Divided kids shared bedroom

3 November 2023

The time had come to try and work out better arrangements for the children now that my daughter is 11 and my son is 7.

It's really tricky when you don't have enough bedrooms (two bed flat). I can remember always wanting my own room at that age too, so I know how important it is to have at least some personal space to call your own. With very limited funds, I have done this to their room. I looked around the internet a lot for some inspiration but couldn't really find much, so I thought I'd post about it here in case anyone else is in the same boat and could get any ideas.

I am at least lucky enough that the room has two windows. I didn't want to do anything permanent or costly, so I found some dividers that can be moved around to suit them, and can make a completely enclosed room if needed (I found everything on amazon and Ikea).

I also took down their bunk beds, and bought two singles with storage space underneath for their clothes.

I had this old table in the garage so I painted it up for my son to use.

The beds took up more space than I was expecting!

This is where you walk into the room. (I took these before hoovering, oops!)

Love this new alpine bedding for my boy...

Otter is also very impressed with the quality of her new room(s)!

I found these ladder style shelves very cheaply online and they are great for small spaces.

And this that she can fill up with her collection of stationery. It has wheels so really handy to tuck in a small gap.

Big boy desk!

I hope this arrangement will do for a couple of years at least!

...This was how it was before, I loved it but I know times are changing and kids grow.

Btw this paint was Farrow and Ball (Light Blue) but it showed up the bad plastering of the walls and it had a very patchy finish which after removing all the blue tack, looked dreadful. It was also a lot darker than it appears here. For more practical reasons I painted it white.

I'm going to sell the bunk beds. So sad! : (

The End.

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New Summer Jewellery

30 June 2023

Hello! It's been a long time since I was last here, I have been swimming in the sea and making jewellery...that's about it.

A few years ago, when I was in the midst of divorce and selling our home and ultimately leaving my job, I wrote a post about how I was going to start my own small business and hoped to buy my own home, with a jewellery studio and go swimming and have a simple (and peaceful) life for me and the children. Well a few years down the line I can confirm that it is now the reality!

Sometimes it is a little too peaceful! but I can live with that ; )

It has been so warm here, we've been feeling very lucky indeed, so I've astounded myself by actually being quite productive in making a few new items for the shop, whilst also spending a lot of time at the beach.

During the making of Only Through Shadows, I have really enjoyed looking at symbolism and folklore in history. A lot of which revolves around nature and how that relates to our human lives, proof that the importance of our natural world has had in the evolution of our varied civilisations around the globe, and which continues today.

The newest items I have been working on have been an example of that, here's lots of pictures! (click on the photos to see them in the shop)...

Come visit me here! Only Through Shadows

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Project: Kitchen 2

26 February 2023

This week I have finally been ticking a few jobs off my never ending to-do list. It is not the most exciting thing in the world, to write about, but I was finding myself scouring the Internet for this kind of subject so I'm thinking that someone out there might find this useful?

If you've been following my diy flat redecorating, then you'll know that I have already painted everything in my kitchen when I moved in, (you can read about that here if you like)

I didn't do anything about the vinyl flooring before as I ran out of money : (

It's not so offensive (if you like beige) and it's quite new (except I ripped a hole in it when I moved the washing machine), but it's a bit...meh.

I found these on amazon - Floor Pops (I'm not paid for this btw) they are Lino floor tiles with self adhesive backing. Sort of liked how bright they are considering I'm not a fan of patterned walls and floors generally speaking as I'm a bit boring like that. My Flat is Edwardian so I though these looked in keeping with the windows and doors.

After much hoovering and scrubbing, you can lay them on existing flooring. Great for renters I think! They cost me about £100 but I way over ordered and have 30% left over, that's cheaper than a rug.

You just basically peel off the back and stick em down! Cutting the curved fiddly bits was much easier using strong scissors (I found this out at the end) rather than a Stanley knife. Also, I found that a few didn't stick down perfectly as my floor has wonky old floorboards underneath, so I will have to go round with a strong glue for those ones later.

Overall I'm pretty happy with it, much easier and cheaper than ordering a roll of vinyl, and more practical than having exposed floor boards (which I would love but I am an upstairs neighbour).

It took me five hours and I did have strangely aching thigh muscles the next day, I think anyone could do this job.

Much brighter I think! The above photo shows the bathroom next door which has a similar grey vinyl flooring. I painted it with a white floor paint for laminate (you can read about that here if its useful)

That was nearly two years ago now and it still looks the same. I didn't paint the kitchen floor just because it gets a lot more wear from furniture legs.