Shopping mecca in East London

The most exciting (?) thing to happen in our neck of the woods lately was the opening of Westfield Stratford City. I'm told it's the largest shopping mall in Europe. It's two tube stops from our house and I was a little hesitant as I'm a fan of shopping locally to support independent businesses. Having made a few trips to Westfield for various reasons I'm pleased to say I've spent a similar amount in local shops over the same time period.

During winter we can see the top of the Olympic stadium from our top floor, but it was a fabulous discovery to find the 2012 themed room within John Lewis. Floor to ceiling windows looked out across the site facing west which afforded a really unbeatable view of the stadium taking shape. The kids weren't bothered but that could be due to the post sugar comedown from the Millie's cookies & Krispy Kreme donuts.

I'll probably avoid Westfield in the run up to Christmas but now that it's here I can't see any reason to go shopping in Central London ever again. Woo hoo!

Downstairs revamp

Our downstairs configuration has been a topic of conversation lately. It turns out the current cloakroom isn't big enough for the Roca toilet and sink combo. Rob then had the genius idea of swapping everything around - moving the shower/loo/sink into what was going to be our utility room, and moving the washer and dryer into our current cloakroom (NB cloakroom is what the British call a small toilet, usually positioned under the stairs).

It's such an obvious solution I can't think why we didn't come up with it in the first place. It might be because the stack (plumbing arrangement involving large pipes) is about two feet up the wall - which might be tricky when plumbing in a loo and shower waste pipe. I'm sure there's a solution - maybe smashing up the floor until we find the outgoing pipe and joining it up there. Additionally we'll need a dedicated hot water system - gas or some kind of electric pump - otherwise the top floor bathroom will have no pressure when the downstairs one is in use.

As the room will have no natural light we'll need to consider lighting, and of course heating and venting out the steam. For inspiration I quite like these two bathrooms - large slate tiles and a glass shower door - practical.

(Both photos via housetohome.co.uk)

Tidy house, tidy mind

Ah surfaces - how I love thee. In addition to de-junking the spare room last month, I also made us of the extra storage provided by our new sideboard to clear away the various piles of stuff. Amazing how many unread bits of mail, magazines and debris just accumulate and if you leave them long enough, they turn out to be irrelevant and can be chucked. The trick is to biff the kid's creations into the wheelie bin, if they see their efforts in the kitchen bin they tend to go a bit hysterical.



So now when I look around our room my eyes don't land on anything that should be tidied away. Unsurprisingly this has allowed me to spend more time doing nothing instead of making piles of stuff to deal with. (Doing nothing when you have house guests is considered polite FYI.)



Below is a panorama of the downstairs space to show a continuous expanse of room rather than what was there before, which was a mishmash of newspapers and kids toys. With any luck we can keep this up at least until school starts back next week.

De-junking

The mid-century fixation continues as we're enjoying more space. Our wider than normal hall which leads to the spare room now houses the retro bar (pictured top). And we finally hung the teak mirror I bought 18 months ago on eBay (pictured below).

The middle floor now feels like a shrine to G-Plan with the mirror, sideboard, bar and coffee table. Having this stuff in place makes the room feel like more or less finished, which is a bit of a relief after nearly three years. Now all we need to do is hang our accumulated art.



This photo shows the spare room now - a couple of weeks ago you could barely see the floor or walls for boxes stacked in there. Apologies to everyone who's stayed here since we moved in - but feel free to come back and revisit!

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...

Hackney is lush

The civil unrest and looting in Hackney had a lot of New Zealand friends and family texting and emailing the last couple of days. They had a vision of the whole of East London burning to the ground. Well, these are friends etc who weren't on social media, so I guess it proves that traditional media over there is reporting way behind 'real time' events. As a rampant user of Twitter I felt as though I was on top of the slew of information, until some numpties started to spread untrue rumours about the state of various local places.

This article from Vice on the battle of Mare Street shows some graphic images as it all kicked off - Mare Street is a few minutes walk from our house. We were none the wiser, having cycled through Victoria Park to get home. The only clue was the helicopters overhead and the anxious people walking towards Victoria Park warning me to 'not go that way'.

Looking out from our kitchen was the view above - hardly any other buildings visible, just a mess of gardens and trees, which is the Hackney I prefer to think of rather than the broken mess that was left behind on Tuesday.

Drop the Lime

I have this afflication now where I can't handle having my nails au naturale - it's been 2.5 years of regular mani/pedis and a lot of experimentation with new products to get the maximum wear for minimum stress/committment. The latest discovery was a gel nail product called Gellac - unfortunately it didn't last beyond a week so I'll be back to Bio-Gels (which last for up to 3 weeks and take 75 minutes to apply) - but the thing that was interesting was my 'random' choice of colour. Yup, it turns out I have a prediliction for this exact shade of citrus green. And it was a totally unconscious decision - when I chose it at the nail bar I was just thinking about getting away from my normal hot pink.

Oh and yeah, another music reference in the headline (look up Drop the Lime if you're into rockabilly dubstep)...

Downstairs bathroom

The Polish builders were doing some work next door and popped over to look at our downstairs configuration. We showed them the garage and explained how we'd like to turn it into a store room and separate utility room, and then tart up the downstairs loo. We haven't gotten a proper quote back as we don't know exactly what we want but now that the ball is rolling I feel a second wind coming on. The drama of enduring the initial build has worn off and now I am looking forward to phase 2.

So - onto the cloakroom: the Roca toilet (pictured top) won the Wallpaper* Reader's Choice award last year. It's a clever design that recycles grey water, filters it, and then uses it to fill the cistern of the loo. It's a massive step in the right direction ecologically and we're pretty sure it will fit into the space OK.

The thing is, it retails for nearly £3,000. Rob found one on sale for £1,800 which still seems exhorbitant for a toilet, but the more I think about it the more I think it's a good investment.

I'm having trouble finding good inspiration for the decor of the downstairs loo so if you've seen anything interesting online, please post links below!

Simply headache inducing

A friend came over with a Lomo camera recently and took some great shots, including this one of the kids baking a cake. I've been dabbling on Instagram using my iPod Touch and it's ignited a habit of documenting my days with banal photos. For years we've used a Canon Ixus digital camera to take snaps of the kids and holidays but lately it's become sluggish and unresponsive and the photos just don't look as good as the ones I can take on my iPod. Rob agreed to go halves on a replacement camera and after a bit of investigation we decided on an Olympus XZ-1 which seems a step up from the Canon in terms of capabilities and results.

Four days ago I ordered the Olympus from http://www.simplyelectronics.net which had the best price and offered a 1-2 day dispatch time. Unfortunately I then read some scathing reviews of this company and freaked out - I couldn't get through to cancel the order by phone and waited for them to respond to my email asking for confirmation that the camera was actually in stock.

One day later (and many minutes wasted on hold) I got through and was told all was OK and the order was being processed. I checked my online status the next day which asked for me to phone or email them. I phoned and was told it was a security check, but all was OK and the camera was being dispatched. I explained I'm on holiday later next week so if the camera wasn't going to make it in time I was happy to pay extra for next day delivery. They assured me it would make it.

This morning I was mortified to get another email from them asking me to provide a scan of my credit card, a utility bill and as an optional extra, a photocopy of some photo ID before they'd proceed with my order. Seeing as how the money was already deducted from my credit card, clearly they'd proceeded! I couldn't get through on the phone number due to "technical difficulties" (quelle surprise) so wrote an email asking for the camera to be dispatched or the order cancelled. I'm guessing they won't respond until Monday but have to say regardless what happens now, this online shopping experience has been uncessarily stressful and would make me cautious about recommending Simply Electronics. Will update in the next post no doubt - keep your fingers crossed for me!

UPDATE

I just spent 37 (!) minutes on hold at www.simplyelectronics.net and finally got through to a human who confirmed that the delivery was being held until I could provide my ID as requested. I pointed out that if I wasn't the legitimate card holder I couldn't have seen the money was taken out from my account but she was insistent.

I've spent a lot more than £295 with online retailers and have to say that this level of 'consumer protection' smacks of delay tactics rather than a genuine need to protect from fraud.

I have cancelled the order and asked for a refund both on the phone and in writing. Apparently it takes 3 to 5 working days for refunds to come through. I will let you know just how long it takes. In the meantime I am off to New York on Friday without a new camera and am LIVID.

Postscript:

I got a refund on Saturday, and immediately ordered a replacement camera from Amazon which arrived 24 hours later. The whole ordeal took 2.5 weeks from start to finish and cost me HOURS in phone calls, emails and stress. I've learned my lesson!

Fake dog

I had some great feedback about owning a dog on my Facebook page, mostly from friends who are dog owners. It has definitely put me off: Everything from the cost of replacing damaged furniture to hiring dog walkers and finding time to take it to the vet, through to some of the more colourful medical conditions they get (swollen anal glands, anyone?)

I bought Marlo a life-size Dalmation for her birthday and I have to say it's pretty convincing. A neighbour saw me arrive home with it on the back of my bike a couple of months ago, but even she did a double take from her garden when she saw it propped up against the window. I'm hoping that potential burglars will see it when they poke their faces over the fence and think it's real. Regardless, the neighbours on the other side are chipping in to buy a security gate for our communal alleyway this summer so no-one will be able to get to our garden gate once that goes in.

But it's not all gloom and doom and dwelling on burglars - I found a wall mounted bottle opener at Oliver Bonas for £8.50 and it's been useful to have in the garden when there are beers to be drunk.