The House of Laura, a tour. Part 1: The hallway

With the benefit of hindsight, I now realise that having named the blog 'House of Laura' I maybe should have kicked it off with an introduction to 'The House of Laura'! Oh well, better late than never.

I'm going to drip feed these as there's quite a bit I'd like to include about each room, like the 'before' and 'after' shots, the inspiration for each space and the problems I'm still working through with each one because, as anyone who has extensively renovated an old house will know - it is never "finished"! Plus, having moved from a 2 bed flat to a 3 bed house, we still have quite a bit of furniture buying ahead of us.

As a quick intro to the house and the project overall, we first saw the house - a typical 3 bedroom, late Victorian semi in South London - in August 2013 and completed on the sale at the end January 2014. Which means we've now owned it for a year so this feels like a really good time to look back on the project..

Splurge, Save Create: Daybeds

Feeling energised and rather pleased with myself after finishing my first blog post, I thought I'd have a go at thinking up some regular features that will help me focus my weekly posts a bit.

One of the main reasons for starting this blog was so that I would have a place to organise my thoughts and record recent sources of inspiration. Having recently finished the lengthy and painful process of buying and renovating a house, I now sometimes feel a bit overwhelmed at the thought of styling and furnishing the mostly empty rooms. 

So, for these (mainly selfish) reasons I've come up my first regular feature: Spend, Save, Create. It's not exactly original but it is the kind of feature I really enjoy on other blogs and in magazines, and might help me - and maybe even other people - see how an idea can be seen through to fruition by spending big, spending less big or by being frugal and creative. 

A daybed for the snug

First up then is my biggest problem area in our new house - the snug:

Lots of people with Victorian or Edwardian houses that are shaped like this use their second reception rooms as a dining room, but as we have a big kitchen diner we don't need, or want, a separate formal dining area, plus it's quite dark as you can see, so we decided to turn ours into a 'snug' and use the front reception room as a slightly more formal/grown up living room. But, given that it's fairly narrow, a standard sized sofa would make the area look a bit too crowded I think, and I want something that looks a bit more 'loungy' so I'm on the hunt for a day bed. 

Spend

My 'if money was no object' option is from Another Country which is a recent discovery of mine and I just love the simplicity of their furniture which has that quiet, well made, well-worth-the-investment air about it. With its brass legs, Belgian linen mattress and £2k+ price tag, this is truly my dream daybed:

Getting past the first post

First blog post on my first blog... who knew a blank white 'page' could look so scary! This feels like stepping into the unknown and is so much more daunting than I thought it would be. I have a new found respect for the many bloggers I follow who make daily blog posts seem totally effortless..

I've written and deleted a few first blog posts now and having worked myself up into a proper stress trying to think of something profound to write by way of an introduction to myself and what I hope to achieve from starting a blog, I've decided to scrap that totally and just dive straight in as I've realised that what I want to achieve from this above anything else, is to have an outlet for my creative juices - a place to collect and work out ideas and thoughts and little pieces of inspiration. 

So, with that in mind I'm going to start with some images I've seen this week that have made my heart beat a little faster:

This one from a post on Suzy Hoodless on desiretoinspire.net - makes me wish I had a space big enough in my house to divide with Crittall windows and turn into a library/study just like this one:

I'm dreaming of a full set of these Hans Wegner Sawbuck chairs (picture from www.scandinavia-design.fr). We have just about enough money left  in our wedding present fund for 1 of these deciding which combination of wood and textile to invest in is keeping me awake at night:

 This looks like a kitchen shared by a cook and an artist and seems like great dinner parties would be hosted here - I'd so like to see the rest of the house and find out more about who lives these but sadly the blog it's from originally is private (picture from Pinterest). I love the simple framed illustrations on the wall and the massive great big slab of marble on the opposite wall:

And finally, I'm not usually one for cheesy life affirming quotes like this, but it sort of sums up how I feel about starting this blog and a few other things in life at the moment (from dianekrugerperso on Instagram):

There we go then - I've passed the scary first blog stage! Here's hoping the second, third and all subsequent posts are a whole lot easier than this one.