There’s a brand of coconut-filled chocolate bars that I really like, but I prefer dark chocolate. Many shops in the UK don’t stock the dark chocolate variety, so I developed this recipe to make my own.I actually like them more than the originals, as do
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Dictionaries say that home is: ‘the place in which one’s domestic affections are centered’, ‘a place where a person, family, or group of people live or spend much of their time, or where a person feels safe or comfortable’. According to these definitions home is not only a building where we spend our time but a special space that we are bounded with.
There are four ways that I know of to smooth over textured ceilings and I’ve tried them all. If you want to do the same, take my advice…
Artex. I hate it. It’s definitely not Arty, but it is Textured.
The previous owners of my house applied Artex to most of the ceilings.
They probably did it to cover the fact that some of the ceilings
were cracked or sagging.
Somehow it doesn’t work in a Victorian house that I am trying to restore back to its former glory.
Here are the methods that I have tried to return the ceilings back to their original form.
Remove the Artex with a sander
One word of advice: Don’t!
Your house will be filled with dust and you’ll get through loads of face masks.
It also takes forever - that stuff is tough! You’ll soon get tired arms doing this job.
Remove the Artex with a steamer
Amazingly, those steam strippers used for removing wallpaper will also remove Artex. The steam softens the Artex and you can scrape it off. It’s still a lot of effort though.
Beware – hot, melted Artex sticks to the skin and it’s hot. Wear thick gloves and other protection if you use this method.
Cover the Artex with a skim-coat
The makers of Artex sell a product, Smooth-It, which is designed for covering up textured surfaces. It galls me that Artex are making money twice – once for the Artex and once for the Smooth-It.
You can buy this ready mixed in large tubs, or as sacks of dry powder. Buy the powder – it’s considerably cheaper and you can mix it to the consistency that suits you.
I would only recommend this if you are reasonably handy at plastering.
If the texture is very deep, knock off the largest protruding pieces first otherwise you’ll be applying a lot of skim coat – probably requiring as many as 3 applications. Your arms are going to get sore!
Start again
Remove the ceiling entirely and put up a new one. Again, this is only practical if you are good at plastering. However, if your ceiling has cornices (or coving), it might be the only solution. Using a skim-coat to cover the Artex means that the cornice will “sink” into the ceiling by the depth of the coat.
If you have a period house as I do, you might be reluctant to do this. My ceilings are made from lath and plaster rather than the modern plasterboard. I want to retain as much of the original house as possible during the renovation.
There are heterogeneous views as to what makes a wooden chair an antique piece. An antique-wooden-chair gives us a historic feeling. Whenever we talk about the antique wooden chair, it creates images of persons sitting in the porch looking at the sunbathed overview. The wooden chair will be an antique one if it is old more than fifty years. Less than that will not make a normal wooden chair an antique one.
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A colourful house with faded walls, wicker and worn furniture is a distinctive picture you might get whenever you think of a country-styled home. Adding a tinge (or more) of the country style to your home doesn’t mean re-creating a part, nor does it mean being frozen in time. It is preserving the good old things of the past and turning them into a mélange by incorporating them with state-of-the-art home amenities.
Living in a country styled home is supposedly very informal and comfortable. It enables the home owner to relax in a rustic setting amidst simple things handmade by skilled artisans. If you are planning to incorporate a country style in your home, don’t imagine it to be a very tedious task. Designing your home in the country style has minimal rules. All you would have to ensure is that the atmosphere is comfortable, both for people living in the house as well as guests who come visiting.
Since the country look has undergone transformation over the years, it has improved and taken in a wider variety of distinctive attributes. Given below are some ideas that would help you while adding a ‘touch of the country look’ and preserving your tradition as well.
Flooring
Always start from the floor, as it is the ‘base’ of the home. For instance, you could lift the carpets, sand the floor-boards and varnish them. Add a painted border to your wooden floor before varnishing it for a finishing touch. You can easily do this yourself by purchasing stencils from arts and craft shops. You can also consider oriental rugs and carpets that lend an extra tinge of drama to the entrance of your home.
Walls
In the past, walls were made of brick or wood. You can use wooden or brick walls and leave them unpainted to give the perfect country look. However, if you wish to achieve the country look, you can paint the walls; just make sure you use natural colours, which complement the upholstery and flooring. Also, to get the perfect texture, get the walls evenly plastered and coloured in soft lime-wash. You can decorate walls freehand or using stencil, simple designs and motifs.
Upholstery and furniture
To give an illusion of space in small rooms use minimally upholstered wooden furniture. To add a rustic, colourful look, a mat, handmade quilt, thrown or draped over wooden furniture adds the extra country charm. Create a layered look in the fabrics you use, to give a serene feel to the ambience. Try combining solid colour fabrics with patterned ones, choosing a colour from the pattern as your base colour.
Decorations
Use wicker baskets for flower arrangements – fresh or dried flowers, dried shrubs, potpourri, fruits, and placing bread loaves on the dining table. Wicker baskets are said to be the heart of the country style. They can be kept on the shelves or hung near the windows.
When we hear gems of wisdom so many times, we often don’t stop to question whether or not they are even true. However, just because Mom or Grandma says so, doesn’t mean it is.
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Everyone is talking about saving energy, and quite rightly too.
In the home, saving energy means saving money, and one of the quickest and easiest ways to save is in lighting.
Most homes use incandescent bulbs for their lighting. These are the standard bulb with a coiled filament that glows when you apply electricity to it.
But did you know that these have an energy efficiency of only about 2%? That means for all the energy you feed into it, only one fiftieth of that energy is converted to light energy. The rest is mainly heat. That’s why light bulbs get so hot.
The new Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs) on the other hand have an energy efficiency of between 7% and 10%. That still doesn’t sound very good, but what it does mean is that to get the same amount of light out of it, you only need to supply it with between one quarter and one fifth of the energy.
Now that we’ve established that they use a lot less energy, what about the cost?
The prices of CFLs has come down rapidly in the last year or so, and they are now about 3 times the price of conventional incandescent bulbs. Furthermore, they last about 10 times longer, so you don’t need to replace them quite as often. So in real terms, they actually cost about one third of the price of conventional bulbs.
Consider that in the winter, you might leave a light on from 4pm to 11pm (7 hours). Let’s say that it costs 1 penny (UK) to run a 100 Watt incandescent bulb for 1 hour.
In 1 month, it will have cost about £2.97 to run that light bulb. For the four months November to February, that would come to £11.88.
A CFL of the same light output uses just 22 Watts. Over the same period, that would cost £2.62, a saving of £9.26. That’s enough to buy 3 CFLs.
Now that’s for just one lightbulb. How many more do you use in your house? You could easily save up to £100 a year by switching.
Don’t wait until your incandescent bulbs have blown before replacing them with CFLs - it’s cheaper to throw away your incandescent bulbs now!
In the UK, incandescent bulbs will be withdrawn from sale in 2012. You don’t need to wait until then to switch over. Do it now and save some money.
A common feature in many older houses is a decorative cornice. That’s the moulded decorative border that is fitted at the corner where the walls meet the ceiling.
Some of these were moulded in-place by master craftsmen, using plaster of Paris. Others are moulded in lengths and attached to the walls afterwards.
In modern houses, this is also known as coving and is generally a
simple, concave moulding made from plasterboard – moulded gypsum covered in paper.
If you want to install your own coving or cornice, beware! Plasterboard coving is very heavy. It will require at least two people to install it and once fitted, you will need a series of props to hold it in place. Alternatively, battens temporarily nailed or screwed to the wall and ceiling can be used. The holes can be filled later.
Considerably easier alternatives are polystyrene foam and polyurethane mouldings. These are very lightweight and much easier to handle.
The polystyrene ones are available moulded into several decorative patterns, which is ideal for period houses. They can be fitted by one person, using a specially designed adhesive which is strong enough to hold the pieces in place while it sets.
Gaps between the cornice and wall or ceiling can be filled with ordinary filler, as can any gaps between the sections.
Once all the gaps are filled, they can be painted using normal emulsion paint. I found that it needed two or three coats, but once done, it was impossible to tell that they were made of polystyrene.
The polyurethane ones tend to be smooth mouldings similar to the plasterboard ones as they are covered in paper to make it easier to paint using standard emulsion paint.
They are slightly heavier than the polystyrene ones, but come in longer lengths, meaning fewer joins.
Again, these can be attached using an adhesive. Being slightly heavier, they might need a little extra support – a few small masonry nails hammered into the wall under the bottom edge, and a few more into the ceiling will do the trick. Once the adhesive is dry, remove the nails and fill the holes with a standard filler.
Being covered in paper, paint adheres well to these mouldings, although you might need two or three coats.
If your rooms don’t already have cornices or coving, you’ll be amazed at what a difference it makes to the appearance – especially if you have high ceilings and use patterned mouldings.
In the UK, now is the perfect time to plant plum trees. The soil is moist, but the ground is still warm so it won’t be a shock to the system when you plant the tree.
I’d usually recommend October planting, but this November is turning out to be very mild so far.
But hurry! You want to get them in at least a week or two before the first frost. You can pick up a young plum tree for as little as £3.99 at the moment – I know because we just got one.
It’s well worth it. You could spend £3.99 on a couple of kilos of plums next summer, but a single tree could give you as many as 20 kilos. And then it will do the same again next year, and the year after, and so on for many years to come. That’s a bargain in my book!
If you have a small garden and space for only one plum tree, you really must choose a self-fertile variety. This basically means that the flowers will be pollinated by flowers from the same tree.
If you have neighbours with plum trees, you might think you can get away with a tree that is not self-fertile, but think again. Not all plum trees are compatible with each other.
Good varieties for the UK, which are self-fertile are:
Blue Tit, Czar, Dennistons Superb (greengage), Early Laxton, Marjorie’s Seedling, and of course, Victoria.
It’s better to dig the soil for the tree a month before planting, but it’s too late for that. Not to worry; it will still be ok.
Dig a hole large enough to accommodate the spread out roots of the selected tree. Dig in some organic material such as leaf mould, compost, chicken droppings, bonemeal etc. Get the soil into a friable (crumbly) condition. Plant the tree so that the soil level remains the same – you should be able to determine the soil-line on the trunk of the tree.
Don’t add any fertiliser - it will damage the roots. We need the roots to settle down and get established in the soil before the onset of winter.
Fill the hole up with the soil mixture and firm down. Try to eliminate large pockets of air around the roots.
Support the young tree with a stake for at least 2 years, otherwise it may topple over and suffer damage. Don’t tie with wire or anything that can cut the tree, and don’t tie them too tightly. In the spring and summer, we’ll have to check that the ties are not too tight.
