I have to admit…DIY confession

First of all....Happy Solstice!!

I really, really am not very good at DIY, I did one single thing only, I plaster washed and painted the kitchen, I did it because it was actually a unhygienic and unhealthy room to begin with, I lived for years trying to get my ex husband to do it and he refused, as soon as he moved out I started working on it myself. 

However after that I stalled a bit, I changed jobs twice, my social life got busy, I was flat broke and I just didn’t have the time or the energy to even ‘think’ about how to do the rest of the flat.  I got in some help from a friend, which was really great and I am grateful  but when it comes from help from friends, you feel quite bad being critical, so when I told him I wanted purple walls (from a lovely rich purple blue colour I had seen in one of the decorating pages) he actually brought a paint himself, from Trade and surprised me with it, except it was a reddish purple, not what I envisaged at all, so when he mixed a sample pot in a white tin for the halls it looks pink.  I am, the least pink woman in the world, really I am.  My daughter loves it though so there is some upside.

But in the end, slightly wrong coloured walls turned out not to be an issue because I moved in with my partners in the country and now I don’t care so much about what the flat looks like. 

The exciting prospect is, we are to move into a new house soon and that house will be ‘ours’  I am ever so excited, I want it to be beautiful and practical, natural and warm.

Because of the children, it won’t do any good investing lots of money in delicate little things that will be broken in a matter of hours (no joke, kids are destructive, I once brought my best friend’s daughter a piggy bank with her name on it, it lasted less than an hour!)  so when I came across the Arts and Crafts movement as a natural follow on to the Artistic Reform, a light bulb came on in my head, William Morris once said “never have anything in your home that isn’t beautiful or practical “  how many of us can say we do that for certain?  I have a whole load of ugly useless rubbish in the flat right now, we have a load of unattractive stuff at the house too.  What we need is stuff that can withstand the kids but look nice also, things that are sturdy but good looking, William Morris was a craftsman, he did not like the way that big industry was producing cheap, rubbish factory made mass produced items.  I appreciate that and I think that is a good way to go.

Of course I have family to consider so I can’t just decorate to suit myself, but I want to have ideas and be fully instrumental in making sure our new home is warm and inviting and a place we all love being in, because goodness knows we adults especially, spend enough time there, it has to be a place that we love looking at!

So, I have started this ID project, I have a folder and I am collecting magazines for inspiration and procurement ideas.  I tend to go for the Country/Period/traditional magazines, because the standard ID/Homes magazines are very much of the mass production types, full of sleek contemporary lines and futuristic monochrome features which is probably my idea of designer hell.

So, anyway that is enough for now, there is very little I can do right now, but  as the weeks go on, I will be adding more about my journey into lifestyles of the Victorian decadents!!!