Film has a similarly iconic love affair with twinkly balls. Velvet Goldmine, Casablanca in 1942, Dirty Dancing all love a twinkly ball.

In the U.S there is one manufacturer who supplies 90% of glitterballs in the US, according to Google.
http://www.omeganationalproducts.com/

But it would seem pretty strange if China hasn’t taken a big part of the market. I don’t know where my glitterball was created I know where it is now. The mortuary part of our house has slightly odd proportions for a domestic property. All the ceilings are very high. We bought a light fitting a few years ago that was sold for large-proportion bars or cafes. with just a little modification to this lightfitting the glitterball has a new home.