"Number 54. The house with the bamboo door. Bamboo roof and bamboo walls, they've even got a bamboo floor" Andy Williams, what a classic. And yeah, we have made ourselves the House of Bamboo - certainly with the flooring, the foliage and now thanks to a Friday morning delivery, some actual plants. They were £35 each from a garden centre in Enfield, the black plant tubs were £65 each. £270 all up for what is now a massive improvement to our deck.
In addition to providing a bit of privacy and shade, we're hoping these will provide a slight barrier to prevent the girls from constantly flinging themselves over the fence to annoy the neighbours. We've had the bamboo for exactly four days and it's already looking a little dry and floppy despite two massive watering sessions. I am optimistic these plants will survive (£140 for replacements! They'd better survive!) - actually, I'm off to read up on how to look after bamboo right now...
We just had the first May Bank Holiday weekend in England, and it was a significant weekend for us as we had a few reasons to celebrate. Firstly, 10 years of marriage (no-one thought we'd last this long, least of all me!), our eldest just turned six and our youngest is about to turn three, and sod it, despite the house not being completely finished we decided to have a house warming BBQ too. I only sent out the invitations a few weeks ago to try and keep the numbers down, and fortunately loads of people had booked trips away or had other engagements. As it happened we ended up with 18 kids and 40+ adults throughout the day, which was plenty.
As you can see from the photos, the weather was cracking - perfectly sunny and completely still, which was lucky as later in the evening we set off 10 Chinese night sky lanterns over Hackney. Even more incredible was that some late arrivals got a bit lost, but found our house by following their noses to the source of the lanterns. The same couple were trekking around Victoria Park the next afternoon and found one of our lanterns still pretty much intact in the park! Amazing co-incidence! (And quite frankly I'm impressed that they were able to leave the house at all, we took two days to surface after the party...)
The deck was finished before Easter, but for some odd reason I haven't taken a photo of it in it's entirety yet. I did manage to snap our new garden gate though. Not only did Chris-the-chippie install it in record time but he then stained it before heading off, which was really nice of him as I thought that was a job that we'd have to do.
The gate is huge and solid and arrived the day before we were due to dog-sit. Couldn't have been better timing as the dog enjoyed hanging out in our garden, and being a whippet we couldn't have hoped to contain him if there was no gate. Confusingly, the dog is called Marlowe - our eldest daughter is called Marlo - so hanging out in the park and explaining that to the various dog people we made small talk with was fun. I tried to convince people my other kid was called Spot (she was wearing a polka dot dress) but only one chap believed me.
The wood/timber/lumber/planks which were despatched last week got lost en route. Apparently they were delivered... but as we couldn't find any evidence of them we think they were sent to the wrong address or something. Fortunately, they showed up today and Teia came round to finish the deck this afternoon. It's dark out there so this is a shot showing the deck with the garden flood lights on, will snap it during daylight hours of course.
The moon is almost full and it's rising right above our glass roof, this photo doesn't do it justice, but it's a real thrill to see stars and a heavy moon on a clear night especially in central London!
Earlier this week Teia showed up bright and early with this two Antipodean helpers and started digging up the back garden. Before long they'd started building the frame to support our deck. By the time I got home from work they'd built half of it - but unfortunately the lumbar yard (aka timber merchant?) had damaged some of the stock before despatching it, and this particular plank was out of stock in London. The reason it's so popular is that it's wide and extremely long, which means no joins in the middle. The rest of the wood should arrive early next week. We've ordered some oil based stain off the internet (sight unseen) as the wood weathers better if it's been treated. We've gone for light mahogony, which looks pretty dark on screen but I guess it'll fade in the sun.
I'm hoping the wood does arrive next week as we're having people over for lunch and it would be super to have our very first BBQ in the new house before Easter.
I never read anything about gardens, and find it really hard to get excited about anything to do with outdoor space. Friends who've acquired a garden wax lyrical about the soothing properties of ripping out weeds and planting herbacious borders, and while I can appreciate that this might be more fun than falling over drunk on occasion, it doesn't really float my boat. Yet.
Having said that, this weekend I spotted this image which shows a wooden floor, leading to a wooden deck, which leads to a similarly sized garden to the one we'll end up with. And again, dark bi-fold doors. And I must admit I was quite excited by the thought of having an outdoor space to create. I've heard landscape gardeners don't come cheap so the garden will definitely be the last thing we tackle. But I'm going to keep an eye out for interesting ways to use the space which will answer all our requirements (herbs and fragrant jasmine for me, grass for the kids and low maintenance everything for the hubby).
I'm into architecture, design, music, travel and cooking. Since arriving in London in 1999 I have worked in digital media and publishing (including Wallpaper* and PORTER magazines), had two children and travelled a lot. I am currently working in advertising doing content strategy. This blog was to document my house renovation project, but for the time being, it's more or less done...
