Welcome to the first in a two-part series about one of our favourite companies: Osmo, who have created a whole range of fantastic products for the treatment of wood. They are based on natural oils and waxes, rather than the extremely toxic chemicals so often found in wood preservatives. The Osmo range can help you to create beautiful floors, including the highly fashionable Scandi-Chic look, simply and easily.
This month, we're focusing on inspiring you with this amazing Georgian house, which has been showcased in a number of books and magazines, as well as for The White Company's Christmas 2012 range. Just look at the beautiful floors throughout the whole space.
The home is featured extensively in one of our most popular books: Farrow and Ball's Living With Colour.
This cottage is actually rented, though the owners have been able to make cosmetic alterations. We want to show you how, with a bit of imagination, and by selecting the right products, you can make an enormous difference to your home, whether rented or otherwise.
When the current tenant moved in, the walls were yellow and the woodwork was a particularly shocking shade of orange pine. It was once a larger, grander house, hence the beautiful stairway, but has been carved in two and so now has a slightly higgledy-piggledy feel.
However, the bones of the house are outstanding and, by choosing a neutral and harmonious palette throughout the house, it has been completely transformed.
Using a select group of shades in your home is a great trick to create a peaceful flow of continuity. It can be tricky getting the exact palette right, which is where we'd be delighted to help. At Relics of Witney, we can discuss the look you dream of and help you create the perfect range of hues to make that dream a reality in your home.
In this case, paints used include Farrow and Ball's Strong White for many of the walls, whilst Down Pipe and Cornforth White have been employed to unify the woodwork throughout most of the house.
The bathroom has been painted in Farrow and Ball's Pigeon, where tongue and groove boarding apparently hides a multitude of sins in the plasterwork. Hardwick White provides subtle contrast on the run of cupboards in the main bedroom.
The floors downstairs have been sanded back and treated with Osmo's White Wood Wax, followed by a coat of Osmo's Polyx Oil, whilst the upstairs floors have been given several treatments to provide a more solid colour.
The owners are postively evangelical about the outstanding qualities of the Osmo range. It is possible to buy in treated limewashed floorboards but you will have to reach very deep into your pockets! Osmo provide a way to achieve the look on a much smaller budget, without compromising on either the integrity of the finished look or of your environmental impact.
In our next post, we'll share exactly how you can achieve this gorgeous look for yourself. Don't forget to subscribe (details in our sidebar) to make sure you don't miss a post.
