I'm back, although I never intended to disappear for quite so long, Apologies to my poor brother for leaving that unfortunate still of him frozen in cyberspace for months :) It does feel a tad weird , you know what it's like when you haven't seen someone for ages but so much has happened that you really don't know how to start to catch up. I've lost count of the number of times I started a post and then faltered.
It was a much needed break though as there were just so many things I really needed to get to grips with. Still got a long way to go but I think I may just have finally learned to stop trying to achieve the impossible and give myself a break.
So what have I been up to then ......
Well, I have finally got my London Mummy website up, after so many false starts. I eventually went for a Big Cartel store which I customized myself. It's very far from perfect but I had spent so long procrastinating and worrying that it wasn't going to pass muster and being embarrassed by the fact that it was taking me so long and that I couldn't afford to purchase all the stock that I wanted, design and make my own items etc that I was in danger of just never getting it done, quitting London Mummy altogether and then beating myself up about it.
I always knew that it was going to be tough given that I was starting from zero, no capital whatsoever, with a child to support and being someone who is not good at asking for help. I find just admitting that things are tough really really hard but I must and will change - starting with not hitting the delete button after this admission.
Earlier this year I did a fair bit of work in Livvy's room. The work I started on opening up the two void spaces under the eaves is nearly finished.
This is the right hand side void partially opened up - was the original lathe and plaster
Lovely!
Can't tell you just how much dust and muck was involved but after moving some of the upright supports, adding an extra horizontal beam for support, battening out and plasterboarding the walls and ceiling, laying a floor on the joists, sanding the two angled beams and fixing tongue and groove it now looks like this:
Oh and lots of white paint!
This is the little secret box I built for her which sits between the floor joists as I couldn't extend the floor any further there - still have to fit the lid for her.
The left hand void was even trickier - I don't have any before photos as I just wanted to get on with it but here is what it looks like now:
The left hand wall was a real mess, bulging mortar between the bricks, horizontal beams and half beams and of course, nothing was straight.
I boxed in the horizontal beams and built out the boxed area a little so that I could build the shelves under the slope to house Livvy's Nintendo DS games and CD's.
I managed to build in a shelf unit behind the sloping beam for more CDs and books.
Having run out of tongue and groove, I only fitted it to the area under the slope and recycled one of the old floorboards to both cover the gap and fix some hooks to with a little shelf above.
To the right of the picture are more upright supports and some shelving I built in which is to be accessed from outside the cupoard although I'm now changing this slightly to create large bookshelf areas accessible from the room.
There is more to do to finish these but I unfortunately discovered a pretty major problem with water ingress under the window between these two void areas which has damaged both the brickwork and timber beam which runs underneath the window and across the full width of the room. Not covered by insurance apparently and which needs to be sorted out by the Management Company for the building, along with various other leaks! One disadvantage to being on the top floor of an old Edwardian House .....
I'll show you more of her room another time.
