Ercol was founded in 1920 by a young Italian immigrant, Lucian Ercolani in High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, England. His simple goal was to make furniture that was well designed and made in a good working environment by craftsmen who really took pride in their jobs.

In 1944 Ercol perfected the steam bending of wood in large quantities. The wood selected was English elm, a wood previously thought impossible to bend because it distorted. Ercol’s innovation meant chairs could be assembled from pre-formed components, and mechanisation meant that a chair could be made every twenty seconds.

Ercol's mass-produced furniture found a ready market in post-war Britain, which demanded smaller pieces with simpler lines than their chunky pre-war counterparts. Ercol furniture was exhibited at the 1951 Festival of Britan, as it represented the latest style and fashion in furniture design and manufacture.

I have always loved the Ercol furniture of the 50s and 60s, the designs are totally classic and timeless, I have spend many hours looking through eBay and Pre-Loved ogling various sofas and arm chairs but the lack of funds has always stopped me, there have always been more pressing thing that need to be paid for (you know, boring stuff like plumbing and electrics..), then on Sunday while listing a load of stuff on Freegle, I spotted this add...

I was so excited when I spotted this I had to do a little dance, luckily no one got to see that. So I emailed the lovely Becky asking if we could give these a new home, I then spent a rather tense afternoon convincing myself that we wouldn't get them. Then she emailed us saying they where ours... more screaming and dancing!

So last night in the dark we drove out to Becky's house and collected what turn out to be the most wonderful Ercol living room set in near perfect condition, I could have hugged her! Becky knew exactly what this furniture was and how much it now fetches on eBay, but as she had received then from Freegle a few years before she had felt it was only right to re-freegly them and give someone else a turn at owning them. Quite frankly I love this lady, she was so kind and generous to us and is also a vintage junky like myself (instantly making her super cool in my book!), she had some lovely 60s curtains which I am now very jealous off!

So here they are in pride of place in our little living room...

I LOVE this sofa and chair, sadly our living room is slightly too small for the second armchair but that will probably find a home upstairs in our studio as I would hate to break the set up. I have to keep popping back downstairs to look at them (and make sure no one's stolen them when I'm not looking!), I'm not really getting any work done today.

So this post is a huge huge thank you to Becky, you have made me and Rich very happy people!

Wow nearly a whole month without a post, sorry life yet again ran away from us somewhat, jobs piled up, illustrations had to be gotten out to meet deadline, sisters had to stay with us for a week while she looked for a house share in Bristol...so not much house stuff got done for a while!

Anyway back on track again now, one of the many many job waiting to be done was the building of a much needed log store. Last winter we just had wood plied up in the porch, not ideal as every time you answered the front door there was a very real possibility of being buried under an avalanche of gash wood!

The price of ready made stores are crazy so we needed an alternative, after much looking about we suddenly realized we had the old chicken coop (still not finished) sitting in the garden not being used for much, chickens had been dumped way down the list of priorities at the mo due to the number of much more inportant things to spend money one. Heres the coop when we got it last winter...

Nice as a coop but Rich and I are now leaning towards ducks rather than chickens and ducks really don't do stairs meaning that  two stores would be a little wasted on them really. So being that dry burnable wood was much more important we decided to repurpose it, the only slight issue being that it was a good 6" to wide to fit next to the front door down a narrow alleyway.  Rich spend Sunday afternoon with a circular saw 'adjusting it'.

I stayed inside where the swearing was less audible.

Anyway he managed to lop 6" off the back, rebuild the frame, roof and floors in about 4 hours, meaning we now have lovely dry wood.

Its the prettiest wood store in all the land...

...and hopefully I can buy a duck coop with the money we save on our gas bill by burning the wood instead!