Disclaimer: this is about our home, and isn't pottery related
Just before lockdown we started tidying up the front of our house. We’ve only been here for three and a half years so it was about time! It’s a Victorian end terrace (there are three in a row) amid a mix of other house styles in the most beautiful town of Stamford, Lincs. Originally from ‘down south’ the architecture in Stamford reminds me so much of my home – Bristol – and my old stomping ground – Bath. Anyway, I digress.
The steps were quite frankly dangerous, and my husband has always dreamt of owning a castle (not going to happen) so the closest I could offer him was a gate instead of a draw bridge.
The steps got dug up days before lockdown which meant the ultimate social distancing measure for a few weeks, but when they were finally put in, we spaced them out and made them a much easier and regular distance. We used the same Indian sandstone that we have in the back garden as we know we love it and it weathers really nicely too.
Before
During
After
We added railings and a gate and just to confuse everybody who assumed that the white front door would stay, we painted it pink. The first pink (Farrow and Ball’s Middleton Pink) was beautiful but too pale, which was confirmed when the builders said: “nice white door”, so the decorator was called back and we went for F&B’s Nancy’s Blushes instead. We put a sample of the pinker pink in front of the pale pink door and as you can see the pale pink almost becomes white. Nancy's Blushes is very pink but the tone works so nicely with the Victorian brick.
We’ve kept the numbers, letterbox and knocker that we had before but with a lot of elbow grease we managed to turn them from a dirty brown to gold-ish. We love them and promised ourselves that we (ok – the child) will have to keep them clean and polished going forward.
We bought our gate and railings from Gates Railings Direct who were fantastic. They were handmade to our measurements and the quality is incredible. We had to get them to make a couple of additional brackets as our measurements weren’t quite right (our fault not theirs) and their customer service was second to none…
What’s still to do? We want to clean the stone and replace the broken capping /balastrade but until we can get round to that we've added some box balls to divert the eye!
We’re thrilled with the results – it is now easy to say to people “we’re the house with the pink door”; we have the added security of knowing that the gate will stop the dogs running out, and I’m very proud to say that the DHL delivery driver declared our steps the “best, safest and smartest in Stamford”… quite the compliment.
Dogs (real and stone), urns and child were all here beforehand!