Tales From the Box

So I read stories all the time, in magazines and on blogs, about people finding these absolutely beautiful pieces of furniture “on the side of the road”. They’re usually an actual, genuine designer piece from the 1950′s or something, although occasionally the finder is unlucky enough to have only found a replica. I always read these stories with a grain of salt (sidebar: are you picturing me sitting on the couch with my laptop, holding my hand out with a grain of salt in it? No? Just me then). I mean, the stories are so common. Where is this mythical neighbourhood where all the trendy people live that no longer want their designer furniture and just put it out on the side of the road?

And then it happened. To me. Yep, truly. I had driven my car down to the mechanic for a service and was walking home with the Widg in his pram (it’s only a 20 minute walk). It was council pick-up week, so there was lots of rubbish and unwanted junk out the front of everyone’s houses, the occasional piece of tattered or broken furniture. So when I saw this sideboard, I assumed there was something wrong with it.

I bravely walked up the driveway to see if the residents were home, and there was an electrician out the front doing some repair work. We got chatting, and the homeowner came out to join in the frivolity. To cut a long story short, the sideboard was in perfect condition, I was welcome to take it, but how would I get it home? It was too big to fit in my station wagon (which was at the mechanic’s anyway) and was way too heavy for me to lift it into the car (and the Widg wouldn’t be much help). So I offered the electrician $20 to drive it home for me in his ute. By the time the Widg and I had walked home, the sideboard was sitting under our front verandah.

It’s certainly not a “genuine designer” piece or anything. But I really like it. I decided to put it upstairs in the hallway (remember this space?). It fits the space perfectly, and it currently holds all of our bed linens and towels.

I guess one man’s trash is this gal’s treasure (the husband’s opinion certainly leans towards “trash” on this one).

When we were doing the renovations to the Box, polished concrete floors weren’t that common (our builders had never done them before, and it took some research to find someone relatively local who could make it work).

Most polished concrete floors are actually a thin layer of concrete poured over the existing floor (often with colour, dye or other effects mixed into it). But ours is quite unique (we’re so special).

Our concrete floors are the actual original slab of the house, complete with faults, chips and oil stains (you can see where the previous owners used to park their cars). New sections were added where it was necessary to reinforce the structure, or to cut into the slab to insert plumbing and pipes and the kitchen island bench.

The guy who did the actual polishing commented on the aggregate (the little tiny stones embedded in the cement to make it stronger), saying that it was rare these days to get aggregate that looked like that (we think it was poured in the 1950′s).

But how does it wear as a floor? Well, we love it. It’s easy to keep clean (just vaccuum, mop with warm soapy water, occasionally it needs a coat of protecting sealant). I never worry about spilling anything on it, since it doesn’t stain and everything just wipes off. It’s especially awesome with kids. We have the concrete floors across the whole bottom storey of the Box – kitchen, dining and living areas.

In summer, it’s cool to walk on, and keeps the temperature of the house just lovely. We rarely have to use the air conditioner in summer (upstairs where we have carpeted it’s a different story). But we truly believe the concrete keeps the overall temperature of the Box down.

In winter, it’s quite cold. We do need to put the heaters on, and it takes a while to heat up the concrete (I would say a few days). Once the concrete has warmed up a bit, and as long as you don’t let it get too cold again, you’re pretty right. But we have needed to buy a few rugs to cover as much of the floor area as possible (we take these rugs up in summer).

It also doesn’t help that one whole wall of the downstairs living area is floor to ceiling glass bi-fold doors. Well, again, it’s great in summer when we can open up the whole house to let the beautiful cool breezes flow through the whole Box. But it sucks in winter (as the warm air escapes straight through the glass). So we have curtains to pull across in winter to add some insulation.

If we had the funds, there are things we could easily do to increase the heat-efficiency of the Box (like double glazed windows). But overall, we love our polished concrete floors, and we would definitely have them in any future house.

(See what we wrote about our concrete flooring during the actual reno process here).

I really should have taken some “before” pics, just to show you how bad my old ironing board cover was. To give you an idea, my husband made fun of how “shiny” the fabric had become, and a friend asked if I had set it on fire. It was one of those things that you don’t really notice until someone draws your attention to it. When I took the old cover off, the fabric was as stiff as a board (pun not intended, but couldn’t really be helped). Ridiculous.

And I know I could have just bought another cover, but I found a tutorial for making one, so I gave it a go. It’s pretty self-explanatory (use the old cover as the pattern, cut, sew a casing for the thread or elastic). Except that I’m impatient and wasn’t concentrating, and made it a bit too small. Technically it does fit, but it bugs me, so I think I’ll make another one.

The hardest part was threading the elastic through the casing, simply because it was so long. But I love the result, it almost makes ironing enjoyable. Oh, and the fabric is from Ikea.