Changing Rooms

Those of you who follow us on Twitter or receive our updates on Facebook will have picked up on the fact that our house is a little, let’s say, “busy”.

Laura paints at home and we store our unpainted stock at home. Recently, we realised that there were pieces of furniture in our store room (most people’s dining room) that we’d had for years and my argument was that if Laura had wanted to paint them, she’d have done it by now.

Her argument was that she hasn’t got the time to work through it all.

There’s a good argument to be made for both.

The upshot of it all was that we had a bit of a clear out over the course of a few weeks and reassessed the way we work, particularly regarding storage of stock.

 

Just add doors... My terrible attempt a barbecue is just visible

We have a fairly large outbuilding, which is full of old bikes, broken lawnmowers, unused skateboards – that sort of thing.

One of the largest storage areas outside has no door on it, so we hatched a plan.

An old schoolmate of mine is going to make us a door for the larger shed – this will then hold our unpainted stock. It’s a big space, but small enough to help us be more disciplined in our buying habits. From now on, if there’s no room in the shed, it’s not coming home with us.

An established, secure brick outbuilding will now house all our painted stock waiting to be sold or moved to a sales space.

This frees up our old store room, which will now become the design studio Laura has always wanted.

 

Fabrics and tools now live here

Planks, thanks

While the room will still be used for storage, it will only be the pretty stuff that stays.

• A huge French 44-drawer unit now takes up a large part of the wall space – this will hold brushes, scalpels, glue, paint trays, screwdrivers, hammers and so on.
• Paint will be displayed for ease of use on shelves made from six old scaffolding planks.
• Fabrics (for when Laura finally gets the hang of upholstery) are contained in crates on a cute formica table, including one given to us by Layla when we went to visit her at French Grey Tales.
• A huge antique pine farmhouse table will be home to a new project Laura is working on (more on that at a later date).
• At the other end of the room will be a desk (we’re still looking for it) to house Laura’s computer, printer and associated gubbins.

The first two shelves - they haven't fallen down yet

And that’s not to mention the epic wallpaper stripping that needs to happen to remove the horrible textured paper and border left by a previous tenant…

It’s early days yet, but we hope that by next weekend, we’ll be another step closer and Laura can unleash her creative mayhem in more organised manner

We'll show you the finished room as soon as it's completed.