Camberwell in the Evening Standard

On my train ride home on Wednesday evening I was excited to see a feature on Camberwell in the Evening Standard. Apparently our street is one of the 'most beautiful in the City'!

Herzlichen Glueckwunsch Margret!

We hope you have a wonderful day! Sorry we are not in Brittany with you and Lothar this time to celebrate.

Draught Proofing Windows

As our building is Grade II listed we are not allowed to change our single glazed double hung sash windows (not that we'd want to anyway!). The only options for us to improve the thermal performance of our windows for the winter are:

a) Get slim line double glazing inserted into the existing timber frames and re-balance the counterweights (Expensive, and requires a specialist)
b) Replace the parting beads between sashes and the staff beads framing the window with new ones with integrated draught exclusion brushes.

As our building has moved over time, the biggest heat loss is from around the window frames where there are large gaps to the exterior, so having the draught beads will make a big difference.

Our friend Julie recently did the same thing to her Victorian sash windows and found this company to provide the beads, so Ive been measuring up the windows and beads to place an order. http://www.reddiseals.com

Bedroom Window Stripping

Today Flo has been busy stripping the paint to the window surrounds in the bedroom. The exposed wood makes it looks as though we've got two church pews in our room!

Living Room Windows

Flo started stripping the paint around the window surrounds in the living room today. Its really the only major piece of work left in this room to complete (that and the radiator cover cabinet). We had delayed this work so we could do all the windows at once as we are going to draught proof them too.

Island of Paint

Ive spent two evenings this week finishing up stage 1 of the shutter refurbishment. This involved scraping off the bits of paint that didnt come off when we had them stripped, and then adding wood filler to all the cracks and holes. On this little island of paint I can count 15 layers, from the oldest to newest:

Peach, pale blue, white, beige, lavender, cream, emerald green, forest green, turquoise, sand, white, sand, sky blue, white and cream.

After all those exciting vivid green and blue years it seems almost a shame to paint them a simple warm grey... but never mind Ive got some ideas for how to add some colour to the room.

Congratulations Trevore & Ros

This weekend we celebrated Trevore and Rosaylan's wedding in London. After the ceremony in Islington Town Hall we went to St Chad's place for the dinner, drinks and dancing in the evening. It was great to catch up with all my old colleagues from John McAslan & Partners.

Steel backflap hinges

This whole timber shutter refurbishment has been a lesson in cabinetry ironmongery for me. The next thing I learnt was what a 'back flap hinge' was. This is a hinge which can fold back on itself - needed for our bi-panel shutters. As you can see from the photo the originals were covered in paint and rusting around the edges and in need of replacement so after many various samples, we finally found a close match.

Bedroom Reminder

Here is what our bedroom looked like the day after we moved in. We're not there yet, but we've come a long way!

Bedroom Fireplace

Here you can see the finished fireplace and the progress we've made in the bedroom. In the end we opted to choose the warm light grey for the fireplace rather than the dark grey as we came up with the idea to match it to the shutters and we thought dark shutters may be too much contrast.

There's still a lot of work to do in the bedroom (the floor, windows and shutters), but we're getting there slowly.

Bedroom Fireplace Tiles

Here is a sneak preview of our bedroom fireplace which we painted this weekend. I have one more coat to put on and will post images of the final product once its all finished. In the meantime however, here is a detail showing the butter coloured tiles surrounding the bedroom fireplace.

The tiles have a cracked 'crazing' pattern on them while the living room fireplace tiles do not. We arent sure if they were installed like this or whether it happened over time if perhaps this fireplace was used more than the other.

Hottest Summer in 80 Years!

We've had a wonderful summer this year in London - it has been the hottest month since 1976, and the hottest first six months of the year in 80 years. In other words its been like a typical Toronto or Chicago summer with temperatures in the 30C's but without as much air conditioning.

Here is a photo I took in East Dulwich Sainsbury's (our local big grocery store) yesterday afternoon - the ice cream section had been entirely emptied! So instead of ice cream for dessert, we made grilled bananas with chocolate and toasted marshmallows on the BBQ last night. mmmmmm....

Cabin Hooks

It took us a while to figure out that the metal clasps to keep the shutters closed were called 'Cabin Hooks'. We tried searching on the internet for shutter closers, window clasps, shutter locks, window latches, and throw over bolts before visiting the local hardware shop to find out their real name.

After a bit of internet searching we finally found these 100mm satin finish aluminium ones which are perfect! They arrived in the post on Friday.

We are going to paint the shutters the same light grey that we used for the front door which is shown in the photo (Farrow & Ball - Colour 228 - Cornforth White). I cant wait to see how it will look all done, but there is a lot of work to do before then.

Window Shutters

When we had the doors stripped in January, we had the internal window shutters done at the same time. Until now they have been sitting in a pile behind the wardrobe waiting for their turn to be restored.

Today we figured out which shutter goes with which window (as they are all slightly different) and started patching in the cracks, chips and dents. It will be a long process, with 3 pairs of shutters comprising 12 wooden panels, but at least we've started!

London Visitors

We had a great June starting with a little getaway to Norderney, followed by a run of visitors every weekend to give us a valid excuse to put the renovations on hold for a month and get out to enjoy the city we live in! Today we made a plan of action... tomorrow the works start again.

Happy Canada Day!

Here is a photo taken in the Bruce Peninsula area of Ontario, Canada which I took last summer.