The Master Bedroom (mid eighties) A Homage To Laura Ashley And All Things Floral......
This is the master bedroom of the very first home that we bought together. We were so proud and had waited a long while before we could buy our first home and jump onto the property ladder. This three bedroom little house was in Tylers Green, Buckinghamshire, England and the village dated back to Henry VIII. In fact the village duck pond was created during Henry VIII reign, the soil there is very heavy clay and a pit was dug to provide the roofing tiles for Henry's Hampton Court Palace. Once the roof was complete the hole that was left eventually became the village duck pond......
It was so daunting the thought of buying our first home and I remember the mortgage was three times my husband's salary, yikes! In those days that was the limit that you could get and we struggled to get the deposit and be able to afford the house......
This was the second house that we lived in as a young and green married couple but our first true home of our own. Because of this I went all out on the decorating and was happy to give Laura Ashley a whirl with roses, roses and more roses please. This was the eighties, the true hey day of the fabulous Laura Ashley and all things floral and any young married couple or country gent had their home decorated with these fabulous wallpapers and gorgeous borders. Prior to Laura Ashely there was nothing much in the way of borders and any that you would find would be little 2" strips. Nothing like the bountiful creations of roses and garlands Laura Ashley would then come to make their trade mark......
I was so pround of this room and thought it the height of romantic elegance. Today I would never use so many roses together but in the 80's it was the height of chic decorating. I like things simpler but at the time it was my dream bedroom. The duvet bedding even matched the wallpaper and was by Janet Reiger with more roses and dripping with lace to top it off. I must have loved it as I stood and slavishly ironed it and all of the frills to within an inch of its life!!! Those were the days......
The top wallpaper was a divine little darling rosebud and the bottom was a faint pale pink stripe called Cricket Stripe. I was slowly starting to collect my first few antiques and thought I had died and gone to heaven. The pink fluffy and puffy festooned shade was the final glorious flourish, this was made by Laura Ashley and it measured 14' long when it was not gathered. I even ironed this thing, I can only think that I was missing a few marbles at the time. I continued to own the brass bed with baskets of inset mother of pearlflowers until last year when I decided to donate it to charity. I know I could have sold it but I decided that a charity shop could do more with it than I . To be honest I don't think it ever arrived at the charity chop because the driver and his little buddy were talking 100 miles anhour in Spanish about it. So I suspect it is now happily in one of their homes and I say enjoy!!!
This humble little corner is to show you my brick red chest of drawers. This and two others were given to me and they were ugly dark brown stain, made from cheap plywood and had very little going for them. I painted this a truly high gloss brick red called Salamander and just loved it. It happily remained that color for years and years and continued to shine and look fabulous. A couple of years ago I did a repaint and it ended up looking completely different. I will hunt out a photograph of the old and the new for you. It is amazing how much a color can change the look and feel of a piece of simple humble furniture......
I came across these old photographs a little while ago and had forgotton those early decorating hard earned skills. I hope you enjoy your own trip down memory lane with your first attempts at making a house a home......
