It’s been ages since I sat down and actually wrote anything about our renovation, but earlier this week I shared a photo on Instagram of the new prints we have hanging in our hallway and it’s inspired me to get back behind the keyboard and talk about one of the things I love which is Art and building up an affordable collection of art and prints. If you’re a follower on Instagram (and if you’re not then it would be lovely if you came and said hi) then you’ll know that we have a lot of prints on display around the house. It’s one of the main ways I get to express my personality and I love how the right piece can really make a statement My taste tends to lean towards abstract or typographical prints. I’m not sure why as I distinctly remember dissing abstract art at school, but I love how the blocks of colour represent something, without being too over bearing. Each print evokes a special memory for me and I love how they can set the tone of the whole room. These sunset prints by Juniqe are the first thing you see when you walk in our front door. I love how bright and bold they are and that they remind me of the beach. Other than these prints, our hallway is pretty grey so I’m hoping the pops of colour will demonstrate that we don’t take ourselves too seriously. Art doesn’t have to cost the earth (Building up an affordable collection) We have a mix of affordable prints in our house with some more expensive pieces dotted here and there but unless you knew what you were looking at, you wouldn’t be able to tell. The higher priced prints tend to be one of a…
I ‘m currently sat on one of the stools at our breakfast bar, red wine in view whilst Stu cooks our dinner for the evening (I know living the dream right!!). We’ve literally just finished decorating this room, like literally! The glue is still drying on the command strips we used to add the pictures to our gallery wall and yet the topic of conversation for the evening …. our kitchen extension! Why??! Renovating houses is for the select few. I know it can seem exciting on those Handy Andy style BBC shows. The before and after pictures on Instagram make the whole process seem really straight forward, but in reality living through a renovation project takes someone with a steely nerve. Living with dust for months, never being able to switch off in the evening because you have to think about the colour of the door handles in the next room your about to tackle and not really being able to invite friends over because, well you’re a little bit embarrassed about how you live! That part of renovating takes a certain type of person. They’ll tell you time and time again that ‘this is the last one, we’ll never do it again!!” But for some reason as soon as the paint is dry on one project… kind of like childbirth, the pain is forgotten and work has started on the next project before the brain has really had chance to really figure out why! Stuart and I are those type of people. The insane kind that can’t just sit and enjoy what we’ve created. A think a little of it is down to ambition, a little down to practicality but also a little because we can. We’re very lucky in that Stuart’s a Heating Engineer and very handy…
W hilst I was in a mild panic to get Ollie’s room finished before he was born, we haven’t really touched it since he arrived and at the moment its a bit of a dumping ground for Ettie’s old toys and baby paraphernalia that doesn’t have its own tidy place in the house. Because he’s quite happy in the Snuzpod attached to our bed, its been quite nice to give ourselves a break from renovating, enjoy the progress we’ve made so far and take a step away from DIY. However this morning when I was taking photos of Ollie to mark his three month ‘coming of age,’ I suddenly realised that time is slowly ticking by and its going to be time to move him from the comfort of the cosy Snuzpod and into his own room before we know it! (*stem big rolling tears!). Ettie was in our room until she was 9 months old because we were in the process of moving house and she fit in the Snuzpod most of that time! Ollie on the other hand is massive and it’s clear to see that he’ll be outgrowing his sleeping quarters within the next few months. So although the break was nice, its time get my thinking cap back on and start making plans for his room. At the moment Ollie’s room is light grey and white. We kept it neutral because we weren’t sure whether we were having a girl or a boy and whilst I do love the pale grey, now that he’s here I’m not feeling it for our boy (No surprises there, decisiveness is not my forte!!) A Monochrome Baby Boys Room Because he has a lovely mop of black hair, I’m finding myself leaning towards a monochrome colour scheme with pops of colour to dotted around to…
D esigning Ettie’s room been my favourite part of our renovation journey to date. Creating a beautiful little girls room that really captures the imagination is something I’ve always wanted to do and when we moved in here I was given a completely blank canvas which was perfect. When designing her room I wanted to create a space that would grow with her. She was 10 months old when we first moved in and so past the newborn nursery stage. Because of that I wanted to create a room that was modern and perfect for a little girl, somewhere we could play together, but also that she could enjoy with friends when she grows a little older. Since posting Ettie’s Room Progress, a couple of months ago, we’ve already made a few changes to the decor including changing her cot into a big girls bed. She loves having a proper bed … although I’m sure she thinks it’s for bouncing on at the moment because she hasn’t managed to spend a whole night sleeping in there! My favourite part of the day is jumping in bed next to her in the evening to read her a bedtime story then giving her a little cuddle as she falls to sleep. It’s so much easier than having to clamber over the sides of the cot (yes I used to jump in there with her too! ) Cot Bed: Silver Cross Notting Hill A Modern Pink Girls Room: Decor The theme for her room kind of evolved over time. When she was first-born, we were in the process of moving house so she didn’t have a proper ‘nursery’. I bought a few token bits for the guest room which sat on a shelf above her clothes rail and one of these was a little…
D esigning Ettie’s room been my favourite part of our renovation journey to date. The inner child in me has taken over designing a space I would have loved as a child, and this room is probably the reason some of our other rooms aren’t finished.. because it’s been taking all my wages! There’s still a little way to go before I’d say its ‘finished’ and I write a complete room tour, but I think we’ve made enough progress now to give a little sneak peek & show you where it’s heading. This was how her room started out. There was a diagonal chimney breast in the far left corner of the room which made it a funny shape for furniture. The room had a picture rail, original wooden pelmet on the window and the walls were covered with cut out pictures of wildlife. We removed the chimney breast (and the pictures of the birds!), skimmed the walls and laid a new carpet giving me a completely blank canvas from which to begin. I also worked though what felt like a million shades of pink, trying to find the right colour for the wall. Eventually we settled on Blush Pink by Dulux which is a lovely soft peachy pink. Painting her room seemed to take an eternity because I was fitting it in between working full time and looking after an increasingly energetic toddler! Because time was limited I painted the walls one at a time whenever I managed to find a spare hour or two. The next stage was to create a feature wall. Because pink can be quite overwhelming, I didn’t want her room to appear too sickly sweet and so I used black wall stickers to give it a bit of an edge. I love clean, crisp…
It dawned on me earlier this week that we’ve been in our house over a year now and during that time I’ve been lusting daily over ideas on how to renovate our front garden. Its currently a bit of a mud pit, so much so that you can see passers by peering in through the window and shaking their heads in disbelief that someone could actually live here! The previous owner was a little old man who used it as a vegetable patch, meaning it hasn’t really been touched since the house was built in the late 1930’s. Because of that, like so many of the other projects we’ve taken on during the renovation of this house, we’ll be starting this project completely from scratch. Tackling the challenge link any good home renovator would, I’ve been adding to a Pinterest Board for the past couple of months now, trying to come up with ideas of things we could do. Unfortunately so far I haven’t really found anything that floats my boat. I think the main problem is that I imagine myself living in an elegant Edwardian terrace, with encaustic tiles and beautiful wrought iron railings. However we live in a 1930’s semi which is partly pebble dashed (although that will be rectified eventually), so there aren’t really many elegant options out there! A few hours of pinning later and I’ve made the decision to keep it simple! We’ll have a wall running between ourselves and the next door neighbour, which will extend along the front of the house, a grey path leading up to the front door and some pretty pots with bay trees standing either side of the porch. I want to try and keep the lines as straight and as simple as possible to keep everything neat and…
We’re nine months into our second renovation project now (although we have had a long summer recess due to Stu’s cricket commitments! *insert eye roll) So as we’re taking a break, I thought I’d share with you a couple of the lessons we’ve learned along our renovation journey to date, just in case you’re bat shit crazy enough to think you might like to have a go at it yourself!** **(It really isn’t that bad) The Highs Despite all my moaning, there are actually a few good points about renovating your own home, and despite how one-sided this argument may look on-screen, the positives do actually outweigh the benefits! Otherwise I’d never have let Stu talk me into doing another one! First of all, you get to choose everything brand new – that means a sparkly new kitchen, new bathroom, new carpets – the works. No more having to pee in someones else’s poo pipe until you can afford to get the whole thing done!; Secondly you get to unleash your inner creative warrior and can start to apply all those carefully crafted Pinterest dreams to your own home; Buying a home in need of a bit of TLC is often cheaper than buying something which is new and shiny, so you should hopefully get more ‘house’ for your money; You can tailor the space to meet your families’ needs without too much disruption! OK there will be dust, so much dust!! But when the whole place looks like its been hit by hurricane Irma, knocking a wall down to rearrange your living space wont seem quite as daunting; You can choose a colour palette and apply it to the whole house, meaning all your rooms will interrelate; General tidying and other housework can take a back seat for a…
I think its still going to be a while before I can share a grand unveiling of any of the finished rooms in this house, so as a little appetiser, I thought I’d show you one of the rooms we made over in our previous flat. I’ll start with the living room as I think it was perhaps the biggest transformation and ended up being one of my favourite rooms! You can see the the transformation from start to finish below, but I’ll talk you through the process as we move on.. Our first home was a cosy little flat in a little village called Ditchling. It was built in the 1950’s and was in need of some serious modernisation. The flat had its own garden over looking the South Downs but was on the top of two floors so not ideal for a small family. When we bought it, a little old lady lived there and other than a splash of magnolia over all of the walls, I don’t think it had really been touched since the 1980’s. I remember sanding down the skirting boards and finding all sorts of wonderful colour combinations – such as red door frames in one room and black woodwork in another! I’m quite sad it all got painted over, it would have been a sight to behold! When we moved in our living room had an electric fire installed and looked a little something like this: Fancy ey! It went through various incarnations as we tinkered about with other rooms, including a store room and carpentry workshop but eventually we started work and began with ripping up the fire place and re-plastering all of the walls and ceilings which were covered in Artex. There was a little hatch from the front room through into…
I went up to our new third floor of our new house today which was a bit jazzy! I climbed up a huge orange ladder and everything (although I was a bit scared to come back down it so chickened out and used the smaller ladder inside the house instead!) It was brilliant up there, I felt like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins! In fact I half expected him to pop his head out of one of the chimneys! But I was left with this motley crew instead! I mean I don’t know about you, but there’s definitely some resemblances between this build and the construction of the ‘Empire State building! It was crazy seeing how much progress our builders have made in just a couple of weeks. They’ve removed the roof, punched through where the new staircase is going to go, removed the ceilings from the bathroom and smaller bedroom and made a start in building the frame for the third floor. It was so strange looking down through our house from above. But I loved it, I felt really lucky to be able to see how our house was put together & to stand on our roof! It’s now when all the decisions begin to start. I’d forgot how absolutely everything when renovating a house leads to a question. At the moment we need to decide where the bathroom window, velux’s and patio doors are going to be positioned, what patterned glass we’d like and what colour roof tiles to go for. It all seem pretty straight forward, but when your suddenly faced with decisions that are going to change the appearance of your house forever – and they are things you’ve never even thought about! The pressure is on to get it right!!…
The moody looking fella in the hoody above is Stu, my amazingly over ambitious and crazily determined husband!! and this is our house!! A 1930’s semi in suburbia just outside Brighton… We bought the house in July and it is a shell… and when I say shell, I mean nothing has been touched or changed on it since it was built in 1937! In fact the little old man who lived here before us – Lets call him Mr G*, has lived here happily since he was 6 years old! (*He’s still alive and kicking i’m happy to add –just moved on to a more practical bungalow round the corner!) The house as it stands has no mains gas so of course no radiators, no working kitchen, an ‘lovely’ blue bathroom suite, minimal electric’s, single glazed windows (in some rooms), patio doors which don’t lock and a 218 sq meter mud patch in both the front and back gardens filled with vegetables and chives. I think the pictures set the scene a lot better than I can write about……. So why, with a six month baby in tow have we chosen to sink all our money into this crazy money pit …? Surely there are easier options?? Well in all honesty, with house prices as ridiculous as they are in the South East, and the need for us to have an extra bedroom so my parents could come to stay, it’s actually all we can afford- and it’s quite exciting!! So we’ve bought it. Chives in the garden, crazy décor on the walls and patterned carpets galore. When I say the house hasn’t been touched, that isn’t exactly true. The previous owner has re-decorated, however he’s chosen to go with his own distinct and rather remarkable style. Throwing away the…
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