Baby is back

Not quite the same as baby got back...

Anyway. I have been a busy bee recently and still am with the packing etc but I will be posting again regularly, scouts honour.

So as decorating is officially starting this week with prep done and colours picked etc I thought I would show you the colours and inspiration for our small guest room.

This is where it started:

Sorry about the rubbish lighting, but these are lovely in real life, they are ready made curtains from Dunelm Mill. They were half price and an absolute bargain at under £25. They are slightly too long so the bottom can be trimmed to make tiebacks and cushions, score.

This got me started for the room and I am loving the idea of nautical influences, just a hint, we are so not near enough to the sea to pull off full on nautical. Here is what I am talking about.

Source: PrincessFreckles

Source: Notonthehighstreet

Source: HousetoHome

You get the idea...

Here is a sort of moodboard of what I want to do with the room:

I know it is rubbish basic, but it will be better than that when finished. I will keep you updated, and can't wait to start to showing you some during photos!


Lots of Love,

Becky

Progress? Destroying our lounge and dining area.

Hello lovelies!

So my last post showed you the colours I want to use in the lounge and I got some lovely feedback on that so thank you verrrry much for that.

I've handed in my dissertation so in between revision and work I thought I would fill you in on how the room actually looks right now, and it is NOT pretty. On with the photos:

First off this is the beautiful colour that was on the doorframes & skirtings all over the place, the skirtings are no more but the frames need sorting as we aren't replacing them.

Ok now for the lounge:

Lounge area left from door:

The line halfway up the wall marks the hight of the built in stone fireplace that stretched the length of the lounge (I will find a before snap of that).

Lounge right from the door, the arch seperates the lounge from the dining area

From the arch into the dining area, the double doors lead into the conservatory:

And back the other way into the lounge, sorry for the pants lighting.

So far we have stripped the walls, taken up the carpet, ripped out the architrave and skirting and taken out the big stone fireplace.

We have a LOT to do but I wanted to show you what we are working with here.

And as a teaser (Some of you have already seen the lounge moodboard)

The colours/ style to be used in the lounge:

And the dining area:

Hope you are all really good,

Much love,

Becky x

P.s let me know if you have any ideas and suggestions, I love hearing from you!

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Living room progress

Hello everyone! Hope you are all well, things have gone a bit quiet on the house front here as I am finishing my dissertation and revising! So I thought I would just post a quick moodboard I put together for the lounge and get your opinions.

The pattern in the background is wallpaper which we are using, and our sofa is grey:

I decided I wanted to add pops of colour as well as black white and grey, and I think I have decided on blue (hence the colour card on the moodboard). Let me know what you think, I was considering yellow too but the dining area has pops of purple.

All opinions and suggestions are totally welcome so please leave a comment!


Becky x


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Decoraters, and persuasion

Hello! Hope you are all having a good week. This week we had the decoraters in to give us a quote for some work at the house. They have quoted us for:

• Sripping the hall and stairs of the woodchip and covering the artex underneath, then painting the whole lot.
• Sripping the dining room and relining, painting the walls and ceiling.
• Painting 3 walls in the lounge and papering one with a feature paper.

Total quoted: £1300

My other half wants to go ahead and get them to do the lot, however that is a huge chunk from the budget and I only really wanted to get someone in for the stairs and hall because we couldn't sort the artex ourselves. I understand why he wants to go ahead as it would lighten the load on us, and the results will be near perfect.

So please please give me your opinions on this, would you pay the total price, have the lot done, save time, and have perfect results but then have a reduced budget for furnishings, carpet and appliances. OR would you have the hall and stairs only done for around £500 and live with some imperfections as a result of doing it yourself in the other rooms, but then have more budget left? HELP!

On another note I am completely in love with the idea of finding some beautiful old furniture like this:

This picture is from design*sponge, which is a great home interior blog you should check out. I just love the character in pieces like these drawers the author found.

My idea would be to get a couple of chests of drawers, a wardrobe and 2 bedsides from the same era, but not neccessarily matching, then paint them up to match. Now I think thats kinda cute and quirky (and it would save a heck of a lot of £'s). And can I just reinforce the fact that I LOVE THIS IDEA.

But last night other half said he doesn't want our house to end up "looking like a charity shop", so now I'm not sure whether he doesn't really like the things I have already restyled :(, or whether he just meant I need to find pieces that match, which is easier said than done!

And he wants to go to ikea on Sunday to pick out some brand spanking new furniture. They do have one I like called Hemnes, but I dont want white, as much as I love white I realllllllly want to get me some grey furniture for the bedroom. And I know they do a grey but online it doesn't look a very nice colour, although I may fall in love with it when I see it. But my point is that this will be a lot more expensive, and I really wanted to try upcycling some old stuff.

Ohhh rant over, please give me your opinions on whether I should go ahead with the decoraters, and if/ how I could persuade other half to let me pick out some furniture.

Help!!!

Much love,

Becky x

P.s Well done if you read all that

Paint. Everywhere. And a Master Bedroom makeover in progress

So today I started painting my mirror and letter rack which I picked up from the second hand shop. There is now paint on my toe.

But they are looking better with just their basecoats on, yay! I will upload the transformation pics soon, probably tomorrow.

Anyway this is our master room as it was back in January:

View from the doorway:

View from the doorway looking left:

and view from the window:

  'scuse the other halfs backside!

The room, as you can see. was a single boys room with lots of fitted furniture, you can see in the first and last picture where we started taking it out. Anyway, we have totally pulled this room apart and started a fresh. The main decor is done but not much else, so I thought I would throw in a bit of a room hint (mood board) for you to see...

oooh...

and here is some progress pictures:

View from the door:



View from the left hand side of the room:



The feature wall:

So as you can see it looks completely different, we repapered and painted up 3 walls in a sand type colour, and then created a feature wall with this lovely paper by Arthouse. It is beautiful, the white and grey on this picture are actually sort of metallic (in a nice way) they catch the light really nicely and make the room look luxurious. I would definately recommend this paper, it looks far more expensive than it actually was.

You can also see the lovely skirting boards my other half put in, he stained them oak and I think they look gorgeous.

Thats all for now folks, but keep the moodboard in mind, there is more to come!

Much love until next time,

Becky x

Dear wish fairy

Here is my wish list:

• To stumble across some gorgeous furniture for our master bedroom, I cant find anything I like and have now got visions of some shabby furniture I can repaint in a stone grey or taupe.

• To get a Thomas kent clock. Beaut!

• To find a miracle cure for this:

To explain, this is our small spare room, the house we are moving into is a three bedroom house, two double size rooms and this single bedroom/ study. We thought the room would be easy as pie to redecorate because we just had to strip the old woodchip, re apply lining paper and paint. Simple, right?

Wrong!!!

We removed this:

and underneath was more wall paper, and under that was the very yellow paint which has been there since the house was built in the 1960's for my boyfriends dad. As we are covering it the colour is not an issue, but it is flaky and some of it has come off, and with the steamer some of it peeled off. However other areas are more persistant and to flake it off would take half of my lifetime, we cant leave it as it will cause the paper to sit unevenly and maybe even stop it sticking!? HELP! We have also had an issue with paint from the cieling peeling off when we removed the wallpaper in this room. Any suggestions welcome...

I will put some more pictures of the house up but I dont have a full set so I will wait to do that until I have collected up some "before" pictures, watch this space for that. Our plans for the house so far include:

• Changing this yellow room, which was a study back to a small guest room by repapering and recarpeting, it will just be very neutral until we decide on its long term purpose.

• Doing up our master room, it was a single bedroom with fitted furniture and we are changing it to a double with freestanding furniture, new carpet and different styling.

• Sprucing up the hall/ stairway, it is pink and blue and we intend to make it more neutral, replace the blue carpet, and add a bannister and handrail to the stairs (at present there is a rope handrail and no bannister). There is also artex on the stairs which has been covered by woodchip, neither of which are ideal so we are unsure what to do, the woodchip is damaged and needs to come off but we arent sure whether the artex can be smoothed or covered using blown vinyl which is slightly less harsh, again your suggestions are welcome!

• Doing up the lounge/ dining area, we have already removed a large fireplace which ran the length of the room, then we plan on repapering, recarpeting and painting, this should be fairly straighforward, fingers crossed.

• Painting the conservatory in a neutral scheme, and I have intentions to give the current furniture a make over.

We are leaving the 3rd bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, utility and downstairs toilet until our budget will allow us to make the changes we would like. Throughout the rooms my boyfriend is fitting new tall skirtings stained in oak to replace the short white skirtings, painting the doors and changing the door handles.

Pictures soon, I promise.

Much love,

Becky

Vintage British furniture

Now after my little baking spree, check out these beauties...

I have just been given these gorgeous pieces of furniture by a lovely lady I work with. They are a set of Ercol "pebble" tables which are still in production although these are vintage 1950's/60's and an ercol rocking chair. I love them! Ercol is a British company which makes fantastic solid wood furniture, they were super popular in the 50's and 60's and now they are having a second breakthrough, with both new and vintage items being highly sought after.

As I mentioned in my first post  me and the other half are in the process of doing up/ decorating our first house together ready for moving in over the summer. We have a conservatory and I think these would look wonderful in there, I plan on making some tie on cushions for the chair in cream so I'll keep you posted on that...

As well as baking I love crafts and making things, as I find it really satisfying to see the finished product. I decided that in our house I would like to make/ update a few old things as well as buy new items, to give our home more character. A couple of months ago I bought a table just like this:

Its a solid pine varnished hall table with a single draw. I got mine from a local second hand furniture shop it cost £28. At present the hall is a darkish baby pink with deep blue, and I really want to lighten it up, I plan on having it cream up the stairs and on two other walls, with the 3rd wall pale blue ( I will upload pictures as the project goes along). So I wanted to lighten up the table too and planned on painting it grey.
 First I sanded it and realised the wood underneath the heavy varnish was gorgeous so then I had a change of plan...

I continued to sand the top so that the whole top piece was varnish free and had no imperfections, then used a paint/ varnish stripper on the rest of the table to remove most of the very thick and shiny varnish. I then bought some wood paint in whiskey cream from Focus and some wood wax in oak, plus a plain wooden knob. I waxed the top section and the handle to match and carefully painted the rest of the table with two coats. Here is the result.

TA DAAAA

Much love,

Becky x



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