in the boiler room !

I recently took two weeks off work, because a) I need to use up my holiday time and b) an old customer was hassling me to do some work for him.

I have worked in this house on and off for about 10 years, for the previous owners and the current owner. I have hand-painted every single room except the laundry.

He initially asked me to come and fix one of the guest rooms because he had had some water damage from a leaky roof.

 The white paint is the stain block I used before re-painting the cream and then the green stripes.

He also asked if I could do anything with his laundry room. There were lots of holes, and dirty and unpainted walls where a new boiler had been installed.

There are also lots and lots of cable's and pipes.

The only thing I could suggest was to turn his laundry room into a boiler room and add even more pipes !

So instead of spending two weeks at home, decorating my own house, I spent 6 1/2 days in this boiler room.
As soon as it started to look ok, I stopped berating myself for taking on the work, and started enjoying it.

Mostly I was left on my own, given a key, and told to help myself to tea and coffee: so I just turned the radio up and got on with it.

I painted the back two walls in grey, stippled with silver, because there was already enough going on, on these walls and I knew everything would look good against a darker colour.

On the other walls I painted 'metal' panels because I couldn't cut round all the pipes. One morning the shelf had gone (a new galvanised one has been bought) and then the next day I was asked to remove the tiles. It definitely looks better without them.

I added a copper pipe, tap and gage, and rivets to make the panel look realistic.

 

 

I 'signed' my work (in the gage) with my initials and year of birth - though the client doesn't know.

 

 

I also added another panel on the wall by the door, with an air vent, and a pipe that runs around the back door and behind the washing machine.

 

 

I would have been happy to paint fake copper pipes everywhere, but it would have taken so long and turned the laundry room into the most expensive room in the house.

 

 

Oh boy, it was hot in the boiler room, I had to open this valve to let off some steam !!!!!

 

 

My client was very happy as he says he's always in here, washing clothes for himself and his daughter, and his OCD prefers the more finished space.

 

 

 

 

 

The white sockets and switches have already been changed for grey metal ones and I also painted a 'danger - authorised personnel only' sign, that I neglected to photograph.

 

Now every room in the house has a Fiona paint effect, though he's thinking of updating the hall.

Er, 'not this year' I told him, coz I'd like to keep my days off for myself.

 

The job was fun though and the extra money really helps !

L.E.T.T.E.R.S

I bought a few more cardboard letters for my bathroom, to fill the gap to the left of the cabinet. I've always had a feeling it would give the illusion of making the cabinet feel wider.

 

I tried the white B.A.T.H.E letters here, but felt it was a shame that you only got to see them when walking out of the bathroom (or lying in the bath with your head at an uncomfortable angle). Anyway, they work well by the window, but I still had a gap by the cabinet that needed filling.

 

 

So, I thought....why not, just go buy some more. I chose Le Bain and gilded them because of the little bit of old gold on the cabinet handle. Or maybe just because I can't resist a bit of gold.

 

 

I mentioned in the last post that I wanted to tie all the colours in the room together, albeit in a very subtle way, so I painted the sides of the letters in a few carefully chosen colours.

 

 

I found a perfect matchpot of yellow to go with my yellow bath, and painted the E and the N.

 

 

I bought a red match pot for the B, because of the paint and fabric on the cabinet.

 

 

I used AS Emile on the L, because of the pinks and lavenders in the room.

 

 

I also chose a blue and a turquoise for the A and I.

I just painted the letters in a charcoal, then gilded the fronts and put a glaze on the gold to dull them slightly and then painted the sides and distressed a little.

My obsession with letters didn't diminish, I bought two more, but not for the bathroom.
I finally got out of the bathroom.

I'm now working on something I've wanted to do for about 10 years, it's very exciting.

I've also been working on all of these. More red chairs, some updating at home and some work in a boiler room !

I just don't blog very much, so I want to say thank you very much if you've stopped by for a little look.

thought processes.......

As soon as I had finished my mini bathroom makeover, I started updating it, and adding things to it.

The positive comments I received about my yellow bath, made me re-assess the look.
Let's face it, I'm probably never going to get it re-enamelled in white, so I'm embracing my retro vintage yellow bath.
The walls are grey, and yellow and grey go together, right.......... so I thought I'd mix it up a bit more......

I thought I'd add a colour I would never normally use........

um....yes....I painted the chair in AS Emile.
I bought a match pot of this and Paloma when I went to the shop in the previous post.
All the gorgeous blues and greens were drawing me towards them (all the gorgeous blues and greens that would have gone great with yellow !) but no, I was trying to think outside the box.

I think I like it, I'm still not sure......I quite liked it when it was white !
I painted a little wooden pot in the Paloma, distressing through to the cream and adding charcoal as highlights.
I like this........a lot.

.
Then I tackled the gap on the wall.

I had always wanted something to the left of the round mirror and originally envisaged some empty white frames and then I thought an eye chart would be great, because it would make more of a statement.

After embracing the yellow retro/vintage bath and painting the chair I thought maybe something colourful would be better, like a circus font, maybe saying 'HOME', or a Mexican style floral skull (done in colours to suit my bathroom of course).

I liked the idea of both of these, but knew they would take a while, when I remembered I had some old artwork in the under stairs cupboard........................

 

and where I found a couple of near perfect (colour wise that is, I'm not saying my artwork is perfect) pictures.

 

 

The yellow is nearly identical to the bath, and the pink ties in with the chair, and they're perfume bottles (in fact one of the perfume bottles is in the cabinet on the right). I painted them for a company that used to print my stuff and give me royalties. I never made much money out of it and I'm not sure I ever showed them these.

 

 

Anyway, I played around with displaying them.

 

One went on the shelf. Actually I tried both on the shelf and managed to break a pretty pot in the process, but c'est la vie. That's what you get when you keep re-arranging stuff.

 

 

Then I painted an old gold frame in turquoise and then in grey (because I tried to live with the turquoise and couldn't) and distressed it, to frame the yellow picture.

 

 

And although there are lots of different colours in here now, it still feels like a restful place, and I've tied them all together in yet another project, that I'll post about next time.

And thanks to my thought processes, I've added more empty frames, eye charts, circus font artwork, and skulls to my looooong list of things.to.do !

Btw, I was drawn to Paloma because I used to wear Paloma Picasso perfume and because of Paloma Faith, She's an amazing singer and recently did an incredible performance on a chat show. You can see it here.

shopping for chalk paint

The first time I bought some AS chalk paint was in Blakes in Hove. They had some beautiful furniture, but the owner wasn't particularly friendly, in fact she was rather snooty.

So the second time I wanted some chalk paint I went to a small shop only ten minutes from the first one, in Portslade. There wasn't much furniture to look at but the owner was really pleasant, so a couple of weeks ago I drove there again to get some red for the chairs at work and maybe a couple of sample pots for me !

I was really happy to see that they had moved to much larger premises, and were showcasing loads of gorgeous things.

As you can see, it was a very sunny day. I love all the chandeliers, and the way AS fabrics were being displayed, as a banner across the ceiling.

I got a litre of Emperors Silk and made a start but as we need somewhere for the customers to sit (and I don't want a house full of furniture), it'll be slow going.

One down, quite a few to go !

 

It wasn't my intention to match the paint to the fabric because we intend on changing it, and it's a bit of a scarlet red, as opposed to the pillar box red that we have used elsewhere, but I will paint some of the other chairs in a different shade. It wouldn't suit the café if everything matched.

I like the look of the red against the dark wood though.

Btw, Blakes the first shop, seems to have gone from Hove, but moved to Devon, although it's now selling a different make of chalk paint !