We had another viewing this week (about time too, it’s been weeks), and this wall really jarred as soon as I showed the visitors through the door – it’s right opposite the doorway in our bedroom. Continue reading
Tag: bedroom
Bed: a mini project (stage two)
Stage one of overhauling our bed was hacking the top off, opening up the lines of our bedroom again and giving me less things to bang my head on in the middle of the night.
Stage two involved sanding as long as I could be bothered (not long), inhaling yellow dust (I know because when I sneezed, it came out of my nose), wiping the sanding dust with a teatowel which really shouldn’t have been used for that purpose, all to get it ready for the paint (which I got on the carpet). There’s a reason I usually let Barry do all this. Continue reading
Plans for bed
I have an idea for our bed. Put those thoughts to one side, this is a house and home blog.
The reason we fell in love with our house was the master bedroom. And the reason we fell in love with our bedroom is the light that comes from both sides of the house; it fills the space and makes it feel twice as big. Continue reading
Procrastination with good reason
Oh dear, oh dear. I haven’t posted in almost a month, and literally nothing’s changed, house-wise. A lot’s been changing with me, but house-wise it’s exactly the same.
The prints are all safely nestled in their frames, and are waiting patiently on the dining room table to be put up on the wall. According to Barry, I’m in charge of logistics of how we’re going to arrange them. That should go well. The pressure’s on to get them up this weekend, because my Aunty and cousins are coming on Monday for the first time and we want it to look great.
In kitchen news, the great black wall still lies unfinished, and we’re going to cave. Next door have given us the number of a painter/decorator so we’re going to get a quote. In the last month, Barry’s moved jobs as well as started his own company, and it’s just not going to happen, so we’d rather get it sorted. The stairs are going to be a major issue anyway, best leave it to the professionals.
As well as the black wall, I think we’ll get a quote for our room to be painted so it no longer looks like a shooting’s taken place, and (wait for it), we’ll need our third bedroom painting as it looks like that will be the nursery.
Yes, I’m pregnant, up the duff, bun in the oven, knocked up. 14 weeks and 2 days to be precise. I’ll try not to harp on about it, I know it’s not a baby blog, but my mind has been on other things lately and I’m poring over prams instead of paint like porn in my lunch hour.
We were dithering about which room to make the nursery. To begin with, the baby can reside in our little nook off our main bedroom, but I think it would be nice to do up a bedroom for when it’s ready to move on and be a bit more independent. At about 6 months. Charlie’s giving us lots of good advice, and she thinks that would be good for the daytime anyway, and then the baby can get used to the room.
We initially thought the spare room with the yellow bed, as it’s the nearest to our bedroom. However, Barry’s made the excellent point that it’s nearer the road, and therefore noisier. They’re both the same size, so I think we’re going to go with the one that’s further back. We’ll have to get rid of the double bed that’s in there, but I think we’ll get a nice fold-out sofa bed in there for when Barry’s family comes over.
We won’t know what colour we’re going for until around October time (forget team yellow, we want to know!), which is also putting the brakes on which colour and design of pram we want. For anyone who’s interested, we’re getting an iCandy. Now I’m going to daydream…
Bedside tables, curtains, and a food processor
A random list, I know, but that’s what we’ve come back with from my mum’s. We went to measure the wardrobes she’s offered us to see if they’ll fit in Barry’s car (he thinks they will), rather than hiring a van.
In the meantime, we fit everything we could into the car to save us going back more times than necessary, so on Saturday, we drove back with two bedside tables, two purple lamps to go on them, a long pair of purple curtains and tie-backs, and a food processor which has more parts to it than anything else in our house combined. I can’t find the instructions online anywhere, so we’ll see how that goes!
We still need to go back for a chest of drawers, the curtain pole (which we forgot), and a double and triple wardrobe. Not sure where we’re putting everything yet, but the bedside tables and curtains will probably be going in our second spare room.
A special congratulations to my fellow blogger, Karen, who got engaged this weekend!
Going on a mini-holiday until Friday now, so see you all when we get back!
Second hand
My mum is going to move out of her house, and has asked us if we would like some of her furniture because she doesn’t need it any more. She’s got a large chest of drawers, two bedside tables, three double wardrobes and a bucket chair. We’ve said yes please to all of them and when can we hire the van?
She’s happy for us to paint or stain any and all of the items, and we’ve said we’d like to chop the wardrobes up as Barry feels like he could have a good crack at built-in wardrobes for our room, and she’s happy for us to do that as well! Score!
There’s a couple of places in our bedroom where we could have built-in wardrobes, but they’re in the eaves so they’re expensive to buy and get fitted. Better Barry has a go at it first!
Happy birthday to Barry! Katheryn’s boots didn’t fit, so cross your fingers my Supergirl boots hold tonight…
Shotgun approach
In response to Wednesday’s post, someone commented to ask if we’re working on our entire house at once. Of course not! was my first reaction. Then, as I started writing out the reply, it really did begin to look like we are, in fact, trying to take on the entire house at the same time.
This was my reply:
We started with the living room in January, which quickly spread to the kitchen, so we’re working on all of the ground floor at the same time. We’ve got a big splodge of tester paint in our bedroom, and we know what we want to do with that. We need to finish painting black up the stairs, and then do it on the top floor too, but we also want to put decking in the garden soon…
Damn. Barry’s forever telling me that we can’t do everything at once, much as I’d like to. Financially, we definitely can’t do everything at once (unless the lottery plan comes together), and it will probably go very quiet for the rest of this month once we have the flooring in. I am, however, gearing up for some excellent before and after shots.
It’s easy to get carried away. I know I’ve talked (or typed) before about DIY and decorating influencing your friends, but it also has a snowball effect on yourselves. The more we do, the more we want to do, and now that a certain part of the house is almost done and looks great (well, we think so!), it makes you want to keep going. Just need to rein it in a little bit! We haven’t even got to photo wall month yet, and we’re already thinking about decking. In the meantime, our bedroom still looks like a crime scene. What will we tackle next?
Tables and chairs
I’m looking at tables and chairs for the kitchen. We’ve talked about having stools and having the extra bit of wood as a breakfast bar, but I’m anti-stools in principle. I don’t enjoy balancing as I eat. The extra bit of wood has to wait until we get the flooring in anyway, as we need to fix the pipe (that’s just arrived) to the floor to hold it up.
I’ve got my beady eye on these white chairs and matching table from Argos, but Barry prefers the purple, which I don’t think matches. I also like these ones, which are on offer at the moment, but we’ve just bought the flooring, so I think they’ll have to wait a while. You can have a look at them with the other stuff on my Pinterest kitchen pinboard.
I am looking forward to having breakfast in our shiny kitchen!
As a side note, you may notice that I’ve added a bunch of buttons on the right to make it easier for people to find and follow me. Most of them were copied from Karen’s blog (thank you!).
As yet another side note, I’ve committed us to the raspberry paint I mentioned before on our bedroom wall, although at the moment, it does like someone was shot and killed against it, and then the killer tried to clean it. It’ll be better when the whole thing’s pink.
Dressing up
The hunt for the perfect dressing table is an impossible task. Actually, it doesn’t even have to be perfect, it can simply be cheap. I’ve had an eBay alert set to tell me every time something appropriate in my area is listed, but then nothing ever comes of it. I feel like I’m destined to forever do my makeup on my bed with my legs crossed like a schoolgirl.
Actually, when I was a schoolgirl, I did have a dressing table. Ironic, non?
I really like this glass table top from Ikea (where else?), and have liked it for a few years. You can buy different legs for it, so you could set it on drawers. I like that it’s huge, has a nice pattern and I can’t stain it like wood if something leaks, or more likely, I knock something over. It’s just we’ve never had the spare £100 to say, yes! This month we shall buy the dressing table!
We’ll definitely have to get one when we do out our bedroom, and we’ve also had a couple of quotes for fitted wardrobes. At the moment we have a solid wood double bed (our fancy spare bed is actually bigger than our own!), and then Ikea Aspelund wardrobe, bedside tables and drawers (only “wood” coloured, although loving the white!). I’ve sadly pushed Barry out of our triple wardrobe, and he is currently hanging his clothes in the dressing area on a clothing rail.
All that glitters
I love shiny things, sparkly things, bejewelled and sequinned things. Therefore, you shouldn’t be too surprised that when we got rid of the chandelier we used to have in the living room, I kept the sparkly things that used to hang from it. Sorry to my friend Helen, to whom the chandelier was bequeathed, jewelless.
They’re not at all valuable – I think they’re just clear acrylic cut into a shape that catches the light – but I’m determined to find some possible use for these in my new living room.
I was thinking that if we had a pelmet above the window, I could somehow attach these to it and it would look really pretty. Either that, or it would look cheap and tacky, but it’s worth a try!
I still love the light we chose for our bedroom (pictured here), which was an Ikea find when we first moved in. We’re thinking about painting the wall behind our bed in this lovely rich Raspberry colour from Wickes, having the other walls Victorian White (also Wickes!), and then painting the skirts and doors gloss black.
I know I talk about Wickes a lot, but it’s our nearest DIY store so we’re up there a lot.
We were inspired by this photo in their paint catalogue, which was actually advertising coral paint, but we thought would work with their Raspberry too. You can get away with using any rich colour here, so we could even paint the dressing room (just off our room) a different colour, like this teal.
Barry’s been a busy little bee, plastering and sanding the walls in the kitchen of an evening. They’re looking great, but it does look like a crime scene in which the fingerprint techs have been round the bottom two floors of our house searching for clues.
K – 6 days…