Sometimes You've Got To Be 'Roofless'

 So Long A Levels!

I am pleased to announce that after a painful month or so of waiting for English Literature, which I sat on June 20th, my A Level exams are finally finished! Thank. Goodness. For that. I'm hoping that this new freedom will allow me to update my blog frequently - I have so much to talk about!

Cash in the Attic?

Over the last three days, my younger sister and I have been carrying out the near-impossible task of clearing out our roof. We've lived in our house for a good ten years, and over that period of time, stuff we've no longer wanted or needed has just been dumped up there. As a result, when you go up the ladder these days you can barely move an inch for the piles and piles of clutter. Just to give you an idea of how chaotic this situation really is:

...

...

So yeah, pretty embarrassing. It's actually hard to take a photo which illustrates the scale of the damage, because you can't move into a position where you can get a photo of the entire thing. Our house is of a reasonable size, so just imagine a very big space, filled to the beams with junk. A lot of it is unboxed too, or else just in plastic bags - NIGHTMARE.

Our incentive for this escapade is selling the stuff we don't want at a Car Boot Sale and putting the money towards redecorating our hallway, which has somewhat fallen into decay - giving it a new coat of paint, stripping up the carpet on the stairs/landing/in the hallway and laying down wooden floorboards. A lot of potential sale stuff belongs to our parents, so we've had to get their consent before putting it in the 'Selling' pile. My Mum is a bit of a hoarder, so we've told her she has to be 'roofless' (get my pun?) and only keep the stuff she needs.

Day One.

In the last three days we've made significant progress, but the amount of work left to do is daunting. On day one we emptied as much as we could into my older sister's room, who is conveniently away on holiday for two weeks:

We also used the upstairs bathroom as a dumping ground:

Leaving a (tiny) fraction of the attic empty:

 We then had to face the near-impossible task of trying to sort through it. On Wednesday we spent from 2pm until 11pm on the job, re-boxing things categorically. We have a new system in which each box is numbered, and everything in each numbered box is recorded in a notebook. This way, if anyone ever needs something from the roof in the future, they refer to the book to locate it, rather than rifling through various boxes and making the place a bombsite again. We also have 5 categories (Christmas, Camping, Childhood, School/Work, Household/Electrical) - we plan to colour-code the boxes with stickers and divide the boxes into sections to make it even easier to locate objects. Genius, if I may say so myself, but easier said than done - every step takes time. Here's my sister, bubble-wrapping ceramics made by my mum years ago:

   Although tedious at times, it's an interesting job - here's a bag of makeup we found belonging to my mum, a good 20 years old! No longer useable of course, but interesting to think of how long it's avoided the bin:

 Day Two.

 

After a well deserved sleep we began our second day of intense manual labour, which began by moving any sealed/completed boxes back into the empty space in the attic. We decided to try working within the roof rather than pulling it all down this time around, in order to save some time and effort...and mess!  It's hard to keep the morale up in such conditions, so we played the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack to raise our spirits - such a motivator. This photo was taken at the end of day two - considerably better on the far left hand side, but still horrific:

Day Three.

  

By the end of day three things actually looked different, which is such a relief, words cannot describe. Although nothing is organised as such yet, boxes are sealed and stacked and the far left-hand side of the attic actually has floor space. Like...you can SEE the floor! Wow:

 

You can see our numbering system clearly here. We're nearly on box 60 now and yet we have so many more to fill! I made a bet with my sister on how many it'd take altogether - I said 75, she 103 - she's going to win without a doubt:

And finally, for the sake of nostalgia, a picture of the Puppy in my Pocket and Kitty in my Pocket toys we came across, among our favourite childhood toys back in the 90s:

That's all for now, but I'll be sure to post an update with pictures when the task is entirely complete...give me a couple of weeks, maybe a month?

 

 

Introducing Brownton Abbey and The Plan Chest

Hello friends!

I warmly welcome you to my first official blog, Brownton Abbey. In the past I've half-heartedly attempted to create blogs for various purposes, but they never actually came to anything. Brownton Abbey, on the other hand, is living proof that my procrastination can sometimes lead to an end product...huzzah! 

Firstly, about the name. 

Initially I wanted to call my blog 'The Town of Brown', but someone had already used it as their URL. This annoyed me because they hadn't updated their page since 2008, but it's cool, because in this moment of disappointment, 'Brownton Abbey' was born from the ashes (courtesy of my sister who came up with the idea). You see, we're both big fans of Julian Fellowes' T.V. series 'Downton Abbey', so it seemed pretty fitting, with my last name being Brown n'all. I've sort of mimicked the logo, although with my own house floating above the letters, rather than, y'know...an Abbey.

This is a multi-purpose blog.

  

One of my problems in life is that I find it hard to concentrate on one thing and stick with it...I have lists coming out of my ears of tasks to perform, projects to complete, missions to fulfil, and I'm forever flitting between them. To put it more positively, I have a lot of interests and passions, so it makes sense to compact them all into this one website, rather than trying to juggle multiple blogs. 

I like lots of things.

I appreciate so much stuff in life and want to talk about all of it! I enjoy painting (with watercolours mainly), textiles (especially costumery), generally being creative, spending time with friends, attempting to cook (then eating it), going to nice cafes, listening to a variety of music, reading a good book, watching movies, being around animals, exploring other cultures (especially Japan), riding my bike, immersing myself in nature, being nice to the environment, going to charity shops and finding bargains, fashion and clothing, vintage and retro things...the list goes on!

But enough of the rambling and onto the good stuff...my latest project!

I gave 'My latest project' an exclamation mark because I'm exciiiited about it! For some time now I've been planning and investing in transforming my bedroom into an art/textiles studio, which will be in full swing once my final A Level exam is over. I'm taking an art foundation course next year so need a larger, more practical work space for my studies, and apart from anything else I'm really passionate about being creative, so I want a room which will inspire and motivate me to keep going! I've gained heaps of inspiration from Crafty Storage (http://craftystorage.blogspot.co.uk/), a blog which shares pictures and ideas for turning rooms into creative havens. There are some beautiful examples on here, and I can't wait to properly get started on my own!

I hope to document my own journey here, starting with the story of this plan chest:

 I've wanted a plan chest for a while for storing larger work, but was disappointed (yet unsurprised) to find that they sell for hundreds and hundreds on eBay. For this reason I doubted I'd ever get my hands on one, but I was lucky enough to have one of those 'in the right place at the right time' moments. 

One of the art rooms in my school, where I spent most of my time in sixth form, had been refurbished over half term, and hence a lot of new furniture had been fitted. I happened to arrive at school early and sat in this room, waiting for my art lesson, whilst the teachers discussed the changes. I caught the part of the conversation where they said they were chucking out one of the old plan chests, and I couldn't help but jump at the opportunity to save it! The bottom drawer had been very badly damaged when it became jammed, almost beyond repair (which is supposedly why they were getting rid of it), but this didn't stop me from saving this baby. As you can probably tell it has seen better days, but all the more satisfaction for me when I bring it back into its prime!

A couple of days ago I started work on it, taking out one drawer at a time to be prepped:

 Some of the stickers were severely faded and yellowed with age...it excited me to think of how many people had used this chest over the years!

 You can sort of see the mouldy white sheeting at the back of the handle, which I promptly unscrewed on both sides...

 ...much better!

I then went on to use this sander...machine...thing of my Dad's to lightly smooth down all of the sides:

 As I expected, this did very little for the front of the drawers, especially those darn stickers which were clinging on for dear life. I took a leaf out of Kim and Aggie's book (anyone get the 'House Clean is Your House reference?) and used a combination of boiling water and fairy liquid to lift the stickers before attacking them with various tools...

...and it took me AGES, simply because I had to peel off sticker upon sticker upon sticker - in this instance, revealing the name of 'Sharon Ford'. Also, as odd as it may sound, I have a bit of a weird thing about touching peeling stickers, so I felt pretty brave at this instance (...go ahead, laugh at me!)

As you can see, this scraper lifted up a lot of the old varnish, but not all of it. I concluded after doing this for nearly two straight hours on the front of the first drawer that I'd need to manually sand it later.

I *finally* finished the first drawer after many hours of work - sanded and scrubbed 'til it was squeaky clean. My cat, Hunter, showed his appreciation by sitting in it whilst it dried.

And then there were two...and I'm so proud of how they've turned out! It's all I could manage in a day because it's such tiring, physically demanding work, but I'm one step closer to painting it...just thinking about picking a colour (or colour(s)) makes me twitchy with excitement! Annoyingly it's been torrentially raining for the last week, which has made getting outside to sand down the rest impossible - maybe God reminding me that I should be revising for my final exam instead?

Bella appreciated my hard work anyway!