This project stemmed from my Man Cave side project (still ongoing), which was made necessary by Franco being forcibly ejected from Office 1.0 to make way for Francine and her humongous printer in m’ Lady’s Chamber (side project D).
Our upstairs ceilings have always been in a poor state with scrim tape becoming detached from several plasterboard joints. The ceiling in Bedroom #3, destined to be my Man Cave, was poor but that in Bedroom #2, destined to remain a bedroom, was dreadful. Since the ceilings are covered in that horrible 60s Artex crap, I took the opportunity to get Builder Man back to knock off all the pimples, apply new sticky scrim tape over the joints and skim both ceilings with beautiful flat, smooth plaster.
To make way for Builder Man, the old bedside cabinets and cheap, white, rickety, MFI-style wardrobe got broken up and went to the tidy tip – sorry, Household Waste Recycling Centre – complete with nasty pink-ish carpet.
Drastic clearing out is really very therapeutic. There are times when I’ve wanted to hire a huge skip, fill it with everything from inside the house and start again with a clean slate.
Right, rip off the outmoded wall paper for Builder Man to do his ceiling thing, let the plaster dry, then paint the fresh ceiling white and the walls in Francine’s corporate Wimborne White. Much, much better.
Without breaking the ever-diminishing bank account, we think we’ve managed to improve on the rickety MFI-style wardrobe [I suppose it should be Ikea, these days] from Lucas Furniture who have a fancy new showroom in Aylesbury.
Headboards are a problem for me. I really don’t like headboards like wrought iron gates with metal bars that dig into your head. Neither do I like padded, upholstered affairs that get greasy and discoloured. Whatever they are, I don’t care for headboards attached to the bed, either – they are never rigid enough and bang against the wall. [Keep smutty comments to yourselves.] No, IMO a headboard should be fixed to the wall. Francine found an oak effect hard headboard that would be cleanable, looked OK and, though it was designed to attach to the bed, I thought a modification would get it secured to the wall.
The headboard arrived wrapped in cardboard and with foam corner protectors taped to it on the inside. I set about my rudimentary carpentry to modify the fixings. Once done, I removed the corner protectors only to discover that one corner had not been adequately protected; it had clearly been smacked on that corner, possibly dropped on it, which was cracked and distorted a little. A tell tale scrap of laminate was embedded in the foam.
“Bother”, said Franco, crossly.
I’d already done my carpentry so returning it seemed a less than possible solution. However, Francine sent an explanatory note to the supplier, HomeFittings.co.uk, a.k.a.Hughes Furniture Ltd, a Northern Irish outfit operating through Amazon. They were terrific. They said that, since it was damaged, they’d ship us a replacement straight away; they didn’t even want our photographic evidence. My modified fixings would go straight onto the replacement headboard. Result!
True to their word, the replacement headboard arrived this morning sans damage. My modified fixings worked a treat.
Now for the pièce de résistance, the bedding. You just have to check this out; it could’ve been designed just for me. This is Sophie Allport Dragonfly bedding. How great is that? [Well, not great at all if you’re not addicted to dragonflies, of course.]
Sophie must be a very classy lady. Look, the kitchen, our main project, hasn’t missed out either:
Here’s the finished side project E, Franco’s West Wing retreat with personalised bedding. 🙂
Looks ace and very, very appropriate.