Sunday House Chat
Bathroom makeover
Sunday House Chat started when my friend Marloes at Thinking things said she’d like to see more about our house here on Substack. Well, I love chatting about the secrets of old houses, so I’ll show you some of ours. Come on in!
Don’t worry about taking your shoes off, we don’t mind a bit of sand in the house. Ignore the mess, I’ll just run ahead putting the toilet seats down and kicking the dirty undies under the bed.
Over the last couple of years, we have been working our way through this ramshackle old house, doing up one room at a time. It’s a Victorian stone-built house, originally four flats for railway workers and fishing families. Read more about the weird anomalies of our old house here.
In the 1960s, the flats were converted into a house. An extension was added for a kitchen, and poshest of posh, they got an indoor lavvy and inside stairs. Yes!
Old fireplaces were bricked up, earth floors were replaced by concrete, Victorian doors were replaced or boarded over with ply to hide the moulding, and an old back boiler was installed for heating. We still used that old boiler until very recently; those old boilers were made to last! The plumber was drooling over it. ‘They don’t make them like that any more!’
Other than a 1990s Ikea kitchen, put in before we lived here, and a few new carpets, not much renovation has been done since. It’s one of the reasons we bought this house: it was a bargain and a nice blank canvas.
Anyway, at last, bathroom renovation time arrived! It was next on our list after opening up the fireplaces, building a studio and designing a Tiger Who Came to Tea inspired kitchen.
Of all the rooms in the house, I found the bathroom the most annoying: it had no storage, not even a nook to put a spare toilet roll, some pretty awful peach and gold flowery tiles, mouldy grout, mouldy silicone (so much silicone!) and a radiator with enough dust trapped in the back to stuff a mattress!
No matter how much we cleaned, it always looked grubby. For a messy person like me, I need a visual reward for such efforts. There’s no fun in wiping knackered old skirting boards. There’s not enough pay-off, is there?
We have been collecting these lovely tiles from illustrator Laura Carlin over the last few years and had planned to design the whole bathroom around them. But problems, problems. They are a funny size, and we couldn’t get blank ones to match them unless we had them made by hand. And our budget didn’t stretch that far. We’ll keep the Laura Carlin tiles to use somewhere else.
So, back to the drawing board. Other than these tiles, I had no idea what my ideal bathroom would look like. Weird, isn’t it? I thought I knew my taste, but when choosing a specific bath or a tap, I felt completely lost. There’s too much choice; it’s overwhelming!
So, I made a Pinterest board to help me figure out my taste. I learned a few things: I like traditional bathrooms, lots of wood, art on the walls, and some nice pops of colour.
I made a some drawings of my vision on Procreate. Aren’t they amazing visuals? You can tell I am an award winning illustrator 😝
Plans included:
A storage cupboard under the sink to hide the mess
Lots of wood panelling
Wonky handmade-looking tiles in a basket weave pattern
No mouldy silicone, thank you
A Victorian panelled door, more in keeping with the house than the blank 1960s door
A light above the sink. I didn’t know this was a life goal until I saw them on Pinterest (the dangers of Pinterest)
A mirror that tilts - so that G can see himself and I can see more than the top of my head. I first saw a tilting mirror in a B&B; who knew such things existed!?
Our joiner (who built our kitchen - and we wish we could kidnap and keep him until he’s renovated our entire house), tiler and plumber are old-school friends and make a brilliant team. I loved listening in to their gossip about the other plumbers/ tilers/ joiners in town.
They started work in early December and were almost done by Christmas; there were just a few finishing touches to do in the new year. And now? We’re nearly done! We just need to hang some artwork and put up a blind.
Here’s the artwork we’ll hang once we get it framed. I love Pia Bramley’s work, do you know her?
Ha! We are hopeless at getting artwork framed. You would think, being artists, we would be really good at getting stuff framed and hung. But no. We have plan chests full of amazing artwork we have collected over the years, and we never get around to framing it. And even when we do frame it, we struggle to decide where to put it, so we temporarily lean it against a wall, and it stays there for years. One day I will conquer this failing/ character flaw. In fact, I am going to make this is a goal for 2024.
How are you at framing artwork? Please tell me you can’t get your framing act together too.
Hope you enjoyed this Sunday House Chat. There were no ghosts, dead bodies or spooky volcanos in this episode. Next time!
Coming soon:
🌟 Pocket Sized Procreate films
I am going to make a series of films about Procreate, especially for paper lovers like myself. What are your burning questions?
🌟 Pencil Pals Problem Page
This week I’ll be answering your illustration/ picture book questions. Pop your questions below, no matter how big, small, sensible, embarrassing or daft, I like the daft ones best. I’ll answer as many as I can.
Happy Sunday! Hope your croissants in bed were delightful.
Helenx
Love this... and YES! Loads of unframed art! The guilt is terrible, as a lot is fabulous work by very dear friends... there have been a few mad scurries to the framer in the past because x or y was visiting... and much rearranging of pictures! Basically, we don't have enough wall space. We LOVE the pictures... just don't get round to framing, or - if we do - can't find a spare inch of wall. I dream of moving somewhere with endless walls...
A few weeks ago a good friend of mine told me of her stress dreams about her old house. It was Victorian and had been in her family since it was built, she lived in it for 11 years until her growing family meant it was time to move on. The house later was used for multiple occupancy and she was very concerned that the house was no longer loved and cared for. She dreamed about it at least weekly.
Shortly after this I was perusing Facebook marketplace for garden tables and saw a freebie being offered- weirdly it wasn’t what I was after but I enquired anyway and was contacted quickly to say that it was mine. As we exchanged details I commented ‘oh I had a friend who lived in that street, it’s nice isn’t it? ‘Yes we are very lucky, we are in number 2’. ‘Oh my goodness- that was the house!!!’
With a bit more chat we established that my friend could come with me to pick up the table - it was agreed that it wasn’t too creepy of us and that the new owners were actually very interested in the house’s history.
I had forgotten this part, but I was with my friend to help on the day she moved out and she hid a time capsule under the floorboards as she left. She was hesitant to mention it to the new people until she met them and checked whether they were kind and caring enough to the house.
Well guess what? They were lovely AND it was four years TO THE DAY since they moved in.
They had restored and decorated really sensitively and really loved the house.
We told them all the secrets about the place and answered lots of questions that they had. We told them about the time capsule.
They found it a few hours later. Sadly some damp had gotten in and the paperwork was not in good condition but there were lots of bits and pieces that survived and they were able to add to it, replace the box with a more watertight container and put it back.
My friend got some much needed closure about the house. I got a table I didn’t know I wanted but proved very useful and a week later I found the perfect bistro set for the garden on freecycle.
I love the quirks of fate sometimes 😊