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CHRISTMAS2

I’m not sure which is more shocking. The fact that it will be Christmas again in just over two weeks or that I haven’t blogged since March!?! Both Christmas and blogging are stressful and time consuming and involve a lot of preparation behind the scenes before the final reveal. Are you ready for Christmas yet!?

Anyway, as you can see, Christmas has come slightly early at Obsessilicious Towers. I was already in the process of doing my Christmas decorations, which are the hand painted wooden balls below, when I was asked by Pinterest if I would like to do a Christmas lunch table inspiration board for their Pin Picks. Of course I said yes straight away. Any excuse to do more pinning.

You can view the ‘Your best ever Christmas Dinner’ Pin Picks board here and you can view my Christmas board here.

I LOVE Christmas but it has to be a minimal affair. I’m still haunted by the abundance of tinsel and miles of foil decorations from my childhood. My mother had the attitude of it’s Christmas so we must cover everything with tinsel! I now hate it with a passion.

So yesterday it was carnage in our apartment because I decided to do a mini photo shoot. The mess off camera was horrific! We still have our old corner unit which we need to get rid off before Christmas because I’ve only gone and got my hands on my absolute dream sofa…a grey B&B Italia Charles corner unit! It’s one gorgeous monster! More pics very soon…I promise!

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I’ve gone for a black, white grey and copper look this year. I came across the copper baubles on Cox & Cox and couldn’t resist them. The grey tray is by Hay and I bought the wooden candle holders from the MoMA store in New York last year. The napkins are from Ikea, crockery by John Rocha and the cutlery and glasses are Alessi.

A special shout out has to go to my friend Helen who got her hands on the small taper candles for my Nagel candle holders in the background.

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The balls are so simple to do. I bought them from Craftshapes and they are very inexpensive at five for £5.97 for the smaller ones and the larger ones are £3.97 each. All you will need is your chosen paint colours, gaffa tape and some small paintbrushes. I used a grey match pot, black and white paint that I already had and I bought a tube of copper acrylic. You could use masking tape but I found I got a much cleaner edge to each section of colour using gaffa tape. I will be adding small eyelet hooks to others to use on the tree.

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I made the wreath on the sideboard. I first saw them on Etsy and then by chance whilst trawling the internet for pics to pin on my Christmas Pinterest board I came across a great tutorial on Vintage Revivals on how to make one using plastic drinking straws.The wire and straws used to make it came to a grand total of approximately £4. I may make another one and spray it copper to hang on our front door.

Good luck and have fun if you are going to try your hand at creating your own decorations.

Have a fantastic Christmas everyone!

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mid century modern unit 1

Well we have at last taken the plunge and invested in a new unit for our lounge to house all of those pesky cables and ever growing collection of gadgets. The unit I cobbled together about eight years ago from left over wall cabinets from our kitchen and mdf had served us well but was overflowing with game consoles, an amp, bluray player, Freeview box etc and miles of cables.

I started designing the new unit early last Summer and had imagined it in every conceivable way over the years but I always went back to the idea of a very long low slung sideboard. From wall to wall it’s five metres wide so it was going to be one hell of a sideboard! It had to be minimal with a Mid Century vibe but ultimately a look that was timeless and wouldn’t date. Hopefully that’s what I’ve achieved.

Below is the final image I came up with. There were other ideas along the way, it originally had three separate units which each had two sliding doors but I ditched that idea in favour of three very large doors that can run from unit to unit. Our carpenter did a great job of interpreting it, it’s almost exactly the same.

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The image below may well shock you to the core. Yes we did indeed own those vile magenta pink leather sofas! Well, when I say “we”, what I mean is is that they belonged to my partner before we got together. Did you seriously think I would ever consider buying something as monstrous as those abominations!? My partner loved them and it took me quite a while to wear him down but eventually after a drunken lunch he agreed to get rid of them. What a huge sigh of relief that was!

We’d been living in our flat for about two weeks when that pic was taken. You can see the faded pink shag pile carpet in all its disgusting glory, it took me the best part of a day to cut it into strips, roll it up and cart it down three flights of steps to the skip. The ceilings are quite low anyway but the artex and coving made them appear even lower. It felt very oppressive. The wall to the left with the radiator was eventually removed to make the stairs and hallway more open and part of the lounge area. The anaglypta wallpaper was an absolute nightmare to remove and I think it had even been superglued in places! What you can’t make out in the pic is the subtle shades of pink and grey in the wallpaper and that the whole lot was embedded with glitter! I often wonder if the place had been used to film porn films back in the 80’s!

BEFORE 2

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I thought long and hard about what to do with the wall above the units. One thing for sure was that it would have to come forward to hide a strange protruding corner running the height of the wall on the right hand side. I also wanted hidden lighting to run the length of the wall at the top.

A plastered stud wall was considered along with a tiled wall but ultimately carrying the walnut up from the units was the only way to go. They can be removed though, the carpenter came up with an ingenious idea of using split batons attached to the back of the six panels and they hang on a framework attached to the wall. So if we ever become bored of the wood we can simply remove and replace it with something else. There is also a gap running the whole length between the units and the wall panels enabling us to bring up a cable at any point along the wall.

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The design of the handles was a complete and utter headache and I’m sure I must have driven the carpenter insane! I changed my mind so many times. They were going to be round drilled holes at one point but it kept niggling me that they would look a bit too obvious. The final design is a simple recess, each door is the same with one handle on the bottom left and the other on the the top right. I love how the handles line up when the doors meet.

Although the entire design was left up to me (thankfully!), my partner David did have a few requests including lots of cutouts inside the units for cables. They had to be big enough to pass a plug through for the many extension sockets needed to power everything. The beast of an amp is now on a pull out shelf which makes it so much easier to gain access to the plethora of cables plugged into the back of it.

So that’s the the first floor of our flat complete…apart from replacing the patio doors and windows…updating the look of the kitchen doors and drawers…maybe changing the corner unit…oh and I may paint the grey wall in the lounge a darker shade of grey. It never really ends, does it?…

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AALOUNGE1

Aflooring1Well I’ve been saying for so long that we needed to replace our flooring and we’ve gone and done it at last! We haven’t just replaced the first floor of our flat either, we took the plunge and decided to do the upstairs at the same time! There were moments leading up to the start of the work when I thought what the hell have we signed up for!

We had been looking for the ideal floor for a few years, we’d considered engineered wood flooring, real wood flooring, resin, microscreed and polished concrete. There were negatives with all of them especially the resin, microscreed and polished concrete because we live on the top three floors of an apartment block and the cost implications were huge plus the added cost of getting the materials up all of the stairs (we don’t have a lift!). Then by chance we spotted a very large floor tile on an Australian interiors show called The Block. I started digging around the internet straight away to see who the manufacturer was and if they were available in the UK. Low and behold we had bought tiles from the same company before for our kitchen and bathroom floors! I phoned our local independent tile warehouse Glamorgan Tiles and yes they were able to ship them from Italy! We were on the floor of cloud nine.

The tiles are porcelain and are made to look like concrete and very convincing they are too. They’re also heavy and very large measuring 60 x 120 cm! They are made by an Italian company called Viva Ceramica and as I said we already had their tiles in our kitchen and bathroom so we knew the quality was very good. They’re certainly not cheap but we did get a very handsome discount. Unfortunately we did have a lot of tiles that had chipped corners and couldn’t be used and on top of that the Italian factory closed down for two weeks for the annual holiday. The tilers had finished upstairs and the lounge, hallway and bathroom downstairs but we were left with a half finished floor in the kitchen and dining area. It was a very frustrating and long four weeks waiting for the replacement tiles to arrive and the tilers to be able to fit us in to finish the job.

The tiling company we used are a local company called RDL Tiling Services, they will travel all over the UK so if you need someone I would highly recommend them. The job they’ve done for us is superb and I think you all know how picky I am!

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It took four men most of the day to bring up 132sq metres of tiles, countless bags of adhesive and grout etc up to our flat on the third floor.

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Ironically our flat more or less looked finished before I ripped up the laminate flooring. We had a few problems to solve including where the wall used to be which we removed about six years ago. Nothing a bit of self levelling compound can’t solve though.

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We had to move out for a week but luckily for David he was away with work for most of it. I did spend a few nights on my own on a mattress amongst the devastation of the flat.

It’s so nice to be rid of the laminate that I put down twelve years ago and now have uniform floors throughout. Yes it was madness, complete mayhem at times and a long hard slog but it was most definitely worth it.

Oh, did I mention that we also decided to add the ripping out and re-tiling of our en-suite to the job? We were going to be replacing the floor in there so we thought we may as well…then we decided to replace the shower, the taps, the washbasin…lot’s more pics coming soon…

ESU1 ESU2I eluded to having bought something in my last post and I was waiting for it to be delivered, well it’s finally arrived! An Eames ESU and just look at it in all it’s glory.

I was doing my usual daily wander through Ebayland and there it was. I gasped. They don’t come up very often at all so I was surprised to see one.I managed to get my hands on it for £900 which is still a lot of money but considering they retail new for just over £1800 I think I got a sort of a bargain…well that’s what I’m telling myself anyway.

It may look quite flimsy but let me tell you they are surprisingly heavy and awkward especially when you are trying to maneuver it up four flights of stairs. It took a while.

I’ve bought it for the chill out side of my office and it fits in perfectly. It’s everything I wanted it to be and more. I’m a very happy Eames bunny.