On the tiles

          You would have thought I’d have learned my lesson after the estate agent’s photos of our “Seaside Garden” made it look good … but this is the bathroom we we bought from the estate agent in our new, “Little House“.

          This was the reality on the day we moved in …

          The immediate problem was that the shower didnt work. You can see from the estate agent picture that the previous owner had rigged up a showerhead from the bath taps, but these weren’t sold as part of the house. We called in a friendly plumber and he fitted a new electric shower on the wall for us so that we at least had use of the bathroom while I assessed the rest of the house.

          Three walls of the bathroom had been mostly tiled, and enough remaining tiles were left behind to finish what still needed doing.

          A gap in our plumber’s schedule meant that the old grey bathroom suite was replaced by a fresh white one in September. The old tiles quite litterally fell away from the wall, and as a cost cutting measure the shower was left off to enable me to do the tiling with Youngest Daughter’s help.

          I tiled the bath end for the shower to go back up, but then the world fell apart as I spent more time at Little Sister’s house and in my Dad’s hospital room than I did at home.

          The cracks in my own health opened up into gaping casms and I was forced to pace myself with my new toy to be able to recover.

          I relied on Youngest Daughter’s confidence to make D.I.Y decisions until my feelings of uselessness finally subsided and eventually the tiling started to happen.

          Pacing myself turned out to allow just a few tiles a week in between my work shifts but little by little the bathroom came together.

          As the final full wall was completed, my plan of a bathroom cabinet above the toilet, and a round mirror below a new light were changed to a large mirror and light stretching across the full remaining space which opened up the bathroom to the illusion of being bigger and brighter than it had first appeared.

          The new orange and grey shower curtain added another splash of colour to compliment the towels … Hubby raised an eyebrow at more “orange”, but didn’t disapprove, and the much needed bathroom storage was achieved by a free standing tall bathroom cabinet.

          I found that as I scratched and scrubbed at the grout smears on the already tiled parts of the bathroom, the light bounced around in the mirrors, and when the final wall tiles going up in the alcove allowed me to add the matching zebra blind to the window, the bathroom became even nearer to finished.

          Of course, the “Bathroom trinkets” have moved with us. And the last few finishing touches are still ongoing, but after such a long haul, I’ll finally be happy with the bathroom we have.

          More from before : living in the “Little House“.

Tree of life

          My latest piece of macramé has grown a long way from the bookmarks I made when I arrived at semi-retirement and decided to play with string again.

          My very first tree of life was an attempt to follow instructions and count each knot as I went along to make a very simple design. By the time I had completed it, I had confirmed my suspicion that I could no sooner count my knots and remember which number I was on as follow someone else’s instructions, so my subsequent trees were a combination of my brain deciding nature didn’t have right angles or parallel lines, and my fingers just tying knots to make it happen.

          I hit on the idea of upcycling old lampshades to use as the rings for my trees and after dredging the local facebook groups for any old lampshades I could find, I set off one morning on what turned out to be a 21,000 step “hike” to collect them all.

          Hidden beneath some of the old battered lampshades were an amazing array of rings in different shapes and sizes. I had fun playing around with different designs on these, but my favourite rings were from a large lampshade, 45cm in diameter, made up of four wide bands of canvas with gaps in between. Once stripped down, the framework gave me three large double rings to play with.

          I played around with adding branches for the tree on both front and back rings and eventually bringing them all together into one thick trunk before spreading the strings out as a fan at the base.

          As with each piece of macrame, as I was making it, it would hang on the wall opposite my sofa and I would sit of an evening just musing as to what would happen to it next, then the following day, my fingers would make it happen.

          It would then stay on that wall for a little while until I either sent it off to the shop, or decided to keep it.

          I had created the position of the branches to accomodate a swing, something Hubby had commented on liking on a previous tree, but although he liked the swing, and the 3D appearance of the tree, a comment he’d made about the whole “tree of life” thing played on my mind. He said it looked like a dead tree rather than one representing life because it was just branches and no leaves.

          That particular tree didnt hang around on my wall for very long, I sold it on and started again with my second large double ring. This time I used some little leaf shaped charms (probably over 200 of them although I’ve never counted) and added some “life” to the tree.

          Hubby liked it, and it still hangs on the wall today.

          Having moved to a smaller house, and climbed the walls in search of storage space, picture hanging space is at a premium. Ive also hung large mirrors in strategic walls to make the house feel light and airy. My corner of the room has one such mirror, and floor to ceiling Kallax boxes, 24 in total, leaving no space for displaying crafted creations…but of course, I already have a plan… I plan to craft the boxes.

          For my birthday last year, Eldest Daughter took me to IKEA with a birthday budget. To Hubby’s dismay, I came home with a rather tacky-looking Kallax box made up of imitation plastic reeds woven onto a frame. Of course, it was the frame I was after, and once I’d stripped the front pannel clear of its plastic weaving, I began to tie bits of string onto it.

          The knotted panel became my companion on numerous train journeys back and for to visit my Dad as his illness took over, and later as I sat awake in the hospital with Little Sister on our overnight vigils, the knots my fingers were tying onto my frame held me together.

          My Dad didnt get to see the finished tree, but the few quality memories from his last few months are woven tightly into this piece making it extra special to me.

          More from before: A little peek further into the world that I’ve “Created“.

Happy chatter

          The time has really flown, and our “Little Man” will be starting school this year. Before that happens though, he will be coming to us from childminder’s on a couple of days for a bit of “after school” time. As Hubby commented, this is just the sort of reason we moved back to the Girls, and I must admit that, I for one, am very much looking forward to it.

          The Little Man has a couple of serious dietary requirements and so Eldest Daughter is going to send his evening meal with him so that he can eat it with us before she picks him up after she finishes work.

          By the time Little Man is in school, we will have perfected some sort of routine where as Eldest will batch cook some of his favourite meals and we can have some in the freezer for just heating up when needed.

          This sort of reminded me of my school lunch times …

          At one point I used to have a packed lunch for secondary school. I used to eat my lunch in the “sandwich hall” with a few of my friends but then one winter it was decided that a hot meal at lunchtime would be a better idea and it was arranged that, along with Big Sister, I would walk to my Grandmothers house at lunchtime.

          My Mum gave my Grandmother a varied supply of tinned meals which she would heat up for us to eat at lunchtime and then we would rush off back to spend what was left of lunchtime with our friends.

          Eventually the reason we would rush off so quickly was discovered, and my friends were invited to bring their sandwiches to my Grandmother’s to eat with us there.

          And so lunch times continued for a while with Big Sister and myself sitting at the little table, and my friends sitting on various seats and cushions around the room eating their packed lunches.

          My mind wanders to when my girls were younger and their friends called for them before school. Varying numbers of youngsters would arrive at the house, and settle themselves around the room until they were ready to all leave together.

          A house full of school children at that time of the morning may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I loved it, the happy chattering of children is one of my favourite sounds.

          It would seem that im not on my own at enjoying the happy noise. Recently, while my Dad was ill, I travelled with Eldest and Little Man on a weekend visit to see my Dad. Our timing was slightly off, Dad had good weeks and bad weeks and our visit had coincided with a bad week. Unfortunately, our arranged visiting time also coincided with a visit from Neice and her two children so I suggested we go at a different time.

          My Dad insisted we all just kept our arrangements and all visited together. He said it would be nice to have the house full of happy noise again.

          And so it was, the children played, the parents chatted, and my Dad ? … He smiled.

          More from before : Delving into the murky depths of my “Memory Vaults“