Alternative bathroom cabinet

Outside the bathroom hang a row of gym bags on a set of old hooks (these were found on a roadside somewhere in Greece, and bought home as hand luggage, not your average holiday souvenir). The gym bags are my bathroom cabinet – the bathroom itself is small with limited free wall space – so the bags, which are themed – hold various bits and pieces; for example spare shampoo, conditioners and soaps in one – all things medicinal in another – etc. Is the medicine/bathroom cabinet endangered I wonder?

In the time it takes to go up and down the stairs ...

(which ok, admittedly has been quite a while) the base of the stairs has changed quite a bit! The paper has been scraped off the walls to reveal the original decoration underneath (plus quite a few new patching jobs to do) and the position of the newel post has changed to be two steps up from the bottom of the staircase. The re-site of the post has now changed how the stairs can be navigated (can step up from the side), and has also widened the hallway - as you may notice from the pic - the two bottom stairs are removable which 'well whaddya know' know, when they are taken away - it makes it possible to steer a vinatge vespa scooter all the way through our terraced house and ot into the workshop beyond!

Sign of the times

A relatively new acquisition is the sign on the stairway. Purchased purely for its typographic quality – I have since learned that it is from the Great Western Railway – identifiable by its colour apparently. I also like the sentiment of the message – firm yet polite! 

It's a good size piece too - 4 feet across, so it is easily accommodated on the quite large expanse of stairwell wall.

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