Mid-century modern show in Haggerston

If you're a fan of mid-century design and you haven't had an excuse to visit Haggerston High School in East London, then make sure you keep an eye out for the next Modern Shows event here (October 12th 2014 FYI). I've lived in the area for 14 years and am ashamed to admit this was my first visit to the Erno Goldfinger designed building. The show itself was worth a look, but because it was hosted in this iconic space made it all the more jaw dropping.

The kids who attend this school probably don't have a clue how lucky they are to be surrounded by such beautiful architecture. We loved the design of the school so much we put it on the list of six shortlisted for Marlo's high school, without really looking at its academic success (as it happens she got into Mossbourne Academy, the Victoria Park branch. Will update once I've seen their building when it opens in September 2014).

We didn't buy any furniture though if we had the space I would've loved this table for games nights - imagine poker and whiskies around this beauty!

The hog roast sandwich was pretty spectacular at the end of the show, located in the school's playground. Very likely to attend the 2014 show on the strength of the building. And the sandwich.

G-Plan sideboard

It's the imminent arrival of certain guests that suddenly propel action in our house. For nearly three years we've ignored the piles of boxes in the spare room. Each one labelled 'office' or 'books' so hardly exciting enough to warrant invesigation. Rob's parents are arriving this week - at the time of writing they were delayed due to the freak snow storm in Wellington and hadn't made it onto their flight - but we used the last two Sundays to sort out those boxes.

Pictured top is the gorgeous G-Plan sideboard I bought on eBay for the bargain price of £110 + £45 delivery. It looked pretty impressive in the photos on the listing and I have to say, it's even better in real life. We had to remove the legs to get it up the stairs, and it suffered a slight scuff on the front being hauled over the hand rail, but a dab of wood stain and I'm sure it'll be fine. The two photos below show the sideboard in our upstairs TV room.

The next de-junking project has to be the boxes in the kids room, the garage and under the stairs...

G-Plan coffee table

A couple of months ago I went the Vintage Furniture Flea fair at York Hall, just down the road from where we live. I didn't buy any furniture, despite finding a coffee table which looked similar - if not almost exactly the same - as the one pictured. It was £75 and I thought that it was a silly purchase given that we had a perfectly functioning coffee table.

I regretted it though as the perspex Muji number we have doesn't really do much in the way of enhancing the space. We originally bought it as our flat benefitted from a transparent table, by making the space seem larger.

I stumbled across this G-Plan coffee table on eBay last week and ended up winning it for £47. Fortunately it was ony five minutes drive away so I popped around to collect it at the weekend, and this photo shows it on our living room rug. The glass already had a crack in it and when I picked it up the crack gave way and a corner broke off so we'll have to replace that at some point. The wood has a few surface scratches so we may take it in for a French polish too.

The table looks great with our mid-century bar - they're almost exactly the same colour. And if we ever get around to hanging the retro mirror I bought nearly a year ago they'll look dandy together.

Office, boiler & outdoor furniture

This is the office nook with the desk and computer back in place. As you can see the boiler is kind of... dominant, and while a lovely bit of kit, it does make some odd noises. We've had a quote in from the Polish builder to house it in a cupboard with shelving underneath. This solution will muffle some of the gurgles and clicks. Not sure exactly when that's going to happen - we need to have the discussion about whether hiding the boiler in a cupboard will add value to the house in the first instance (to get through the mortgage valuation). If not, it can wait for a couple of months.

We arrived back in London on Sunday at 5am and got home a couple of hours later to find our garden was covered in snow. We knew it'd been snowing thanks to the panicked round-the-clock news coverage, but as it happens, the snow was beautiful and despite coming from a tropical climate, we didn't think it was particularly cold.

Annoyingly now that the snow has melted, I can see that three coats of Ronseal hasn't saved the wood on the table (which we only bought this summer) - the wood looks absolutely knackered and swollen with moisture. I'd think about swapping it with our lovely neighbour's identical table but I suspect they might notice. Or worse, be reading this blog!

Good light for photos

So far we've had one plumber come round to quote for the new boiler. We used to live next door to his parents, and he did the boiler at our flat. Top bloke. It's been a week and a half so we're hoping the quote is imminent. The other plumber I contacted didn't show up and I'm having trouble getting a recommendation for anyone else (if you happen to have a reliable boiler oriented plumber's number, please leave it in a comment below). Would be good to have two quotes for comparison purposes.

The photo at the top was taken by a professional photographer who specialises in taking kids photos. Despite the rainy day there was plenty of light, she hardly used her light reflector. The new Verner Panton chairs were put to good use, though I wish I'd paid more attention to wrangling Gwen (the one in pink), of the hundreds of photos taken she's pulling silly faces in 90% of them.

If you have kids and you're based in London, I can recommend Francesca the photographer - very patient and produces better portraits than I can manage. Here's her website: http://francescaquerci.com/

And some examples of her work below (Yup, these are my kids...)

Petite Panton chairs

I've always liked the Panton "S" (stackable) chair, it's a 20th Century Design icon and was the first plastic chair made from one section.

We considered getting half a dozen to use as our indoor dining chairs, but decided against it as the S chair has become too ubiquitous. From various drinking establishments around London to the Mode offices on Ugly Betty, the S chair is everywhere... so instead of being quirky and distinctive, they now feel a little common.

Last week I was on eBay and saw that you could get kids versions for £14 + delivery, so I went for it. I've put them with the little table in front of the TV in the living room on the middle floor. This way we get to enjoy a little nod to Panton's collectable design without having them take over our dining room. The kids really love them too. I wonder if you can get kids sizes of the Barcelona chair?

Outdoor furniture sorted

Our new neighbours have great taste. Aside from the numerous coincidences that have sprung up since we've got to know each other, they saved us several hundred pounds by sourcing the perfect outside dining table and chairs from the end of line department at... yup, Ikea. Despite frequent visits to Ikea and hours perusing the catalogue in the last couple of years, we'd never seen either this table nor the chairs.

Our mission to find an identical set involved a trip to the Edmonton branch for the table and then a couple of phone calls and a 40 mile round trip to the Croydon branch for the chairs. They look like they match but are from two different lines, and being discontinued were a little difficult to track down. Still, at £75 for the table and £15 for each chair we didn't mind the time involved as the alternative was a similar set from John Lewis which would've cost £1,108 vs the £165 we ended up shelling out.



Coincidentally one of the weekend newspaper supplements had an advert for Ronseal Perfect Finish Garden Furniture Oil and for £15 including delivery it seemed a sensible investment. I managed to do all three coats myself - as indeed it was extremely easy to apply (just like the ad promised). Each coat took about 20 minutes (to do six chairs and a table), which was touch dry within an hour and totally dry after four hours. The furniture now has a slightly darker, glossier sheen which should make it weather proof for the next few years.

Dining room getting sorted

Last week we took possession of six dining chairs, two side chairs, an office desk and a dining room table. The table was the only thing to come from Ikea and miraculously it fitted into the Volvo, but only just (maybe Ikea designs large objects with Volvo space in mind?). The table cost £136, which is crazy cheap. (I hope the student tenants at our flat are enjoying using our Habitat extendable table which cost over £500.) The chairs were another matter. We didn't want to spend silly money on the chairs we actually liked. I wanted Konstantin Grcic's Myto chair and Rob was keen on the Habitat Palacco chair - either of these would've cost us hundreds.

We both agreed we liked Eames' Eiffel chair (below) and as luck would have it there's a slightly cheaper plastic re-issue doing the rounds. The fibreglass versions cost £205 from SCP but I found the plastic version on Mydeco for £146. Even better, Swivel had them for £79. But none of these places could compete with Dwell, who had them for £39 and honestly, I cannot tell the difference between what arrived from Dwell and the versions available in other shops. Anyway, at that price, even if they do fall to bits in a year or so, by then hopefully we can afford the Myto or Palacco versions...

Week one is over

Well I guess the first week was going to be the hardest as we adapted to life in our drafty, chaotic and unfamiliar house. Fortunately the plumber came back on Thursday and did something to the central heating to get the radiators on the ground floor working. While they can't exactly heat the space, having them on does mean the glacial draft isn't quite so bad and we don't need the mattresses blocking the stairs any more.

I've just done a mercy dash to Ikea today to get some rubbish bin options as we need something that'll fit into one of our cupboards. Also picked up a new shower curtain. There was something gross about having the last occupants soap scum in such close proximity. (I feel like that about the entire contents of the bathroom but until Rob has a new job we can't put a firm date on continuing the renovation.)

The photo at the top is our bedroom floor the day we moved in - I'd hurriedly mopped it as the plaster dust was everywhere. Even a bucket of soapy water didn't help much, as you can see the floor was still streaky. The removal guys said "Oh, is the top floor the only one that's been finished?" I was mortified and had to explain that the top floor was the only one that hadn't been started!

The photo below is in the living room of our flat. It's of the awful kitset sofa I bought from Nabru. It came in 54 parts, took four hours to assemble, looks hideous and is the most uncomfortable thing to sit on. There's a 14 day return policy but the tenants insisted that it was perfectly fine. I guess they're young and don't need acres of extra padding...

Furniture shopping?

Ilva, the Danish answer to Ikea, is in receivership in the UK. They'll be closing down when the stock runs out in about six to eight weeks. I'm a bit sad as actually I quite liked some of the stuff in Ilva. It's more expensive than Ikea but the shopping experience was less fraught - there were never that many people in the store (maybe that's why they're in receivership). In my opinion their marketing let them down - Rob and I are frequent visitors to Ikea in Thurrock (in Essex) but until about a year ago we had no idea that there was a massive retail park just down the road. Of course this is where Ilva is based, but we didn't know that. Listing your address as "Thurrock" isn't really useful to the sat nav.

Once we'd found Ilva we were pleased that it stocked essentially cheaper "homages" to the stuff we actually like, but can't afford just yet. We're fans of mid-century designers (isn't everybody?) and obviously would like to own the originals rather than knock-offs, or reproductions… but that's not going to happen any time soon.

Pictured is the table we'll probably buy, it's on sale for £60. Our current dining table is a cherry wood extendable thing from Habitat which we'll leave in the flat when we rent it out. It cost nine times the Ilva table but we just can't be bothered moving it cos it'll be massively heavy (and the movers would have to negotiate tricky concrete stairs, recipe for disaster).

1950s settee

I found this display by Uno Design in Salone (surprise!) and something about the retro style really spoke to me. I didn’t sit on it so can't tell you if it's super comfy, but I love the way it looks. If The Jetsons were decorating I'm sure they'd have a sofa like this, it's both futuristic and retro at the same time.

Maybe this piece of furniture would make more sense in an office environment rather than a home (would it withstand hours of bright sunshine bleaching the fabric? Could you lounge on it and watch every episode of Arrested Development over a weekend? Heck, is the back even high enough to stop your head from lolling about?) - you can see why people who work in interior design need to be clued up. Unlike me. I tend to choose stuff based on emotion, comfort, practicalities and (sadly) price. It would be great to be able to have that visual gene that can work wonders in any space and know how to make the most out of a room.

Like a cousin to the above sofa, I found these chairs at Modus. Again, didn't sit on one so can't vouch for its comfort but can imagine sitting here and wasting an hour or two on the PS1 (I told you I was into retro).