Recycled home – happy imperfection

We shift things around a fair bit in our house. We are so often picking up new bits of furniture from street corners (poor, neglected things) and little trinkets from charity shops that we kind of have to wriggle the whole lot about every now and then. We just recently overhauled part of our lounge in a bid to rehome a 1950’s cabinet that was covered in cat wee, which meant getting rid of a 1930’s beasty bureau that was taking up 50% of the room… This is the new craft station that took a while to get up to scratch:

These rearranging sprees have turned kind of extreme at the moment, almost, almost, venturing in to “tidying” territory. I have, in the past, been entirely capable of spending twenty minutes creating a tableau- moving ornaments on a shelf by millimetres, reframing bits of fabric to place there, filling a vintage vase with roses to sit just next to that frame, all the while stepping on raisins, over mountains of Ramona’s toys, moving half-drunken mugs of tea out of the scene. I understand this complete obsession with beautiful things and utter apathy towards mess makes me a bit cuckoo.

However, pregnancy hormones must be kicking in, playing with this inconsistency of mine-  I am 30 weeks now, and with each day that passes I find myself, like, doing dishes! And picking the raisins up! Not only shifting around the beauty but dealing with the disarray. Talk about total discombobulation. Blimey, I’ll have a crush on Dave Cameron next.

Our latest big change in the lounge has opened up the room massively, and given us space to upcycle this old shadelesss lamp we found with a map of London.It looks wicked turned on, highlighting the twisting and turning bends of the Old Father Thames.

We honestly found this bench in a skip. Who would chuck this away, eh?

Our house would be even more of a shambles if we didn’t have stacks of vintage suitcases lying around. The ones tucked under the bench were found in Oxfam for a few pounds, the black cornet case in a derelict space, and the glam white one was given to me for my birthday (filled with the pair of vintage curtains hanging by the cabinet – best pressie ever, or what?!) These suitcases are the outer hebridies of my craft station- they hold extra paper and paints that I can’t squeeze in the cabinet (c’mon, have you seen the size of that cabinet? It is teeny, weeny, really…)

With the prospect of selling this little bubble of Camberwell we live in looming, we are going to have to get some paint on these walls to make it all a bit more appealing. We have had the bare concrete exposed for the whole three years here- I love the raw feeling of it, especially with the juxtaposition of all our homey jumble-sale trinkets. In fact, a visitor last week asked us how we did it. Like “How did you get this awesome kind of gritty concrete effect?” Hehe. Hoho. “Pure laziness my friend, pure laziness.”

There is nothing perfect in this house… nearly everything has a bit missing, a chip off the rim or a bit of rust, that is the way of making do, and then falling in love, with a completely recycled home. “Imperfection” for us not only means “bad ass thrifty” but it has come to mean “loved” and “enjoyed” and it is nice having a home filled with stuff that has bought happiness to loads of others in the past too. Even if it does make our house smell of cat wee. (Jokes.)

I have to admit, a bit reluctantly, these tidying up capers make it all even more delicious. I could almost get used to it…. *picks up a raisin purposefully*

These snaps were taken by the one and only Tom Hartford – thanks Tom, he was over here taking pictures of some exciting doilly crafts for an upcoming issue of Pretty Nostalgic mag… EXCITING!
redrosevintage

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