The Bike Room…
If you like the bottles then you can look at the post before this on how to do this effect - Simple but effective!
I think that the pictures tell the best story about this space. It was a badly painted room in magnolia which with age had made the room look like someone had been smoking 50 cigarettes a day in there for the last 40 years. A decrepit but beautifully proportioned, almost square room which we crammed with all the detritus of the family, the children used this room as their sitting room initially, which meant that the relatively new TV attached to their PlayStation only worked on 3 quarters of the screen due to being hit hard with an America football. This ‘accident’, as there is a rule in this house of ‘no ball games in the house!’, was greeted by protestations to me of how they might not be able to live past teatime as the screen enjoyment was ruined by the now damaged screen! The other interesting fact is that no one knew who had kicked the ball - it was a mystery to them!
The TV was not replaced & over the next few years the children migrated into their own rooms which had TV’s as teenage years came on. Therefore the room became redundant, whilst we carried on decorating the rest of the house this room became more of a dump, then my husband bought a bike & he came up with the idea of working on it in the house! Fortunately this room can, in principal be shut off from the rest of the house & you have to admit I am a very reasonable woman! Then our daughters decided she like the idea of a bike & then there was two bikes in there & the room was referred to as The Bike Room! The room continued to be neglected, the ceiling was falling in due to the leak in the the shower room above, the leak was obviously fixed but the old lath & plaster ceiling sagged with a hole in the centre. The carpet was disgusting thanks to the children & then the bikes. Something had to be done!
Even though the bikes have been banished the helmets make a great statement shown of a hat stand!
The bikes 'after much debate’ were sent off to the garage. And work began on this old space. Once everything was removed from the room including the carpet which exposed the most beautiful unloved wooden floor, which has now been polished without removing some of the aging that had occurred over the years.
The next thing was to choose a colour. The room is big with two large feature windows with old shutters - so it could take a strong dark colour which would complement the brilliant gloss white painted window frames would lift the room, turning it into the most stunning Drawing room. We have placed the hall porter chair in there from my childhood, the terracotta urns are a grand fixture, a gift from me to my husband from years ago, these were originally in the garden, but I could not stand looking at them in the winter when they had to be bandaged with hessian to prevent them cracking in the winter frost. So now they are a very welcome inside feature!
The body part is from an men’s dress shop which I decorated with gold leaf, there are some masks in the store done in the same way….
The leather Prince of Wales luggage boxes made in Jermyn Street, Haymarket, London are a pretty ‘funky’ addition to the alcoves in the windows, an item purchased from an antique shop by me for me! The sofa took more than a bit of a battering over the years, this sofa came from my mother, she had bought another identical cream sofa so this cream sofa was redundant! The cream colour had long been hidden by super amounts of dust caused by work on the bikes & the recycling of the wood burner for another room hadn’t done it much good either! Instead of replacing it we called in an upholstery cleaning company who scrubbed & cleaned the sofa bringing it back to life - However the sofa cushions were beyond salvage. So a quick look on line for upholstery fabric in Harlequin colours to bring out the drama of the blue walls & I got out the sewing machine, the result was stunning…
The coffee table came from my husbands father, it was rotting in an outbuilding at his parents house, so many years ago he repaired it, we had it in storage in another room, but it works perfectly here & complements the Prince of Wales boxes, two different era’s of military packing, I am told by our youngest son that now the storage boxes for the military are now carboard! Long gone the time of luxury!
The room is a work in progress …. The colour we used is No.50 Blueprint from Maylands
