A Scandinavian Adventure

It was bank holiday weekend.  It was raining.  TFL were playing silly beggars with the train service.  There was only one thing for it.


But it turned out Richard had booked Necker Island for himself that week, so we were stuck with Croydon's favorite Scandinavian mega store instead.  Which is totally almost nearly as awesome.  Nearly.


As much as I joke, I was actually quite excited about this expedition.  Filling a completely empty house with all the things you have fantasised about through back-to-back episodes of Grand Designs has got to be a fun job, right?


Well, it started well.  Almost as soon as we arrived we spotted these:

Yes, that is a white, gloss, handle-less cupboard door.  Buckle in people, because this blog post is mostly full of similarly exciting photos.

That's Rob with the door.  We spend a considerable amount of time inspecting this door.  This is rule number one when visiting Ikea - you are immediately bestowed with the ability to find totally uninteresting details fascinating.  And this new found fascination eats up hours of your time.

And prompts you to take photos of tea towels.  

(I actually liked the idea of having a rail above your kitchen work surface to hang things on.  I'll admit that in the cold light of Nunhead this seems slightly less fascinating.  Ahem.)

But look, this is exciting!  We've found our perfect* sofa!  It's the right shade of grey, it's a corner sofa, it's about half the price of the ones we've previously seen - hurrah!

* It's actually a bit softer than we'd like.  But we are learning to compromise...

To our immense excitement (still immense, we'd only been there for about an hour at this stage), we then saw this: 

This is the sofa bed we had in our previous flat, and we loved it at the time.  It also turns out to come in the same shade of grey as the corner sofa.  Since we want to have as many of you lovely people round to stay as possible, we are planning to have as many sofa beds as possible in the slum.

We might not mount them on the walls though - we don't want that many of you staying round.

Still in the living room section, we then saw this mini-table and blackboard set - Rob loves it:

Oops, sorry, that's not us, this is:

This was the beginning of our first decline into Ikea-induced-delirium, the symptoms of which include chair-blindness - an inability to decide what chairs are lovely, which are horrific - and culminates in the sufferer deciding that they really couldn't care less what chairs you have and perhaps bean bags get a rough rap, and we should all just stand anyway because it's better for your cardiovascular health.  Or something.

Chairs chairs chairs chairs chairs chairs chairs chairs chairs chairs AAAAAAAARGH

TEA BREAK

Phew.

So, onwards to bedrooms.

Rob likes this bed.  I worry about the hospital style table at the end of it.

We also quite like this one, although I suspect we will have to have a white wood frame as our floors will be dark wood.

Obviously it's essential to test these things.

And we both love this hidden headboard storage:

And now to the kitchen.  Billed to me by Rob as the place where I could have whatever I wanted, it turns out he has some pretty strong opinions of his own.  Most of which revolve around white things, maximising the amount of food I can cook for him at any one time, and white things.

We are agreed that we will be going for something like this:

Nice, yes?  Although we aren't sure we have room to have it all on one wall like that.  Who knew kitchen design could be so tricky?!  We have an empty, box shaped room, with one door and one window.  But with two degrees and several post-graduate and professional qualifications between us, could we figure out the Ikea kitchen computer design programme?


No.

TEA BREAK

Now, I quite like these tiles:

But I don't think we can afford them.


I also quite like these random lit up spatula things:

But Rob doesn't.


I'll admit that at this point I started to get a bit distracted with kitchen storage.  Look at this:

And this!

And this!

Rob kept having to drag me back to look at sinks, and extractor fans, and handles, and other sensible things.

So we now have a list of things we like, a list of things we don't like, and a list of things we really don't care much about.


The second rule of Ikea is that you will leave at least four hours later than you intended to.  Probably with a random soft toy in hand.

Oh, and I also bought some meatballs.  Which is, of course, the third rule.

A Design For Life

I think, with some trepidation, that it might be finally safe to declare the Slum ready for someone else to slave over.  I think we've finally finished clearing/stripping/cleaning/dusting/sweeping.  We are laying down the wallpaper stripper and claw hammer.  I might even recommence using fabric softener for the purpose it was originally intended for.


So it's also time to tell you about the design.

You know that the downstairs previously-carpet-filled room is to be the bike store, so I won't bother to show you that, since we aren't really changing much.  The first major change will be the removal of the walls that currently separate the asbestos-toilet from the random extra bit of landing.  We are going to put a sliding door in, creating a bathroom with shower on the mezzanine floor (bet you never thought the slum could have something as fancy as a mezzanine!):

On the first floor, we are knocking out the stud walls that separate the main bathroom from the landing, removing the bathroom, and making a library.  (I know!  First a mezzanine, now a library!  I'm not sure Nunhead is ready for these heady levels of sophistication!).  That's it opposite the stairs.  The grey portions that look like the bread in a particularly chunky hotdog are floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.

On the top floor, we will be putting up a wall to box in the space between the two bedrooms, creating another bathroom.  

We will also hopefully be turning the eaves spaces (they of the wattle and daub and elderly newspapers) into cupboards (that's all those extra doors).  However, it turns out that each of the eaves contains one beam of wood that is apparently holding up the whole house.  Really.  And so doing any work around that might be expensive.  I'd upload a photo of the pesky beam, but I was concerned that breathing near it, let alone risking a camera flash might destablise the foundations.  Or the roof.  


And now comes the best bit!  We are all about interior design from here on - hopefully less dusty and dirty and more exciting and fun!


Rob doesn't really approve (no doubt not the first time I'm going to be typing that) but I've created a pinterest board here so you have some idea of the vision we have for the slum (sorry about that, but I think if Nunhead can cope with a mezzanine and a library, it might be able to cope with a vision).


Since the bank holiday weekend is upon us, Rob and I will be making a trip to Ikea to touch some kitchen cabinets, stroke some lino, sit on a few sofas, and so on.  In true bank-holiday-couple-in-Ikea-style we may even have a row in the bathroom department.  If you are really lucky, I might even blog about it.  Croydon, prepare yourself - the Slum is on its way!

Return of the slum

We've been off the radar for a while.


We haven't given up on the slum and sold it (although we considered it).


We haven't relocated to the Cayman Islands (although we considered this too).


We did move into a skanky flat, employed a design company, realised the design company were pretty useless, sacked the design company, went out to tender for builders, received pretty useless tenders back, had (and are still having) a protracted argument with our freeholders about planning permission... and to be honest, both got pretty fed up with the whole thing.


Several sense of humor failures later, we've propped each other back up and we're back in the slum.


We've now employed a lovely, efficient, sensible friend of Rob's to do our project management - more of him later.


So - some discoveries.  My parents visited the slum for the first time a few weeks ago, and eagle eyed Dad pointed out that the fireplace in the kitchen is surrounded by tiles.  I hadn't bothered to remove the woodchip from here before - partly due to woodchip-removal-fatigue, to be honest, but also because we are planning on getting rid of the whole fireplace anyway.


Now from here on, I'll admit my imagination might have slightly run away with me.  In my head, underneath that yellow wallpaper was something like this:

Or maybe even this:

Now, I'll admit, the reality was somewhat disappointing.  Here's a before and after.

So unless glossy, brown, 70's style tiles are your thing, this wasn't a particularly exciting discovery.  In case they are your thing, here's a close up: 

So, moving on - Daddy Gee also spotted this:

Ur, yes Siobhan, a horribly painted blue sink?  Ah ha, NO!  A lovely, stylish, Belfast sink!

See?!  Just needs a bit of paint stripper.  


We've also realised that the fireplace in the scary-cat-mask room is cast iron...

... and therefore presumably worth something to someone.  Although it may be haunted.


And finally, a blog post wouldn't be complete without a bit of wallpaper removal.  There was one room we forgot (because we'd filled it with carpet) - the downstairs soon-to-be-bike storage.

This room has life.  The wallpaper, in parts, has become one with the wall behind.  Together they are growing, spawning, breeding, and spreading.  YUK.  That big black patch is some sort of mould, and if I become Wheezy the Penguin after this, you'll know it's because I've caught some hideous fungal chest infection.

The other walls, as if in protest at the relative ease with which I was able to scrape off the mould/paper hybrid, hung onto their woodchip with ferocity.  We couldn't find an extension lead long enough to bring the steamer down, so I was back to fabric softening the walls instead.  This is a wet, messy operation, and I was getting woodchipped hair, so I had to improvise a shower cap:

Apologies to the other pharmacists working at the same Trust as me.  It should be a Sainsbury's bag, I know.


Removal of the paper in this room uncovered more distressing evidence that the house is mostly being held together with wallpaper...

Wallpaper, and cement - which seems to have been applied with about the same amount of skill as I'd have to contribute to the job:

Lovely.  And if purple, orange and turquoise doesn't say stylish to you, then you are clearly reading the wrong blog.

The end of the beginning

WE'VE FINISHED!


By which I mean - the flat is empty of rubbish, finally!  Rob found some nice Polish men to get rid of all the detritus for us.  I wasn't there, but I understand he was kindly helping them out with the removals by leaving them to it and going into Nunhead for a fry up.  


All those months of scraping, stripping and steaming are over - now it's over to the professionals.

No, not Rob - he's just enjoying walking on a patch of floor we haven't seen in three months.


Here's another room we haven't seen the inside of since we started this project:

That's the manky-carpet storage room.  


Hang on a minute - what's that I see?  MORE WALLPAPER?!


Before you all start hyperventilating on my behalf (not the best idea here as those walls are covered in mould) - this is a type of wallpaper that is actually coming off very easily (helped by that mould).  I am an expert in this now - I can tell from ten paces away exactly what level of difficulty a particular paper patch will present.

The reason this room is so damp is because daylight is coming up through the floorboards:

You can't really see from that photo - you'll have to trust that wind was blowing up my trouser legs whilst taking this.


So.  Our thoughts are now moving on to the fun bit of this project - the interior design.  We've had some ideas:

This is the kitchen, and we are thinking of having a breakfast bar under the window there - it's too low for a worktop, and it looks out onto the garden (which is currently full of dog poo, but that's another story).


The former bathroom will be a library (yes, A LIBRARY!):

I want to get rid of that cornicing (?) at the top of the arch first, and we are going to remove the walls and the doorway:

Our architect is getting builders into tender for the project on Tuesday - hopefully we'll be off and running soon!


We have also recently learnt that the slum is in the Nunhead Conservation Area - oh yes, we were shocked too.  And apparently the area had this status before we decided to move in.  So that's all very lovely, but it means that replacing the windows is going to be an expensive problem, as they have to match what is there already:

Presumably not down to the peeling paint job.


So now, blog fans, I'm off to put the overalls in the washing machine, re-patriate the dust pan and brush to our Peckham flat, and disinfect three months worth of Rob's tea mugs.


Hurrah!