embrace shibumi and wabi-sabi in my surroundings and life

..is to be in a perfect winter retreat. There are blue pigeon walls with trim the colour of vanilla ice-cream and dusky blue velvet curtains surrounding the windows and day-bed. The little quartersawn oak sewing and writing desk is also a century old. The whole thing looks out onto the frost of the winter garden.

The house is almost 100 years old, and casts looming shadows in the half-dusk that passes for afternoon at this time of year. There are towering chestnut trees out in front, each with a bristle of squirrel-nest.
The goal is to make all of this graceful.

It is like peeling an eight-foot high boiled egg. The fumed-oak doors and mouldings have been, over the century, coated in multi layers of alligatored paint. My plan is to strip off the old paint and gently restore the wood, leaving the gouges and scratches of history to emerge without apology.