Tag: DIY

#537 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Home, SerendipityLeave a comment

We are boggle eyed from painting doors, stairs and anaglypta panels a very dark grey. This morning after we made the most of the very early light we went out for an Easter morning walk before most people had thought about breakfast. This fabric hanging from a building, soon to be renovated has a plaintive feel, but the rest of the walk was full of spring colour.

Full disclosure the job was greater than the time we had. We deliberately started with the hardest end of the hallway and it has taken all of the time available to get about half of the ground floor hallway done. Our cut- off deadline was always 4pm on Sunday. Apart from one from one swim and many dog walks we have politely declined social activities all weekend. The work left is, by any measure, much less time consuming and can be achieved over a couple of weekends.

Work in Progress shot.

The under stairs cupboard door will also go grey. It is unimaginable how many hours have gone into this small space. My jaw tells me that I painted spindles through gritted teeth and we both have lower backs that are stretched by the constant crouching to reach hard to reach places. Our minds have been stretched by the music and podcasts we have listened to. YouTube failed me on Spindle painting. Apparently the modern way to achieve the same effect as hours of teeth clenching is to mask everything except the spindles in plastic and use a spray can or gun. After ten such jaunty videos I gave up and did it the Victorian way. When I was a small child living in a house with a much smaller staircase my mum took me away for the weekend while my dad ” Got on with the hallway. “

He arrived triumphantly, at my grandparents pub saying “I’ve boxed it all in”

In the space of 48 hours our between- the-wars semi had been turned into smooth 1960’s minimalism every panelled door or ornate spindle hidden behind sheets of hardboard and painted white.

After this past weekend I understand the sentiment but cannot praise his architectural vandalism. I hope whoever lived there after us was thrilled one day to take off the boxing-in ( thank you Practical Woodworking Magazine) and reveal the real charms of the house.

#436 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Easter2 Comments

Our Georgian style, Victorian house has many original features. One of which is Anaglypta panels in the hallway. In 1889 when this house was built Anaglypta was the Metro Tile of the era. Anaglypta was invented in 1887 and bespoke panels were set into the plaster walls. In any house this would have been a hard job, getting the panels shaped to run in line with Dado and picture rails. This house is built near the peak of a hill. The front of the house runs up a hill north to south and down a hill front to back. Getting anything straight was a miracle.When we looked at the house and decided to buy it,  the panels were painted a bold mustard colour with a honey cream background. At some point during a very protected house sale the previous owners were going to take the house off the market and repainted the hall in a blander style for the rental market. Having seen the hall boldly painted we decided to make a feature of the lower panel and paint it dark grey. Hannah is on this now she has finished the doors. Right now we are wondering if we have gone too dark. Trepidation is a regular feature in our interior design journey.

Just as soon as we are done there will be a big reveal blog, but this morning with the early sun pouring in things are looking good even though everything is embellished with Canary yellow masking tape. One last push from me and the spindles up to the first turn of the stairs will be finished later today.

In between spindle painting I made some digital repeat patterns of the work in progress photo. I might print one out, frame it and hang it in an Anaglypta, panel a sort of infinite homage to Victorian craftsmen…

#435 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Bobbing, Serendipity1 Comment

Many months ago we made a plan to decorate the hallway in the Easter holidays. It is a big hall and I could bore the pants off everyone, talking about it but last night we reached a moment when the ground floor spindles were mostly painted and there was a moment when the stairs looked like a clever optical illusion.

We are replacing Nicotine Cream with a dark grey. The hallway links three floors, so getting nearly to the top of the first set is encouraging. Crouching on the stairs to paint is bone aching work but the call of the sea gave us an hour off yesterday.

Not only were we rewarded with a long cool swim but there were many after swim snacks to fuel the rest of the day’s painting.

Our bones felt very happy after an hour or so away from grey paint. The fiddly painting makes me clench my jaw but there were plenty of bobbers yesterday, to chatter to, which gave me all the jaw relaxing exercise I needed.

There is a lot to ponder, in this picture of warmly wrapped up swimmers. Some of us have been doing this together for two and a half years. What started as therapy for one bobber, who had been given a diagnosis of an immune system disease, quickly became exercise for the Covid years. Our numbers peaked at about fifteen for quite a while and are still under twenty. These occasional group photos link the missing bobbers with the active group of the day. The bobbers themselves link up on all sorts of dry land endeavours. Our lives have been enhanced, in unexpected ways, by this regular dip in cold water. All this for an activity which is officially discouraged.

49.1 F is 9.5 C

But who could resist this.

#532 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Peninsular Life, SerendipityLeave a comment

Spring is definitely asserting itself now. A bright shaft of sunlight caught this blue bowl yesterday.

Ferries to all sorts of places have started their summer services. Great big passenger ferries travelling to France and Spain leave from in front of the house. Although there is a cliff between us and them, we can feel the gentle power of their engines and hear their public announcements. Things that would quietly excite me if I were  a passenger.

dav

I have never actually caught a ferry from here which is why the name of the Ferry terminal was a big surprise to me while writing this blog. I had always assumed that it was just part of the Millbay dock complex. But actually the Ferry terminal is called the St George Terminal.

Not knowing the name of a Ferry port that I walk past every day is not as mad as it seems. From my side,the port is labelled Plymouth Port and it shares gates and staff areas with the Royal Marine Barracks. Like many places in Plymouth the outlook from my home was changed forever during World War II. Currently we overlook a school playing field beyond the field is the rocky outcrop that forms the small cliff that blocks the view of the port.

Before the war I would have looked out on two rows of Georgian houses, and tucked in amongst them a Primary School called St Georges. Further away there was also a Church called St Georges. The school, houses and church were all destroyed by German bombs and incendiary devices. The land was eventually cleared after the war and only the Primary school was rebuilt. It is very weird to think of the carnage that occurred a few steps from my front door. But beyond the rebuilt Primary School the name St Georges is not used in this area at all, so it is a huge surprise to discover the real name of the ferry terminal.

There is a strange tie in with all this and our Easter activity. We are painting our hallway, it is a big job and my task is the bannister and spindles of the staircase. The bannister shows a huge scar where something must have fallen during the bombing. Some of the spindles also show signs of damage and repairs. We will need to do more repairs just to give the staircase a bit more rigidity too. The rest of the house though is as solid as the rock it is built of and on. Luckier than its neighbours.

It is amazing what plaids can be made with some painted spindles. Time spent when I should actually have been painting spindles!

#473 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn art, Art for sale1 Comment

Gallery walls and thieves. Hannah @theoldmortuary has finished the gallery wall and the inspiration for a weekends work has been hung. I bought her three original prints for her birthday from Debs Bobber, one of our cold water swimming friends. As soon as they were unwrapped their new home was planned and this weekend the plane was executed. Debs Bobber, real name Debra Parkinson is currently working on a theme of thievery. In this series a mythical creature steals the gold finial that tops Smeatons Tower, the iconic Lighthouse that stands on Plymouth Hoe.

©Debra Parkinson
©Debra Parkinson

Of course the gallery wall is just the beginning of the kitchen, dining room refurbish but it is always good to get the essentials done first!

#472 theoldmortuary ponders

On By theoldmortuary.designIn PaintingsLeave a comment

Cue the Rolling Stones, Paint it Black. Although to be accurate the Rolling stones would have to be singing. Paint it Farrow and Ball ‘Railings’ which is not the same thing at all. Our art collection deserves a Gallery Wall and that is the project for this weekend.

In between painting the wall F&B Railings we discovered a, new to us,park with spectacular views.

Now the dogs are not the biggest of fans of DIY but a new park is something they can fully invest in.

The views seemed to be immaterial to them but an hour or so of scampering for them and Vitamin D harvesting for us was a great break in the day.

Pandemic Ponderings #34

On By theoldmortuary.designIn Pandemic ponderings, SerendipityLeave a comment

Pandemic Ponderings started on 17 th March sometime before the Government Lockdown restrictions and a little before my own self isolation due to a common virus. That’s about 36 days of life being significantly different from anything any of us have experienced before. Have we @theoldmortuary developed a new set routine? The answer would have to be no although we do seem to run out of food/ provisions on Tuesdays. Our world has shrunk and the weekly trip to two supermarkets, one each, is an event in life rather than something squeezed into life. Communication is everything and we’ve not quite got that right. Yesterday was National Tea Drinking Day, unconsciously we took the cue and bought 500 teabags, both bagging a bargain. Stockpiling at its most shameful, the T bags join the six tins of sweetcorn.Gardening has become a routine but we are fast running out of places to store lawn cuttings, bush trimmings and weeds. It is weather related rather than supply and demand which governs shopping. Storage of garden waste is soon going to be the factor that controls us. The weather flip opposite of the gardening routine is interior DIY. It’s amazing how much we can achieve just by using stuff we already have in our shed.Curiously Mondays have become our laundry and house cleaning day. This is exactly the routine my grandparents had and it’s one that has crept up on us. In non pandemic times we washed whenever there was a load but with no life beyond home we are producing less washing. House cleaning is not so bad when you are not exhausted from working elsewhere, I can only think of two pre-pandemic routines that we’ve not modified. One is the bedtime walk for the dogs, we never meet anyone even in normal times and that’s not changed, people don’t whizz past us in their cars anymore . No cars means no pollution and what is noticibly more lovely about our evening walks, this spring, is the intensity of fragrance from people’s gardens and the hedgerows.The other unchanged routine is having flowers in the house. The weeks of daffodils have passed and currently we have tulips.One slightly odd juxtaposition is our fireplace. An interiors psychologist suggested keeping Christmas lights up until Spring as it helps to make darker evenings less dire. Weve stuck with that because a Pamdemic needs light shining on it. Fear not, that is not a Trumpian solution , we just love a bit of twinkle, any excuse. Now we have tulips and Christmas lights,if this goes on it could be sunflowers. In this shot the pandemic gets a mention too. It does not improve with twinkle.

Not to be outdone the garden has some new solar lights to brighten up the evening of whoever walks past the house. Something we do at Christmas time but it seems important to do it now too.Lola reminds me that there is one other routine that must be adhered to, dog hugs. This is the face of someone who wants me to stop pondering.