A spring spruce: home updates inside and out

Over the Easter holidays we made a couple of small updates to the house and I thought you might enjoy seeing them, knowing how you appreciate domestic details like this as much as me.

The first job was to give the shed a bit of love. Here it is looking very sad and dirty.

Ever since we bought the shed, about four years ago, I have wanted the windows to look less stark. I decided to soften them by adding some strips of wood to try to create the effect of mullioned windows. I measured my windows, bought some wooden beading from B&Q, cut it to size then painted the pieces with white wood paint suitable for outdoors. 

My Dad helped me glue these painted strips onto the glass (after giving it a good clean).

Then I filled the window boxes with fresh compost and planted them up with geraniums.

I also washed down the shed and jet washed the pebbles, just to give it all a bit of a spruce up.

Before:

And after:

I'm really happy with how it looks now. The shed is so visible from the kitchen and this just makes it look a bit prettier.

Along with a freshly washed and painted decking area, and new outdoor chairs, the whole area had a freshen up ready for the summer.

We also gave our bedroom a fresh coat of paint. The floorboards and walls were really scuffed and it was looking a bit sad. I went round and round in circles looking at wallpaper for this room but in the end decided to stay with paint, but not white this time. I had to contend with perfectly good (although old) curtains and a rug, both of which are patterned and different colours, and all our bedding and blankets in a multitude of patterns and colours. The thought of trying to find a wallpaper that worked with all this (and that John also liked - he does not enjoy anything too floral or "chintzy", his word) was exhausting so I just chose a paint colour instead.

We had to work around the bed which was tricky but manageable. We painted the walls in Taupe 05 by Lick. I wanted something fairly neutral but warm.

Then we gave the floorboards a sand and two coats of white floor paint. 

When I got the the threshold between the bedroom and landing, it became clear that the landing would also need sanding and painting.

Luckily our landing is very small.

Here you get a better sense of the colour with the bedroom curtains. Maybe I could have gone for wallpaper, I don't know, but thinking about it stopped being fun so that makes me think paint was the right choice.

Here is the room from the other side.

We decided to give my dressing table a coat of paint at the same time. John did all the work on this, I have to admit. He sanded the old white paint (very scratched and stained especially on top) and sanded the top section right back to the wood,

 

We chose grey paint as it needed to work with the existing yellow chair and rug. I was going to order new handles but decided in the end to paint the existing ones pink.

I am really pleased with how it came out. Below you can see previous incarnations - when I painted it in chalk paint (such a disaster) many years ago (we still had the horrible bedroom carpet!)

And when I painted it white with grey handles maybe five or six years ago. I do still really like this look to be honest. Very soothing. 

Overall I'm pleased with the new bedroom. There is a little more colour but it still feels calm and organised. I always love that big clean out that comes with emptying a room of furniture and giving it all a really big sort and clean. 

It is still small with a tiny wardrobe but it does have so much light . We saved money by keeping all the existing furniture. dry cleaning the existing curtains instead of replacing with new, choosing paint over wallpaper and painting the dressing table and handles. Other jobs on the house need to be done (work on the chimney - boring and expensive) so we needed to keep to a budget. Decorating is always so much about compromise, isn't it?

Easter, cookies, flowers, little trips, blossom, spring and all good things.

Spring has been really good to us so far, weather wise. We had gorgeous sunshine for most of the two week Easter holiday and last week was unexpectedly hot (and today unexpectedly cold). It has been a busy, lovely time of visits, day trips, decorating, DIY, gardening and baking. Good spring things. 

We travelled north at the beginning of the Easter holidays to visit family in Durham. 

We always try to have a few hours in Durham city if we can, to wander around the pretty streets, eat out somewhere, visit the cathedral and pop into Waterstones. 

The cathedral is beautiful and always worth a visit; they had a Lego model on display too which was full of incredible detail.

I bought a book - more on reading later. But is there ever a sight more welcoming than piles of books on a table?

While in Durham, I spied an unusual concoction (confection?) in a bakery: a peach melba pie. Of course I have heard of peach melba, as an ice cream flavour, but had never seen a cake like this. Peaches in a pastry crust topped with whipped cream then the whole thing smothered in icing. Delicious. I think this may be a North East thing - I never saw it growing up in the South.

Once home, it was time to nest and potter, to reset the house after a very busy term at school. Working full time (with a great deal of work in the evenings and at weekends) means that I push a lot of tasks back into the school holidays so that is when I really tackle admin, cleaning, sorting out cupboards, gardening etc. I go into the holidays with a big list.

Some tasks are delightfully unnecessary, such as creating an April shelf in the hall, full of the pinks and yellows of spring. 

Or ordering a set of solar lights (habitat) for the back garden.

Others are slightly more necessary, like washing all the cushion covers and throws.

Or adding a couple more pictures to the family gallery wall. 

This print and the tiny bird are from Budapest...

....and this little watercolour of a bunch of flowers was a mother's day card Bella made me this year. 

All the house plants (very neglected house plants) were taken outside to be rescued. It's amazing what just repotting in a larger pot with fresh compost can do.

I took lots of cuttings and they are all lined up on the kitchen windowsill, growing away.

It always amazes me how quickly they grow roots in water

The fireplace was cleaned out and the log basket moved into the garage, to be replaced by lots of greenery.

Then it was time to embark on the DIY and decorating. Always so many jobs to do. B&Q did well out of us over the Easter break with the money we spent on paint, plants and other bits and bobs.

Plants were potted 

and tables sanded.

We jet washed pretty much anything that would stand still and then I treated the decking with a couple of coats of decking stain. 

I will put all the decorating and DIY photos into another post as I think you may doze off but there's lots to show you: a decorated bedroom, newly-painted dressing table and a few other little things. 

It was not all graft over the holidays - we had some lovely walks and days out. I met my friend Abigail in Brighton and we had a fun day with all the teenagers: shopping, Five Guys burgers, going on rides on the pier, ice cream etc. I was bankrupt by the end.

Finding salted caramel and liquorice ice cream was a definite highlight too.

Easter was lovely. The baking is always the best bit. I didn't make any hot cross buns this year but we made Easter nests and some biscuits. 

My new flower cookie cutter was a lot of fun to use.

This was a delight - my Easter egg, chosen by me and bought for myself from Waitrose. A sort of caramel chocolate. Absolutely gorgeous, and a good amount of chocolate too.

I bought the prettiest Easter egg garland from East End Press which I really enjoyed having up on the wall. The garlands were on three for two so it's just as well I bought a summery butterfly one too (as well as a reindeer garland for Christmas) as I really missed the decoration when I took it down.

And when not painting, gardening or eating chocolate, I have been reading. So much reading! I absolutely loved The Wedding People, a beautiful novel about a woman who is persuaded out of ending her own life through a combination of friendship and comedy. It sounds depressing but it really is not - I thought it was an incredibly uplifting book.

I bought Crying in H Mart in Waterstones in Durham, on recommendation. It is a book which features food heavily, always my favourite kind.

Little Fires Everywhere was a recommendation which I have just finished. I'd say it was a 6/10. I liked it and was very invested in finding out what happened,  but found all the characters pretty irritating and unlikeable to varying degrees.

However, Moon Over Soho was brilliant. I read it for book group. I read the first in the series (Rivers of London, also for book group) a couple of years ago and quite liked it but didn't love it. This was so much better: the characters really revealed themselves more and the plot was gripping. They are crime novels, set in London, except in a strange, secret branch of the police that deals with all crimes magical and otherworldly. I love how much London is a character in these books and how much knowledge of and affection for the city the author has. This was an Audible listen, and excellently narrated by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith. The narrator makes all the difference on Audible. 

Finally, on a whim, I downloaded the Booker Prize-winning Orbital. A beautifully written novel full of observations on life, space, human nature, but it would have been vastly improved by a bit more plot. It felt more like an essay than a novel at times. The best bits were the details of everyday like in the International Space Station, like meal times and daily tasks. I often think about this book though. How much a book pops back into my head after reading is always a sign of how good it was, I always think. 

There ends my mammoth round up of life here lately. We are deep in the thick of revision: Bella has here A levels this summer (English lit, History and Law) and Angus is doing his GCSEs. Both are very busy and only seem to come out of their rooms for food. My role is feeding, buying stationery like flash cards and occasionally testing on random subjects. We are all looking forward to this phase being over.