Homely

I want to apologise for being absence for all of… five days (well, four if you count Saturday) but I’m not. I’ve cooked, hosted and scoffed to my heart’s content with five different kinds of meat consumed over the past week. Faced with a glut of leftovers, I’ve been pottering around at home, knocking my head against the wall, seemingly with little to blog about style wise, unless the way I draped streaky bacon over my stuffing mix tickles your fancy.

Then I realised I hadn’t really taken the (admittedly narcissistic) opportunity to blog up the way I’ve done up my hovel and all the bits and bobs that I’ve accumulated to fill up the rooms of my hovel. I’m not going to lie. In fact, I may sound a touch smug. I’ve fully relished my first opportunity to paint, hang wallpaper, bang holes in walls and buy bits of furniture (that aren’t from the bargain basement in Ikea…) for the house. With twice the amount of space to play with than my old Holloway hovel, I no longer live in peril of a random box or coat falling on top of me. After two months of managing the renovation of the bathroom and kitchen in the new house (much thanks to Aspect.co.uk and Kitchens Unlimited – you were tops) and getting my trusty Papa Lau to do most of the donkey decorating work, I moved in last December and have since been slowly building it up decorative layer by layer. It’s finally gotten to the point where I have to resist homeware overload as every interiors/lifestyle store holds temptation. I’ve *just* about weaned myself off my daily visit of Clippings, Decor8 and the ever trusty Houzz.

The dangerous thing about it this whole house malarky is how my attitude towards interiors mirrors that of my clothes. Hurrah you might say. Except that my love of colour, print and ridic cartoonish-ness needs to be tempered because a) you have to work/live with a room interior for longer lengths of time than when you wear a super loud outfit and b) this house belongs to both me and my boyfriend Steve, who favours the subtler and dare I say more tasteful side of things. There’s also all the fashion gubbins to contend with. Bags, shoes, accessories and other paraphernalia aren’t ever going to be seamlessly concealed behind magic white cupboards and nor do I want them to be. In effect, they’ve had to be incorporated into the “schemes” of the rooms (can you tell I’ve been lapping up The Great Interior Design Challenge?)

Challenges aside, as I’ve spent the past few days enjoying holing up in my house, I’m happy to say that I’m now mega house-proud. It’s not exactly #chic-to-the-next-lev or Elle Decoration ready but it was never going to be. I’d liken my house in the same way as my personal style – it’s basically an overdecorated cake, with far too much icing and too many candles and extra ornaments. It was never going to be that minimal Scandi thing – the sort that graces minimal Scandi interiors blogs. Nor was it going to be floor-to-ceiling psychedelic cray. It’s something in between with opportunity to be amped up should I become braver, with my weapon of choice be it paint, wallpaper or washi tape (going to attempt to washi tape the entire staircase soon…).

Living/Dining Room – I’m not sure why I was hell bent on the combination of grey, white and yellow (with a flash of pale blue). It might have been the Miss Print “Mountains” wallpaper that led the way. Or the Knight Mills rug but once I got going it was hard to not go matchy-matchy. It’s a running joke with friends that we’ve stuffed our smallish room silly with no less than six different kinds of chairs with my favourites being the grey moustache chair that I use as a desk chair and the white geometric Charlie Crowther-Smith dining chairs. I’m not the biggest fan of Made.com (late-late deliveries…) but they came good with this Je-Uk Kim Lovebird sofa. Special mention to Shoreditch-based furniture company Unto this Last for the slat and step shelving, which you used to be able to order in a ton of colours (now they only offer three) and Chiaozza in Brooklyn for making all your multi-coloured display shelving dreams come true.

Kitchen – This room is still recovering from the four day cookfest and plus it’s fairly utilitarian (cream and grey) and not so interesting on the pretty pretty front. I’m oscillating between organic wooden things and garish crockery.

Hallway – The star of my entrance way is the neon yellow Brose Fogale Camerino valet stand. It’s never going to actually hang all our bags and coats but isolated in one area I can kid myself that I’m the sort of person that might only have one or two bags and a few pairs of shoes.

Landing - I yelped quite a bit when pictures like the Givenchy M/M Paris invitations and the original Julie Verhoeven illustration were finally hung, only because I’ve never ever hung a picture up having lived in rented properties. That was almost as monumental as buying the house itself. The wooden vintage shoe cabinet came from a very friendly eBay furniture seller based in Germany, who called up several times to ensure safe delivery. I also love that the owner is called Axel. I’m going to try and bid on more stuff just so I can converse with Axel.

Bathroom – Again, more utilitarian than interesting. White subway tiles, Victorian/Edwardian-esque tub and sink and errr… a lot of white. I basically wanted the Soho/Tribeca Grand bathroom in my house minus the quirky wallpaper. My baby sister Jennifer’s “You got pooped on” “It’s my hat.” comic strip illustration is the smidge of whimsy.

Special special love to this pair of spade chairs by Faye Toogood, the standouts from our ridiculously large collection of chairs. They came with a note that simply said “Sit.” Trust Faye and her sister Erica to send something minimal yet salient.

Guest room formerly known as the out-of-sight, out-of-mind room – This room was a tip for such a long time that I now just love going in every once in a while and sigh. I’m still deliberating whether it needs some paint or yet more wallpaper but I’ll enjoy its clean state for the time being. The decoupaged flamingo chest of drawers upcycled by Lady MucknBrass on Etsy got a lot of love on Instagram and I’m excited that this former fashion nail technician turned furniture upcycler will be opening a shop in Crouch End early next year.

Our bedroom – There was only ever one wallpaper I was interested in for our bedroom. I’d been looking at Kirath Ghundoo‘s work forever, mesmerised by her seemingly random vortex of glitchy geometric patterns doused in pretty pastel shades. My dad was tutting the whole time he was putting up this Mosaic wallpaper, perplexed and confuzzled by the patternation. A year in and I haven’t had a pattern migraine yet. It’s just been augmented by a lovely wall tapestry that my other sister Yonnica Lau made me for Christmas.