Lavender in pots through a wet Lisbon winter — what worked.
Three lavender plants, two of which made it through their first winter. We changed two things on the third — and now all three come back eve…
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The full notebook
Every piece we have published, newest first.
Essays
Why a 22-centimetre-deep bookshelf beats a 30-centimetre one for actual reading.
Most bookshelves are too deep. The thirty-centimetre standard fits twice as many books and reads as half a library. A shallower shelf forces…
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The under-stair cupboard we built by hand on a long weekend.
Under-stair voids are sold as wasted space because nobody bothers to fit them. A weekend of careful joinery later, ours holds a vacuum, a to…
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How a brass key-hook collection grew, slowly, into a wall.
We have eight brass key hooks, none of them matching, all of them found at flea markets over four years. The wall they live on is the only t…
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Re-grouting our bathroom on a Saturday — and the small things that made it look new.
Our bathroom needed a renovation we could not afford. We re-grouted instead. One Saturday, fifteen euros, and the room looks five years youn…
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Testing four whites in real light — what we got wrong before.
We picked the wrong white twice and a third time was guaranteed to be expensive. Four tester pots and a weekend of light-watching saved us f…
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A serving tray from oak off-cuts and a single afternoon.
We had three short pieces of oak in the off-cut bin and a Saturday with no plans. By dinner the tray was glued. By morning it was carrying c…
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The thrifted hand-stitched quilt that ended our duvet shopping forever.
We tried four duvets in five years and not one was right. A vintage hand-stitched cotton quilt cost less than a single duvet and outperforme…
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How one heavy linen tea towel replaced eight in our kitchen.
We owned eight tea towels and used the same one because it was the heaviest. Then we bought one good one for fourteen euros and threw the ot…
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