My flat -- a lovely story continues

A Monday morning still life, sometime in summer 2008.

Hiya again
I have long promised you a quick look at the inside of my flat. Some parts are still provisional, nearly two years after my arrival... Shame on me! However, I quite like the way this place looks.
Here's the hallway, before the doors were painted white:And my kitchen, not very good photos but the best I have just now:
This is my sitting room in its evening incarnation:
The wee sofa is only a two-seater but at least it doesn't take up all the space in this cosy room.Yes, it's a real nineteen-sixties gas fire. It hangs squint on the wall and is really ugly. But I kind of like it. And it certainly pushes out a lot of heat, none of which goes up the chimney as is the case for most log-burning fires.
I would love to have a real log-burning stove, though.The artwork above the huge armchair is a lithograph by Lily Keller called Gri-gri. The door leads to my airing cupboard with an ancient, not very well-insulated immersion heater, which is where I dry virtually all my laundry.
On to my guest bedroom -- the artwork above the bed is an early-ish gouache by Katrien Caymax, the Belgian artist.
Sometimes, fine dining occurs at my flat:
And I spend a lot of time reading in this lovely armchair. It's a nursing chair, actually, with a comfy tall back and a low seat -- just right for me.
Those of you who have been following this blog since I got to Oban will know that I had a wee mishap in the early days of staying here. I'm glad I pulled out a manky old built-in wardrobe that stood in the wrong corner and made the small bedroom look much smaller still. But the gap in the parquet flooring was pretty expensive to fill. Still, well worth the trouble:
Above is the new piece and the almost cream coloured, freshly sanded older parquet.Sanding off the old varnish, then taking off the horrible gunk that I painted on, has given the lovely parquet floor a lot more character. I understand that this very type of flooring is making a comeback. Maybe I could now buy that replacement patch for less than nearly £300! But I wanted it then and I wanted the same type of floor. Should have gone for the bleached version, though, or taken out a few of the old tiles and dispersed the new ones randomly across the old floor. Ah, well, you live and learn...
Finally, the bathroom:
The new thermoblinds make a HUGE difference. At last, this essentially unheated space warms up when the rest of the flat is being heated. And last, but not least, a glance at the shower cubicle. The weird structure on the left is a very useful narrow cupboard that holds all my toiletries, medicines and towels.

At last -- one project completed: behold the "new" floor!

Hello again

Some of you may remember my griping about a diy disaster that I created early last summer when -- against T. the builder/decorator's advice -- I painted a freshly sanded, beautiful parquet floor with the wrong stain (see blog post of June 29, 2008).
Well, I am happy to report that the work is completed. I hope you will agree with me that the floor now looks gorgeous.
I had help from one of my neighbours, who really made me push on with paint-stripping the terrible plasticky-sticky stuff and hand-sanding the entire floor. Thank you, G.! Our wrists, elbows and shoulders are slightly the worse for wear, but my eyes are enjoying the feast.
Evidently part of the original 1930s interior, a built-in cupboard used to stand where the flooring is a darker shade. Whoever put in the 1950s parquet flooring did not extend it to the inside of the cupboard. When I moved in, the door had long gone missing. One of my friends advised me to rip the hideosity out. Which is when the original strip flooring was revealed.
Sourcing the replacement parquet was quite a job, and having it made to order did not come exactly cheap. Never mind, I am very pleased with the result.
I declined having the new wood bleached to blend in better with the old -- shall we call this a case of "didactic interior architecture"? I think that's as good a label as any.

One month

Hello again

Another spectacularly beautiful day here in Oban; quite warm and summery, with a nippy breeze, though. I spent a while in the garden pruning the honeysuckle and some kind of shrub with lovely pink flowers and spiny branches. I didn't have my camera with me but will post a photo next time I remember.
What I did take photos of is the current state of my flat -- it's still box heaven! But some corners are beginning to look decidedly livable. Other corners await the arrival of a piece of hardwood flooring to complete the 1950s parquet in what will be my own study/bedroom, and some items of furniture, including bookshelves.
Sorted one of my major storage problems. I don't have any attic space so what should I do with some files I have to keep? There's a big gap of nothingness above the kitchen cupboards, and the moving boxes with the files in them fit very nicely. I found a roll of old wallpaper that I used to wrap the ugly brown cardboard boxes -- not perfect, but it will do for now. Huge amount of work, though...
My kitchen reminds me so much of old-fashioned kitches I used to see when I was a kid. This morning I rescued a used pull-up blind and hung it on the window -- sometimes the sun is just too bright and hot so I needed a kind of curtain. Looks ok.
The hallway could be bigger but it's actually not all that bad. The whole layout is really pretty good -- compact, but useful and usable.
This is my "White Cube" -- what will be my little study/bedroom. At present it awaits new flooring and then the old floor will need to be sanded and oiled. Then I can put things in permanently. It's a lovely, airy, light little space where I love to sit and read, or have breakfast, or practice my flute, or do yoga. Maybe I shouldn't fill it with more stuff? I'm thinking of getting a futon that I can roll up in the daytime.

The bedroom is a tip. That wardrobe is so crooked it laughs at you -- the people who lived here and put things in had no patience to do jobs right -- I've been mending and cleaning and shaking my head at how poorly jobs can be done. I never would have believed it.
And one thing this blog doesn't show is the noisiness of the house. Sound travels far and wide and some nights here have been nightmarish because of the lack of consideration of one young neighbour and his mates. Totally unimpressed by the fact that the police called twice one night to make them quieten down. The latest commotion -- just talking and laughing really loud, mind -- lasted nine hours, from just before 2am until just before 11am on the Friday/Saturday night. I'm still reeling from lack of sleep.
However, all's not bad. For one thing, the garden I have inherited contains a spectacular fleshy shrub with clusters of whitish-yellow downhanging trumpet flowers:I cut a few branches and put them into my beautiful big glass vase (actually intended as an umbrella stand). They're now messing up the floor in my little hall as they drip with a sugary sap which drives the bumblebees crazy outside. No idea what it's called.