A couple of weeks ago, an email dropped into my inbox that I skimmed over quickly, then read again. And again. And again. ‘Come to London,’ it said, ‘come and see our fabulous new product, scoff some cake and meet your other favourite bloggers. Oh, and George Clarke will be there too! Chin, chin!’
Actually, it didn’t say that, but that was the gist. So a week later, I found myself sitting across from one of my friends, eating pizza, wringing my hands together and sweating profusely at the thought of making a fool of myself in front of my favourite architectural and interior heroes of all time. Ha!
The event was hosted by British Gypsum, and was held to promote the launch of their latest Rooms Made for You product: the absolutely ingenious Lifestyle Wall. After being greeted with drinks and a seriously impressive array of refreshments (too busy eating to take any photos, bad blogger!), we were introduced to the product itself – designed to be stronger and more durable than standard plasterboard walls (the absolute bane of any interior fanatics life), the Lifestyle Wall has a reinforced core that can hold really extreme weights – there was a sample board which had a 12kg weight hanging from a single wood screw. 12kg!
In his talk, George Clarke called the product a ‘game-changer’, and it really is; we live in a relatively new house (early eighties, I think) and every single internal wall is cheap, flimsy plasterboard – the wall in the bathroom isn’t even strong enough to hold a bathroom cabinet. Long term readers will know that I tend to change my mind a lot, and switch around hooks, displays and shelves as our needs as a family change – Ali spends so much time trying to squash rawl plugs into the wall to support this picture or that mirror, and with the Lifestyle Wall it would be so much quicker. There’s no need for reinforcements or rawl plugs, no cracks or splits in the wall afterwards – simply fit the screw and you’re good to go. It’s seriously the stuff of dreams!
We were split into groups and asked to create our own gallery wall, using just a selection of screws and a screwdriver – our team sadly lost (which may or may not have been down to my picture being ‘on the wonk’) but we managed to find comfort in the desert stand, which had the best brownies I’ve ever eaten. After saying goodbye to some of my favourite ladies (Lori, Fritha, Kerri-Anne, Lucy, Amanda and Katy), I hopped back on the train, complete with a brand new signed copy of Georges latest book to keep me entertained on the way home.
Huge thanks to British Gypsum for the kind invite, a wonderful afternoon and collaborating on this post. Oh, and for the opportunity to meet George Clarke, obviously!
Was such a fun day and fab to finally meet you in person! xx