Rad rage

Renovating a house: you start out all 'oh myyyy house won't have ugly things, my house will be PERFECT'. When you began, you had pictures of lovely homes, and you flicked through them on a regular basis, going 'oh my house will look like this - only NICER'. You sniff at the tiniest details that offend your inexplicably high standards (how did someone who grew up as the youngest of five children in Longford in the 80s come to have such snooty notions about solid wooden floors and fancy tiles anyhow?) and tut over the apparent lack of attention to detail. And then everything starts to happen VERY QUICKLY. Large numbers are bandied about and you gulp as you realise that this is actual real money and these numbers are no longer hypothetical sums that you may or may not have to/want to/need to spend, but actual euros that you have to make note of in your ever dwindling budget and you need to make decisions NOW. There are precious euros to be spent on practical (generally ugly) things that aren't that much fun but you can't live without, like boilers and toilets and radiators. Nice invisible underfloor heating? HA HA HA HA HA HA. But, y'know, these days there are really lovely radiators available. After seeing some lovely, lovely, lovely pics of rads in a house (due to be featured in the next issue of H&H) you get your hopes up and then start gabbling about them at the plumber, and then he makes the very rational and logical point that would make your life a whole lot simpler if you would only think of it every time you saw something lovely for sale and started poking in your bag for your wallet: "but they're expensive". Sigh. And then you resign yourself to being sensible and ponder the fact that maybe, at last, you're Growing Up.

And they photoshop out radiators in houses in magazines all the time anyhow. *Grumpy sniff*

They are lovely though. The black one in the pic on the top is from Victorian Salvage, and then the others are by Acova, which you can buy at B&Q. If you can afford them.