The Sublime Home: A work in progress

After two years of living in our flat, we've finally got round to having these shelves built to house our massive book collection. It will be a relief to move all of our books, plus the TV, DVD player and sky box into this big unit with locking cupboards. All out of the reach of little people! Apart from the little desk at one end where V can sit and play and read his own books.

The shelves are made of plywood which we will paint white, so our materials were fairly inexpensive and a great joiner put this together in less than two days. I love having tons of storage space so I'm over the moon to have this in my sitting room. Our very own library!

Furniture finds

One man's trash is another man's treasure! Here is a nicely shaped chair that I found out on the street near my house recently. I'm looking out for a suitable bit of fabric to cover the seat and restore this chair to new glories. Do you like to rescue and recycle old pieces of furniture for your home?

Victorian details

One of the nice things about tenement living is the Victorian features of the flats - if they've been lucky enough to survive that is! Someone had a good go of obscuring some of the nice features in our flat, no doubt at a time when these decorative Victorian flourishes were out of fashion. Recently we stripped back layers of nasty tiles and wallpaper then brought the features back to a neutral matte white, which shows them off nicely. I now want to find a light fitting that is big and bold enough to complement this ceiling rose, without stealing its thunder! All suggestions are welcome as I just haven't been able to find the right thing yet.

Decorate! Baby boy's room

We had immense fun thinking about how we would decorate our son's room, and were picking up bits and bobs before he was even born. Actually before we had even bought our current home!

I have a penchant for all things nautical so you might notice a theme emerging in some of the items here...

I saw this lifebelt souvenir from Shetland in the window of a junk shop. I thought £10 was steep and managed to haggle them down to £8! It's my favourite thing in the room.

You can see here where it hangs, over the cot. The cot is from John Lewis, given to us by my parents-in-law.

These sweet hangers on the back of the door are from Jojo Maman Bebe.

Another sailboat, bought on Ebay. The picture on the far left is a favourite William Blake poem, 'Infant Joy'.

Bunting seems to be a must-have in children's rooms! I jumped on that bandwagon.

Here's a little fishing boat! We bought this on a visit to Anstruther, a beautiful fishing village in the East Neuk of Fife. You get the best fish and chips in the world at the harbour here.

This sweet music box with boats came back from Italy with my parents-in-law. The fish tile was given to me by a lovely friend and former colleague.

Friends gave us these initial letters from Anthropologie when our son was born. I love the home section at Anthropologie! Shown here over the mantelpiece with a Moomin picture from our son's cousins. 

This political world map mural from National Geographic is huge and adorns one wall of the bedroom. We love pointing out places we've been and would like to go!

Finally this lampshade which I bought very cheaply and is very innacurate as a globe, but looks cool hanging from the ceiling!

I hope you liked seeing some details of our nursery. I know I love to see how other people have decorated their homes, but maybe I'm just nosy!

Decorate! DIY pastel painted wardrobes

My idea for this home decor project was to 'bring a bit of Miami to our home in Glasgow'. Yes, this is something I actually said to my husband when I dreamed this plan up. He was very polite and let me get on with it.

Our flat is a work in progress which we're tackling slowly as it had some dodgy decor when we moved in and we've been trying to make it ours without huge expense. The previous owners left us these huge wardrobes that I initially wanted to dump, but once we got our clothes into them we realised how useful the hanging space was. This is when my upcycling plan was born.

The original wardrobes, looking a bit 'blah'

Project makeover in full swing

All we had to do was to lightly sand the surfaces then wipe them down with a dry cloth, leaving them primed for painting. I took the doors and drawer fronts off so that I could do my dirty work outside. We used 2 coats of Dulux satinwood in the shades atlantic surf 4 (above left) and amethyst showers 3 (above right). Don't you just love the names they come up with for paint colours?

Ta-dah! The finished job.

And in situ.

I am really pleased with my wardrobes! These pastel colours really cheer up our bedroom. Now, armed with Pinterest and my Kirstie Alsopp book, I just need to find something else to upcycle!

Make! Cath Kidston fabric kitchen blind

When we moved into our flat we had this sort of a random blind in our kitchen over a recess, which further inspection revealed to be hiding the boiler. Now this would have been fine had the blind not been even uglier than the boiler itself, but it was made from white cotton fabric and it had absorbed all kinds of kitchen grease and dirt. Yeeeeeeuck! Thankfully no picture of the 'before'.

Now I have finally replaced my blind with an oilcloth or 'tablecloth' fabric blind I made in this fun Cath Kidston cowboy print. You can buy the material here on her website. Oilcloth is great for the kitchen (and not just for table coverings) as it's easily wiped clean due to its plasticky coating. It was incredibly easy to make as i just cut the fabric to size and used a blind kit with an adhesive strip to attach the fabric.

Have you come up with any interesting decor solutions recently? Please share in the comments!