Sugar soap
I inherited two lovely white wicker Lloyd Loom chairs from my grandmother. Our cottage was too small for them! When we moved to Nether Edge we suddenly had lots of empty rooms with no furniture. My Dad bought the chairs up from Nottingham for us. They are a bit battered and have been serving us as garden furniture. I decided they were in need of sprucing up, so I’ve bought some new seat pads for them and some spray paint. I sugar soaped them and scrubbed them down, and they’re astonishingly white now. Ready for the paint job.
The sugar soap is bright yellow and has a nasty additive in it – probably tartrazine or sunset yellow – that gave me a red bumpy rash all up my arms. It may have made me cross too, but that might just have been because I was fighting Jasper for the scrubbing brush the whole time.
My grandma bought the chairs when she lived in Portsmouth Southampton, in a sale from a cruise ship that was being renovated. This was in the 1950s. Lloyd loom still make the same chairs. I was astonished to discover that they would be worth over £300 each if they were new. I’m not sure they will be garden chairs for much longer!
3 Comments
it was Southampton, not Portsmouth and we took you to see that house on the way to the holiday on the isle of wight when we were all sick. It was 6 wilton crescent, shirley, southampton, and its dead close to Shirley Common. we had dinner by the paddling pool.
sorry to be a pedantic pain in the arse
Hi Dad
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