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!
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