Pimp My Bricks

Posting from the interstice.

Posted in Great Danes, Uncategorized with tags ceramics, Great Danes, Istanbul, Moire, Spice Market, Turkish carpets on August 9, 2013 by pimpmybricks

Yodel Doodle Ladies and Gents

There hasn’t been a ceramics post in a long while on the blog. Now seems a good time to remedy that, while all things Regency Wreckish are slumped in a bit of a waiting ditch and marking time until the wind shifts and brings change. I find this clip quite beautiful and magical, for all its ear extensions, bike stands and doing of things one just doesn’t do. The music sends me into a bit of a swoon and the film making is lovely.

See it here Moire

Neither have the Herberts been receiving their rightful allotted fifteen minutes worth, so let’s put that to rights too. Or at least let’s give Remington his go, since Miss Elsie is still too harem scarem to stand still long enough to have her photo taken. First, though, let me introduce you to The Ralph, Rems’ younger brother in all but genes and geography. Here he is in a park in London, handsome and sleek as a seal:

The last couple of times we’ve been back in London I’ve been able to assuage my Remington withdrawals by fondling another Great Dane’s ears, Danes being great natural schmoozers and all. The truly wonderful thing about Ralph is that he comes fully equipped with two people whom I met through the blog (one of the very best things to come out of it), and about whom all I shall say is that they are both utterly delicious and live in an utterly delicious house in Spitalfields.

And I was so taken with Ralph’s beautiful orange collar (and so taken by the colour orange in general), that I took myself off to Harrods and bought Mr Big something a little similar of his own. (I then went to Istanbul on the way home and treated myself to a bright orange bag so that when we’re off shopping together, we do look a little….shall we say…accessorised. But neither of us is particularly fussed about that):

Miss Elsie, who prefers pink, in a rare moment of repose:

And perhaps, having mentioned Istanbul, I’ll end this somewhat mishmash post with a couple of rugs we fell in love with while we were there, but which, at $12,000 a pop, we were obliged to leave behind. The first two are samples of a new (to me at any rate) deconstructed design. We’re seeing them pop up more and more here in Uh Straya at what I believe they call ‘high end’ outlets. Interestingly enough, the prices here are comparable to the prices there, a symptom, maybe, of America having banned the import of Persian carpets, and the price of Turkish pieces shooting up accordingly. Either way, these were beautiful carpets, silk on cotton, but I suspect that they, like the patched and over-dyed rugs, will date quite quickly:

Below we have the old Pimperstich, fingering an eye-wateringly beautiful Memluk. Oh, the conversations we had over mint tea about whether we should or shouldn’t, could or couldn’t. Until we eventually decided that we shouldn’t and couldn’t. And didn’t. But oh, woe. We were still revisiting the whole thing at the airport! Actually, one main reason we didn’t, apart from, you know, the old spondoolicks, was that we have nowhere to put it. These rugs don’t just lie there quietly and think of Turkey, they are voluble, loquacious personalities and they demand attention. I don’t think I’ve outed Mr P before, but he has what might politely be termed a bit of a carpet fetish. At the farm we have a 60 foot shed and in that shed we have a rather embarrassingly large number of carpets that positively insisted on being bought, only to arrive and find there was no (immediate) home for them. Another thing about fetishes I didn’t know, and maybe you don’t either, is that they’re contagious. Really! I didn’t used to have one for carpets, but as surely as eggs is eggs, I do now. And doors. But that’s another story. Anyway, the Memluk:

I’m thinking just a few photos of Istanbul, outside of the carpet shops, where we did on occasion manage to drag ourselves. I hesitate to post too many because it was rather an embarrassingly long time ago, but I take heart from Blogland being a place where the mountains of time are levelled into a horizon of the perpetual present. So, the Spice Market, where I discovered, to my absolute joy, that I could buy Amber in liquid form (and only aficionados of Istanbul and Marrakesh will recognise that I smell of moth repellent):

And the Hagia Sophia, because how could I not include that? When Mr P told me it was built in 500AD I thought he had his figures wrong, and had casually left out ten centuries. Because, you know, being English, I’m used to old places being from about the 15th century. But actually, he was absolutely correct. As he often is, for the record.

Istabul was a funny old place. I had not managed to hear one word said against it before we arrived. And yet it took time to captivate us. It was a vast, working city which didn’t just crack open and fall into two neat halves, for the digestive convenience of its visitors. You had to work at it a bit. You had to get beneath the blare and the noise and the crowds. And when you did, then you realised (or I did), that you were somewhere really rather ancient and really rather unlike anywhere you’d been before. Because there is the modern city which overlays the Ottoman city, which overlays the Byzantine city, which in turn overlays the Roman city. Much in the way of a vast, urban layer cake, it seemed to me. And there was a very definite three-dimensional sense of this too – go through the basements of some old houses and you’ll find yourselves wandering ancient streets down there. We visited some astonishing Roman mosaic pavements. There was always a sense that if you dug down just a little, you’d literally be digging through the centuries. Anyway, enough waffling. The Hagia Sophia:

I was extremely taken with these lights. Actually, I was madly plotting how they could be re-imagined in porcelain. Because if you stand still for more than thirty seconds in front of me these days I’ll be re-imagining you in porcelain too:

There are many more, but considering I only stopped by to post the ceramics clip, I’ve bumbled on for long enough. And so I’ll leave you, Mrs Woodentop in her dressing gown still, with Spotty Dog at her feet twitching and whimpering in one of those impenetrable doggy dreams. Adieu! There will be house happenings soon.

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of finish lines and mirages

Posted in Derelict house, kitchen, Renovation, Uncategorized with tags renovation, Sydney, unfitted kitchens on August 3, 2013 by pimpmybricks

Good Morrow Ladies and Gents all

I have been nudged into wakefulness and summoned to my laptop to write a post (for which many thankyous – it’s good to be missed). And so, like some crumpled old genie I emerge from my suburban bottle in a poof of wattle pollen. But I must warn you that this will be a post thrown together by a distracted mind. Caveat emptor! Abandon ship all ye who enter here seeking order, coherence or even linear thought.

But first, let’s do the ritual sozzas for being late and get that out of the way. Ladies and Gents, pray silence for the solemn reading of the Proclamation of Lamentations. Items one to six – issues arising with the Regency Wreck. Items seven to ten – other matters. One such other matter, in fact, being the complete and utter lack of internet for five weeks. There has been much eating of cold turkey around here and it hasn’t been a pretty thing. It’s not until you’re without it that you realise the full and alarming extent of your dependence. Mr P, normally the most equable fellow you could ever wish to meet, took to posting boxfuls of his torn out hair to call centres in Manila. The eventual upshot being that our illustrious ISP has now supplied us with a dongle (do you not love that word?), and so here I am, bashing out said post.

So then. Life has been somewhat Sisyphean of late. It’s been tough on the Regency Wreck front – that’s axiomatic, innit – but also across the board really. There has been some pretty awful news in the family and my own health issues have resurfaced from all the on-going nonsense. A veritable tsunami of stress, all in all. Mr P, I have to tell you, has been a Super Trouper of the First Order, with gold medals and epaulettes and everything. But I, the ex-stress junkie, have been coming apart at the seams just a little. Madame Flaketastic, wibbling and wavering all over, like a too-heavy thing on a too-slender base. Hence, you know, the lack of posts.

And what of the the jolly old Regency Wreck? Well, it finally resembles a house (more or less), and, in fact, has been hovering within co-ee of the finish line for some time now. Hovering but not advancing very fast. Indeed, the very definition of ‘finish’ is something that is hotly contested at present. And so we are still waiting. And waiting. Parables of tortoises and hares spring to mind. Rather fed-up tortoises with tired legs, I tell you, having staggered around these past two and a half years (I know! really!) under the weight of that big old unliveable house. And no, that’s not the wind in the trees you hear; it’s the strains of violins. Overall, the situation with the RW is still…shall we say, somewhat powder keggish… and because of that I think I shall be prudent for once and stay schtum about the whole thing. Just for a short while longer, if you’ll forgive me. But, as they like to say, watch this space. I promise posts with pictures and sentences that make sense and no smoke and mirrors. Maybe even a theme or two. Soon. As soon as a spoon.

In the meantime, let’s look beyond that disputed finish line at the piles of kitchen, pantry and laundry cupboards that are still in the UK, but due to be packed on Tuesday and bundled onto a boat to make their seasick way out here. I know that it seems an utter lunacy to have a kitchen made on the other side of the world but in fact, even with the shipping costs it’s cheaper and I got rather tired of hearing that no, I couldn’t have real hinges but I could have fake ones with those flat pack affairs behind them. I mean, really!

In the end we did go with the pink island. The actual colour has more yellow in it than appears in the photo; a sort of stewed rhubarb hue. At least I’m hoping it does because in the photo it looks a little scarily…pink.

This last cupboard is for the laundry because – confession time here – I’m a bit of a closet washermaid (without the mob cap) and the pinnacle of my laundressing aspirations (other than, you know, a housekeeper) has for years been the idea of a cupboard into which I can sort clean and dirty washing. In colour categories, mind you (for dirty) and owners (for clean). You may call me anal – but let me remind you that Mrs Beeton would have called me organised.So then one pressing question on my mind (that small portion not taken up with matters of porcelain or semiotics, which is another story)… one pressing question is whether copper would speak nicely to the pink island in the kitchen. Or not. Because I am having a little love affair with these lights which look to me for all the world like slightly deliquescing jellies:

And further, whether the pink condemns me to sensible honed granite worktops in grey, and all matters relating thereto. And on that lovely prosaic note, I am off.

Soon, jellyspoons.

9 Comments »

Half of a postcard from Londinium.

Posted in Uncategorized with tags Contempo, Heal's, London, Matthew Hilton, sofas on June 11, 2013 by pimpmybricks

Hola mi gente encantadora, mi beach umbrellas, mi leetle bicyclettes.

Now firstly, I should warn you that if you’re not feeling disposed for a bit of glump, you might want to leap over the next paragraph and land safely on the second, where you’ll find a pink velvet sofa waiting to break your fall. And if you are so disposed, I just need to break that cardinal rule of Blogland – Stay Positive or Stay Silent – for a brief moment.

Because a couple of days ago I came to my machine to write a post to say goodbye and shut down the blog, since all things Regency Wreck are so mired in pessimism and so swathed about with gloom that frankly it’s hard to write about anything in a positive light. The Battle continues on, roaring then whimpering then roaring again.

But anyway, instead of writing that post, I overdosed on cashew nuts, clambered out of my black hole, had a little rummage in my mental pockets and found a tattered postcard from London lurking. You know, from the trip in April. How long ago that feels! Lawdy. We had only a few days there, but it was the usual emotional homecoming (for me, anyway), the usual slug to the gut walking around my old stamping ground. I always feel tearful when I first arrive in London. It’s the tearfulness of returning to a place where your heart is (or a large chunk of it), but not your life. The city which you have not moved on from but which has moved on from you. The happily married ex. You know, all of that. And after I’d got over that, we spent our time cantering around the streets like the demented offspring of Mammon, ogling light fittings, sofas, paint colours, dog collars, bits of art. It’s a strange way of being at the moment – swanning around like Lady (Sch)Muck, ordering kitchens and sofas and the like, while on the other side of the mental curtain there are scenes from Dante’s Inferno going on. And it’s perverse in the extreme, I know, to source from the other side of the world, but there you are. You can take the Pimp out of London but you can’t take London out of Pimp. And anyway, it’s cheaper over there.

So sofas. We are in need of two. One for the living room, the have-a-cup-of-tea-or-a-glass-(several)-of-wine room, and one for the library/telly room. One moderately upright and one supine. Or maybe both supine, depending on the bevies and the hour.

And I’ve learned an important lesson (not exactly one of life’s big existential lessons, but important within the context), which is to not buy sofas you haven’t first sat on. I’d been having a little online fling with Mr Matthew Hilton for some time before we went. His lines appealed to my contemporary-meets-traditional notion of the Regency Wreck. I felt sure I’d be ordering a Lucas

or an Oscar

or a Sissinghurst, for a dash of mid century

But when we espied them in Liberty and lowered our eager frames into their depths, there was what I can only describe as a back-to-bum-interface-situation- situation, the back being hard and the seat soft. Or was it the other way around? Either way, the sofas weren’t as we imagined. Though having said that, had we left our bottoms there a little longer, we would have discovered, as we did at the house of friends with a Mr Hilton, that the seats mould themselves around the sitter rather oomphily, given a minute or two. However, by that time Mr P had struck up a little something with this, also spotted at Liberty, and so we ordered one.

And yes, I’m sticking to my resolve and having it covered in pale pink velvet (though my heart has roamed onto orange, and mutinous thoughts are twitching in my mind, but too late, too late!). And incidentally, I’ve lived all these millennia without knowing what a tuxedo sofa is, or even that there was such a designation (which obviously explains that slight sense of there being something missing in life). I’m perfectly sure that you knew a tuxedo sofa was one where the arms and back were the same height, but I did not.

Which leaves the library sofa still to go. We were at the end of a particularly tiring morning when we staggered out of the lift in Heal’s to fall almost immediately into the arms of this little number by the Italian company Contempo

Like me, it doesn’t photograph well – you can’t see its beautiful copper coloured frame, for instance. Nor can a photo deliver the feeling of falling into a perfect Victoria sponge – neither too springy nor too soft – and lying there, blissed out, amidst the strawberry jam. It was, I tell you, the one. Sofa home. Superlative supine. The only plobs being that there are only two suppliers of Contempo in UhStraya, one of whom simply can’t be arsed, the other of whom is wonderful but in Perth. Which might as well be a couple of countries away. And even wonderful can’t get me samples in under a month, and then there’s the four month waiting period after that and the usual situation of Australian prices being over twice those of Europe. Why don’t I just go down the road and get something lovely from Mr Somebody? Well, because. (I once had a dream about there being two paths across a mountain I needed to cross – one straight around the base and another meandering all over – precipitous, vertiginous, overgrown and given to avalanches. You can guess the rest).

Anyway, that’s enough of sofas. There’s another half to the tattered postcard but I must up, up and away to Potty Training, so I will have to find a stamp and mail that other bit later. Laters, potaters.

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The fool’s waltz – one step forward, two steps…

Posted in Georgian houses, Renovation, sandstone walls, Uncategorized with tags builders, hotels, renovation, somerset, UK on May 20, 2013 by pimpmybricks

Well hello there campers. Long time, no thingummies.

(Please take as read the by-now standard apology for time elapsing, general slack tartishness and various assorted etceteras).

Actually, in fact, I had intended to write a post during our five week extravaganza to the UK, but we went at such a fast clop here, there and everywhere, ordering sofas, gathering paint samples and (most importantly) organising retirement homes, that I had hardly a second to sit at my machine.

In order to cope with the stress and the sheer wall of anger generated by house issues, our response has been, as far as possible, to pretend that the Regency Wreck doesn’t actually exist. Instead, we have tiptoed, hand in hand, into the realm of fantasy.

Not that nice, safe, unattainable variety of fantasy, mind you, but the sort that has a margin of realism, something that might actually be pulled off by those with stunning reserves of masochism, goodly sets of blinkers and at least one very impulsive adventure seeker (that would be me, the sort of adventure seeker who always forgets that adventures are hard. Incidentally, on hearing my (abbreviated) litany of woes, someone at potty training last week reminded me that I was even so lucky to be in my position. And, of course, she was absolutely right. I think the mistake is in expecting luck to always feel pleasurable).

In any case, the bummer of it all is that our bolt into fantasy still involves houses! Do you see what I mean by masochism? Is there no escape? Were we terrible destroyers of houses in other lives who have been set the task of making amends in this life? It’s bonkers, I tell you, and I watch aghast as we keep on doing the same thing, but keep on we do.

So this little jaunt into fantasy – it started as a throwaway line. The best and the worst things always seem to start with throwaway lines, don’t they? Some friends told us that a house in the Somerset countryside which we know well, which we used to walk past yearningly, had finally come onto the market. This was the house we dreamed about buying when we were properly grown up. It was the house we asked our friends about every year when we visited – had they heard anything about it, had it come on the market yet?

And now it was footloose and fancy free and seeking a dalliance with new people. Excuse me, all potential buyers – but that would be us. Begone, you scurvy knaves, get thee hence!

There are complications though. Always with the complications! One, a mere bagatelle, being the mountain of money it would take to secure this house. We would have to sell almost everything (including that house which will never be finished). We would have to go cantering over there quam celerrime. It would take upheaval of the most blithering variety. The Regency Wreck in comparison? Would be a doddle. A waltz in the proverbial park. But why let that stand in the way?

And while we were at it, drooling over our old love, we had a little look at other houses in the same area. They got bigger and madder the further we looked. We rediscovered our old fantasy of doing up a vast old wreck and running it as a hotel. If I tell you we got down to what we’d serve for breakfast and the fact that I’d need a studio to make the crockery, you’ll see how far gone we are. If you’re going to be sick, I tell you, be properly so.

There was this one, which utterly smote my heart:

But it’s near a busy road and the whole village can peer into your windows. But even so, look:

and

And then there was this little tootsie, which is already a hotel. In need of, of course, dosh and love. And, oh em gee, new bathrooms:

and

The problem with that one is that there’s a car breakers yard just over the hedge. So then we found another, this one already a hotel and one which Mr P has the decided hots for (me less so – it’s a tad masculine):

A grade 1 medieval number in need of a bit of colour and oomph

But alas alackikins, this one sits in the grounds of an agriculture college and has no land.

And there are more.

But I am off for supper. I’ll be back in short order with pictures of the sofas ordered, rugs ogled and that sort of thing. Tooraloo.

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Of visitations and kitchen islands.

Posted in Georgian houses, kitchen, Renovation, Uncategorized with tags Georgian house restoration, Hone Tuwhare, kitchen islands, pink, rain on March 31, 2013 by pimpmybricks

In just over 6 hours Mr P and I will be toddling off to the UK, for the visitation of parents (and the buying of sofas). Lawdy. All the manifold house balls hovering precariously in the air will somehow have to be brought in to land before then. The current crises (colour for the stairs, treatment for the floors) will have to be parked on little piles of crossed fingers in the hope that they’ll magically resolve themselves while we’re away.

Our run up to departure has been an interesting one. You know, interesting in the manner of the Chinese proverb.

Mr P’s car has developed a mysterious, and possibly fatal, illness. Yesterday, while bailing out his old wooden boat, which was sinking, Mr Pimp managed also to drown his phone. While he was busy drowning his phone, his tender slipped its tether and bobbed off down the harbour, leaving him stranded. When he got home, his new computer blew up. Miss P developed a stomach bug. And I sprained my ankle on those lovely flagstones in the basement and am hobbling round now like a cartoon crone with one ankle the size of a small watermelon. But you know what? There’s something almost relieving when the outside universe so closely mirrors the chaos of the internal. It renders it all quite funny, in a perverse sort of way. You just set your course and steer straight ahead. Battle on girls, battle on.

I don’t know about you, but when I’m a tad overwhelmed by things that need resolving, my mind tends to scuttle into one small corner of the chaos and concentrate on that. The corner du jour (du? de? Oh, who knows or cares?!) is the question of what colour to paint the kitchen island. Sadly, we’ve had to jettison my plans for a bronze island – rapidly diminishing piles of moolah for one thing, and for another the big black steel doors who commanded me not to introduce anything else dramatic into that space. And so it is this question of kitchen islands which comes in a rescue boat at 3 in the morning when I’m stranded on my island of wakeful lunacy and steers me off to saner waters. Though having said that, I’m contemplating pink. Is that utterly bonkers barmy, do you think?

So anyway, off we toddle in a few short hours. To say we’re unprepared for the trip is an understatement – packing so far is a pile of clothes plucked distractedly from their hangers and dumped unceremoniously on a chest of drawers. I do, however, know the whereabouts of my passport this time. Someone asked me to let them know in a post whether I found it, and if so where. So for the record, I did indeed find it (or rather, the redoubtable Mr Pimp did). At the farm. In, of all places, a filing cabinet. A filing cabinet! Who in their right minds would keep a passport in such an obvious place? Mine should have been in the glove drawer where it’s always been.

I’m hearing tales of frigid weather awaiting us in the UK and (apologies to all who’ve had a long hard Winter there) I’m relishing it with utter glee. Snow? Oh, yes please. Rain? Pure bliss. I can’t tell you how much I love English weather, especially the rain. This poem by Hone Tuwhare gets pretty close to explaining why

Rain

I can hear you
making small holes
in the silence
rain

If I were deaf
the pores of my skin
would open to you
and shut

And I
should know you
by the lick of you
if I were blind

the something
special smell of you
when the sun cakes
the ground

the steady
drum-roll sound
you make
when the wind drops

But if I
should not hear
smell or feel or see
you

you would still
define me
disperse me
wash over me
rain

Hone Tuwhare 1922-2008

(found on http://likeafieldmouse.com)

Tooraloo.

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Of walls and Herberts.

Posted in Uncategorized with tags georgian house, grey, paint, renovation, Trove on March 24, 2013 by pimpmybricks

Hola mis damas, mis caballeros, mis little castanets.

Oy vey. As far as silences go, this one has been an absolute doozie. Not only did I plunge headfirst off the blogging horse but said horse got so tired of waiting it pottered off to livelier pastures, raised a family, opened an organic oats business and then retired. And so here I am, mountless. But, you know, bisons is bisons and tradition is tradition and if I started too many posts without the statutory apols for slack tartishness, you’d think you too had wandered off to some other, more organised blog. So, dear Ladles and Jellyspoons all – (if there is, indeed, anyone out there still with half a cocked ear) – I bid you good morrow.

And the reason for my muteness? For one thing I’ve started back at what it amuses Ms Pimperletta to call my ‘potty training’.(http://northernbeachesceramics.wordpress.com/). So there you will find me from Monday to Wednesday, having a lovely old time making oddly gonadal shapes out of porcelain. You’ll also find me engrossed on many a night, strung like a looney between the twin swaying poles of dusk and dawn, wide awake and watching as images of clay go flowing in plastic glory across the night stage, and off into the flaring dark. You could call me obsessed. I am, for the nonce, much engrossed by the oddly sexual qualities of orchids, and am trying to render them in porcelain as fine and as translucent as my bumble-fingered skills allow. Let me show you what I mean:

And this, which reminds me somehow of monks at prayer, piety verging on the disconsolate:

And from Thursday to Sunday? There is the house. Natch. The dear old Regency Wreck. On the subject of which a little caveat, because there follows a short rant, so for those averse to such things, please avert your tender eyes now. Because I have to tell you – we are almost dunfer! We realised recently that it’s over two years since we bought the house and still there is no moving in date. In fact we have stopped thinking of moving in at all – it saves on the endless steeplechase of expectation and disappointment. Mr and Ms Pimp went so far as to join a gym just up the road from where we are renting, and Mr P and I are off for a month next week to visit family in the UK. We were going to do it in December, when we’d moved into the house, and then January when we’d moved into the house, and then February when ditto. And now we are just doing it. It has come to feel as if there has always been the house and there will always be the house. Endlessly demanding of door knobs and colours and cupboards and floor tiles and money and money and more money, and energy when the reservoir is dry… and yet never quite getting there. If I sound a little jaded, it is because I am. Jaded and absolutely cream crackered.

But (and you can look back now) – there are good bits. Because there are always good bits. We are poring over colours (about which, more anon), agonising over kitchens, ogling sofas. We are thinking what will go on walls. This all requires a certain suspension of disbelief when, you know, we are never going to live within said walls. We have found ourselves awash with thoughts of chinoiserie, for instance. Which was somewhat of a surprise. Had you once asked me whether we were a chinoiserie kind of mob I’d’ve said probs not. A bit fiddly, a bit schmancy, a bit opulent – for me at any rate. But Mr P, coming as he does from several generations of Orient-raised family, has always had a soft spot for it, and Miss P has recently joined in. And so I have taken up the challenge of sourcing something good, as cheaply as possible. I have been talking to China. Several months now of prolix and deeply frustrating emails which start off with a rush and then trickle into intermittence. Maybe I ask too many questions, maybe I’m too fussy with my requests to add/subtract a bit of bamboo, make the petals finer. But anyway, we’re getting there and I have learned an invaluable lesson – if you want to save money, you have to spend time (and patience, which is something I’m not renowned for).

Ms P favours something like this for her bedroom, though it has to be said that the bottom portion would be quite wasted, buried under tissues, clothes, shoes, papers, make up, and the general miscellany of what she calls her ‘floordrobe’:

And Pimpoh finds himself fancying something a bit like this:

or this:

Me, I like things a little plainer and a little simpler. It’s the old Wee Free in me. But even I have been carried away on the wave. Just a tad, of course, no deeper in than my knees. Because I like dark things I could, for instance, be persuaded to this. I’m currently trying to persuade Ms Pimp she wants a version of this for her bathroom. You know, to go with those dark tiles I’m so enamoured of, but she, she ain’t so convinced:

And talking of walls, there’s another thing (actually there is a whole firmament of other things, but let’s pretend there’s only one) – and that is this, the hallway:

I think there should be a little oomph when you open the front door. You know, a small trumpeting fanfare. And if you can’t afford a line-up of liveried rabbits, you’d best be thinking about getting your drama from the walls. Preferably the wall to the right in our case, which is actually a lot longer than it appears in the photograph. The problem is that the hallway and staircase also need to sing duets with the rest of the house which is going to be, for now at least, tricked up (or down) in those fugitive, atmospheric greys. You know, purple greys, brown greys, and their various assorted offspring. I have ditched, with some reservations, my addiction to moody, inky drama. It was pointed out to me that the house has a feeling of lightness (in the Enlightenment sense of the word) and that it would be good to go along with it. And that made sense to me. For now at any rate. We’ll see whether darkness makes its way in, a little pool here, a dark lake there. So in all probability the hallway and staircase will be grey also.

How to achieve a sense of drama, then.

There is good old grisaille, of course, and Mr Pimp is very fond of things like this:

And I have to admit, I can see how it might be fun to find an elephant calumphing along the hall when you stumble downstairs at cock call, all early morning frowsy and bleary of sight.

I had a passionate-ish tango with this offering from Trove. A panoply of old queens seemed quite the thing to come home to:

But then I discovered the price.

Still an arm and half a leg, I am having a bit of a pash with these:

Or, on a more sedate day, these:

But enough of such fripperies. Right now I must leap into the car and hurtle down the motorway to go bed shopping with Ms P, who is currently sleeping on a mattress on the floor. We shall be without the Herberts, who are staying at the farm with Eric the house sitter while we are in the UK. All of which is another story. Finding a sitter has been an education that sits alongside buying Chinese wallpaper. I have encountered aspects of humanity I had not previously met, even in my psychoanalytic practice. There were many lovely people who replied to my ad, and a few…what you might call eccentrics. One good lady, for instance, very kindly sent me photographs of her aura. But Eric seems solid enough, and the dogs are tentatively accepting of him (“what does his arrival mean, where are you going, can we come too?”). So off I go, guilty heart heavy, until another day…

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Bali bye.

Posted in Georgian houses, hallway, kitchen, Renovation, sandstone walls with tags failed holiday, georgian house renovation, kitchen renovation, steel doors, Ubud on January 28, 2013 by pimpmybricks

Eh bien Mesdames et M’sieurs. This was going to be a brief missive, the merest whiff of a post dashed off in haste as I winged my way out of the door and into a waiting aeroplane. Can’t you just see my suitcase trailing chiffon scarves and feel those kisses blown from my fingertips? (All very Isadora Duncan before the car trip, I know).

It has been a rather grim couple of months trudging through my crappy health issues, and as well as that there have been a couple of big parental health scares. When we arrived at my birthday a couple of weeks ago Mr Pimp, gawd luv ‘im, suggested we find a cheapie break and take ourselves off for a few days. And so we set our caps at Ubud. The plane was booked for this afternoon, the Herberts stowed, the suitcases packed, and we were more than ready to go.

Except. Except. A most exceptionable except.

My passport has gone missing!

It has vanished, seemingly, off the face of the earth. Gone off on a little sojourn of its own. Or, more likely, it was stuffed into a box when we packed up our old house and moved to this godforsaken tin can, and then taken to the farm. Where it now languishes in stygian gloom beneath lawd knows what boxed rubbish, and has grown tired of calling to us. So here we are, a half hour after we should have taken off, drowned and dismal and with the week ahead hanging off us like an extra skin. And I am feeling like the egregiously air headed flake that I sometimes am. Bali Hi? Sadly, I don’t sink so.

This was going to be our bedroom:

But anyway, that a leaves me with a whole swathe of unexpected leisure time in which to show you the latest bit of progress in the house. One, luckily, about which we are wildly enthusiastic. The pictures are a little dark because, ahem, I have a new camera (one birthday present which didn’t go wrong). A new and, I must confess, somewhat frightening camera. So frightening in fact that I felt quite unable to attach the flash (a flash that isn’t in-built? New to me). Anyway, when I get my confidence, we might all look forward to better pics. But now, Ladies and Gents, without any further paffing and faffing, I give you the steel doors (cue a bit of parping fanfare):

The picture above being from the hall into the kitchen and through to the door into the pantry. And below, into the pantry:

And from the kitchen into the dining room and hallway:

So that being done, I shall return to my sitting and thinking and failing to believe that anyone could really miss a holiday by dint of a disappearing passport. I mean, it’s absurd and unbelievable, isn’t it? (Even now I keep expecting it to sidle around a chair leg and waggle itself for attention). But actually, I have decided that we shall not sit here moping but gather ourselves up and go forth into the torrential rain and try to extract a bit of fun from this molten, silvery day. Tally ho!

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That was the year, that was.

Posted in bathrooms, Renovation with tags bathroom renovation, Georgian house restoration, Sydney Harbour on January 8, 2013 by pimpmybricks

So, 2012 was the year of Supreme Folly. The year when we started work on pretty much the worst house in the area and discovered it was even more dire than we’d imagined! It was the year when whole rooms were mere piles of sand and lumber, when floors collapsed, when walls revealed themselves to be nothing more than giant honeycombs of termites’ nests. It was the year of the Long Dark Night of the (restoration) Soul when more and more and yet more damage was pulled out of a hat by some malevolent magician until it became difficult to see how the house had not collapsed internally into a pile of steaming rubble. We were stretched further than we ever have been with a restoration (and there have been seven of them) – mentally, financially, and most of all, emotionally. Looking back at the end of the year, we had to ask ourselves the inevitable question – would we have done it if we’d known? And the honest answer? Probably not. Maybe not.

But the fact remains that we have started, and having started, we must continue. (And besides which, we still love that bloody house). So armed with our one solitary New Year’s Resolution, the only one we could logically make – to survive! – and with pith helmets firmly clamped on, stiff uppers in place, our hysterical gibbering selves closeted once more in the….closet?… we’re ready for the final onslaught. May it not be too bloody. At least not after the floors have been laid.

So ladies, gents and mint juleps, I think it’s time for another little snapshot of progress.

Please allow me to introduce to you the Jungle Lav. So named because Esteemed Architect originally conceived of it as a sort of high-up, diminutive conservatory, a verdant eerie where we could take tea of a Sunday afternoon and have a natter. You know – our ears nuzzled by potted palms, our cake dusted with fern spores; that kind of thing. All of which was a wonderfully evocative idea until the humdrum clamour of waterworks started up and it was decided the room should retain its waterclosetory function as a guest bathroom. As they say, you can never be too rich, too thin or have too many bathrooms. Especially if you might need to sell the house in a hurry on your way to the debtors’ gaol or the insane asylum.

Here is how we found it – an utter joy to behold.

It had a sheet lead floor which, in our enthusiasm, we thought we’d seal and keep until OH&S and the builder intervened and it was escorted from the premises under armed guard. It also had a polystyrene ceiling. With nary a stretch you could reach up and inscribe your name or football team with a fingernail – imagine!

But what you can’t see from these pictures is that when enthroned you gaze out onto this:

Nice, innit?

When the conservatory idea was set aside the idea of its glass roof remained, which has had an unexpected boon. On the landing outside there is this rather handsome window which lost the bottom section of itself when the Jungle Lav was originally built (the JL being an early extension).

You can see how it relates to the JL:

Somehow, the exact manner yet to be determined, the new glass roof will free the window from its truncated state and allow the bottom portion to be re-instated.

And here is the jungle lav as it now is, in all its transitional glory. We put in a black and white stone floor. Thuper cheap. The border is not a border but water proofing, bee tee dubs. The hound, however, is a hound:

The glass roof (above). And ditto the yellow – it too is water-proofing.

Here are the tiles. I’m not so sure I like them. In fact I’m quite sure I don’t much like them. I don’t think they sing from the same song sheet as the floor tiles. They were a decision made very quickly, in the sense of ‘let me out of here’, at the end of a verrrrrrrry long session in the tile shop. I always meant to cancel them and think again, but didn’t because I got buried under a mountain of other decisions that needed to be made at the same time. Lesson to self – if everyone’s screaming at you for tile choices and you haven’t made one – get a pair of noise cancelling headphones and carry on thinking.

But that being said, I have hopes the basin might bring them together:

It’s a little bit Biedermeier. It’s a little bit cast iron. And it was a little bit cheap – ten per cent of its original price. So obviously, it was a done deal, innit?

And that, said John, is that (for today). I need to gather myself for the onslaught of the weather – we are promised bush fires and temperatures of 40/104 degrees. And I need to attend to my other New Year’s Ressie (I lied) – which was to make the bed before lunch time. Every single day. Toodlepip.

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The King is dead – long live the King!

Posted in Uncategorized on January 1, 2013 by pimpmybricks

If, like Mr Big here, you’re plum-tuckered out from all the partying, renovating, or just plain whatevering, I wish you a chill New Year’s Day. The chillest.

To everyone who reads this blog, who trots along with me on this lunatic steeplechase journey of ups and downs, who forgives my periods of silence while missing in action, who nudges me when I’ve been silent too long – thank you. Thank you for your patience, your advice and your humour. Gawd knows, I need all three! May this coming new year bring us all goodly dollops of health, fortitude, generosity, and a lot of what we wish for. X

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Rush rushery and a few ‘during’s.

Posted in bathrooms, Renovation, silver with tags copper bath, georgian house, restoration, Sydney, tiles on December 24, 2012 by pimpmybricks

Enter stage right, a small figure scuttling beyond the spotlight to slide a wrapped package unobtrusively onto the floor .

Greets, Ladles and Jellyspoons. I know! I’m late as the proverbial plate yet again, and this is my very last chance to slide a leetle sumsing in before most of the world shuts down tomorrow. Apols for going awols. You know the drill by now. You’ve read the headlines so many times before – “Struggling restorers sink into pits of black despair as more termite damage and cracked lintels are uncovered in inner Sydney Regency Wreck…” It being blogland and all, and moreover blogland approaching Christmas, I have been loathe to come and spread my glooms abaht the place. No Bah Humbuggery here!

But wait, because in amongst all the doom and gloom, in all the tearing of hair and gnashing of teeth (they are mere stumps I tell you), there has been the occasional sighting of that rare and lesser spotted beast – p.r.o.g.r.e.s.s. Which is serendipitous because I’ve received a few requests for during shots and I’m nothing if not attentive to requests (unless, of course, you require me to don tutu and dance the Nutcracker Suite, in which case I would have to demur in the cause of Public Order).

Tubby strictly honest I’ve also dawdled a bit because progress shots are so…well… incomplete somehow and every time Ive seen said piece of modest progress I’ve had the feeling that if I only waited another day or so those tiles may have been cleaned of grout to reveal their lustrous sheen, or the showers might have arrived. Or this or that or the other. But work has now stopped for the holidays and nothing will happen until the New Year, and so without further procrastination I offer up a few morsels for your delectation.

But because we’re in the act of flinging a few things into bags and scurrying up to the farm, I’ll spread them over a few days, if that’s permissible. Herewith, today’s little ration.

This unprepossessing little room was earmarked by HRH Princess Pimp as her bathroom:

She wanted it dark. And by gum she’s getting it dark:

Those tiles – they are tho thexy. The patch of light you can see to the left is the window in the pic above, which will be transformed into steel and glass doors onto a tiny Juliet Balcony from where, if you turn your head to the right, you’ll get an eyeful of the Harbour Bridge. This was granted us by the Powers That Be because there was once a balcony on the back bit of the house. Precedence – thou art a wondrous thing.

And while we’re on the subject of tiles, let me show you this place of unaccustomed glam, which is the en suite. The very en suite which, if you remember that far back, may never have come to pass. Which may have remained, if the purists had ruled the day, a mere twinkle in my eye as I hauled myself down four flights to use the bucket in the back garden.

This is it before:

We would have preferred to keep the wooden floor but here in Uh Straya such things are verboten. We bought the limestone tiles as a job lot for $50 a crate at a rather sad liquidation sale a couple of years ago. In the cause of full disclosure I should say sad for them, lustful for us.

Avec crazy bath and the fireplace stripped back to metal:

et the lav and basin:

These are the very tiles which are still smeared with dried grout and don’t yet reveal their shimmery glory, but here’s a patch that have been cleaned:

I must admit that when I first saw the bathrooms I was a little shocked. I feared we had imposed too much on the house and felt we should maybe have found a way to minimise our impact. But someone said the other night that they could still see the beauty of the rooms, even though they’ve been rendered functional, and I was glad to hear that.

So anyway. That’s the lot for today. I sit here in my pre-breakfast frowsiness on the unmade bed while the day outside gathers itself for a full-frontal furnace assault. I must up, up and away before the roads melt and become a shimmering mirage. Laters, potaters XX