Love this #87 Touchdown table

I’m delving into my photos from this year’s Ideal Home Show for today’s post, and sharing a piece of furniture that not only looks good but is practical too. I’m sure many of us have charging wires trailing about, and never really having the right charging cable in the right place. I’ve solved that by having several cables, one of which always lives in my handbag, just in case.

But imagine if you could just put your phone down and it would charge. I know right, but you can. But what about if that table also acted as a speaker. And looks good too. May I present the Touchdown Designer Table:

And to blow my mind even more, you can connect more than one table to each other wirelessly for complete surround sound and/or multi room playing. They’re not cheap at almost £300 put equally if it’s functional and stylish it’s worth considering isn’t it?

They come in different finishes and fabrics and I think they’re definitely one to watch for the future.

Though, if you remember my bedside table, it’s unlikely that any side table of mine will ever look this clear.

But what do you think, is this something you have, or would have?

Dark and blowsy

It’s not quite the golden loo that went missing from Blenheim Palace, and I don’t have anything comparable. But I do have plenty of loos. Or rather photos of them. This one’s one from Grand Designs last year, where of all things they had a whole section dedicated to the smallest room, and the Lavatory Project. Who’d have thought hey?

Today’s Lavatory Project is potentially a bit marmite, if you can be a bit marmite!

I’m very much of the opinion that you can go bold in a small space, and especially in a downstairs loo. But then again I don’t have one, so it’s easy to say that isn’t it? I like how the frame of the mirror is also dark, and the wall lights either side of it too.

There’s hints of copper too, which works well with the pink flowers and the splashback tiles.

I’m not sure about the potted plants in the loo, or the gardening tools, but I guess some artistic licence in this environment is allowed!

Yes, see what I mean about the watering can. Though it’s a very nice watering can!

And with a room with dark decor, light is even more important than normal. Alongside the wall lights, there’s an overhead industrial pendant light - the sort that you regularly see on Salvage Hunters (yes, I’m still working my way through hundreds of episodes), though this one picks up on the copper theme again.

What do you think?

Add your personality with Identity Papers

It’s another archive post today, this time from the 2017 Grand Designs Live show at Excel. It’s crazy, I remember this wallpaper like it was yesterday, and so I was pleased to see that the company, Identity Papers, were still in business.

It’s another one from the Design Arcade, which gives people two or three metres by one metre to display their wares, and share their ideas.

This wordsearch paper was brilliant. Without the white picture frame the random letters wouldn’t have made any sense at all as you wandered by.

Digital wallpaper printing makes it all possible, and it’s completely customisable. At the time, and again now, I thought this would be a fun approach for a downstairs loo, or as an alternative to a blackboard wall in a kitchen, or playroom.

Speaking to the people on the stand at the show, yes it made that much of a mark on me, I remember them saying that it all started with the words. And I can see why.

The wood effect wallpaper on the adjacent wall and on the lampshade are also wallpaper. The woodgrain geometric shapes can be mixed and matched, I think they’re a much more subtle approach, but for me the real star is the word search paper.

The other style that I was keen on was the photo grid wallpaper, which again is entirely customisable and would make a really special memory wall. The wallpaper books below show what a vibrant option this could be.

You can tell I’m a fan, but what do you think?

Would you use customised and very personal wallpaper in your home?

I think the challenge would be, what words to include, what would the theme be, and how much checking you’d need to do to make sure no unintentional rude words crept in by mistake. That could be embarrassing!