Can You Tell What It Is Yet?

This beauty has been living in pieces since I sold my house in Reading way, way back in 2005. A crying shame for sure; it's been in a loft in Henley, a storage facility in Reading, back to another loft in Reading, and finally the garage here at our home in deepest Somersetshire.

Once upon a time this lovely graced the front room/parlour (aka the 'nosey' room, since it overlooked the street and was a great place for watching the neighbourhood goings-on) at my Granny's house in Bristol. When she died and the house was sold, this gorgeous item came to me.

And finally, a few weekends ago we got it out of the garage, shuffled it into the living room and hubby put it together.

There's something you don't see often enough these days!

Once it was fully assembled, we carried it into the snug and, ta daaaaah, popped it up against the chimney breast. 

We've been debating what to do with the chimney breast/fireplace for a while now, looking on eBay for the 'perfect' surround, and all the while there was this lovely heirloom out in the garage. It's not that we'd forgotten it was there, but it had been earmarked for use in the living room when we get round to having a chimney breast/fireplace built in there. However, we think it suits this room much better. Not to everyone's taste, I know, but we rather like it.

Here's a comparison photo to show what the chimney breast/fireplace looked like on the day we first viewed the house in July 2010.

And another from the day the builders started work on the house back in April 2011.

Next on the list is a little bit of colour for this room. When we had the house renovated, we asked the decorator to paint every room white, because we couldn't think of what colour we would want each room before actually living there. Once the carpet was laid and we started moving some dark oak furniture in, I plotted to paint the room a deep, dark grey or purple. My plan was to paint the entire room, but I thought I'd start with the chimney breast and see how it went from there.

And so I present to you Carragheen by Kevin McCloud for Fired Earth.

Rejected by hubby (and then me) as being too dark. And defintely too dark for the entire room.

So, it was back to B&Q for another look at the purple range; this time Dulux Twilight Cinders 2.

It's actually darker than it looks in these photos, but after a couple of weeks of sitting and looking at it, it looks like this colour will be given the boot too. We have decided it is too 'new build'. That's our way of saying it's too modern for us - it's the sort of colour you might see on a feature wall in a show home. And we're not show home people.

So, it's back to the drawing board as far as colours go. Hubby has suggested green. I'm not convinced.

Oh, and on a completely different note, a trip to one of our (many) local charity shop turned up another frame for just £1.99. A quick couple of coats of Dulux Bowler Hat (originally bought as a contender for the walls of the snug, but again rejected as too dark) and here's another of DC's art works ready to be hung (if we ever get round to deciding the best spot.)