The one with the redecorated loo

Last weekend we celebrated my MIL’s birthday with afternoon tea at Alexander House Hotel in West Sussex, and it wasn’t our first time there. Our previous visit, also for afternoon tea (they’re good) was a couple of years ago, and then I shared how my outfit seemed to match the painting in the loo.

When thinking about what to wear I remembered them matching my yellow dress before, and thought I’d wear something different this time. I’m a fan of colour, often wearing, at least one bright colour but nothing really jumped out at me as I recalled my wardrobe. So, as often is the case, I chose the shoes I wanted to wear and went from there, thinking nothing more of it.

After eating more than I had in a while, and yet still not managing to polish off all the cakes - I know, I was shocked too - and drinking a pot or two of “sparkling white” white tea, a trip to the loos brought a good excuse for a break and a wander. Remembering the loos from before, and knowing I’d already shared them here, I almost didn’t take my bag with me…

It was obvious though, that something had changed.

I noticed the wallpaper straight away, it’s similar to the bamboo wallpaper we have on one wall in our living room, but with more sparkle. Had I known I could have got some sparkle in my wallpaper then maybe I’d’ve had some, as it would bring an element of light to the wall. I was less sure though if the basins had been changed, so later I checked my earlier post and they had. In place of white traditional sinks where these countertop basins, which as you can see bring another metallic texture to the space.

The wallpaper was different too, more metallics and with a geometric pattern - the light in the photo below seems to have played havoc with the colour, but I couldn’t resist showing you this wall, isn’t it great?

In the lobby area, you can see a truer colour of the wallpaper, and it was great to see the picture still hanging in the same place. The padded bench seat though was the star and this is my favourite view of the loos - I know, how weird is that, I mean how many people have a favourite loo view?!

But you know what I mean, it almost seems wasted in the loo (but it was too large for my handbag!)

So that’s another first for the Loo Series, this is the first loo that’s been redecorated and therefore featured twice. I think I much prefer the updated version, but what about you?

A map on my wall

It's been a little while since my post on loving maps, and the fear of wallpaper but the good news is the map is on the wall, and I love it.  Things didn't turn out quite as I planned for the actual putting it on the wall part, and so I didn't have to face my fear of wallpapering after all.

I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly my Wallsauce mural arrived, in fact I couldn't believe it was here just a few days after I'd made my choice, they most certainly don't hang about.  It arrived well packaged too, in a sturdy cardboard tube within a wallpaper sized cardboard box. There was wallpaper paste too, and as I discovered a visual plan as well as some written instructions, which are also available online.

THE MASTERPLAN

But because life happens we needed to change our plans of tackling this ourselves. I'm certain we made the right decision as not only were we nervous wallpaperers but our attention, and time, has been taken up by those life events I mentioned on Monday, and neither of us wanted to ruin, or even slightly mess up, what is quite honestly, beautiful wallpaper.

And so we asked our conservatory builders to do the job for us, or the decorator anyway - I use builders as a generic term, and were confident they were up to the job, I wouldn't have asked otherwise.  They were just as keen as us to see what was inside the package that arrived, and so we peeked.  My first view was of Alaska (from Panel 1 of the plan above), and I was smitten, although in truth I think it could have been anywhere and I'd have had the same reaction, because as I said in my first post, because, well maps.

Now the builders had seen the wallpaper, they were keen to see the wall it was going on, which was the tricky bit, as we'd yet to tell them it was the curved wall around our spiral staircase.  Their faces were a picture, and while they might have been a little incredulous they were soon checking the wall for what prep needed to be done.

I know from dad that it's all in the preparation, so I wasn't surprised to come home to a wall with some extra filler.  Actually it was great to see tradesmen taking pride in their work, reading the instructions that came with the wallpaper, consulting with us and confident in their skills to do a job well, that we'd all be happy with.

FIRST THE FILLER, THEN THE DUST

But of course where filler goes, dust follows.  Luckily I'd thought this through and moved the duvet and as much as I could out of the room.  The room was covered with plastic sheets and dust sheets, but my reasoning was if it's not there in the first place it's not going to get dusty, is it?  And that's something I'd recommend, even if a builder says there'll be no dust.  As it's likely your definition of no dust will be different to theirs!

The result which wowed

I'd been keen to follow progress as the paper went up, and cups of tea were made, proffered and gratefully received so I could keep a bit of an eye on proceedings.  And progress was quick, relatively speaking (and definitely much quicker than I would have done) and the paper, and the design got the thumbs up from the builder too.

Even among the dust and detritus it was clear this was something spectacular.  I hadn't thought how having a map on a curved wall would give it a "globe" effect, but of course now it's been pointed out I'm going to claim that as the idea all along, what do you think?

In my first post I shared my potential choices from the world map wallpaper section on the Wallsauce site, but didn't share which one I'd chosen.  This is the Antique world map and is the perfect choice for our room as it tones well with the wardrobe, and as both are things that I expect to be around for some time, that's a good thing.

The more eagle-eyed among you will have already spotted that Australia and New Zealand are missing (sorry guys!) - my wall just wasn't big enough to get you in and I chose to include all of the Americas, rather than cutting that off of the final design.  It's nothing personal, but as we're more likely to travel to the States it made sense to have that on our wall, as I'm pretty sure this wall is now going to become a key tool in our travel planning,

I wasn't expecting to be able to choose where to make the cut on the design, but thinking about it logically it makes sense as not all walls will be the same size, and not all images work if stretched to peculiar dimensions.  In fact the customisable-ness of the image size and position is one of the pluses, and imagine how this could work if you chose your own image. It was also easy to do on the site and to check your design.

You'll see that our map has a textured effect (look to the right of the text South Atlantic Ocean in the photo below) and that's in the wallpaper design rather than actually being raised, and it's very effective and I think adds to the overall result.

I mentioned that we would most likely use this while planning our trips, but it's already had its first use when at the weekend I looked to see where England's game against Panama was taking place in the World Cup.  You can clearly see Nizhniy Novgorod to the right of Moscow in the photo on the left below, and my light switch in China in the photo on the right.  

There's going to be many happy hours poring over this map, which has entirely transformed the room.  You've probably worked out I'm completely thrilled with it already and impressed with the quality and service I received - and I am - but I'm keen to know if you have, or would consider mural wallpaper in your house, and of course what do you think of my wall.

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

Highlights of my Chelsea (part 2)

In this second highlights post from my visit to the Chelsea Flower Show on Monday I'm sharing my highlights from inside the Great Pavilion (read part one to see my highlights from the show gardens, artisan gardens and the space to grow gardens).

The Great Pavilion is huge.  Two football pitches worth of flowery gorgeousness.  I started off with a methodical up and down each row approach and then got distracted and that plan went out of the window.  I *thought* I'd seen everything it had to offer, but I've since realised I didn't - not sure how, but I did see a lot...

One of the corners was dedicated to floral displays, there were floral thrones and floral arches, and there was a definite nod to the Royal Wedding.  I'll share more in a future post, but for now there's a close up of one of the arches, which also had a heart-shaped "window" built in.

ALLIUMS, AGAPANTHUS, TULIPS, ROSES AND MORE

THE HEART SHAPED 'WINDOW' WITH ADDED SUCCULENTS

There was the usual display of neatly arranged alliums, and instead of the more usual purple ones I thought I'd share this pale pink version.  Even looking at this picture I'm making a mental note to get more alliums for my own garden next year.

I think this floral horse and cart was one of the areas where my logical plan went awry - I was quite literally drawn to it, it's beautiful isn't it?

I'm a fan of the wire mesh type sculptures and the figures on this stand were fantastic.  The planting was evocative of a journey through a pretty meadow, and the smell here was fantastic.  As I've been editing my photos I've realised that a sure fire way of seeing just how much I liked a stand was by the number of photos I've taken, and I've a few of these, so you can expect to see more of this at a future date.

You knew there'd be cacti at some point didn't you?  And you're right a highlights post wouldn't be mine without some, these ones have the added bonus of having brightly coloured flowers too, so a double win in my books.

While we're talking bright colours, just look at the colour of this plant in the greenhouse, which I snuck myself into. The leaves have an almost waxy, succulent like look about them, but the flowers have a touch of asters about them don't they?  I'll be doing some detective work on this one I think.

Actually while we're on colour this Flower Market made me smile, as where else would you have blooms laid out to resemble veg (and with real veg there too)?

I mentioned in my first post that there was a fair bit of corten steel on show and in the Stihl inspired garden by Hillier Nurseries, there was more - and I'm really not complaining. 

I quite randomly appear to have chosen both sides of these pots for this post, but doesn't the blue of the ceanothus look great against the steel backdrop in the photo below? 

This iris, and those around it also caught my eye, isn't the colour exquisite?  Almost golden. I think I might need some irises in my garden at some point...

The planting at Chelsea is often dense and that's a style I love - I'm not keen on seeing earth between plants - I was pleased to spot these upturned, and crooked sleepers, and it reminded me that this was very much our preferred approach to our gabion basket area on one point, now though I can't imagine anything other than our quirkily filled wire baskets.

The Great Pavilion was also good for some celeb spotting, the lady of the left is Beverley Knight and she was a good sport trying out the Steel Drum, she admitted after the photos she had no idea but quite enjoyed herself. I bumped into her a few times around the show and the lady next to her was always with her.  I don't know who the man is on the end of the photo, but I did recognise the man with the medals.  Me being me had no idea of his name until later, it's Johnson Beharry who in 2005 was awarded the Victoria Cross for valour in Iraq, and was the first living recipient of the award in thirty years.

He was, as you'd expect, super nice and I was proud to shake his hand and in fact he was one of the few people (or celebs) that I spoke to.  I also learnt later on that he was born in Grenada which explained why he was at the Grenada stand. I'm not a fan of the celebrity culture, and I do think that we should aspire and recognise people that achieve great things, rather than those that don't, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, back to the flower show.  As you can see I'm back at the greenhouse from earlier, but this time it's a much more refined affair, with greens and succulents for lunch, and a soft cushioned chair to sit on.

Actually the chairs reminded me of something similar from my 2015 visit - remember my Bumping into Alice in the Chelsea Wonderland post, if not pop over and have a look, it's definitely fairy tale.

I've a couple more photos to share in this post (and plenty more for a few other days) but I couldn't end without a peony shot, and not just any old peony shot, the colours of the petals here had me fascinated.

As did one of the clematis displays, there were wave after wave of clematis on these structures lapping at the beach.  It was a great way to display them and fun too, and yes you've guessed it there'll be more of these photos at some point too.

So there's my highlights in sixteen or so photos, I tell you narrowing it down took quite some doing!