The art of unfinished-ness

We haven't done quite as much with the house as we perhaps might have hoped by this stage. Holidays, parties, boxes and busyness have all seemed to get in the way. But the look we have right now is rather delicious- particuarly in light of this beautiful book; Recycled Home by Mark and Sally Bailey. Every scene is just one of rusting corners, bare walls and floors and reclaimed bits of junk. In this house it is our style bible, which is not really motivating us massively to get painting.

We have screwed our new fire place up against the hole, and need to really do all the plastering buisness around it. But just look at it in it's incomplete state- what a feast for the eyeballs!


And then there are just these bare unstripped walls, with all their layers of various plastering and hole-filling. So hot. Here they are being set off perfectly by a left over bit of birthday bunting, a little vintage stool Shelley gave me for my birthday and a big bunch of house warming flowers....


So in many respects our house is still, well, quite a dive. But little rough scenes like this totally fill me with joy. (This is the start of a terrible journey towards house-proudness perhaps?!) Which doesn't bode well for us actually getting round to painting and all that shenanigans...

Signed, sealed, delivered...

Well, how momentous has the last week been?! Not only have we exchanged, completed and MOVED but we have already started painting and decorating! Amazing has wheels can turn so painfully slowly and then all of a sudden it all happens in a matter of days.

Technically we have only moved our bodies- me and Tim have slept their for the last few nights but all our stuff is coming in a lorry tomorrow. This has meant we have been able to rip up carpets, paint the kitchen and pull off wall paper.

We spent our first night going "Uh oh. What have we done?" - overwhelmed by the mountain of of making over needing to be done before the baby arrives in November. But it is amazing how significantly action can change your frame of mind. Once we started attacking the ugliness, dominating that worst of the eighties badness, we began to feel better about things, and now we are positively stoked!

The grimness was so bad that I didn't even take many "Before" pictures- I just couldn't bear to point my camera at it. But I took enough to hopefully capture some of the transformation and, crikey Jim, it needs a transformation.

My next post will be the kitchen make over. From pine covered grime to shabby chic lushness....

In the mean time here is Tim looking pretty proud...

Hurray!

Crafting babies and homes: a bit about me and what I hope the new blog to be...

I love creating stuff, I'm not too picky about what, although at the moment I am big into making collages. Oh, and babies. I'm 14 weeks this week, it is our first and we are hand clappingly happy about it. It is pretty cool making something without really doing anything. At the moment I believe I am working on a hearing system to make those ears functionable.

We are half way through moving into a little Victorian terrace in Camberwell, South London. Once in, we (that's my husband, Tim, and house mate, Shelley) we will be obliterating the worst-of-the-eighties- decor and unleashing our dreams of a recycled, beautiful, best-of-all-era's design theme. We are just waiting on all those boring bits like land registry checks and all that.

This crafting blog will hopefully document the foetus to new-born, no house to delicious home stage in our lives...