How a pot of paint can cause chaos…

before and after, Colour, Decorating, Interior Design, interiors, Makeover

In the last couple of weeks I decided to repaint my sitting room. It has been the same colour for ages, and I felt an update was in order. I am getting very drawn to orange at the moment, and as the room has a lot of light and high ceilings, I felt that it could take a dark tone and create a different feel to the existing colour. This is the room as it was…

It was originally painted in Drab, a now discontinued Farrow & Ball paint. I chose a strong orange by Valspar called Storybook Sundown to replace it. I have orange elsewhere in the room in the rug, upholstery and cushions and this colour complimented them the best…

So with 5 litres I started to paint. You know that moment when you think ‘Hmm, not sure if I am liking this…?”, well it came pretty soon after the first coat. I have been so used to the previous colour and this is so out of my comfort zone that I started to to think I had made a mistake. But I decided to continue to see what would happen.

BUT… once it was done I loved it. Really vibrant, rich and cocooning.

Now this is where the chaos started… when I say chaos I mean a nuclear chain of events starting from the initial one pot of paint. My sofa now looked really insipid against all of the other bright colours. The room needed something stronger/darker in colour/tone to work with these walls. The current sofa is a Wesley Barrell Knole, and cost a huge amount when purchased. It is quite tired now and has been an old faithful for over a decade, so I thought this would be the time to revamp it. Investigations into re-upholstering it revealed it costs as much if not more to do as getting a new sofa. The seat cushions alone cost £500 for new inserts, not to mention 15m of fabric and upholstery costs.

Egged on by my daughter we set out to find a new sofa. On my wish list the main priority was NEVER HAVING TO EVER PLUMP ANOTHER CUSHION AGAIN. This has been the bane of my life with sofas, and actually if I add the hours spent doing it I could have learnt a new language or trekked across a country instead. So number one priority was a sprung seat and back sofa.

Research then ensued; size, shape, fabric, finish, durability… The internet is great for hunting, but I want to see them in the flesh too and sit on them to see if they are comfortable. A bit like Goldilocks and her chairs – too firm, too soft or just right? A sofa is a big expense as well, so once a shortlist had been made we set off in the car on a sofa bouncing mission.

Stop one was a high street store that had not been on my wish list, but was on the way to another shop. As we mooched about I spotted the perfect sofa; sprung, buttoned and available in the fabric I wanted. It was in DFS, is called the Trafalgar and is a modern version of the chesterfield with buttoned seat and back, plus proper springing. The shape is more angular than the traditional rounded chesterfield but that is why it looks so nice.

The detailing is lovely, with upholstery studs along the front:

But this colour is too pale and I wanted a richer more textural fabric. And voila, in their books I found:

The perfect velvet; not shiny like a lot of modern versions but lustrous and deepest black. And so reader, I ordered one.. and it comes in about 6 weeks to reface the old faithful Knole sofa (which incidentally is going to a very good home where it will be loved for many more years).

So that was Chaos Element No 1. This pot of paint has now cost me a new sofa.. but it doesn’t end there. I like the idea of adding in more black to define the room, so black lampshades have now been ordered for the lamps around the room in black, and passementerie trimmings have been ordered to jazz them up. That’s Chaos Element No 2.

On top of that I have now started hunting for new curtains to add more drama and tie up the room visually as the current ones are lovely, but look quite pale now compared to the other colours going on in the room, and that’s a 10ft tall bay window to negotiate as a starter. Not something you can use readymades on easily… so let’s call that Chaos Element No 3. I’m thinking watered black silk puddling on the floor would be a bit special…

With that I will sign off, as I need to plan how to create these curtains on a budget, but so they don’t look it. All this from just one pot of paint…

Weekend Makeover – Student Digs

before and after, Decorating, Makeover, styling

Greetings…I have written before about a doing a quick makeover on my daughter’s student flat last autumn, and have just spent the last 2 days finishing off a new makeover. What became really apparent since the last time was that good storage was needed, and some room shifting was a necessity as a result.

So the sitting room has become the bedroom as it a really good sized room, and it could take a lot of storage and still be spacious.

Here’s the room as it was when it was the sitting room…

There was a daybed, (incredibly uncomfortable either when in use as a sofa or a bed!), and lots of wasted space in the middle. The bedroom that was in use before looked like this:

It was sweet, but a smaller room and not brilliant for storage. So we decided to move the bedroom into the sitting room. The general style she likes is a bit of boho, a bit of Hygge and some bohemian all thrown into the mix.

THE PLAN

As I said before, the room is really big, so we decided to break the space by using a large room divider. A serious trip to IKEA resulted in a crazy amounts of boxes being delivered, and we spent an afternoon building a huge Kallax storage unit to break the space. It has 25 compartments and is 1.8m x 1.8m in size, but as you can see through the compartments it is not a solid block and let’s light through. We painted the wall where the bed would go in a blush pink, not sick sugary pink but dusky pale rose.

We also got a new bed from Ikea called Kopardal which is a very simple grey metal bedstead with an industrial come Hygge style. We did not really pay attention to the instructions, so 3 tries later it was finally built and my daughter was quite red in the face.. But she is now a master at flat packs, a valuable life lesson has been learnt….

We also filled up the IKEA order with lots of storage boxes and accessories for the Kallax, including some drawers and cupboards that slot into it to stash away things she did not want on view. Plus some new chairs, a kitchen table and other bits needed for the flat were added to the list. As per normal we went OTT on picture frames, (you can never have enough pictures!). We also discovered IKEA have a great new range of candles called NJUTNING, which are only £5.95 and smell amazing… roll over Diptyque – these are far more suited to student budgets! The only problem I have with IKEA is that you invariably leave with far more than you went in for, but I think everyone can relate to that.

njutning-scented-candle-in-glass-gray__0554673_PE659896_S4

These are amazing and so well priced

Next stop was H&M Home, where I thought I had died and gone to heaven… They have some excellent items this season, and we got new bedding and some brass accessories to use. This bed linen set is called Conscious and it is so pretty, so that was popped into the basket:

THE RESULTS

Here is the room as it is now. It has designated areas for sleeping, sitting, dressing, piano playing and putting on make up.

This is the bed area, with the pale blush wall setting off the bed nicely.

To the right of the bed is the huge room divider. This takes all clothes, books, records, and ‘stuff’ which is concealed in boxes, drawers and cupboards.

IKEA do these great brass hanging files for Kallax, perfect for the student room.

As space was tight either side of the bed for run of the mill side tables, we used an H&M Home brass basket as a wall hung bedside table.

Storage, storage and more storage. On the other side is a space with a piano in it.

Here you can see how the room divider sits in the space.

In once corner of the room is a dressing area

Looking into the room from the hallway

In the window area is a little chest of drawers I upcycled with chalk paints and wrapping paper, thrift is my name!

There is room for a little seating area as well.

My daughter is over the moon with the room. What do you think?!

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Stairs & Landings – the ‘nearly’ finished results…

before and after, Decorating, gallery wall, House Tour, interiors, Makeover

In my earlier post, you may have been aware of my procrastination about finishing off the top floor of my hall and stairs. But it is finally done, with some serious hanging off bannisters paining techniques. I forced myself to start yesterday, and it is now finished, well very nearly….

This was looking up to the next level before I changed the wall colours. That wallpaper which is in in the strange ‘door-to-nowhere” architrave is going to change too, I have ordered some samples of eye-wateringly expensive wallpaper from the lovely Fabricsandwallpapers.com and we’ll see what works best when they arrive. They are all very large scale patterns:

cole-son-lily-wallpaper-95-4020-111458-p

I am really forgetful about before and after shots as I tend to dash in with paintbrushes on a whim. So I don’t have any photos of the floor above pre-makeover! Probably as it was always such a dumping ground, it had loads of overflowing bookcases, an electric piano in pieces, and I never really liked it so never photographed it. Sorry….😐

Anyhow, I cleared out all of the books and had a huge cull so there are boxes and boxes ready to go off to charity shops, and I removed 2 out of 3 bookcases. I had to keep hubby’s collection of comics, books and coca-cola limited edition bottles, plus we had a lot of film posters and things to hang. This is now what it looks like looking down the stairs with the dark grey walls.

And here is the artwork. The weird original Harry Potter troll picture was a present to my daughter from her Godfather, who got it from the art/concept designer Rob Bliss from the films. If you look carefully, he has pierced nipples, which Warner Brothers obviously asked him to tone down for the final film! It scared my daughter to bits when she got it, so it has been hiding in the loft until now. That is the bonus of having older teens, I can put whatever I want on the walls now without fear!

At the top of the stairs is an odd landing which goes nowhere, a bit like the door mid-way down the stairs. What is it about my house and places going nowhere? Originally this landing had 3 full size bookcases on it, now it has been reduced to one, And I have hung the strangest huge anatomical drawing/chart on it which the hubby gave me, and until now I had no idea what to do with. But I think he looks great against the red carpet!

It looks so much better than before. There is no natural daylight in this landing, so I was a bit worried about how dark it would be with the grey walls. But it looks bigger in a strange way as the corners vanish with the dark grey. I kept the original wall light which was a converted victorian gas light, and got 2 excellent wire cages to go on the top from eBay. The ceiling is white so light can bounce around still, so it’s not dark at all.

The bookcase generally houses Hubby’s stuff, and I have moved the books I saved for myself elsewhere so it looks much more spacious now – althought somewhat random items are on it…

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I’ll do a final post when the wallpapers have come, and I have decided what to do with the ‘door-to-nowhere’. I also have the odd corner wall to hang something on so I am hunting for something large like a mirror to go on it, or maybe a lovely bit of taxidermy.

Teenager’s Room & Spare Room Makeovers

before and after, chalk paint, Decorating, grown up, Interior Design, interiors, lighting, Makeover, recycling, Upcycling

THE CHALLENGES:

My youngest has always had one of the smallest bedrooms in our house. I think that is generally what younger children get actually in the pecking order of families! Poor them… they are definitely overlooked a lot…. she also always got hand me down clothes for years, but I did always get her new undies and socks!

Our eldest has now moved out to go to Uni, and will only be back home for holidays, so we thought it time to do some switching around of bedrooms. We have 5, so are a bit spoilt for choice, but the youngest had always had what could be called a very small double. She is also VERY messy, so it was a question of bribery… ‘if you tidy your your room and keep it up for a while, you can move into a larger room…” It worked, and she made an effort, so I had to honour my word.

This then escalated and became a massive upheaval over Christmas, it actually always sort of escalates when I start fiddling around… I also had a pretty weeny budget and needed to be able to re-use and re-purpose existing items if possible. An existing spare room, (which had been decorated for my mum mainly when she stays over in a very granny-friendly style), was to become my youngest daughter’s room as it was much larger. And as such, it was not teenage friendly in terms of style. Here it is as it was… see what I mean…?!

And my daughter’s existing room was then meant to switch back over into being a spare room again.. this is the other room when my daughter was in it:

Crammed, no decent storage and hideous fake brick wallpaper which I reluctantly agreed to a couple of years ago as I was in no mood to chip off all the plaster for real. So definitely time for a change.

DAUGHTERS NEW BEDROOM:

I was shown pinterest boards with the most white, zen and minimalist interiors of dream bedrooms. ‘Wow’, I said, ‘NICE!’… But was I was really thinking was…’Yes, of course – it’s not like you don’t have loads of STUFF… and that STUFF does not stay in the allocated places usually.. and the STUFF is added too with lots of my china filled with various stages of decaying MOULD”…

But I agreed as she had tried to be clean, and then spent 2 days bent at odd angles totally whitening out the room. I forgot how much I hate rolling paint onto ceilings. 3 coats later, we had pure white. The floor is already lovely old pine stripped boats, and there is a pretty original fireplace and victorian sink.

We got her a new bed and mattress, and then I hunted through the house and found an oak desk, a beautiful needlepoint rug that I forgot I had and has been in the attic for years, cut work white curtains and a freestanding clothes rail (she wanted that sort of look, forget the dust!). The mirror was originally taupe, and it got a quick coat of Annie Sloane’s Graphite for an update.

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When you really need a proper upholsterer…

before and after, Decorating, recycling, upholstery

Picture the scene, I am at an auction and am supposed to be selling off unwanted furniture. If you have been to auctions, you know there is a lot of waiting around for your lots, and there are also a lot of chairs about that you sit in whilst waiting for the said lots.

So I realise that I am sitting in a really comfortable chair, and it is tired and sad, but it has a really pretty shape and is probably Edwardian. So when it comes up as a lot, and no-one bids I stick up my hand. I felt sorry for it.

And so I came home from the auction with a little tired chair for a very small price, not really what I went for.. I don’t think I really should go to auctions.

The chair sat in our house looking battered and tired for a long while. But it was very popular, as it is just so comfy. It’s like Goldilocks’ best baby chair in fact. I scoured the internet for upholstery lessons to give it a revamp, but it all looked far too complicated. And thus it lived draped in blankets for a long, long time.

So very tired and grubby…

Cut to a year later, and I remembered that someone I know is an upholsterer. With a quick call, the chair was delivered, and I was off on the hunt for fabric. I really wanted some House of Hackney fabric, but it would have cost a fortune as the chair needed a few meters, so I had to be creative and scour the internet.

If you follow the blog, you will know that orange is creeping into my house a lot. So I decided that the chair needed a massive jazz up and orange was my new black, so I found some raised velvet fabric of orange on a sort of hessian base. It is like a psychedelic Indian curry house in the 70’s, but I sort of like it! It also was a total bargain on eBay, and I got about 7 meters in total so I have some left over to play with. I then found a lovely orange plain velvet to go in the inner part of the chair.

I then handed it all over to my clever upholsterer Caroline, and waited for the finished result.

Lo and behold, soon it was ready and this bonkers chair was ready for its new home:

She looks so pretty! And so ORANGE! She has had her innards re-plumped as well, so is even more comfortable, and is my favourite companion as I watch far too many episodes of Stranger Things in one sitting. As yuletide nears, I am loathe to share her when the relatives arrive. Happy Christmas!

Student flat 24 hour makeover

before and after, Decorating, DIY, gallery wall, grown up, Interior Design, interiors, Makeover, styling, Upcycling

You know when time slips away from you…I am feeling full of guilt as I have not posted for ages, and I apologise to those of you who nudge for an update.

24 HOUR MAKEOVER

I have been really busy of late, my daughter has moved to London to study music at a Conservatoire and we did a 24 hour makeover on her new abode. It is an unfurnished flat where she will live with her partner, and I really wanted her to have a clean, safe space that felt like home.

So we hired a van, stripped my house of a lot of furniture and accessories and then headed up to the big smoke.

Apart from getting a few bits at Dunelm and IKEA, the latter which I delighted in handing over for flat-pack building lessons, we had pretty much all we needed. Plus we had zero budget! It went from a dark, bland place to a rather smart des-res in 24 hours with a bit of creativity and styling.

My daughter is definitely a chip off the old block, she had Pinterest boards ready to show me in the style she liked! It is very Scandi, with lots of palms, copper accents and retro touches.

Here is the flat when we viewed it originally.

For the bedroom I made some great bedside lights from old IKEA wooden shelf brackets I had lying around.

Using Annie Sloans Graphite chalk paint to jazz them up, I upcycled them into light holders. A long retro style pendant light with a filament bulb is wrapped around each one and hangs over the bedside tables. These were reduced to just £5 each at Dunelm so the total project cost just £10! The bedside drawers await a makeover with paint and new handles, I am trying to train up my daughter to embrace chalk paint!

The sitting room has to be a multi functional space- living, working, a music studio and also a spare bedroom for when mum comes to stay (that’s me!). It is a good sized room which really helped. We used a day bed that coverts into a full double bed as a sofa, and covered it with lots of emerald green velvet and shaggy cushions. A leather chair from home and a cute retro table which my daughter’s boyfriend owned finish off the seating area.

Above the daybed we hung large rattan plates as the start of a collection of natural objects. My daughter also started to map out a gallery wall with frames ready to fill. For the moment they have wrapping paper in them!

We got two lampshades from Dunlem which are made from twisted wire and they cast great patterns across the room.

One corner is used as a recording studio, so IKEA came to the rescue with their work tables and some wall hooks for all the leads. I have had the shelves for years in storage and never got rid of them as I knew they would come in useful again. They got a lick of paint and have lots of baskets on them to stash things away.

The bathroom got a fresh coat of paint and some accessories to jazz it up. It’s very small so not many options to get creative, and I fitted a nice new loo seat, (it’s my least favourite job crawling around lavatories).

Finally we dressed the sitting room with layered rugs and lots of plants, and for a student pad it is pretty nice. In fact, my own student flat was grotty beyond belief so I think she has landed on her feet. I drive home feeling exhausted in a large empty can, but I know she loves her new little home and it is somewhere to go and relax after very busy days at Conservatoire.

Hang on! My daughter has nicer mugs than me 😳. There’s still lots to do such as hang pictures and sort out the kitchen, (which has a garden table and chairs in it for the moment until we find a bargain on eBay or gumtree). But they have a lovely home now and can grow into it themselves with their own styling and treasures, plus I can visit and pretend it is my pied a terre!

A Quick Kitchen Makeover on a weeny budget

before and after, Decorating, DIY, House Renovation, Interior Design, interiors, Makeover, Property, Renovation, wallpaper

This was a very old kitchen. It is orange wood, is really tired and the expense of the recent roof-light saga has put a replacement total replacement kitchen on hold. So I had to do something to make it less hideous for a minimal cost and which was less brutal on the eye.

It is amazing what a lick of paint can do to jazz up something in the meantime. Cue two pots of very dark grey paint – one eggshell version for the cupboards, and another tough kitchen wall paint. Add some new handles, and nearly done. New Stainless steel wrapped shelves and hanging rails from Ikea add an industrial vibe to the wall by the sink area. Total time 2 days, and that was because I was waiting for paint to dry mainly and trying to hand the shelves straight.

But those leaded effect glass doors had to go as they looked so dated – so I took off the doors , (that’s down to my friend Rita who told me to do it – Ta Rita!). I then painted the interiors of the open units white as they were also lined in garish orange effect wood. I used a trompe l’oeil metro tile wallpaper on the backs, and marble sticky-backed plastic paper to wrap the shelves. It looks a TRILLION times better now, and I can relax. Plus the sticky-backed plastic reminded me of Blue Peter and making things when I was small so I got a nice bit of nostalgia thrown in.

Before…

After…

Lamp Black eggshell by Farrow & Ball on the Cabinets

Before…

After…

Asphalt by Valspar paint on the walls

Before…

After…

Metro tile wallpaper

Marbled adhesive paper

Total Budget for paint, paper and shelves came in at less than £270. The handles came from my favourite ironmongery shop Nu-Line in Notting Hill and can be re-used when I get the kitchen of my dreams one day in another house.

Ta Dah! I am so pleased with the results. Hope you agree….

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Wallpapering Wardrobes

before and after, Decorating, Flowers, House Renovation, Interior Design, interiors, Makeover, Renovation, wallpaper

It’s raining, in August as usual, and I am sitting looking through a window at a waterlogged garden. So I have a quick moment of calm to post about the cupboards that I mentioned recently were being built. They were fitted in a day, have a load of space inside and then it was my turn to get going on them.

GUEST BEDROOM

Here they are going into the alcoves, this is in the room that has one built in wardrobe:

The room also had a horrible and ugly boiler cupboard, and my carpenters very kindly made me a new door and frame for free, (probably as it was so offensive in the room compared to the new one above!).

Once they were in they just needed a lick of paint. They are going to be very simple and white so I had a plan undercoat applied in the workshop. I will post more pictures once I have finished them.

MAIN BEDROOM

The main bedroom was due two wardrobes, one in each alcove. We went right up to the ceiling to maximise space and brought the cornice around the front of the doors. I had already asked for a specific configuration of shelves and rails in advance.

As you my have gathered, I LIKE DARK WALLS! This room was painted in the inkiest dark blue called ‘Hague Blue’ by Little Greene – it changes from inky blue to almost black depending on the time of day. I have left the ceiling, cornice and skirting white along with the window woodwork. The flooring is very pale too, so light can bounce around as I didn’t want it like a dark tomb. The cupboards were also going to get a coat of Hague Blue, so the undercoat was in a dark grey to help speed things up.

The woodwork paint was the same colour in their new range of dead matt eggshell which is water-based, and which is supposed to have a very low 10% sheen. It is also supposed to be very workable. However, to be honest I was not that impressed with it. I used brushes for detail mouldings and foam roller for the flat surfaces and it dried really patchy, even after 3 coats. Next time I am sticking to normal eggshell.

See the streaky finish in the panel area?

However, my master plan meant that the finish on the flat panels did not really matter. I have been waiting forever to use some House of Hackney wallpaper, and planned to set it into the panels of the wardrobes. I had even asked the carpenters to make them exactly the same width of the wallpaper so there was no wastage, how sad am I?!

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Sometimes, you just should say ‘no’ – The Before

before and after, Decorating, interiors, Makeover, Painting

Silence from me as of late, but for very valid reasons. On top of general life, work, running a late night parental taxi service and so on, I have been preparing to sell my house (it sold in a week), and then I got myself in a total pickle with the local church.

I was chatting to a parishioner, who mentioned that they had been let down by decorators as the church was long overdue for a repaint. He then told me the quote they had been give, which was shockingly huge. And then, more fool me, the worlds shot out of my mouth ‘oh I can get it done for you for far less and immediately’. As the words came out, his face lit up and I was pretty much hired on the spot.

Now this church is not small. It has 13 meter ceilings, huge cross beams running throughout and needed to be used every weekend between painting. It was also black with 10 years of soot from candles. The photos below show how grimy it was. Once upon a time this was pale pink.

Before I knew it, I had booked myself out of other work for 2 weeks, pulled in a fellow female whizz with the paintbrush, hired a cherry picker, had a moveable scaffolding erected and sorted out hardcore industrial insurance.

We attempted to wash the walls, but the soot just spread around. So they were sealed first with a PVA bond, so that the paint would take, and then the HUGE task of painting started.

Look at the beast of a cherry picker! Every time we needed to do a new area we had to move dust sheets, pews, sometimes the altar and so on. Plus at weekends it had to be cleaned and shifted back into being a working church. My muscles are aching, and I managed a spectacular topple off the cherry picker (while it was grounded) which resulted in a torn ligament in my knee and trip to the osteopath. But as a plus I also got a huge, wide roller to speed things up, which is amazing. I shall never moan when I have to paint a normal sized room again, or even a ceiling.

We are up to over 160 litres of paint so far. The sacristy end of the church was so sooty that it needed 3 coats of paint to give a crisp and clean finish. But we have done it all in 2 weeks as promised.

Here is my partner in crime Angelique on the cherry picker. She is such a whizz that I have renamed her Davros after the Dalek leader as she shoots about on it.

So we have a day left before I can do the final reveal, just some woodwork left to finish and tweaking. But it has been monumental, and I will now think before I speak next time.

Most Hit Posts of 2016

before and after, Decorating, DIY, Flowers, Ideas, Inspiration, Makeover, plaster, Soft furnishings, tutorial

Today I have been looking back at last years blogging, sometimes done a bit intermittently I must admit, and noticed that the most popular posts always seem to be the DIY ones, so here is a round up of the ones that still get the most hits, and I only hope that as a result there are many Ikea hacks, Plaster Flowers and No-sew curtain pelmets floating out there now! More DIY ideas coming soon as I tackle a spare bedroom in the coming months.

Click on the photos to take you to the posts and tutorials…

DIY Plaster of Paris Flowers

No-Sew Curtain pelmets

Ikea Hack Bookcase

Ikea Hacked Bookcase

Slate Effect Painted Fireplace

Moppe Drawer Makeovers

Using Moppe drawers as wall art

Emma Kayne

The Department of Designs

before and after

How a pot of paint can cause chaos…

Weekend Makeover – Student Digs

THE PLAN

THE RESULTS

Stairs & Landings – the ‘nearly’ finished results…

Teenager’s Room & Spare Room Makeovers

THE CHALLENGES:

DAUGHTERS NEW BEDROOM:

When you really need a proper upholsterer…

Student flat 24 hour makeover

A Quick Kitchen Makeover on a weeny budget

Wallpapering Wardrobes

GUEST BEDROOM

MAIN BEDROOM

Sometimes, you just should say ‘no’ – The Before

Most Hit Posts of 2016

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THE PLAN

THE RESULTS

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THE CHALLENGES:

DAUGHTERS NEW BEDROOM:

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GUEST BEDROOM

MAIN BEDROOM

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