Woodwork

 

Unfortunately there's not a large amount of sewing going on this week, due to nearly every room in the house been either devoid of furniture or so piled high with it that there's no room for a girl and her rotary cutter and cutting mat to fit in amongst it all.

 

At the end of the summer, in a response to my alarming dust allergy which threatened to render all conversations to be conducted from behind a handkerchief, we tore up our bedroom carpet and found some potentially lovely floorboards lay beneath, if only there weren't so many holes in them that I was in danger of permanently losing my presser feet every time I changed the foot on my machine (something I do with alarming frequency).

 

 

So the time has come to have the holes filled in and have it all properly sanded and waxed to bring out the loveliness which we hope they hold...and we've decided to do the same to the rest of the house at the same time (aside from the children's bedrooms, where it seems nice to have something soft for their trotters to land on when they get out of bed in the morning). Yesterday the rest of the carpets were taken up - my daughter and I have rather fallen in love with this scuffed looking paintwork on the stairs, but my husband is insistent that it will not be preserved, despite it amusing the children for nearly an hour this morning as they climbed up and down it pretending the central area of stair was a waterfall.

 

I had a very clear idea of what I wanted in my head...warm, but very, very dark floorboards. I'd just forgotten that we already have a huge amount wood all over our house that's a completely different colour. Nearly every door, several window frames and many of the skirting boards are pale stripped wood. Also this vast panel that runs along the side of the stairs.

 

  

It feels too awful to paint it white so that we can have the colour floors we'd like (especially when the previous owners stripped much of this by hand), so we're now thinking of compromises that avoid it being so one-toned that our hallway is mistaken for a sauna. It's funny how once you start thinking of changing one thing it has a knock on effect on everything around it.

 



 

My Instagram friends were a huge help when I was pondering all this last night. They clarified that I must not ever paint the stair panels white (by using shouty capitals at times); they reminded me that you can start off light and then go darker with floorboards, but not the other way around (without sanding it all over again); they shared photos of their own hallways and floorboards; and even advised about which waxes were best. Instagram is such a wonderfully visual and instant way of talking with people.

 

So for now, I'm sitting squashed into the corner of a furniture-stacked room doing some work with my husband on his Squeebles, making teas and coffees and considering where we might sleep tonight, as it's not looking obvious which room in the house would allow for such a thing.

 

Florence x