Nice people thread part 4 - sugar and spice and all things

PasturesNew

lostinrates wrote: »

anyone prepared to help me brainstorm a very importnat thing....dining room curtains? I can link the paint colour.

We're thinking of getting that room's building works done in the next few weeks, (builders reckon if we want they could do it before cristmas) ...involves RSJs and a wall down, quite besides all the other stuff....rewire, new plumbing to go into the walls instead of over them....


I could be making curtains now if I could decide on the fabric.....

Have you thought about/would it be appropriate to consider .... wooden folding blinds instead of curtains? What with the house being old and all that....

Doozergirl

PasturesNew wrote: »

Have you thought about/would it be appropriate to consider .... wooden folding blinds instead of curtains? What with the house being old and all that....

Nice idea! Does she need something else to help with draughts?

What have you seen LIR? What colour are the walls?

I can't promise I'll be any use at all but I do love shutters.

lostinrates

Yes PN, I might well add shutters too, as the return is deep enough for shutters and curtains. I think thats a wonderful idea, and we've considered it, but I want curtains too to soften it. This is a very masculine house, and I want to make it a little more androgenous. I picture long meals with friends here for the weekend, so want it to be a room we'll sit in for hours feeling neither overwhelmed nor uncomfortable, but warm and winesoaked and animated only enough for discussion.

The paint colour we are almost certainly going to use is this:

http://www.littlegreene.com/oak-apple

Its a compromise, I wanted dirtier and browner...filthy gold, this is quite clean. But it changes more than almost any paint I've tried anywhere. They describe it as a dark, greenish cream I think, but it varies from a decided yellow through chartruese to an almost olivish brown on the wall.

Its a funny room...there is some exposed wood (which will be cleaned up to its natural colour). Half has a low ceiling (below secret dwarf room) and half has a high one (which may well be dark and reflective by the time I've finished) and its long and narrow, so will have to have a long rectangular table in it. Also going in there are two largish pieces of very dark, almost black, grotesquely creepy diningroom furniture...a buffet and a side board. Their will be some old gold/bronzey things too. Nothing clean and shiney, but a bit old and lustrous.

There are three windows, ina row, all different sizes, one very old low one...three casements, one set of french windows, not very high either, and one other higher double casement.

I had thought of very crude linen or even hessian with a broad silk band of two or three feet at the bottom of a dirty gold. But my mother says it will look like the original linen curtains (she refuses to contemplate someone would use hessian) were too short for the windows. she thinks I should use plain silk. Which I could.

I want it to feel very warm and there will often be lots of candle light in there. Because its an odd shape, and the two different ceiling heights and some fairly cool grotesque furniture, I want it to be quite dramatic, without being overbearing. Rustic, but slightly exotic, like some old travelling eccentric brought ideas and stuff home : exotic but familiarly so, very old. Some of the images I have are morrocan, but I want to infuse that sort of vibe with colour, not objects....because I still want it to feel like a farmhouse in wiltshire.

I have no idea if this translates to any one else the way I'm trying to describe it., I have an ace picture which is perfect (and has a nicer, dirtier wall colour which I might still talk dh into ), but still can't find my camera to put it up here.

edit: oh, and as you can imagine, the low ceiling half is very warm room (its west facing) but the high ceilinged one is a very cold room atm....we're knocking the divding wall out.



edit again: OMG, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that to be so epic!

PasturesNew

The more colours they invent.... the more glad I am that I decided that "everything white" was the way my eventual house paint will be

lostinrates

PasturesNew wrote: »

The more colours they invent.... the more glad I am that I decided that "everything white" was the way my eventual house paint will be

it took me weeks to choose the right white for our exterior wood work:

http://www.farrow-ball.com/shaded-white/colours//fcp-product/100201

thankfully, my instinct was keener over the white that will be in the hall and go all the way up to the attic:


http://www.farrow-ball.com/cabbage-white/content/fcp-content


I'm choosing whites for interior woodwork/ceilings ....and you know, doozer was right about slipper satin, it works well with the colours we've chosen for sitting room and library, but with the dining room I think I'm going back to lime white which I love. next to that colour in the epic post it looks very lovely.

Whites are diificult.:D

PasturesNew

lostinrates wrote: »

it took me weeks to choose the right white for our exterior wood work:

pfft weeks..... into the nearest B&Q/similar ... head for paint.... search for a big tin that says "White, Gloss" .... see if there are 2-3.... pick the cheapest. Off to the till, into the car, home. Job done.

vivatifosi

Lir, have you seen the William Morris design "The Strawberry Thief?" There are a couple of colourways that may work with your scheme. I don't know if it is still done as an upholstery fabric mind, but I thought it would fit what you describe, as well as, in my head, tying in with the bird lamp. It's probably not what you are looking for, but its what I envisaged from my crazy woolly head. Here's a pic of it printed on a fine lawn, rather than upholsery fabric:

http://www.liberty.co.uk/pws/client/images/catalogue/products/aw02libe1040035f/large1/aw02libe1040035f.jpg

tomterm8

PasturesNew wrote: »

The more colours they invent.... the more glad I am that I decided that "everything white" was the way my eventual house paint will be

You'd think that, but apparently there are hundreds of different whites, and I'm told that 'apple blossom white' is supposed to be different from 'snow white', which in turn is different from 'cocaine white' even though they all look the same.

DISCLAIMER: actual colour names have been changed because I refuse to remember them:D

PasturesNew

tomterm8 wrote: »

You'd think that, but apparently there are hundreds of different whites, and I'm told that 'apple blossom white' is supposed to be different from 'snow white', which in turn is different from 'cocaine white' even though they all look the same.

DISCLAIMER: actual colour names have been changed because I refuse to remember them:D

I'm a secret bloke.
http://www.geekinheels.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/how_men_and_women_see_colors.jpg

I did learn the other day the difference between tint and tone ... although, I didn't really learn it as I've forgotten it already - but I know I've written it down somewhere.... and it confused me because a tint of one colour is a tone of another because they're moving in opposite directions between colours. (Didn't explain that well, but I know what I meant - and I doubt anybody reading cares for an explanation).

PasturesNew

vivatifosi wrote: »

http://www.liberty.co.uk/pws/client/images/catalogue/products/aw02libe1040035f/large1/aw02libe1040035f.jpg

Maybe I don't "get it" as, to me, things should be "right".... and it looks like that front/middle bird's leg's almost emerging from his 4rse. Now, I don't know where birds' legs do emerge, but I'd have thought it'd have been further forward.