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Rachel's Art Deco Living Room

Let's take a look around the room first. Imagine standing in the room and spinning clockwise.  You can click on any photo to see a larger version.

This is how it looked when we viewed the house:

And this is how it looked when we stripped the room of the carpet and wood chip paper on the walls.  We removed the mantlepiece after this photo was taken.

Inspiration came from my previous living room which can be seen here and my love of all things art deco, which Stephen, my partner in crime, luckily, shares.  We painted the walls and ceiling (after the room had been rewired and totally plastered) the same Farrow & Ball Blue Black as my previous living room.  Although it is a dark colour, it is warm and cosy and does not "shrink" the room.  We painted the coving and skirting board in Crown's Millionaire metallic gold paint.  Originally the skirting board was to be painted white and Stephen did start painting it, but I stopped him midway through as I knew it did not look right.  Thank goodness for understanding boyfriends.  The wall is stencilled with VN7 Chain Lightening from our Vintage Range.  I used Sunset Gold paint which is a warm slightly orange gold.  VN7 is a repeat pattern and it repeats horizontally and vertically to fill entire walls if wanted (which I did).  It took me about 2 1/2 days to stencil this room (with a bit of help from Helen).  Once you get going, it is quite quick.  It was a bit awkward stencilling around the corners, but I cheat slightly by running a strip of low tack tape down the corners on each wall so I don't quite have to stencil right into the corner.  It looks neat and tidy and saves me some effort.  Stencilling with a single metallic paint can look very dramatic even if it is just a single colour.

I am a big fan of low light so had a dimmer switch put on the ceiling light and also on the main floor lamp so that I could play with the levels of light to suit my mood or needs.

This adds an extra dimension to the stencilling because just as you can see how the stencilling almost fades away in some lights and sings in others, so it is in real life.  The walls are never the same when you walk into the room.

The ceiling is stencilled with MD73 Pulsar, a motif from our Modern Range.

Stephen and I had to work on this together because the stencil was too heavy to stay up on the ceiling with Spraymount alone.  I had the stencil cut into a quarter and on thick film for added rigidity, but it was still unwieldy.  So I stood on a box with stencil brush and paint, and Stephen stood on a ladder and we managed to get the stencilling done that way.  It took just over and hour and was painful to do (backs and necks did suffer a bit), but so worth it.

I have an extraordinary number of books and they have always been piled here, there and everywhere which although looking slightly eccentric (a good thing), made it difficult to dig one out when I wanted to look at it again.  When we saw the living room layout, we decided we wanted proper bookshelves to house them. 

It was a labour of love.  Our budget did not stretch to bespoke inbuilt bookshelves so we had 1.8cm thick MDF cut to size and used a metal bracket and slot system available from most DIY stores.  Stephen lost sleep over whether they would hold the weight of the books.  The strips of slots are not just screwed into the wall, but bolted.  We had to pop around to the neighbors several times to apologise for the noise from all the drilling.  They were most understanding though because a) they are cool and b) they refurbished their house from top to bottom so had been through it all themselves.  We painted each shelf and we sorted all the books by height.  As a shelf would dry, we would slot it into place, fill it with books of a uniform height and then work on the next one.  It took several days, but was, again, worth the effort.  It also had the added advantage that the shelves are placed to accomodate the exact size of the books, so no space was wasted.  We can move the shelf levels if needed.  I don't know what it is about books, but they really make a room very personal.  The whole dynamic of the room changed once the books were in place and it started to look like a home.

I chose white carpet for this room to offset the dark walls and ceiling. 

It is my homage to Syrie Maugham, the "it" decorator of the 1930's famous for her white rooms.  Yes, it is probably impractical and most people think I was mad to choose it, but I love it and it does lift the room.  I just have to take care of it and if anything is spilt on it, I will clean it.  Only time will tell if I have made a mistake, but I take full responsibility.  It does look fab though.

I didn't buy anything new (or rather old as I only seem to buy old stuff) for this room except the rather splendid fringed lampshade,

the painting of Miss Irma (painted in 1927)

and the deco curtains featured in a previous post. 

Everything else came from my previous living room or other rooms. I daresay I will still manage to find the odd accessory or artwork to add here and there.  Hurrah for ebay.  I was very pleased to note that our furniture fit perfectly.  Both the sofa and chairs are quite petite, thank goodness, as it is not a large room. 

I found the tapestry cushion in RE in Corbridge several years ago.  My sister think she looks like Kate Winslet in "Titanic".  She has a point, but as this is an old tapesty, I think it preceded the making of the film.  I placed our fantastic jade painted (with original chinoiserie stencilling!) card table behind the sofa and it is turning out very useful to sit at.

 

The card table has 4 chairs and soon after we bought the house and I was starting to plan the layout and schemes, I had it in my mind that the table and four chairs would easily fit into the bay window area with space to spare.  As soon as we got the keys, I realised my mind has a horrible habit of exaggerating spaces and making them much, much bigger than they truly are.  The table and one chair just squeeze into the space.

The fire.  What can I say about the gas fire. 

I have a love/hate relationship with it.  It is very much of it's time (we estimate 60's/70's) and a bit bashed.  I love open fires.  I would love to have them back but unfortunately due to budget constraints and the fact that both downstairs fireplaces (there is another beauty in the dining room) have been well concreted in, we knew it would take too much effort, building and money to get the open fires back just now.  So we have no choice but to live with our gas fires.  I had hoped if I squinted enough, this one would look slightly oriental and pagoda-ish and I could live with that, loving most oriental styles.  But unfortunately, you have to squint so much to get that effect, your eyes might as well be shut.  On the love side, it does throw out a huge amount of heat.  I will say that for old gas fires...they do what they are supposed to.  So for that, we are very grateful (and warm). The Chippendale-Morris "Girl in a Green Dress" definitely improves the space and draws your attention away from the fire.  But when Chips looked at this photo to see his painting in place, he did say, "You need to get a new fire".  One day....

And that is the tour of our living room in our new home. What did I learn from this decorating project (because there is always something to learn)?

1) Very matt paint is gorgeous and like painting velvet on your walls (oooh, just had a vision of pasting old velvet onto the walls and stencilling it in faded metallics - make mental note), but like velvet, change the direction of your brush stroke and you will see it (ie when you touch up bits, the paint will never quite blend in).  This is the sacrifice for having such a matt lovely finish so learn to live with any touch up marks.

2) When stencilling with light reflective paint (ie metallics), make sure you have a good light source in the room, especially if working at night.

3) If you are going to work on a project with someone, best if it is the love of your life as he will be more understanding than many and forgive you most things (eventually).

4) Plan as much as you can when decorating a room.  Create mood boards, paint samples, measure and draw out...whatever is needed to get the clearest idea of how the room will work.  However, despite planning, sometimes things just don't work according to plan.  Better to put the extra effort in and redo it then and there than try to live with something that just isn't right.  It will only annoy you and take far more effort to correct later on.

5) Only work on one room at a time if you have a whole house to do.  It is far better for your sanity to stay focused on one space.  Also, it is great to get one room completely done so you have a place to retreat to when the rest of the refurbishing is all getting a bit too much.  At last, Stephen and I feel we can take a bit of time to relax and have a lovely room to do it in.

All photographs by Stephen Egglestone

The Woman Cave

What do you do with a very small room 7 feet x 9 feet?  You turn it into a dressing room (as I call it) or woman cave (as my partner calls it).

We had a spell of calling it the lady cave until my sister politely pointed out that it sounded like I was referring to some part of female anatomy which when saying something like, "I should be tidying the lady cave", doesn't quite sound like it ought to, hilarious as it was, so we've since reverted to calling it the 'dressing room' in polite society. 

Never have I seen my boyfriend more enthusiastic or quick to put a room together.  I was basking the the glow of how caring and thoughtful he was to work on this space with such fervour, zeal and single mindedness, until I realised in reality that he probably wanted a space to put me and my stuff.  And the sooner, the better.  I couldn't blame him in the slightest for thinking that.  This way he is not tripping over yet another 1930's dressing gown or dress.  I can be in there with the laptop happily ebaying away and not go near his (he calls it "ours", but in reality it is his) 27" screen iMac.  And even better (for him) he has more control over the TV remote and TV viewing schedule.  Mmmmm, methinks there might have been a plot afoot....but I digress.  Regardless of the motivation behind it, it is a really lovely space and I am a very lucky girl.  Essentially it is storage for my things, but storage can look decorative.

Most houses in Britain have what is known as a box room (a reference to a small room historically used for storing boxes and travelling trunks).  Although this is no longer the case, the small room can be used as a nursery, child's room, small bedroom, home office or storage space.  But even as a bedroom, it can only take a single bed and minimal furniture as you can see in the "before" photo when the previous owners had the house: 

We have a full sized spare bedroom so felt that we could sacrifice this room to other purposes.  

It was quite a quick decorating job.  The room was covered in woodchip wallpaper which came off very easily (in comparison to the rest of the house) because it hadn't adhered particularly well to the wallpaper underneath. 

We left the old wallpaper intact as it was smooth and secure enough to just paint straight onto.  The plasterers only had to smooth skim the textured ceiling. 

We decided to put a shelf up around the entire room just above the door and window because it is dead space up there otherwise.  That shelf is only 30cm wide so doesn't make it feel like you've lowered the whole ceiling.

This is where I can store my bags and hats.  My partner painted the ceiling, shelves and woodwork in Crown Paint's Millionaire metallic gold.  I wanted an old rose pink for the walls and chose Dulux's Pink Nevada.  A friend had given me an old swirly carpet from her 1930's house which I had used on the floor in my living room at Stocksfield Hall.  When I moved, it came with me and we used it here. 

When we ripped up the old carpets throughout the house we were able to salvage enough underlay to reuse here.  I didn't make any plans to stencil the walls because I knew most of the walls would be covered up.  However, I did think the ceiling would be ripe for stencilling but waited until the room was put together before I made my final decision.  Until all the furniture and accessories are in place, I would not be sure how I could handle extra decoration and then would have to be careful so that the decoration added to the room, not tipped it over the edge into mess.  We put a dress rail down one side of the space and my dressing table and small armchair down the other side of the room. 

 

We were also able to squeeze my vintage wardrobe trunk into one corner. 

Once most of the large items were in place, we realised we had more "dead" space above the dress rail so put another shelf up for my sweaters, t-shirts and so on. 

The shelves are budget cut-to-size MDF and metal brackets.  We spraypainted the brackets gold to look more decorative. 

My Gruau lithographs and vintage paintings adorn the walls where there is space.

Vintage satin curtains have been hung at the window.  We took the door off the frame to make it easier to lay the carpet, but also because the swing of the door took up a lot of space in a small room, basically chopping off a 3 foot by 3 foot space in one corner which is about a sixth of the entire room.  After the room had been put together we made a decision as to whether the door needed to go back on or whether we could get away with using a door curtain instead.  We opted for the door curtain and I had found a pair of 1920's chenille door curtains at Corbridge Antiques Centre. 

Importantly, they look good from both sides.  I used one here and the other at the window at the top of the stairs.  I am especially pleased about this because it does leave me quite a bit of extra, precious, space.  It does look nice to be able to peer into the room from the hallway (as long as I keep it tidy), but I have the option of hiding the room with a curtain if need be.  The room can be a private, although not soundproof, space.

Finally with almost everything in place, I could think about the stencilling.  Even with the space filled so comprehensively, I did look up at the gold ceiling and feel it could do with a bit of decoration to fill it out.  I decided on one of our new Vintage dragon stencils, VN140.

I've always liked oriental styles and decided to channel a bit of 1920's Shanghai by stencilling a couple of dragons swirling around the light fitting.  They tied in with the red Chinese lamps Helen brought back from Singapore that hang beside the dressing table.  This stencil is designed as an all-over repeat, but I simply used the two dragons as motifs.  I didn't want to fill the entire ceiling surface. 

Ceilings are awkward to stencil, but are a nice area to put pattern onto if you can manage it.  I think there is always something dramatic about a decorated ceiling because they do take extra effort to do and most ceilings are undecorated.

I am thrilled with this space.  It is warm and comfortable and I do not feel like I have been banished.  It feels like a theatre star's dressing room from yesteryear and I can enjoy my various collections.  The woman cave definitely trumps any man cave.

Speaking of man caves and just in case you were feeling sorry for him thinking he had no space that was all his...he has not one, but two spaces to call his own.  This....

And this....

Admittedly, they both need a bit of work.  Stephen's off work next week and intends to work on them.  I think he is hiding the hot tub, huge screen wall-mounted tv and dedicated beer fridge catalogues from me.  That is fine by me if that is the look he wants, but he still has to find space to store the tools, his bikes, and the garden furniture etc. as well.   

All photographs by Stephen Egglestone 

Rachel's Living Room Preview

Whilst I work on the full post, I thought I would give you a bit of a preview of my living room showcasing the wall where Chips' lastest painting hangs because it is the feature of this room. 

Photo by Stephen Egglestone
You will have read in previous posts that Chippendale-Morris have a new range of paintings.  Chips takes well known art and reinterprets it by meticulously separating the image into thousands of coloured dots which he paints onto large canvases.  Up close, the image will look like a colourful abstract image, but the farther you move away from it, the more clear the image will become.  It is very, very clever as the colours have to be just right and takes ages to paint.  I have always loved anything that puts a modern twist on something traditional so couldn't wait to have a Chippendale-Morris for my own walls.  I chose "Girl in a Green Dress" as it is so very art deco (the main theme of the room).  I saved the chimney breast space for this masterpiece and it was a thrill to bring it home and hang it in place.  We were then able to call the room "finished" (bar a few minor details) and photograph it to share.  The full post will be along shortly but in the meantime, "Girl in a Green Dress" as seen by Chippendale-Morris deserves a post of her own.  I have yet to research this painting and I do not know if the model is known, but in the meantime Stephen and I have named her "Tallulah".  You can see the hint of the stencilling in this room: stencil VN7 Chain Lightening from our Vintage range, stencilled in Sunset Gold paint, on a wall painted with Farrow & Ball's Blue Black estate emulsion.

Art Deco fabulousness

I am having such fun working on our new (old) house.  After an initial frenzy of hard graft, Stephen and I can sit back, take things a bit easier and enjoy our new home. There is still loads to do, but the urgency is over.  I shall have photos of a few rooms very soon.  In the  meantime, here is a little peak at an exciting ebay find: genuine art deco curtains.  They look like a flapper dress and are quite amazing.

They are to be used in the living room.  The window is a 10 foot long bay window so these are to be a decorative detail rather than functional curtains as they are only just over 3 feet wide each.  Are they not perfect?  The fabric is a dull metallic gold heavy satin.

They are embroidered in jade and lime green, probably by hand.

And they are trimmed in gold lamé piping which has since tarnished to a metallic flecked brown.

I reckon, by the quality and look of these beauties, they had to be high-end art deco curtains back then.  These were not made for your traditional small semi-detached 1930's house at the time, but that is where they are now!

They bring to mind a particular art deco motif stencil from our range.

It is DE336 and I used it on the top of some shelving in my art deco bathroom at Stocksfield Hall.  It is painted metallic gold and the stencilling is done in jade green and black.

I love this stencil design so much, that I have used it again, with alterations, and bigger, in our bedroom.  You'll have to wait a bit longer for photos of that room as it is not quite photography worthy just yet. 

I love ebay.  If you can spend time on it, you can pretty much find whatever you want.  It is an excellent source of old things (which is what we prefer).  But you do have to search and search and search and patience is definitely a virtue.  I can spend an awful amount of time on it in the evening.  I use the laptop so I can peruse in different rooms.  I reckon Stephen thinks I should just have one of those cigarette girl trays hanging around my neck so I can move around and use the laptop at the same time!  I justify it by simply saying that it is all in aid of a good cause: the decor of our house.  I hope you enjoy my find and I shall have photos of them in place soon.

Rachel.

Possibly the best moving aid ever

Aside from a team of burly men to pack, move, and unpack it all for you whilst you lounge on a beach in the Caribbean....yes, it is the humble Ikea Blue Bag. 

What a little (large) gem.  Stephen and I have almost moved all of my stuff to our house and we did it by reusing 40 Ikea Blue Bags.  To date, they have moved 16 bags of large books, 40 bags of magazines (see yesterday's post), 20+ bags of clothes, 4 bags of shoes, 4 bags of hats, 2 bags of kitchen paraphernalia...the list could go on.  They only thing that didn't go into them was the furniture. The damage? One of the 4 handles on one bag has broken, and another has a small hole in it.  Otherwise, they are still going strong.  They will be great for storing things as well.

The best bit?  They cost 40p each (total outlay 16.00 GBP).  We used exactly 2 cardboard boxes to move some more fragile items, otherwise, it all went into Ikea Blue Bags.  I never want to move again.  It was a crippling experience that had me sitting on the stairs late one Sunday after having spent all weekend moving stuff with my legs trembling so badly, it took 10 minutes before I could stand again.  But we couldn't have done it at all without our Ikea bags.  All hail the Ikea Blue Bag.

Rachel

Rachel's House: the things you uncover

Stephen and I have not moved into our little house quite yet.  We have taken a few weeks to do some messy work in the house before we move in.  Stephen spent a week stripping wood chip paper and artex (textured plaster) off the walls as mentioned in a previous post.  Now the electricians are in rewiring everything and the plasterers are making the walls smooth, creating our blank canvas.  Then it will be back to Stephen and I.  As everything is (sadly) being covered back up, I thought I would take this opportunity to share some photos of what we uncovered in our 1930's nest.  This is not a major renovation and the house is not that old by English standards, but just from the little bits and pieces we found, I can imagine how exciting it is to peel back the layers of history in a very old house.  Even a mere hint of a paint colour, or the tiniest scrap of flock wallpaper found in a corner was cause for excitement.  So onto our magical mystery tour:

This is the guest bedroom.  If you look closely at the walls, you can see the faint outline of decorative paint work.  It is just a simple effect, creating a paler tone of colour on a stepped band around the top of the room.

And the same in the main bedroom

In fact, if you look closely at this wall, you can just see loads of drawn pencil lines (you should be able to click on any photo to bring up a larger version)

Stephen and I were quite fascinated by this as we are not sure what all the pencil lines are about.  It would be nice to recreate something similar, but these days we have more furniture and general stuff than they had in the 30's and it will only work if it "frames" the contents of the room well.  Otherwise it will be chopped up by furniture and look like oddly painted patches.  However, I am certainly going to keep it in mind and try to find more references of 1930s interiors to see how it worked with the furnishings.  We also found scraps of this lovely paper in the main bedroom (under the lovely wood chip paper that covered it):

It is hard to date this paper.  The house was built in 1935 and the yellow painted panels will be the original decoration.  We found pencil signatures on the wall dated 1952.  My guess would be that this floral paper was put on in 1952.  And then the wood chip paper sometime later.  When I have some spare time, I am going to look into the history of this house.  Sometimes details of the changing of ownership can give you a big clue as to when new decoration was done.  Here is another photo of the paper.  Had there been more of it and in better condition, I would have liked to have kept a wall and worked my decor around it.  The colours are gorgeous.

We also found wallpaper in the small box room.  This is classed as the third bedroom, but is only 9 feet x 7 feet so I am turning it into a dressing room/walk in closet. 

The paper is a simple floral sprig and so smooth, it can be painted over as is so we didn't go to the effort of steaming this off.  There was one small area where we could see the original paint colour which was a pale apple green.  And I am not sure, but the woodwork might have been a pale pink colour.  There seems to be scraps of old lino down on the floorboards.  I had heard that this row of houses had been built with young professional couples in mind.  This will take some investigative work, but it could be that the decoration in this room was meant to cover everything from a small hobby/sewing room through to nursery/child's room.

And more on the living room with the stencilling.  They weren't afraid of bold colour in the 30's.  The main bedroom is ochre, spare bedroom a red/pink grapefruit colour and the living room this terracotta colour (which is more vibrant than in this photo).

The paint finish is lovely.  Very matt and chalky with good opaque coverage without being thick.  I don't know enough about old paint finishes, but I do know distemper was quite popular.  The gloss paint on the woodwork (and ceiling in this room) is also quite different from gloss paint today. (Note: I would love to open up the fireplace again, but that will have to wait.  In the meantime, the old gas fire is fine and does throw out extra heat.  I am hoping with a bit of tweaking I can make it look a bit more like an exotic chinese pagoda shaped gas fire and less like the stylistically challenged fire that it is.  We have taken off the mantle and have smoothed that out.  Any ideas would be gratefully appreciated).

As you can see the walls have been well patched over the years so sadly we have no option but to plaster over it all.  However, it is still there for posterity.  By the way, can you see the chandelier?  We have taken it down and kept it because although it is wrong for the schemes I have planned for this house, it would be quite fab in the right room.  It has 3 lights and is painted white metal.  What is lovely is that it has these wire bits with flowers and butterflies on the ends around the central stem.  If anyone is interested in buying it, let me know.  It will need rewiring (not a difficult job) so could also work in other countries.  If you want more photos, let me know and I will email them to you.

We did find more stencilling.

Aside from the cornerpieces, there is this central motif:

It is on three of the walls (the 4th is taken up by the bay window).  It is so simple and effective and I love the pale ochre band with the burgundy coach line that just sets it off.

And now to the toilet/bathroom.  In an ideal world, I would have loved to have had the original toilet, bath sink, kitchen and fireplaces in this house.  Sadly I have none of those and to add insult to injury, I have a tiled 1980's toilet and bathroom.  It was standard practice to have a separate toilet next door to the bathroom.  I quite like the idea except that it is not for the claustrophobic....

And when you see the size of the bathroom...

...you will see why we will probably combine the two when we redo the bathroom in a couple of years.  The hot water tank is in the cupboard in the corner.  These photos show one of my favourite finds: the old lino in black and burgundy.  I love it and it is a shame that it is wrecked.  But it can stay for now.  You can also see the lovely 1980's avocado sink and bath we have.  It will have to stay for a while too.  In the meantime, I will dream by looking at original bathroom suites on ebay and one day shall have one.  They tend to come in pink, blue, yellow, white or jade green and I am rather fond of jade green so that would be my first choice.

Finally, one has to mention and spare a kind thought for my boiler which I am going to name Mo (partly in homage to M-O, the obsessive compulsive cleaning bot from the film "Wall-E" and partly in homage to Mo Farrah who kept on running during the Olympics).  He has just gone through his health check and although does not look his best (you have to use the pliers to turn the main knob), he is in tip top condition and does not need to be replaced for the moment (our purse breathes a sigh of relief).  So I am extremely fond of Mo.

He keeps our little house warm and is right now working to dry out the new plaster so we can crack on with the painting and decorating of which there will be much, much more in later posts.

Rachel

Rachel's New House

Just a bit of an introduction...I've bought a new house.  Yes, I shall be moving out of Stocksfield Hall after 15 years, but only a few miles down the road.  It is going to be hard adjusting to a commute longer than a 30 second walk.  It was built in 1935, just my sort of era.  We got the keys on Friday and have spent the weekend lifting the carpets and starting to take the wood chip paper and artex plaster off the walls.  It is everywhere so is a very large task, but we need smooth walls so I can stencil.  Last night we hit the living room and look what started to reveal itself:

It is only right that my house should have some old stencilling.  We worked at it a bit more and here is the full design:

The rest of the room has to be stripped and am I am not sure if there will be anything else, but it was rather fun to find this, especially at the end of a hard day's work.  Aside from the damage to it, the colours are as vibrant as ever.  It may well get covered up again, but will be there for future generations to find.

Over the next several months, I will be posting more about my house as I redo each room.  There will be before and after shots as well as mentioning any other interesting finds and useful techniques as we go.  The house retains some original features, but others are sadly gone.  Whilst I won't be doing a totally authentic restoration job on the house, I will be putting some 1930's features back in.  Art Deco is one of our favourites styles so most of the stencilling and decor will have that flavour.  We've just added some new stencils to our site based on a 1930's china pattern.  I am sure Helen will post more on this, but I am rather taken with them so it may be used in my house somewhere as well.

Keep reading for further installments.

Rachel