DULUX HERITAGE - GREEN EARTH

I’ve always been a Dulux gal. For years Dulux has been my ‘go to’ paint for pretty much every refurbishment project I’ve ever done, a product that always comes up trumps on colour choice, quality and finish. (Dulux if you’re reading this a few freebies wouldn’t go amiss for this glowing endorsement!)

Time for another paint job

In keeping with my ‘nature’ themed colour palette I’ve chosen yet another shade of green for the home office walls, this time from Dulux’s Heritage paint range. It’s called Green Earth (green bogey meets gooseberry).

Green Earth - Dulux Heritage paint range

I’ve never used their Heritage paint before but have to say I’m very impressed with the results so far just after one coat. The paint has a lovely thick velvety texture, goes on smoothly and dries quickly leaving the walls looking fabulous even before a second coat has been applied.

BEFORE 

Green Earth is a gorgeous colour that contrasts well with either black or white so the newly built office wall units should look great next to the freshly painted walls. It’s a beautifully serene colour, reminding me of peaceful olive groves, fragrant sage leaves, and fat juicy gooseberries. I would go as far as calling it a ‘period colour’ as I’m sure it wouldn’t look out of place on the walls of some posh country manor.

AFTER

Final top coats to both ceiling and walls are going on tomorrow so Easter Bunny, if you’re popping round please be sure to bring a paint brush as well as a few choccies.

One more coat to go but already looking great

DOORS & DRAWERS

Now when I said that our home office project was currently ‘in limbo’ perhaps that wasn’t strictly true as work is still being done to finish the units.

There is always a moment of extravagant madness that takes over on these projects and in this case, it came about from my desire to have small drawer units incorporated into the shelving. Boy, did that idea bust our budget!

Having searched high and low for something suitably sized to hold a ream of A4 paper, I finally purchased a couple of small wooden drawer units from Ebay priced at £40 each. Blimey! Yes, totally frivolous expense I know but I really wanted to have somewhere handy to store computer paper and envelopes.

Storage drawer unit for A4 size paper

On top of this little extravagance, I then spent over £20 for 4 vintage looking brass knobs. Are you nuts? At £100 in total for 2 mini drawer units, this little whim of mine could have paid for last month’s leccy bill so yes, it was definitely a case of more money than sense.

Having painted each drawer unit black, I covered the fronts in a raised patterned wallpaper which I then painted in Marseille blue. I think the drawer units look rather smart and we’ve managed to incorporate them perfectly into the shelving.

Drawer unit painted black

Drawer fronts papered and painted

Drawers incorporated in the shelf unit

Of course, this wasn’t to be the only moment of financial frivolity as then there was the matter of doors for the narrow end units.

Inset door needed on the end unit

To recreate the NJ design I’d set my heart on, inset doors were required for the end units and due to lack of knowledge or proper tooling, time to call in the professionals.

NJ's home office design with doors

Calling in the professionals is generally a last resort for us as nobody gets out of bed for less than a £200 day rate even for small jobs such as making/fitting cabinet doors but sometimes there is no other alternative.

Being inset doors, the main criteria for the carpenter was to ensure the hinges were hidden within the body of the unit and not visible from outside. To achieve this, he used the type of concealed hinges normally used to fit kitchen cabinet doors. Perfect! Not a bit of hinge can be seen.

Concealed door hinges

No hinges visible from outside

Door handles to match the office furniture were found online from a company called the Handle Studio. Should you need to buy any of these, they are called ‘finger pull’ cabinet handles – these are in a matt nickel finish but other colours are available.

Finger pull handle - Handle Studio

I’ve stained the doors in the same colour as the shelves.

Doors stained and waxed

Ta dah! The units are now finished and ready for final fitting once the room has been painted.

Finished units - ready for final fixing

Bridging unit not in final position

TULIPS

Let’s talk tulips not Tories.

After the warmest and wettest February since Great Aunt Ethel stubbed her toe on a sleeping brontosaurus, bulbs are waking up. So far, March hasn’t gotten any drier either.

Bulbs may have woken up but I haven't

The front garden is awash with tiny daffodils, hyacinths and those little blue things – ah yes, muscari. 

Blue muscari growing wildly in the front garden

Hyacinths have also magically appeared

I saw a host of golden daffodils

I didn’t plant these but they seem to have sprung up everywhere. They look lovely!

This springtime, the real showstoppers are tulips. Inspired by one of Monty’s bulb potting episodes of Gardeners World, I fell victim to a bad case of Tulip Mania and this is the result. 

Look out!  She's gone tulip mad

Starting to wake up

Pots and pots of wonderful tulips to brighten up the back garden.

Bee magnet next to the veggie patch

They look even more vibrant against the black backdrop of the shed.

Lots of lovely bright colours

Even tulips we thought we’d gotten rid of in the lawn when the extension was built have somehow re-surfaced which means that patch of the lawn will remain un-mowed for a while.

Guess who's back?

There are so many different varieties and colours of tulips available to buy, the hardest part is choosing colour combinations you like.

Love tulips

Here’s to tulips – they’ve helped brighten up my day and hopefully yours too!

May tulips brighten your day

HINTON AMPNER

Our DIY projects are currently ‘in limbo’ as we wait for warmer weather to paint the plastered walls so in between rain showers, we’ve ventured out for a day in the country.

Waiting to paint walls

Nestled in the countryside on the road between Petersfield and Winchester is the elegant country house of Hinton Ampner.

Hinton Ampner house

Once home of the author Ralph Dutton, 8th Baron Sherborne, a man of mystery since little is written about him online or otherwise. Unusual? Well in this day and age you’d expect a few snippets to appear somewhere but its almost like a non-disclosure agreement has been applied to his life making it difficult to uncover anything juicy about him.  And that’s part of the appeal of visiting these places, isn’t it?  Getting all the tittle, tattle tales about what went on in the lives of the rich or famous.

Tomb of Ralph Dutton

The house much like any other country pile, sits in an elevated position with a commanding view of the beautifully lush surrounding countryside.  

Side view of the house

Has anyone else noticed that there's always been a fire at these places?  It strikes me as quite an odd coincidence.  These stately piles are either victims of dodgy electrics or the perhaps the landed gentry aren't above an insurance claim or two to get themselves out of financial trouble.

A kitchen garden displaying signs of springtime is well tended.

Spring flowers in the garden

Lovely old greenhouses

Although early in the season, there are many plants already in flower. This beautiful dark hellebore caught my eye and now I want one for my own garden. I’ll be on a mission to track one down either in local garden centres or online.

I want one of these hellebores

Lovely fragrance wafted across the flowerbed from a swathe of navy blue coloured hyacinths.

Lovely scented hyacinths

This wonderful magnolia groaning under the weight of its blossoms graced the back of the house. What a magnificent specimen!

Fabulous magnolia tree at the back of the house

Subtle pink sprinkled with rain drops

The central core of the blossoms

Too muddy to explore any of the estate walks, we wandered off to take a peek in the small Saxon church not far from the house.

All Saints Church

What a vibrantly coloured window

Stained glass windows

No doubt if you returned later on in the year there’d be plenty of beautiful flowers to see in the gardens and woodland walks to help build an appetite for a glorious summer picnic.

View of the gardens

Large cardoon

Ornate old guttering

Fritillaria Imperialis in bloom

SCRAPPING NATIONAL INSURANCE

Wow that was a riveting budget yesterday, wasn’t it? About as interesting as the sludge in the bottom of the Chi canal. But what shook me to the core was the Chancellor’s remark about potentially scrapping National Insurance at some point in the future.

“We (the Tories) want to eliminate that double tax on work” he was quoted as saying in a media interview and this was soon backed up by Dishi Rishi in another public speech.

What Chancellor ‘Fiscal Drag Queen’ Hunt really means is that he wants to scrap NI so that it can be replaced with a single higher tax that will be levied against anyone that ‘earns’ more than the £12,570 threshold which includes those whose income sources do not come from traditional forms of employment ie pensions. You can bet your bottom dollar that this new Single Tax will be higher than both NI and Income tax combined and thanks to fiscal drag, will rake in even more revenue for Treasury coffers.

Now I have no objections to paying tax provided the Treasury then spend the money to address issues being faced by the people of the UK such as energy cost unfairness, pension poverty, skills shortages, lack of dentists, etc etc but instead the Government prefers to fritter cash away on Rwandan migrant schemes doomed to failure, the lazy French who can’t be arsed to stop the boats and a Ukrainian war that could rumble on into the next decade.

I have never viewed National Insurance as a double tax on work. I’ve always felt that the NI portion of deductions made from my pay packet were largely a separate provision for healthcare and a state pension. However, Dishi Rishi’s kicked that out of the ballpark stating that NI goes into the same pot as everything else instead of being specifically ringfenced for health or retirement so then there is little point having multiple deductions on a wage slip, it may as well all come out of income tax.

Making such frivolous statements without further detail on how this will all come about is pretty dangerous for the Tories especially in an election year. I have a few questions for the Fiscal Dragmeister myself on this topic so Jezza, if you’re reading this post then please do enlighten us on the following:

Firstly, how will this new Single Tax be collected from those who aren’t on PAYE but are over the income tax threshold? HMRC are already struggling with the workload they have so having to deal with millions more self-assessments from those not in employment is likely to push them over the edge.

And more importantly, how will monies from this new Single Tax be apportioned towards our state pensions? At present, entitlement to a full state pension is based on paying a full NI stamp for a set number of years. If the NI stamp is abolished, what will the new qualifying criteria for a state pension be based on? What will happen to the NI contribution made by employers? Is that being scrapped too?

My guess is that eliminating NI is the Tories precursory move towards scrapping the state pension. If re-elected they will no doubt increase working age to infinity whilst at the same time, forcing everyone into compulsory stakeholder pension schemes so that no-one ever gets a single penny from the Government.

Yes, by all means simplify taxes (something that the Office of Tax Simplification abolished by Chancellor Khazi in Sept 22 was always meant to do but never got round to it) but for f***s sake wait until you’ve worked it all out before dropping the bombshell!

NHS MONEY WASTE

Rant alert! Oh Gawd, not again (big sigh). I’m very angry, where’s my soapbox? Run to the hills, run for your lives…

What’s lit the blue touch-paper this time? The NHS or more specifically their complete lack of co-ordination and waste of everyone’s time/money both theirs and mine.

On Wednesday I wasted £11 buying a train ticket to trek all the way to Hove to attend a 30 minute physio appointment that technically I wasn’t entitled to. Being somewhat financially squeezed at month end then you can imagine I’m was not best pleased.

Here’s three recent examples of how the NHS wastes tax payer money:

Postage – A few months ago I was invited to attend a follow-up telephone consultation with one of the local NHS clinics. The appointment was arranged via a phone call, confirmed by text message then re-confirmed with not one but two physical letters that arrived in the post within days of each other. I clearly can’t be trusted to remember such an important event!

In the past, I’ve asked hospitals for emailed appointment letters only to be told that the NHS does not regard email as a ‘secure’ form of communication, it would instead prefer to squander oodles of cash on keeping the Royal Mail afloat. Money that could have been saved – cost of 2 x postage stamps, 2 x envelopes, 2 x sheets of A4 paper and ink, plus an administrators time to prepare and mail the letters.

Granted all of this probably doesn’t equate to a great deal of expenditure but multiply this small expense by the millions of patients receiving physical mail and the NHS could generate a significant revenue saving. Give patients the choice to opt in to their preferred method of communication – texts and emails cost nothing!

Procedures – I don’t mean surgical ones although we’ll get onto that one in a mo. What I’m referring to is the awareness by all NHS staff as to what procedures they should be following so as not to waste everyone’s time and money.

After a lengthy phone call in the middle of my train ride home with the physio centre at Hove, it transpires that the NHS consultant I’m under should not have referred me for treatment to their clinic because the contract between them and the NHS only covers patients who have recently undergone surgery. They’ve not been paid by the NHS and I’ve no intention of paying for a service which I expected to be provided for FREE.

The NHS cannot expect patients to foot the bill for services that are part of their rehabilitation process UNLESS they have been told upfront that the provision of that service can only be privately funded.

Pathways – Whilst no-one can fault the expertise or pleasantness of the doctors or nursing staff you encounter on your NHS travels, it does make you wonder if the whole system of ‘pathways’ they follow hasn’t been put together by sat nav since it subjects patients to the most lengthy and tortuous route to get the most effective treatment for their health issue.

I’ve just waited 6 months for an appointment for something called a SPECT scan where radioactive tracer will be pumped round my system to pin point areas of pain in order to clearly identify my health issue.

I would have thought that after 3 years of being on the NHS merry-go-round, a CT scan, several MRI scans, and feedback from my chiropractor it is abundantly clear that I still have a herniated disc in my neck causing nerve compression. I really don’t need an expensive, risky ‘glow in the dark’ experience to confirm what is already known – what I really need is surgery to correct it!

The NHS doesn’t need MORE money chucked at it – what it does need is shorter treatment pathways, less bureaucracy and faster, cheaper means of confirming appointments.

Rant over – for now!