This has become my way of editing what I keep, as well as a lovely excuse to carry on shopping.Big (or, actually small ) news, folks! Living large (or even medium-sized) is officially a thing of the past. So it was a relief when my younger daughter decided to set up an antiques shop online. Needless to say, I have ended up with too much stuff. There is a table in the panelled room on which everything, including a cream ware bowl, an ornate china candlestick, and a vintage Lucite lamp cost less than £5. I still find it difficult to resist the overlooked or undervalued, and get far more satisfaction from ‘finds’ and ‘bargains’ than from anything we have paid a sensible price for. Having started working with her as a schoolgirl, buying things we liked and could make a profit on, I have never lost the habit. Here I must declare the advantage of an antique dealer mother. Other decisions have stood the test of time including the Colefax and Fowler ‘ Bowood’ wallpaper in our bedroom and the Lewis & Wood ‘ Fly Fishing’ wallpaper in the downstairs loo.Ī lot of the furniture came with us, and we filled the gaps from local antique shops. We have changed our minds in other rooms – painting over Farrow & Ball ‘ Fowler Pink’ with ‘ Saxon Green’ in the hall, covering ‘ Old White’ with ‘ London Stone’ in the upstairs library, and adding drama to the gloomy inner hall with walls and woodwork in ‘ Mahogany’. We started by painting everything Farrow & Ball ‘ White Tie’, except the polished oak of the 17th-century panelling in the living room, and the kitchen, which has kept its shiny coating of cream gloss – a ‘wipe-clean’ finish I vividly remember from the kitchen of my aunt and uncle’s ancient Dartmoor farm. MAY WE RECOMMEND: The writer Olivia Laing on falling in love with a houseįurnishing and decorating were incremental.
#TINY PIANO DRESSER WINDOWS#
We put doors on either end of the cross passage and it became our hall and boot room, and the lean-to potting shed got new windows so I could use it as my summer office. We were also given permission to remove a later bathroom from the landing and create a third upstairs bathroom in a former bedroom.
![tiny piano dresser tiny piano dresser](https://i5.walmartimages.com/asr/af848e23-f716-44d5-a294-12f41ee3eecc.20d80b3abdd815f03f284839b332ae51.jpeg)
English Heritage allowed us partially to reinstate this room. By the beginning of the 20th century this had been replaced and the space divided to make three bedrooms and a corridor. Where, for example, were the original staircases, the two current ones being plain and late-19th century? We do know that the house was once thatched, and that the room above the kitchen was the solar, and had a barrel-vaulted ceiling. This is not the original 16th- and 17th-century layout. Today, the top leg of the E is a hall, with a panelled living room next to it, the bottom leg is larder, pantry and workshop, and in between are the kitchen, stairs and cross passage. The plan is roughly E-shaped, without the middle leg of the letter. The house had been rejigged repeatedly over its 450 years, first built as a prestigious home for a prominent family, then abandoned for something more fashionable at the end of the 17th century, from when it was tenanted by farmers.
![tiny piano dresser tiny piano dresser](http://ep.yimg.com/ay/yhst-32204204442389/melissa-doug-learn-to-play-piano-music-toy-15.jpg)
It was also satisfying, as later internal walls came down, opening up space and letting light flow, fireplaces were unblocked and in one case discovered behind plaster. It was dirty, noisy, difficult, each day punctuated by the mass-production of cups of tea.
![tiny piano dresser tiny piano dresser](https://www.sweetretreatkids.com/media/vendors/Schoenhut/189B-kids-black-baby-grand-piano-schoenhut.jpg)
It needed a new roof the leaded windows were taken away for restoration, leaving us boarded-up and fumbling around in semi-darkness and the concrete mortar that was trapping damp had to be chipped out from between the stone and knapped flint of the exterior and replaced with lime mortar – month after month of tap, tap, tap as irritating as a constant drip into a sink. Then it rained for two months and I began to have doubts. By the beginning of January we were unpacking our saucepans onto its shelves, after a breathless quickstep of sale, purchase, schools, work, all clicking into place. We had first stood in the kitchen at the end of October. Once planted it took root and grew at an alarming rate. But we had no serious intention of leaving London. It is a loveable house, dating from the mid-16th century, surrounded by walled gardens, in the middle of a small town near the coast. We joke that our twelve-year-old daughter made the decision for us when, twenty years ago, we stood in the kitchen and she announced to the owner “We would like to buy your house.” We had seen it in an estate agent’s window and decided to view on a whim, on the last day of a holiday in Devon.