Tag: paint

To paint, or not to paint

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As I mentioned in my very first post, our living room was black and red before it got reincarnated as the current green/grey paradise.  With us plumping for white for the flooring and picture frames, the existing black and red furniture doesn’t exactly match.

We got rid of the giant red light quickly (someone got a very good deal on eBay for that), and the remaining culprits are the Ikea Expedit units in black times two, and the red drawer inserts that go with them (although I’ve just noticed that Ikea don’t seem to do red ones any more).  We get away with the sofa as it’s mostly grey.

I’ve ummed and ahed about painting the furniture, even going as far as to paint a splodge of the Boudoir on the back of one of the drawers to see if it would hold.  It came off with my fingernail.  I’ve consulted a colleague at work (hello again, Michelle!), who’s advised me that to paint this kind of finish, for either the drawers or the units, would involve sanding, priming, painting, repainting, and then an adhesive spray for dessert.

The beauty of Ikea is that it’s so cheap, you can just go and get some more.  The current shelving would fit in our room, or spare rooms, or could just go on eBay, but I’m really reluctant to hand over another £124 for the two units, plus £52 for two sets of drawers, cheap as they are.  Having said that, it would probably cost me more than that in time and money on all the priming and spraying equipment.  There’s the additional worry that if we went all white, it could look plasticky and cheap.  Or like heaven.

Decisions, decisions.  Anyway, despite my innate aversion to wicker, I do like these little Branas baskets that Ikea do (surprise, surprise), and would definitely find space for them somewhere.

Recommendations are welcomed.  Although this isn’t a pressing issue, it is something I could be doing while Barry’s tearing walls down/plastering them up again, and I’d quite like my own corner to be proud of.  Speaking of plastering, here’s the latest picture of the “bathroom”.  And the radiator’s been ordered.  Sweet warmth is on its way!

In other news, K -8 days.  No pressure.

The grass is always greener

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Actually, the grass is not always greener on the other side because one of our neighbour’s dogs poos freely in their garden so they have giant dead patches of grass. A good reason to get higher fences. But that’s another story.

Barry has had a plan for some time of having decking in the garden. By plan, I don’t mean some vague concept of “we need to do something to the garden”; I mean plan. He’s drawn it out on graph paper so many times I’m surprised he can’t recite our garden’s exact dimensions. I was reluctant to consider decking at first. I’ve seen some examples and it can look very cheap, and it also requires some upkeep (a dirty word in our house), so I didn’t think much to it.

However! My ex-uncle (for an explanation, please see the post where we broke his sander) has lovely decking, which he put in himself and I really like, possibly because he’s stained it dark and surrounded it in pretty flowers.

And yea, I was converted to deckingism.

And yea, I had to google the word “yea” to make sure I was spelling it correctly. It looks a bit too much like “yeah”.

Regardless, let me give you, ahem, the lay of the land of our garden. Our garden slopes towards the back right hand corner. It slopes down to the right, and down to the far end. The patch of land most likely to get any sun at all is the back right corner, which is also where we very cleverly placed our shed. We used to have a rabbit, so there’s a big square patch of dead grass where the hutch was, and I hate the paving stones, which I’d call a “prison” grey. Hence the plan.

I’m not even sure this will get done this year after all the interior fun with the kitchen and living room, but I can tell you what we’re thinking. We’re imagining decking down the right hand side of the garden, and we’ll have to have two or three separate areas (with steps between them), otherwise we’ll end up about five feet above the ground by the end of the garden. Barry’s got visions of firepits and barbecues dancing in his head, but one step at a time, hey?

Updates on Saturday’s activities – it’s (as you can tell by the picture) been snowing, so we’re really in dire need of a radiator now! We’re being quite indecisive about which one to get, so I think some snappy decision-making’s in order. We nipped to Wickes to get some tester paints (not long and we’ll have the complete range) for the kitchen. After Karen commented about brilliant white not being so brilliant for walls, I’ve been wittering on about maybe a pale grey for the kitchen too, but Barry’s having none of it. In retaliation, I’ve painted two different greys on the wall (and in the corner, thanks Karen!) and I’m hoping he’ll come around. God forbid we have to paint it twice.

I’ve also finally finished painting the living room walls, as shown. There are still doors and skirting boards to do, but they’re going to wait until the kitchen’s finished. Meanwhile, Barry was fitting some of the plasterboard we took down into the gaps in the walls, which should hopefully make it a bit warmer as well.



He’s also plugging up the fan that went from the loo to the outside world, but the expanding foam went a bit wrong and it looks like it’s been really ill.




Our dining room table’s currently in pieces, and we’ve moved all of the chairs up to a spare room so they’re out of the way for when the kitchen comes (a week and a half, people!). It does, however, look to the casual observer that we’re ready to play musical chairs at a moment’s notice.

Breaking the fourth wall

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The kitchen wall is no more!  All hail the supersize kitchen!

I annoyed Barry by taking lots of photos as he worked.  In my defence, I did order the Chinese food – I couldn’t exactly get to the kitchen.  It’s difficult to get a photo of the entire kitchen, so I’ve had to take the last two from either side.  It’s that big.

We sat and thought about the list last night; I think we didn’t want to do it because it’s really long and we knew it would be.  To start with, we were going to put the delivery of the kitchen units back because they’re supposed to be coming in less than two weeks’ time.  We’ve changed our minds now, because we’ll only want them, so here goes…

  1. Finish painting in the living room.  We’re going to leave the dining table down for now, and this will allow us to store things in that space.  Namely, kitchen cupboards.
  2. Get the kitchen pipework done.
  3. Electrics – get them where we want them.  Barry will be linking two lights together and getting rid of a switch.
  4. Start patching up the kitchen.  This will involve fitting plasterboard into the holes in the walls and ceilings, and generally making it ready for skimming.
  5. Take the current kitchen out.  Scary step, there’s no coming back from this!
  6. Skim the plaster.  A friend is being called in for this one!
  7. Paint ceiling.
  8. Paint walls.
  9. Put cupboards together (maybe while the other is drying?).
  10. Put in kitchen.
  11. Put in kitchen flooring.
  12. Put in living room flooring.

There are a million and one other things to add, like putting additional radiators in, sorting the photos for the living room wall, getting some more units sorted for the living room, getting the worktops cut, shall we have an island in the kitchen, etc., and I’m sure more will come to me as I’m just about to drop off to sleep.  But it’s a start.

Paint, glorious paint

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Around the lights we’d chosen, as I mentioned previously, we thought we’d go for a classic feel in the living room. We chose this beautiful green quite quickly (Wickes’ Boudoir), and after slathering the wall with three shades of grey from tester pots, chose the palest (Nickel). The green is a chalky flat matt, which works really well – it makes it look quite grown up!

We discussed, Googled, and then discussed some more which wall we should make the feature wall and how to ensure the room wasn’t too dark with having vast expanses of grey walls. We’ve counteracted this by choosing a pale grey, sorting lots of lighting, and we’ve decided to go for a white wood laminate floor rather than the dark wood we’d originally wanted.

The ceiling was painted last Saturday by the husband. Painting a white ceiling white is the most unsatisfying feeling ever (or so he tells me); you can barely see where you’ve painted. I spent my time feeding him and wandering round looking at the ceiling, pointing out bits he’d missed. And then got shouted at for “making it up”. I wasn’t.

Where to begin…

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I have a confession.  My name’s Michelle, and my husband and I have been living in a new Barratt’s home for over three and a half years now.  Until last week, it was still magnolia.  The whole thing.

In my defence, we selected some pretty awesome statement pieces to counteract the magnolia when we first moved in.  As we were advised not to paint immediately, due to nail pops and the house settling in general, we thought we’d get creative in other ways.  Like this cool red Kulla light from Ikea in the living room, and this lovely yellow four poster Hemnes bed, also from Ikea.  You’ll notice a theme.

Anyway, we’ve recently decided to dust off the old overalls, get our fingers out  (neither of which I mean literally), and make some changes.

 

We went a bit mad with paint tester pots to start with.  Luckily, we live two minutes from a Wickes store and they were on offer at buy one get one free, otherwise we may have been forced to rein it in a bit.

We couldn’t even decide where we were going to paint to begin with, so we bought six tiny pots for our bedroom and four for the living room.  All of which were splodged across the walls.  I have a strong feeling we’ll have to live with it in our room for quite some time.

Anyway, we decided to go with the living room first.  Bear in mind that when we last decorated everything was when we moved here in June 2009.  As you can see above, for our living room as was, we’d gone with the standard magnolia walls, cream carpet (I’ll assume you’ll take this as a given for any other room I discuss), with red, black and grey highlights.  I like to think that people don’t notice we haven’t painted anything until now, as we chose our rooms’ contents very carefully.

When we first moved, our first choice was our lovely corner sofa from DFS, which unbelievably, we got on sale.  Pretty much everything else in the room was from Ikea, including a six seater dining table and bookcases for our TV and DVDs.

We’ve moved away from the black/red combo now, and have decided on a much more classic feel for the living room, although we’re keeping the current sofa and dining set.

The first items I chose, which seem to have set the mood for the room, were some lovely lights from Argos.  This review by Bobby from Yorkshire (scroll to the bottom) sealed the deal to be honest.  As no one Argos in the area seemed to have two, my other half had to trail around Leeds one day picking the pair up from opposite ends of the city, but they’re worth it!