Taking care of our teak garden furniture

It's got to the time of year when we almost expect the weather to be good hasn't it?  And by good, I mean warm enough to sit in the garden without adding an English summer 'layer' (aka a cardy) and generally over the past few weeks, I think we've done ok.  

As ever some days have been better than others, but it's also clear that our garden furniture has also seen better days.  Pondering this I realised it's been a while since I spent an afternoon sprucing it up.  But, I think it's getting to the time to give it some more attention, don't you?

Teak garden furniture is a classic, but yet on-trend choice for garden furniture, we've had this set since 2008 and apart from that one scrub have done very little with it.  We should do more, I'm sure but the silvering has a certain appeal, and if I'm honest you forget how good it looks when it's cleaned and spruced up.

This year for the first time that I can remember I've moved our houseplants out into the garden, and they seem to be really enjoying it.  But as you can see, they'd look better if the table had some care.  But it's relatively easy to give teak outdoor furniture some TLC and improve its looks and longevity, and it's a task this time I'll be delegating to MOH (he doesn't know yet!)

I read somewhere that it's going to be a good year for strawberries this year, and so far that prediction has been proven right.  We're currently in strawberry overload from the plot and the plants we have in our garden are also producing fruits, which they don't always do.  I love a strawberry or two, so I'm very much in the "long may it continue" camp - what about you?

MOH though is getting to the "what strawberries and cream again" point so let me know your best ways of using a glut of strawberries.

STRAWBERRIES - YUM!

We're off to Gardeners' World Live tomorrow and I'm fully expecting to be "assaulted" by lots of loveliness, for the garden and for my tummy, as there's also entry to BBC Good Food Live too.  It's my first time at the show, so it'll be interesting to compare it to both the house and garden shows I've been to this year.  

But I bet I'll see plenty of garden furniture, and I bet plenty of it will be teak too.

* This is a collaborative post, but all views are my own.

Reclamation at Grand Designs Live

One of the new additions at this year’s Grand Designs Live was a reclamation area with items from Lassco and English Rose kitchens on display. I would love to spend hours (and no doubt hours more) perusing a whole market like this, so was really pleased to take a legitimate wander around in a "well-we're-here-dear-we-should-take-a-look" kind of way.  You see MOH is much less of a ‘make do’ kind of person (and I mean that in a make do and mend way) and likes to have good quality items, that last. I think that's great, but for some items I like to think I’m more adaptable and open to reclaimed items, and have a much more flexible approach to fittings and furnishings with character, which at times can be tricky, but usually we end up with a compromise. 

I think the closest I've got him to a salvage yard is Maltby Street Market, but when it's been turned into a hip weekend market and usually involves a burger and cakes, actually we haven't even done that for a while...  

But presented with a whole area of the show dedicated to recycling and reuse I was keen to make the most of the opportunity.  I’d also been lured over by the brass knobs and pretty tiles, yes I can be such a magpie...

MOH soon picked up though when there were lights to look at, not necessarily these, as these are far too pretty, and too small for MOH’s big sell (to me) project.  I liked the fluted shade, and the brown wire though, but they wouldn’t do for our dining area, as they're too delicate, but would be great over a dressing table or as bedside lights. One day, we may find a light we agree on - I haven't given up hope!

I was enthralled by this old gymnasium flooring, MOH humoured me, and I know while he made sympathetic noises that really he’d be trying to peel or clean off the sticky markings around the red sections. Seriously. I once bought a bottle of wine that came covered in dust, on purpose, he dusted it...

This would make great flooring in a high traffic area wouldn’t it?  I'd be wondering where it came from, what sports and sports men and women had played on it, and if it had played host to any famous trainers.  

Ah, more brass knobs!  Rose brass no less, I didn’t even know that was a thing - but it does look great, and so do the pink patterned tiles. 

In the English Rose kitchen display, it was knobs of another kind that caught my eye.  These traditional shaped, but colourful handles made me smile - we don't have kitchen handles like this anymore do we?  Well in fact, I don't have any kitchen handles at all in our kitchen, and (obviously) I like that too.

The kitchen units which had been spruced up looked great, it's not a kitchen that I would go for but I admired how it'd been given a new lease of life and brought up to date with a modern look and feel.

Clearly there's still some work to do on this one!

But look at the shape of the units above, our local kitchen shop has this very shape units in its window, so it just goes to show that quite often styles come back into vogue, even in homewares.

I mentioned lights before and this is the one thing that I think MOH would happily have a reclaimed piece without any questions, in fact we'd both happily have something like the one pictured below if we had the space, and if we didn't already have two standard lights.

It's the style of lights pictured below that we disagree on.  It's not that I don't like them, but I'm not convinced by the amount of light they give out and think one chunky light while looking industrial above the table, isn't really the look I want - and I'd be concerned that it would fall on my table!  

The green enamel type lights in the background are also good but I'd want to be convinced by the light a single pendant gives out, I think these would look better in a row of three, and that means more work and making holes in the ceiling which I'm less keen on.  That's really our dilemma, wanting something more modern than we currently have but not compromising how much light it gives out.

We'll get there, and in the meantime we'll have fun looking at many, many lights, reclaimed or not!

Let’s talk bathroom trends and dream bathrooms

At this year's Ideal Home Show, as well as the wellness bathroom room set, bathrooms were much in evidence as I stumbled across a further three bathroom room sets towards the back of the show.  I wasn't expecting to find them, but it's always great to get as much inspiration as possible when at shows like this, and the extra room sets (there were two more kitchens too) did go some way to make up for there not being any garden “room sets” at the show. 

I've been sorting through my photos from the past few months - there are too many, I'm starting to think I should show some restraint, but I also know that's unlikely to happen - and I saw the photos and thought they would fit in nicely with a post on my dream bathroom.  You know how much I like a loo or two, so it makes a change to think about the rest of the room.

In case MOH is reading I should say I'm not looking to update either of our bathrooms in the near future before he has a bit of a cold sweat, but of course that doesn't stop me looking and taking a whirl around the trends in bathrooms this year.  I also know that if we were even thinking about updating our bathrooms, he'd be pushing for a wet room.

We toyed with the idea of a wet room before, but although we were keen it was a while ago (more than ten years!) and the concept wasn't as normal as it is now, and the relative newness in a domestic setting dissuaded us, along with the additional work that we were sure our bathroom would need. Instead we opted for the shallowest shower tray we could get (and afford).  It's not as shallow as the one in the photo below, from one of the extra room sets I mentioned above, in the Industrial bathroom and would, I think, still be in the running for our bathroom.

THE INDUSTRIAL BATHROOM ROOM SET AT THIS YEAR'S IDEAL HOME SHOW

I like the geometric patterns, and the mix of tiles too.  So I'd be keen to adopt something similar in a future bathroom, and black and white in bathrooms is just a classic isn’t it?  All three of those were in the trends for this year, and like many of the interiors trends you’re probably more aware of them than you think you are.

Mixing tiles appeals to the patchwork loving me, but in our shower room we've gone for another classic approach with the same tiles for floor and walls in a natural colour, and while it's a smaller room than any of these room sets looking at these photos, while it’s still perfectly lovely, it does now feel kind of dated. 

I need to be careful here, or else by the end of this post I'll have convinced myself we need to update our bathrooms!

House & Home magazine say that matte black finishes are one of the bathroom trends you'll see everywhere in 2018 and I tend to agree with them.  The finish was used in the open plan bathroom in the Houzz of 2018, as the photos below show and I was quite taken with it at the time (less so with the open plan approach though) and while it's quite a step away from the traditional chrome it is something I'd consider, and something I think would be a relatively easy sell to MOH too.

IN THE HOUZZ OF 2018

THE BATHROOM IN THE HOUZZ OF 2018

His and Hers showers and metallic glamour were two of the trends the Ideal Home tipped to be big this year and while you might think the His and Hers showers is unrealistic - and maybe it is depending on the space you have available - I think I prefer this than a double shower, but perhaps I just like my own space!  

If you have the space, the aqualisa electric shower might be one of the ways you could make it work, and incorporate some of the other trends at the same time, as on their site they have the shower, what I call "control boxes" in both a graphite and chrome finish.

METALLIC GLAMOUR AT THIS YEAR'S GRAND DESIGNS LIVE

I couldn’t end this post without including a shot of what is probably my favourite example of the metallic glamour trend. It’s from this year’s Grand Designs Live and part of their lavatory project, which I’ve yet to share here but made me smile, and I couldn’t help but think that Kevin and his team were jumping on my loo bandwagon...

But it’s gorgeous isn’t it? 

* This is a collaborative post but all views are my own.