The Dining Room gets a Look-in

My bathroom journey has hit a pot-hole, and I’ve learnt a very important lesson.
Resources. Check their availability. Darn! This is the first thing you learn at marketing school! Just to give you some spiel: Your resources (Men, Money, Minutes) are vital for a project’s success and I’m missing my man. More precisely, I’m missing a builder. Through some freakish builder drought in the central Reading area, I’m without a burly pair of arms and plumbing knowledge until the end of February, so that little project is on the back burner. What’s on my mind instead? The dining room!

The dining room has been moderately neglected on the blog so far (aside from its brief mention in the Christmas post). I think it's about time it had a share of the spot-light. Introducing....

The YUP Dining Room

view from the doorway; full of light, but also junk

  I decided to put my dining room in the front room of our little terrace, which is actually furthest from the kitchen. Why? Well, that room is the first you pass when you come in off the street, so it's the most likely to become a dumping ground.

The dining room is the least used room in our house - T and I have good intentions, but often end up eating on the sofa. Therefore, a little clutter in here will help us maintain order in the rest of the house. I plan to create a beautiful yet informal space that we can enjoy, and will remain practical too.

view from the opposite corner

 There’s also the small matter of the bicycles…

looking from the window: they need a home!

Buying a house is sometimes a matter of painful compromise. Not between you and your partner, either (let’s face it, if you’re making serious sacrifices, you probably shouldn’t be buying together) – I mean in terms of want vs need. I wanted a beautiful, clean space in which I could entertain and have fancy-schmancy dinner parties… but what I needed was somewhere dry, secure and convenient in which to park my noble steed.

Hi Bikes, meet dining room wall.

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After being inspired by many an apartment therapy blog post (if it’s good enough for sophisticated new-yorkers, it’s good enough for us), we decided that the best place to store our biggest babies was right here in the house. I actually think it’s rather beautiful (although, grandparents tend to disagree). However, we did NOT have a good experience buying a bike rack. T purchased a GearUp Oak Rak (Floor to Ceiling) bike rack from Amazon at the beginning of October. It was very expensive (more than I wanted to spend) and it took a long time to arrive.


I was so angry when we opened the box. Parts were missing, and our countless attempts since to contact Amazon/the seller and get the missing parts have been futile. I do NOT recommend this seller. The goal is to have the bikes on the wall, as seen in the right picture, but.... yeah. we're still waiting.

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We also have a storage requirement. The corridor from my front door is, in my opinion, too narrow to hang coats in, pile shoes up, or dump your keys. ‘Landing strips’ are a very desirable (or essential, depending on your source) feature in a house now - no longer the hallmark of glamour models or the pages of Cosmo. That's a term for a conveniently placed coat rack and table on which to rest your hat/keys/handbag when you enter your home, as seen to the left of this text.


I hope to build that in to the dining room, creating a clever duality between storage space and entertaining space.


I'd love to hear anyone's thoughts on making the most of a space like this!

We Chose a Bed: Get Laid Beds

The bedrooms in this house are a lot smaller than I realised.

When I bought the house, I got utterly fixated with the positives (Price? Tick. Fireplace? Tick. Upstairs bathroom? Tick) and you fail to see the shortcomings. Once we moved in, I got very worried by the small space we actually have available to us.


I love clothes. This is, horrifyingly, about a quarter of what we own, hanging on two tidy rails from Argos. (great value for money though, product found here)

The floorplan doesn't look too tiny but we do have large fireplaces jutting out of every room, eating up valuable space.

I looked at a lot of beds in this post but, to be honest with you, they're all too big for the space we're working with. Even with underbed storage, we just lose too much floor space and too many possibilities.

Therefore, we went for this little number.
It's a space saver bed - and a small double. Compare it to a standard double and you'll see why...

Now, let me tell you about this company. Handmade in Leicester, they boast beds that are 'simple, natural, solid, quality' - which is exactly what I'm looking for. No faffing around with headboards, bedknobs (or broomsticks). No headboard, no footboard, no bed knobs, no broom sticks. This bed is stream-lined. This is a serious-business bed. There's space underneath for boxes, too. All in all, it seemed like a very savvy buy, although it set us back £270 - more than we'd budgeted for!

It was all worth it, though. It arrived last week and it's fantastic.

Get Laid Beds Platform Space Saver, here; Bird Bedding/Wicker Chair, Unknown

It is absolutely perfect and I'm in love with it. The finish is incredible, and will go beautifully with our floorboards (once sanded, varnished and restored). It took over 20 days to arrive, but we were given due warning. It also seems quite fast for a handmade product!

John Lewis Perth Rug, available here; Assorted Jewellery

The space it's given us is amazing. We can fit in a decent-sized chest of drawers either side - and walk through properly!

Left: Grandma's G-Plan Drawer Set, Circa 1950;TK Maxx Lamp

I'm over the moon with this purchase and I fully recomend Get Laid Beds. Hopefully it'll serve us for many years to come.

Sarah of The Yup Blog.

AND WE'RE IN.

  And, we have internet
 
Nothing makes a house feel more like a home than a good ol' connection to the outside world - am I right, or am I right? I think T and I both breathed a sigh of relief when we realised we could stop talking to each other and go on footytube/facebook again.

Joking, of course.

However, I am able to also write the post of posts - the MOVING IN blog post. After all, this is a first-time-buyer-rookie-home-owner blog (yes, I invented my own category) and those are defined by these posts. Just like fashion blogs are defined by their sultry outfit shots (city scapes obligatory - if there are none of those where you live, your career is over before it begun) and a cooking blog requires gratuitous macro-lense close-ups of sugar.

The day went swimmingly. The house was in incredibly good condition when we finally got in, which suprised me. When we had our pre-exchange viewing, it was disgusting. I kicked off at the estate agent but she replied haughtily; 'well, you're already getting it at below market value, you're in no position to make demands of the seller'.....ooooh. I argued that a new tenant would not be allowed to move in with these conditions. Something must have been said, because the fridge (part of our contents agreement) has been cleared of half-drunk wine and stubs of butter (seriously).

We were in by 1pm. T's parents were incredibly helpful and transported our stuff from our temporary flat to the new house, as neither of us drive. All our worldly possessions fitted in two car trips!
We also bade a genuinely sad farewell to our landlord and his adorable little boys. We were lodgers in the old 'servants quarters' in the attic, rather than a stand-alone flat, so we got quite close to the family.

Anyway, we were alone in the house by 6pm. It is a very strange feeling, to be in your own home for the first time, without the spiel of the estate agent as a background hum. I kept walking up the stairs, and down the hall, running fingers across the walls. It felt positively palacial. Never before have I had so much space to fill. 

Fear gripped me suddenly. It was a terrifying void, empty and souless, not a home for us yet. More pressingly, I was suddenly consumed with the thought that it was my responsibility to keep these bricks and mortar standing. I had to take care of this place. It was more than just a house; it was our life savings. Urgh.

Luckily, it was Thursday night and I had a wine-drinking session to get to. We shelved that freak-out for another day.

We've been in since Thursday and a lot has happened in the interim, which I will cover in my next post, so stay tuned :)

So, today's learnings: Do a pre-exchange viewing and throw your weight around if something's not right. It's your last chance to save yourself some money/time when you move in. 
 

Picking the Sofa

I do love my town, but its' rather lacking furniture stores.

Sorry, DECENT furniture stores.

looks like a tiramisu

Have you ever been inside an ScS? On every sofa, there are scatter cushions asunder; that armchair reclines, twists and even orders your Chinese takeaway for you right before X-factor starts*. They come in a cornucopia of textures and fabrics that read a little bit like an adult store: whether you like it ribbed, corded or (p)leather, you can achieve 'extreme levels of comfort'.

At least Furniture Village has a redeeming feature (pro tip: free cookies)

Alas, I digress. The biggest problem is size. These pudgy 3-pieces would take up my entire bottom floor, and my terrace would begin to resemble an indoor bouncy castle**. I need something that is not too deep. I would have to look a little further afield.

On Sunday, we went to London. I've been remarkably restrained; T and I haven't dared to really 'shop' for our house before now, in case it all fell through (though I did think about beds)

I've been eyeing up sofas from www.made.com but the reviews were very, very mixed. Some claiming the quality was amazing, others swearing that it was tacky and not worth the hype. I even asked another blogger-owner for her opinion. (The beautiful Ferren from artcre.am was very obliging: she said she loves it!)

I was still nervous of spending £600 on something I'd only seen photos of, so we decided to visit their showroom. Honestly, it's worth going for the experience alone.

Seek out an office building that looks almost abandoned (just outside of Notting Hill Gate tube) and enter a secret code. Feel dubious.
Follow the yellow corridor. There's a flummoxed hipster couple at the door; glasses, plaid, skinnies, beard. Exchange subtle nods with partner: yes, these are our people. We are safe here.
Ride lift up to the 9th floor.
Emerge. Get bamboozled by soft jazz. Notice other hipster couples. Wonder, irrationally, if this is a vision of interior design heaven.
See sofa.
Buy sofa.

I fell in love and we ordered the Ritchie straight away. (pssst! Use code DESIGNERS for £30 off!)


It is slim-line. It is neat. It is minimalist.
IT IS ARRIVING NEXT WEEK AND I AM SO EXCITED.

My Grandma told me not to spend any money until we've moved in.
Oops.


*exaggeration.
**Childhood dream would be realised. But, not great for quality of life. Imagine putting on mascara. Or eating soup.