A glance back over my shoulder ...

I just HAD to sneak these in! (I thought it would be ok to look back over my shoulder at the upstairs landing as I was going back down the stairs). The week before last we stripped the wallpaper(layers and layers!)off the walls from landing and down the stairs - and all of these fragments were found after peeling off the last whole layer. It was the very first wallpaper to be hung here - isn't it an amazing pattern!? You can see how bright the blue colour was in the detail pic (which also shows a very fetching crack going upwards from the corner of the bedroom door).

We were so excited about finding the first piece - we did some super speed-stripping and had the rest of this wall done in half an hour  phew!

(The rest of the stairs took much longer - covered in anaglypta, varnish, lining paper, emulsion, gloss paint, plaster, and layers and layers of paper.)

Landing wall - the first layer - found just like this, as if someone had got fed up with stripping it off and just left...

First layer showing details of nature themed and art deco wall papers. Second and third layers respectively.

Bright blue printed detail (and BIG crack)

Nature themed details ... layered over the top

Art Deco paper added at a later date to nature themed wallpaper.

Have been saving this rather gummy fragment of wall paper to add on to this post - found it the other week, when we had got down the stairs and were carrying on stripping the hallway.

We also managed to take down the brackets and pedestals (not shown) from beneath the arch in the hallway, and to our surprise, underneath layers of a distemper-like gunge, there was some details of acanthus leaves and flower. This had all been covered up to make a smooth shape instead - we liked the detail, so S cast some new ones, so we'll always have spares!

The banister. Feel

Ok – I think it is about time to start making our way upstairs. Satisfyingly smooth – I love the feel of the banister and cannot help put run my hands along it every time I walk down the stairs or across the landing. It is one of the few original features that remain in the house – and is by no means grand, however I like the way that it doubles back on itself along the galleried landing (that sounds grander than it actually is too). Whilst the spindles are painted the top rail is the original wood – probably stripped back by the previous owners. In winter the landing banister is used to hang wet washing on, it’s particularly good for duvet covers as there is plenty of room for them to hang into the stairwell.

Cabinet of curiosities #2 inside

One last post from this room – and it is back to the cabinet, which contains my mother’s baby book (it’s blue taffeta, so I’m not sure if my grandparents were hoping for a boy). I can’t remember how I came to have this object, however it is (naturally) in the original box. Due to its small size it fits nicely onto the glass shelf in a standing position.

Inside my grandfather has completed each page to give a running commentary of my mother’s early years, from her first word – Teddy – to first journey by bus at 11 days old. There is also the original cutting from the local newspaper announcing her birth. Albert, my grandfather was an avid diary writer, so I imagine that he would enjoy the task of dutifully completing all the relevant information. 

My own baby book has been completed but with less rigour by my Mum, it doesn’t seem to have been a priority and after a few entries, my early years remain a mystery! 

Flowers Echo Throughout the House (Dogwood Blossom)

Didn't really want to spend any longer in the upstairs bathroom, so we're walking back down the stairs now - often music (of every kind) fills every room in this house - but sometimes, when I'm on my own and 'over-thinking', the most evocative track is Dogwood Blossom by Fionn Regan. Beautiful and melancholic.


Keep climbing into my head without knockin'
And you fix yourself there like a map pin
On this ghost of this street where I'm livin'
I'm in a chrysalis and I'm snowed in
Darling, darling that dam's gonna give
It's inevitable the way that you live
Bottles in brown paper and a mouth that slurs
All the shit that it stirs
Let that dogwood blossom
There'll be hell to pay in heaven
For you take every street home
What happens when you're into deep to break
Loneliness keeps you constantly awake
What happens when the passage of time appears
You see yourself as a child and it brings you to tears
You say that you're troubled and you always have been
Uncomfortable in your own skin
So you contemplate the riverbed
Turn off the dark thoughts in your head
Darling, darling that dam's gonna give
It's inevitable the way that you live
Bottles in brown paper and a mouth that slurs
All the shit that it stirs
Let that dogwood blossom
There'll be hell to pay in heaven
For you take every street home

A rose amongst the ruins ...

As you come out of the bedroom, immediately on your left (at the top of the stairs is the bathroom, (if you can call it that). It's the one room that we have done no work in, after ripping up the (soggy) carpet. It's a mess, stripped back to original floorboards, most of which we'll have to replace, and also a large chimney, which would've orginally been part of the oven in the kitchen downstairs. It's going to be a job probably for next year, but will be great to enjoy having a bath in nicer surroundings when it's finished!

You can see the chimney immediately left of the door. Also the holes where we have taken off the hardboard door panel are clearly visible. Lucky to have the original glass underneath!

An ironic painting hung on the bathroom chimney.

You can see that old 50's yellow colour that the bathroom used to be painted.

Cabinet of Curiosities #1 – inherited

In a former life this glass cabinet was a shop display for cakes. It’s not particularly beautiful but it does have a certain oddness that I like.

The display and choice of objects was never really planned, it’s more a case of what actually fits onto the limited shelf height; several objects are in groupings, namely the tin robots, boats, glasses, sardine tins, and D’s collection of VW camper vans.

The photographs of Jayne Mansfield and Cary Grant are purely incidental, I bought the old frames from a market stall in Banbury, and these photographs were included, I have never got around to changing them, and have now become quite attached to Jayne and Cary – were they ever an ‘item’ I wonder?

My favourite things are the set of ten wooden soldiers that I inherited from my grandmother; these were used to decorate my mother’s childhood birthday cakes, although we have no idea where they originated from – my great grandfather was a baker, so perhaps they were handed down? 

Souvenir

 The level of the garden at the back of our house had sometime ago, been made higher, to enable Audrey (in her later years) to tend her garden without having to bend down. When we moved in, there were lots and lots of daffodils out in bloom, nodding their yellow heads welcomingly, in the April sunshine. Audrey's Brother had planted all the bulbs (as a gift) before winter had set in, so she would have a "nice show come spring time," so Margaret said.

It was such a pity that Audrey never got to see them.

Though I did, every day - until they too, died. I so appreciated their glowing abundance.

I found these pieces of blue and white when I first dug our garden, a few years back now. There were quite a few more pieces, but I have only kept these two (the rest are back in the garden soil). I put them outside on the kitchen windowsill for a while, yet that now have come to rest on the wooden shelf unit in the bedroom. I wonder if they were pieces from Audrey and Albert's old china plates?

I especially like the larger shard as it has a beautiful wing painted on the back of either some kind of creature or Angel type figure.