DIY Update

Hi bloggies! It's been a while, I know; we've been really busy trying to make our new house a home. When last I blogged, The Irishman and his brother had been ripping apart the place to paint the lionshare of it bright white. Now complete, we're really pleased at how much cleaner and brighter it looks. We're ready to start hanging art on the walls to really make it our own.You can see above the lovely light coming in from the back garden; it's pretty fabulous as a space, I must say.After the painting marathon, we spent a lot of time in the garden fighting back some of the wilds. We have lots of fascinating fruit plants invading our garden from neighboring patios; a fig tree and passionfruit and grape vines are all dropping their produce into our yard. Unfortunately, I think they're all ornamental so rather than try to keep it all, we hacked most of it away. Now the space is bigger, brighter and cleaner (sense a theme here?).Finally, the biggest excitement for a while happened last night when we bought a kitchen table. We were toying with going for a mid-century modern pieces like this vintage Ercol number below.

The Irishman wasn't really feeling the vibe, though, and I think for something like this to work, you have to build a world of mid-century around it otherwise it would feel out of place. Being so characteristic it would drive the whole aesthetic of the ground floor of the house, and since we weren't going to develop a completely new style overnight we decided to go with one of our original ideas: a vintage farmhouse table.Friends, do you know how expensive an old farmhouse table can be?Answer: as expensive as you want it to be! We found some new ones on Not on the High Street for into the £1000s; the prices for used/reclaimed wood tables aren't much better on Ebay or in antique shops, and those can sometimes have gaps in the planks and uneven surfaces that aren't exactly practical. We were considering just going for it and buying a new table until The Irishman found a listing for a table for sale in Stoke Newington on Gumtree for £225 plus a bench for £75. Last night we went around to look at it, bargained the poor man down to £275 and took the table home in the back of our Streetcar. You can see it, hosting my lovely autumn sunflowers, in the photo at the top.So we're on track, slowly but surely; this weekend we're headed to the New Forest to see some friends and planning on stopping into some vintage and antique shops along the way. Our next focus is bedside tables – I'll keep you posted on the search.