Red and Black Week. Day 1. Too many books? Never!

Hurrah! It's Red and Black week again, thank you to Sophistique Noir for the wonderful theme! I've been putting together a post about my Red and Black bedroom at Dad's house for a while, so what better day to post it than at the start of Red & Black week!

My Red & Black Room

Red walls and black trims, it seems my bedroom at Dad's is perfect for the theme!
I have been waiting to post pictures of this room, but it never got totally finished so I kept putting it off. I can't use power tools (don't give this dyspraxic a drill, ever) so all the things I can't do myself remain undone (mostly having heavy pictures/mirrors, but also shelves). There are also a few things I never got round to finishing myself, as you will see. I'm going to do some more work on it, then bribe a DIY savvy friend or two into drilling some holes for me!

I've decided that over the next few weeks I'll post some pictures of what's finished and still to be done. Here's the first batch! The corner of the room by the door.

As you can see my large mirror is sitting on the floor underneath where it is meant to hang! The ceiling still has splodges of red on it too! I doubt I'll ever get time to re-paper and paint the ceiling though, so I may just have to paint over the splodges....

 I ran out of paint before I got to the main door. I've decided to paint when I get back from my fieldwork at Highgate.

I need frames for these posters, then I'll move them higher up the wall so there is room to hang my small gold framed mirror.

Any offers of help for this DIY dunce? Ill pay you in Absinthe!

Before I can do much serious work on the room though, I need to go through my stuff and organise it all (which will also make it easier when me and ash get our own house and I can finally move it all out of dad's =P).

Books, books and more books

Last week I had 3 days off because of the bank holiday, but I felt knackered, must have been all the traveling (Birmingham - York, York- Bristol, Bristol - Birmingham, in 3 days) and the extra hours I had to work to get time off for the conferences. So instead of going out, I spent a day being uber geeky and re-organising and cataloguing my books. I haven't finished yet, because I have so many, but this is most of the fiction dealt with!

This is the main bookcase, for my ridiculously extensive collection of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and kids books! There are a few classics in there too, honest!

I keep my poetry, folklore and culture books on the small bookcase by the bed. Because they are mostly rather lovely old editions.

There's another small bookcase under the desk and several bags of textbooks waiting for shelves as well... Do you think I have too many books? =P

I hope you have enjoyed this little tour. I'm off to read all of the other red and black week theme posts, and plan a blog giveaway (just reached 100 followers yay! =]).

Decorating can be distressing...

Since I finshed my undergrad degree and moved in with my Dad I've been slowly decorating my room.

The walls are  deep red, the woodwork is black. Can you tell that I got a bit over-excited about being allowed to paint, because I no longer had a landlord breathing down my neck?

I had to buy a new bed too, because it was that or sleep on an inflatable mattress all year. I ordered the second cheapest Argos bed; having slept on the cheapest Argos bed in 2 student houses, I thought I'd splash out and get one that looked nice =P.

When the bed arrived I realised that the bedknobs I had imagined to be silver, were in fact antique brass style. Not usually a colour I go for, but it looked so nice with the red walls that I decided to run with it. I found the candlestick in a chairty shop for 3 quid, and the lamp was from Homebase in the sale.

I even added some brass handles to my new wardrobe (which deserves it's own post if I ever finish it), they were also from Homebase, 3.79 each. The butterfly handles were from Urban Outfitters (3 quid each in the sale). The heart was made my my friend Pip.

Getting carried away with the whole decorating thing, I decided to swap the very ikky old white plastic lightswitch and plug sockets for brass too. I found some cheap from Wilkinsons.

When they arrived they were just too shiny, so I decided to distress them to match the rest of the room. I attempted to remove the protective coating with acetone nail varnish remover. I then gave them a good scrub with salt and lemon juice. The results were disappointing; it only worked in small patches, creating very dark spots. This is because the damn things aren't actually brass at all; they are steel with a brass coloured finish. So instead of a nice patina, I was just getting rust.

In the end I just decided to use a very fine grade sandpaper to dull the surface a little. It's hard to take a good picture of it though.

I think they look OK, and will probably age more quickly to a good finish than if I had just left them alone.

If anyone has some tips I could try before I go ahead and wire them up (or rather Dad does, because I am not to be trusted with electricity) I'd be very grateful.

My student bedroom

In my 3rd year at uni I lived with some wonderful friends in what was for students a fairly nice house. There was however one problem. My landlady was Cruella Deville! She even looked a bit like her (but with way less dress sense). She hated me because I did this to my room, and made it look 'unsightly' without actually breaking any house rules. She was worried no one would want to rent the house after us!

So here is a tour of my student bedroom, redecorated using only white-tack and nails (which of course I polyfillered and repainted when I left).

My door. La Coulisse is french for 'the wings' as in backstage at a theatre in French. I like the idea of my room being behind the scenes and I love the theatre.

On the left wall as you entered my room I hung a mirror and my jewellery diplay boards, as well as other pretty things like my black fairy wings.

In the corner facing the door was my desk. It was always a mess so I didn't take any pictures of it. Above the desk there was a noticeboard, posters, my clock and photos. The picture leaning on the desk is a picture my friend norma drew of me. I couldn't put it on the wall because the frame is really heavy so that would have involved some serious fixings and a power drill.

Here is a picture showing the entire wall.

The wooden bookcase served as a dressing table and a place to display things:

Another reason my landlady disliked me was because I 'made the room look small' by adding 4 bookcases. These 2 stacked on top of each other and a further two small ones in the window bay. I own over 400 books and had to put them somewhere! Unlike most students I didn't move home to parents in the holiday. My student house was my only home.

The curtains I put up around the window were made an old friend's mum. A lovely lady called Barbara, who was like a second mum to me. She died in 2005 and I still miss her so I like to have these to remind me of her.

On the window sill, I kept my signed Siouxsie Sioux poster (also too heavy to hang) and above on the lintel was my collection of glass bottles.

The window bay had a boxed in electrical meter and I used this as a bedside table. The trunk here is full of all my important papers, like the electricity bills!

Above the bed I had more photographs, posters, a lino print by my friend miriam and a silk painting I did in year 9 when we were studying gaudi in art.

Finally a picture of my wardrobe doors. I brought these canvases with Parisian scenes in a charity shop.