26/07/2009 by admin.

After last week’s rant about the merits of cheap design, I ranted so much I gave myself a migraine! So this week, I will go back to being my happy carefree self and try my best to look at all areas, whether they be bargain or gold-plated.

Ideal Home have sent through a rather interesting guide to dining chairs including these 2 lovely beauties…

[caption id=”attachment_163″ align=”alignnone” width=”160″ caption=”Nordmyra chair - £29.90 from Ikea”][/caption]

[caption id=”attachment_164″ align=”alignnone” width=”160″ caption=”Rowan Multi-stem chair - £250 from Heal's”][/caption]

Only Ideal Home could put 2 chairs from deeply differing price ranges, right next to each other on a page. Congrats! Incidentally, I like them both, but what with my budget being rather constrained these days, I’m going to end up buying neither.

Oh and if you hadn’t already guessed, the second chair is from the Orla Kiely range. And worse still, it’s £45 more expensive on the Heal’s website…

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14/07/2009 by admin.

It’s that time of the month again. Not the time where snap at my hubby for no reason and generally keel over in pain unless given chocolate on a drip. No, it’s the time of new magazines!

After my last trip to college, I found that I had been buying irrelevant, inappropriate and sometimes downright dirty magazines…like Ideal Home for example. It seems that the college theory is that if a trend is featured in one of these so called ‘lowly’ publications, it’s already on it’s way out.

As a previous ‘consumer’ buying every interior design magazine under the sun was a perfectly acceptable habit, especially since I preferred this to buying clothes and shoes (much to the hubby’s confusion). Now I have to extract myself from consumerdom and start thinking like a designer.

I’ve remedied this somewhat buying subscribing myself to professional (expensive…) mags such as idfx and the like. I have to say that the products featured in them are infinitely more exciting than my old mags’ offerings but also, unsurprisingly, more expensive.

As I’m not even halfway through my course yet, I haven’t decided what kind if designer I want to be. Are all interior designers high-end? Some would argue that that is the whole point. Hiring a designer us seen as an expensive luxury, a business necessity a bage to show off how much dosh you’ve got. I’m leaning towards the more accessible end of the market. The people who, like me, buy all the magazines but never actually have any time to put the ideas into action. The people who want to go ‘eco’ but don’t know where to start. The people who haven’t really got a lot to spend but want to feel as if they’re living in a home and not just a house where they eat and sleep every night. Am I wrong for wanting to do this? Should I end up designing for both ends of the Market and everything inbetween? Think like Kelly Hoppen who has a raft of celebrity designs under her belt to go with her shiny MBE (congrats!) but has also designed a range of homewares for BHS.

If you’ve got any thoughts on this let me know and comment below.

Anyway, rant over!

Carrying on with the theme of accessible (bargain) design, the Next Sale starts on Saturday. Or at least I think it does, as I’ve received a VIP sale preview invitation that ends on Friday! For those of you who like mirrored furniture btu think it’s a little too pricey, you’ll be pleased to know that the Vienna Standard Chest is half price at £175 (down from £350).

They also appear to have halved the price of some of their glossy items such as the Opus White Gloss Sideboard, again now at £175. But the most notable discount appears in their wallpaper section with this beautiful metallic damask now only £7 (down from £18).

With all these bargains available, I can see my Next account taking a large hit very soon!

I have been quite active on the old Twitter of late, so if you haven’t already signed up, please do and follow me (peacheydesign) for a daily helping a rants and finds!

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06/07/2009 by admin.

As I’ve mentioned before, I currently work in an office, doing officery thing including running events. The rooms in our office barely hold then amount of people we see, so we tend to use external venues. Now summer is upon us, the venues are touting for new business and keeping their exisiting contacts ‘warm’.

The first jolly I was invited to was at Browns Courtrooms in Covent Garden. Our company must have been there a hundred times and not realised there was anything available for us to use on the top floor. According to their Conference Manager, they’d just had a refurb, to make the rooms more aesthetically pleasing. Even after a few free champanges, the abysmal paint job did not seem to reflect this! Some will say that now I am training as an interior designer, I probably have a more critical eye than most, but my colleague completely agreed with me. Even my husband could do a better job (sorry hubby). Please note, they still give exceptional events services and great food and drink, so just ignore the walls the next time you go to an event at Browns!

The second, far more impressive event was held at ETC Venues in Hatton Garden. We were invited to a preview of the new work by artist Philip Smith called ‘New Horizons’.

The exhbition was half London landscapes (the usual Leicester Square and tube signs etc)

and half Amercian landscapes (gas signs, neon sign in the desert etc).

[caption id=”" align=”alignnone” width=”400″ caption=”Last Chance for Food and Gas by Philip Smith”][/caption]

All were beautiful, but there was nothing particularly ‘new’ about any of these horizons. Still, if you’ve got a few grand spare you can buy the work from http://www.artzu.co.ukand the exhibition is still on at The Hatton.

My colleague and I were acosted by a couple of ETC Venues staff, dying to get more business out of us. Having then been shown their refurb, were were extremly impressed by the spacious, light filled rooms and break out areas available.

We’ll defintely be going back there, not in least because they are the nearest venue to our building, but the food is excellent too!

Last but not least, I won a competition to have free private room hire (plus large quantities of champange, stawberries and a screen for the Wimbledon Female Singles Final) at The Brunelpub in Battersea. There appears to be no obvious link with the famous engineer, nor any customers to speak of…

They have also recently had a refurb and it has been done rather well.

The resulting feeling is very gastropub, although they only seem to serve Thai food (we didn’t stick around long enough to try it). I think the problem is that the pub is situated right next door to the Royal College of  Art (Sculpture department), so this place is clearly inhabited by students during the week, and noone at weekends.

Being a Kentish lady, I found it particularly difficult to get to, as it’s nearest station is Clapham Junction, and I’ve never been there before in my life. Unfortunately, my London friends also had trouble finding the place! Once all arrived though, we were made fairly comfortable and I’d be happy to go and enjoy it’s carefully styled surroundings again in the future.

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