I have been following a LOT of renovation accounts on instagram. It’s a very ambiguous obsession, as I love seeing other people’s plans come to fruition, and I REALLY love a good floor plan, but often I find myself preferring the ‘before’ shot to the ‘after’.
Sometimes it’s that the current trends don’t really chime with my taste – the greys and peaches, mustard yellows and pastels which seem to be very popular just aren’t very ‘me’, and more often, it’s the sense of something being over-finished. I can’t bear the sight of a traditional house being so transformed that you can’t see the bones of how it originally looked.
Of course, this is what had already happened to our house before we moved in, except for the staircase, which gives just a glimpse of what it might once have looked like. If a house has had all the character stripped from it, then I don’t blame people for treating it like a blank canvas – but if you’ve got some original features, any at all, it seems a shame not to try and keep them.
And in a perverse kind of way, I do rather like the odd 1970s feature, a pine ceiling or textured glass window, but I can see why other people would want to dispense with them, (especially if they’re of a certain vintage but not original to the house) – they might be admirable at a distance but not so easy to live with (and might well breach building control these days).
On the other hand, what I do like on Instagram is seeing how people manage to add better storage – I dream of pantries, utility rooms and boot rooms. It’s not as if our household does any very muddy sports, and we don’t have a dog, but every time I admire someone else’s grand utility room, I still yearn for something a bit better than our ‘space’.
I can’t even call it a utility room – it doesn’t have a sink, for starters – and it’s only got room for one person to stand in, but when it’s all you’ve got, you have to try and make it work for you. It’s more or less just a back porch, or a lobby, but we usually call it ‘the washing machine room’.
The shelf space above the washing machine started out as a place for smaller gardening items, bird food, and the laundry products, but since guinea pigs joined the family, some of their stuff has ended up there too. Since then, I give it a proper clear-out every so often, but it never lasts very long – the piles of stuff build up again and again. No point having better organised storage, either – I’ve tried having tubs and boxes to store things in, but other stuff piles up on top of those, and the underneath things never get used at all.
My one good solution to the lack of space is ‘if in doubt, add a hook’ – we had put up some proper hooks for the more heavy-duty garden tools, but then I discovered command tag hooks, and I haven’t looked back since.
During the first lockdown, (I suppose when I wanted to exert a bit more control over domestic matters, when so much else was out of our control), I decided command hooks were the solution to the under-stairs area. This is our bonus storage space, and it’s even more of an annoyance to me than the utility lobby. I was always frustrated by the broom and mop clattering over – a few hooks later, no more brooms falling over and getting in the way when I try to reach for something else.
Even now, 3 years on, when I look down the little corridor towards the back door, I feel grateful for 2020 me for bothering to do a quick fix, rather than it turning into one of those jobs you think of doing but never get round to.
If only the same could be true of the rest of the under-stairs space. It just doesn’t work, but I don’t see a way of making it better. I know lots of people box them in and turn it into pull-out drawers and cupboards, but our adjacent corridor is too narrow – if you pulled out a drawer or opened a cupboard door, no one would be able to get by, and besides, the door to the downstairs loo is in the way.
Secondly, if it was all boxed in with shelves and cupboard doors, the gas and electric meters would be inaccessible. So, it remains hopelessly messy. All the various footballs we’ve acquired over the years. All the bags for life. Cables. Old shoes. Clothes airers. All these things have to live somewhere, but no matter how much I tidy, clear out and sort, it remains dark and cluttered. Is there a better solution? Probably, but short of adding more hooks, I’m all out of ideas.
Anyway, in the spirit of shining a light on the scruffy unloved corners, here’s to all the bits of our houses that get on our nerves, and don’t work as well as they should. They deserve their moment in the sun, too.
ladymissalbertine 