You light up my life

Remember when the extension was being built, and we discovered that the architect had forgotten to add any lights to the drawings? Well we thought we'd get by with some well placed uplighters and lamps. Turns out that a large body of glass and the pitch darkness of night will swallow up light. We considered getting an oversized Anglepoise lamp to help matters when we're eating dinner - having the halogens on isn't the best solution, and neither is peering into dimly lit plates. We tried stategically placed candles (ok, but not ideal when the table is covered from end to end with food and booze), and finally agreed on that Livingetc featured design staple, the Arco floor light.



I've been to the Castiglioni studio in Milan so I have a huge appreciation for the designer and his influence. Sadly, I don't have £1,350 to buy a modern day reproduction of his iconic light. Obviously, if I did I would've definitely shelled out over at Heal's but as it happens I found the best homage to the original on eBay via Contemporary Furniture Clearance. You can bid from £159 or buy one on the spot for £169 - it arrived with us two working days after I paid (via courier) and an efficient chap called to say he'd left it on the door step. The marble base weighs 64kgs so no-one was going to nick it - we had to unpack it in order to stick a wooden pole through the iconic hole just to get it inside.



Once assembled the lamp looked right at home - these photos don't do it justice, but the height is perfect in our extension, and the quality of the finish is unbelievably convincing. I've seen terrible silver effect shades, bad arcs and shoddy "marble" in other copies but this, thankfully, was the best £159 we've spent in a while. It even came with handling gloves so you don't put finger prints all over the brushed aluminium when you assemble it.



The marble base is an excellent place to leave the laptop when we're not using it (I'm not keen on leaving the laptop on the table as the heat that thing puts out is intense) and as a happy coincidence, the shape and patterns of the lamp shade compliments our uplighters.



(Apologies for the cheesy title but I'm fond of word play and song lyrics. I should point out that this is in reference to the Debby Boone version and not Westlife/Whitney Houston songs of the same name.)

Art for arts sake

After nearly two years of extreme procrastination, we finally have two photographs up on the walls. The problem was that these photos came ready mounted and had a long strip of wood fixed to the back. They were designed so that the opposite bit of wood cut at the corresponding angle could be attached to a wall, and thus the photo would sit flush. We visited several picture framers and wood merchants in the last two years with no luck. Everyone knew exactly what we wanted but no-one actually sold these wood strips.

Eventually I had a light bulb moment when I remembered that our pal Jason worked at the White Cube gallery as a technician - fitting artist's works professionally! He was only too happy to help and in about half an hour, had measured up and fitted the bits required.



A major problem that Rob and I have is despite a general consensus on all things design and interior related, we don't see eye-to-eye when it comes to art. I like to have things up that I like to look at, he prefers something with a story and even likes the idea of investment pieces (to that end, he has two very collectable pieces gathering dust somewhere in New Zealand that will probably be ruined from damp by now...) Anyway, I happened to like these photographs which were from the Design Awards exhibition that Wallpaper* magazine had a couple of years ago - and they were only a tenner each. So there's the story to keep Rob happy and I really like these photographs.



The one was taken at the John Lautner Sheats Goldstein residence in Beverley Hills - and the speakers projected on the right hand side are the 'Katamari 01' by Giyanze, which won best domestic appliance. It's a bit difficult to see but there's a guy DJing in the foreground so the photo looks in tune sitting above my decks.



The other photo was taken in LA and features the Panna chair for Moroso by Tokujin Yoshioka, who won best domestic furniture designer. I like this because it reminds me of my first trip to LA, the outlook was eerily similar, though fortunately there wasn't a creepy guy sitting on an expensive chair...

Waste disposal

Photo: http://www.insinkerator.com

A few weeks ago the Observer magazine's Lucy Siegle wrote a column entitled 'Can I throw out food and be green?' which touched on how UK households have reduced the amount of food we throw out by 270,000 tonnes per year. It sounds a lot until she mentions that actually we still throw out 8m tonnes - half of which is still edible.

Lucy advocates the use of Food Waste Disgester units in the kitchen, which was a bit of a relief as we've had one in our kitchen for years. After buying a Magimix juicer about ten years ago, I insisted on a FWD to deal with the ensuing buckets of leftover, inedible fruit pulp. It seemed a sensible way to deal with quickly rotting peel but I wondered if it was ecologically ideal.

A friend who's seriously into eco living said that we were doing the right thing - at the time we were living in a flat so had no compost options, and it turns out that putting bio matter into London's sewers is actually good for them. Also, as Lucy Siegle points out, the FWDs create 10x more electricity than they use.

Now of course we live in a house where we could run a compost bin, but still prefer the FWD. The 30+ comments on the Guardian website in response to this article were quite something to read - nearly all of them echoed each other in the view that it's never OK to throw out food, that people should buy less and re-use everything.

Obviously very few of these people have kids - I can't speak for small boys, but my two girls rarely empty their plates. I've tried smaller portions, mixing things up for variety, you name it, but there is inevitably some mucky leftover on their plate that won't get eaten or saved for the next meal.

It's not like we're bulk buying food then chucking it when it goes past the best before date. All the stuff that goes into our FWD is stuff we wouldn't be eating - be it vegetable peel, inedible leftovers, teabags, coffee grinds and the occasional culinary disaster. It's incredible that not one of the commenters thought of this, instead advocating chickens & pigs (great in theory, not so great in some parts of London) and retro-fitting compost to apartment blocks. Geez people. Relax. Having a FWD sounds like a better option than just throwing food into landfill.

Well lit

Another photo of the finished kitchen. This shot was taken at night - about 20 minutes ago actually - and I noticed that all the lightbulbs under the cupboards were working. This is possibly the first time in over a year that there hasn't been one or two blown. Yup, another productive day from Rob who's been fiddling with teeny tiny bulbs.

In other house related news, the tenants at our flat are moving out after two years. I've got a friend who's a painter/decorator popping round to give us a quote. Rob wasn't keen, arguing that new tenants would just ruin the new paint job within a few months, but with a combination of London pollution and Blu-tack the walls have definitely seen better days. It was last painted seven years ago. (Actually, the walls at our current house could do with a tart up and we've lived only here for two years, but that's what happens when you have kids...)

Decluttering mission

In a recent post I mentioned our plans for the utility room. Well, this is the view of our garage and where the bike rack is (on the floor), is about where a new wall would go to separate the utility space from the garage.

I wish I had a 'before' photo to show you as this space has been completely overhauled. There were boxes of who-knows-what and unstable shelves full of miscellaneous DIY debris in here. It was impossible to walk around the bikes due to the tower of fire hazards looming - one bump and the whole lot would tumble.

Rob has been working part-time all summer and he must've noticed my exasperation at this mess 'What exactly do you do all day again?'. I came home last week and opened the garage door to be greeted with an industrial shelving unit and a clear floor. It would've taken hours. And it's surprisingly satisfying being able to walk around in here now. There's still quite a bit of junk to dispose of but this is 10x better than it was.

Chicken coop

Ah, the heady days when I thought we could have chickens in the garden... inspired by a trip to Grand Designs Live where we discovered the Eglu. Then we discovered the neighbour's fox and decided that chickens probably weren't a great idea.

Now there's the Nogg thanks to a (fleeting) visit to Tent London during the London Design Festival. It looks a heck of a lot more secure than your average hen house and check out the design - isn't it fabulous? Would probably still need to keep an eye on the chickens as the foxes are so bold, even during the day. Wonder if I can get this back on the agenda? There's nothing quite like fresh eggs...

Phase two plans

Image: Joanopolis House, Sao Paulo from wallpaper.com

Two years after the work started on the house, we've finally finished phase one. And now I'm thinking (vaguely) about phase two. I must admit my passion for getting this project finished is diminished somewhat but next door's build only went a month or two over schedule. Their Polish builders were superb, so we swapped numbers and I said I'd send through some drawings so they could quote for them when we get motivated about, well, saving.

Phase two was going to involve knocking the downstairs loo through to the under stairs storage area and putting in a wet room. But this isn't practical for lots of reasons - the location of the soil pipes, the plumbing costs, having to tank the room so it doesn't leak etc etc. The Polish builder suggested putting a shower into our utility room, which doesn't exist at the moment as the washing machine and dryer inhabit a wall in the garage/bike store room.

So Phase two now means fitting a solid wall in the garage, putting in a proper ceiling and floor, lining the walls, putting in a shower and a sink and tarting it up with some tiles etc. And then giving the existing downstairs toilet a makeover so that it doesn't look like a bad 80s flashback (as it does now).

Phase three is the top floor, phase four is the garden. By then I reckon I'll be shopping round for a happening retirement village...

(I couldn't find any suitable inspirational photographs of utility rooms or under stairs storage so here's a lovely home in Sao Paulo that would be my inspiration for a holiday home...)

Splashback is in!

Who knew a piece of 6mm toughened glass would be such a cause for celebration? Nearly two years (!) after finishing the kitchen, we finally had the splashback installed yesterday. It cost just under £1,200 including installation and VAT, and was sorted efficiently by Robert Timmins Furniture who came round and did the measurements with a laser.



I'm so glad we paid the money - our original quote from a local glass supplier was half what we ended up paying, but would've meant the glass had seams/joins around the hob. A continuous piece of glass looks impactful, and the sockets were cut out perfectly thanks to the accuracy of the laser measuring system.



I can't believe we took so long to get this sorted. It makes the kitchen look SO MUCH better. And now I can continue having espresso machine explosions and blender accidents and not worry so much about the mess. Yippee!

Going green

Last night I spent the evening in the Edmonton Ikea. The goal was to buy up lots of glasses. We'd had people over for lunch at the weekend and I noticed our glassware was a motley collection of mismatched sizes and styles.

I got white wine glasses, red wine balloons, tall drinking glasses, shorter ones and some champagne flutes. And a duvet cover, a couple of spare sheets, some cookware and what the heck, some toy dogs for the kids.

The bill came to £215.

I thought Ikea was meant to be the budget option? For this kind of money I could've gone to John Lewis or Habitat and saved the torturous trip up the A10 in the pouring rain.

On the upside, the kitchen accessories were a bargain - pictured clockwise at top: peeler 79p, timer £1.99, measuring spoons 79p and bottle opener 79p.

Lettuce despair

We've just gotten back from two weeks in Northern Croatia where it was in the high 20s (celcius that is) most days. On two days there was the most severe thunder and lightning storms right over the Istrian villa, and monsoons would dump down for a few hours. It was pretty crazy weather.

Turns out it had been raining in London too, which was great for our lawn which is now a lovely bright green colour (pictured top, this morning - even the bamboo looks happy). Unfortunately, rain also means snails get their groove on. One evening last month I managed to slay 36 of them who were giddy from their spoils after a heavy shower. They must have had relatives because as you can see from the photo below, there's not a shred of leaf on any of my lettuces. I didn't get to eat one bite. All that plant food and sunshine and constant watering and for what?

Next summer it's war. I'll be collecting coffee grinds, egg shells and yoghurt containers (to make beer traps) for my amory, until then, I'm on the lookout for a hobby which doesn't involve gardening.