It's a different part of the budget, dear

A stream of delivery men have come and gone today leaving me cool and necessary items. Nothing renovation related, mind you, that part of the budget is closed for the remainder of the year. No, these are decorative items and decoration, as everyone knows, has absolutely nothing to do with construction or demolition.
Creative economics or semantics this may be, but it's how I will be accounting for it when Steven comes home and though wowed by the new pendant light in the bedroom, asks me where the money came from!
I'll need to be a little conciliatory because I want him to help me install the shade tonight before our gusts arrive tomorrow. I've been looking for nice shades since I bought this one at the Conran Shop a while ago. It was a really reasonable $49 and not surprisingly they sold out quickly and never restocked. That meant two bedrooms had their original plastic lights, which I like, but no amount of cleaning will change their dingy grey colour so it was definitely time for a change.
Then I saw this gorgeous Lulworth lamp from Mibo at Design Public that will go perfectly in Verity's room.
We also needed a new duvet cover and I got a cool grey one from CB2, which is now sold out, so no picture until I make up the bed.
The last delivery and the most important, was three cases of espresso coffee pods from our local supplier. Like everything else these pods have been going up in price, but it's my habit and I need my daily fix. Now, if I make Steven a nice espresso before I show him my new purchases do you think he'll be in a more receptive mood?

Bye bye funky flowers

At last we found a replacement for the 1960s orange and green flower chandelier in the bamboo room. We bought an ecru drum shade from the Conran shop in Manhattan for forty bucks and remarkably we remembered to get the ceiling converter kit (designed by Noguchi, no less) to go with it.
Even more remarkable, instead of leaving it in its box for several weeks we installed the light the very next morning, with no fuss and just before we left to go to the theatre. Amazing.
We also ran into Lighting by Gregory and ordered a wall light to go on the landing. As it cost substantially more than $40 and won't arrive for a couple of weeks this was less exciting.
The play was fantastic: Rabbit Hole starring Cynthia Nixon and Tyne Daly, it officially opens this week. Go and see it if you have the chance. And Tyne Daly had dinner in the same restaurant as us after the show.
A pretty darn satisfying weekend.

Bamboo to you

Hurrah, we have bamboo flooring in all the bedrooms; the furniture is back in place; the beds are made; pictures have been hung and it all looks fantastic. There is a lot of colour variation in the bamboo so it has movement and the gloss finish makes the rooms feel much lighter. Because most of the rooms had recently been painted cream we will leave them for a while, it's neutral and clean looking. But we will paint Steven's office as we had to strip panelling and wallpaper there. He wants a cranberry colour but I think yellow or gold will work better. We'll see.

We also changed our minds at the last minute about bamboo on the landing. I felt it was too shiny and casual for that space. I asked Steven to go look at some Tigerwood that I thought would work but we would have to wait until November for delivery. He didn't much like the Tigerwood anyway (too yellow) but he saw some Brazilian redwood that was new in that day so he bought a sample home for the weekend so we could live with it. As the ceiling is redwood it tied the whole area together. It looks good where it joins the bamboo and against the teak banisters, too. The bonus of doing it this way is that there will be enough bamboo to floor the master dressing room and my office. By the end of this week it should all be finished and we can sit back and relax. Ha ha.

Floors and walls

We're drying out and, apart from a wet patch on one wall that is probably caused by the air-conditioning system, Steven's office is done. It looks so much better than it used too, although if I was a pre-teenage boy in the seventies, I might think it was cool to live in a gold bamboo fort.


The bamboo floors are quite glossy and that reflects a lot of light around the room, which it needed. The old blue bedroom is also finished and hopefully by the end of today we will be able to put the furniture back in those rooms and then there will just be the pink room, the landing and staircases to floor.
The lights are causing a major headache.The first ones arrived with no problems except for the really nice one that is on back order. For the other upstairs lights we ordered from a different company and only half the order arrived and that was damaged. So I returned them and re-ordered other fixtures. But they failed to arrive (something about the salesman left and the order was never processed) so I just canceled that order today. Now I have to go and choose something else and you would not believe the junk you have to sift through before finding contemporary lighting here.

Overwhelmed

When we bought this house we knew there was a certain amount of work we would have to do before winter set in, First we had some windows that had to be replaced, some of the guttering was shot or missing and the siding over the garage had been damaged. Inside all the carpets would have to go to be replaced by wood floors and, to make more space, because 5000 square feet is just not enough, there were closets to be taken out (I know that it is impossible to believe that a gal can have too many closets but even Imelda Marcos would have trouble buying enough shoes to fit in here) plus there was the decorating stuff to be undertaken: paneling to be ripped off the walls, wallpaper to be stripped from three rooms and a hallway and the "Muenster Cheese" decor in the master suite, which covered every wall, door, architrave and baseboard, would have to be painted over.

We figured we would make the outside waterproof before tackling the interior projects. But of course things never run off a slate roof, as they say in Dutch, so we are working backwards, doing all the stuff we don't need to do while waiting for the windows which at this rate will probably be installed during a three-day snowstorm in January. In July, just before our first houseguests left, the contractors started work tearing out the panelling, taking down the mirrored closet in the bedroom and shortening the hall closet to make a bookcase. Then they painted over the oil-blue interiors of the remaining closets with a fresh coat of clean white matte and left for their vacation.

Koen and Verity stripped wallpaper and pulled up two carpets before they left and we ordered 1500 sq' of pre-finished wood flooring. Sick of the cheese effect, I painted the walls of the master bedroom and dressing room a calm blue shade and the ceiling, trim and doors a brilliant white.