carpets in the loo

Dear reader, this is a sponsored post. But I wrote it and it’s actually a bit good, so you ought to have a look.

This is the first of several things-about-the-house posts I’ll be writing today. Or this evening, depending on how this day goes (note: I have come back to this several hours later, which says it all).

We’ve been in the house a couple of months now and it’s starting to look a bit like home. Well, sort of muddly chaos with occasional corners of tidiness and order, which is as good as it gets with six children, a dog and three cats (one of whom went AWOL this weekend following the all-weekend epic that is the National Musical Fireworks Championship – no, I had no idea they existed, either).

Although its rented, the house is ours for as long as we want – we’ve got the loveliest landlords for which we’re extremely grateful. I think me bursting into tears of happiness the first time we viewed the house convinced them we’d appreciate it, and we really do. We’ve got wonderful neighbours who actually like children – lucky someone does, as I can fob them off on a regular basis to help plant potatoes and pootle around the garden and let me get on with drinking coffee. I mean er writing and doing very important things.

Anyway, I digress. The thing is this: all this fabulosity is great but there’s a huge problem we have yet to address. Four small boys. Two loos. And yes, you guessed it – that most British of conventions, a carpet in the loo. Yearghhh. Unfortunately it doesn’t take much for them to get distracted when they’re, um, relieving themselves. And then it’s wee on the seat, wee on the carpet, and I’m not even going to go into the light sabre episode. If you have boys you’ll get it – if you haven’t, be thankful you need never know.

When I was a little girl I spend every summer at my grandmother’s house in Deal, Kent. She had lived there since just after the war, and the house was a bit like stepping back in time. My favourite thing was her enamelled bathroom sign:

Now we’re sharing one bathroom between the six (eight, half the time) of us, it makes a lot more sense than it used to. Trying to juggle showers for hair obsessed pre-teens and force reluctant small boys into the bath seems to be a constant battle here. And so it’s reached a point where we need to do something about the dreaded carpet. That’s where the lovely wood flooring at Ambience Hardwood Flooring is looking like the secret. The rest of the house has the most beautiful, hard wearing hardwood floors, and the bathrooms are going to have to go the same
way, I think. I don’t want lino, although again, childhood memories of freezing cold linoleum underfoot bring me back to being ten. I remember hopping into the bathroom at six in the morning after my grandad had finished his regulation six inch deep bath. Freezing feet and the smell of Pears soap and his marvellous badger hair shaving brush.

That house had a huge influence on me. Right now we’re decorating our hall with a distinctly 1930s/40s feel and I can’t wait to show you the results. Photos coming soon, I promise!

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This has been a sponsored post*

*I know, another one. The reason for this will become clear soon enough. Bear with me. It’ll be worth it, I promise!