Tag: white

Here we go!

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The flooring is here!  We had a manic day yesterday.  Barry had the opticians in the morning, and of course, that was the time when the pallet of floorboards came.  The man couldn’t get the pallet trolley thing up the path, so left it in the road.  I was literally running in and out of the house, just in case a car reversed into the pallet.  Then Barry came back, and wondered why I was running round shouting “Cones!  Get some cones!”.  We don’t have cones, but he thought it was funny.  I did not.

He then started laying the flooring in the living room.  I tried to help, but I’m relegated to underlay (because it doesn’t matter as nobody sees it).  I’m also permitted to put little protective feet on furniture and unwrap the next pack of flooring.  Oh yes, I know his game.

We also squeezed in a cinema trip (Wrath of the Titans, 1.5/5, don’t bother) and a trip to Nando’s to see some old uni friends.

We’ve got two sets of visitors coming over the Easter weekend, so the pressure’s on to get the flooring in (although we still need to paint the skirts and radiators in the living room before putting the beading in, but that can wait).  The paint’s cracking at the bottom where we’re hammering flooring against it, so that needs sanding off and redoing.  Also, Barry’s working in London all week, so he’s not going to be productive from there!

Sunday is supposed to be the day of rest.  It isn’t in our house!  Onwards!

Photos of the flooring so far…

Change of plans

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I’m kind of sulking, because I’m not going to be able to chop up our units to make a dressing table.  The neverending saga of me not having a dressing table continues.  I suppose if I ever actually got one, it wouldn’t be neverending.

Instead, we’ve decided to leave the units as they are, and replace the red stuff with white stuff.  Otherwise, it’d be white on white on white, and that’s clearly too much white.

As I said before, we will still be having white drawers/cupboards/wicker baskets in the units, but it won’t be quite as clinical as we first thought.

Barry’s asked me to clarify why he’s wearing sunglasses inside on yesterday’s post.  It’s not that he’s too cool for school, is a pimp, or has some strange eye disease.  No!  It was just incredibly sunny this Sunday – so sunny, he had to wear sunglasses inside.

I also wanted to show off that we got tickets to the Sunday of Radio 1’s Hackney weekend, and am super excited about it!  If my friend Rach picks up her phone, we might even have somewhere to stay for the night…

I’ve just remembered that I promised our living room carpet to Jaime many moons ago.  I’m afraid it’s not going to be much use to anybody (it’s covered in splashes of paint), and Charlie and Jaime did get their carpets redone about a year ago, so I’m hoping he’ll forgive us when we throw it away!

Tiles, floorboards, floorboards, tiles

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We’ve been looking round at tiles again and nothing’s striking either of us, so we’re thinking we might just stick to white floorboards for the whole of the bottom floor.  It would match, although there might be a bit too much white in the kitchen then, so I may finally get my wish of it being painted pale grey.  We definitely need to stop the new radiator from dripping first!

The other option is to have a darker wood on the kitchen floor (think dark grey).  I prefer the white, myself.  Bracing myself for the bill that’s over £500 just for some floorboards though.

The old kitchen, hob and oven are selling well on eBay – finishing this weekend and then we can wave goodbye.  Can’t wait – we’ll have a bit more space in the current kitchen (not that that’s a huge issue now), and can carry on painting the room.

It’s our five-year wedding anniversary this weekend, which ironically, is our “wooden” anniversary.  Spoiler alert, Barry: if a new kitchen and flooring don’t count as an excellent wooden gift, I don’t know what does.

Colour me beautiful

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I’ve been following a few other decorating/DIY blogs, and one writer has recently come up with a couple of kitchen posts I found interesting – one about white ones and one about kitchens with flashes of colour.  It’s nice to see trends on the other side of the pond, and shows how a bit of colour can really work.  I’m unsure about the brightly coloured units in three different shades in one kitchen though – it would have to be huge to carry that off.

I love the idea of having chalkboard paint from this blogger.  We’re having one wall matt black anyway, so we’re looking into this – it’s definitely a possibility!  From the big UK stores, I’ve found this one from B&Q, and this one from Wickes.  If anyone actually has experience of doing this, it would be much appreciated.  I’m not sure how much control you would have with a spray one, and I’m not sure how much you’d need to cover a wall that goes up the stairs!

Ode to a kitchen (oven remix)

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I have been informed by a friend (hello, Jaye!) that it is completely couth to love inanimate objects (see: Ode to an oven), so let me say it now: I love our new kitchen units. They’re not even fully unpacked yet and I love them! It’s like Christmas (well, a sight better than this Christmas actually).

The purple is richer than I remembered, and the white looks sharp and clean (it was displayed with cream in the showroom, so we hadn’t actually seen it with white).  It will be great when we get the doors on.

I think getting the worktop cut will be an extra for which we may actually have to pay, but it’ll be worth it to get it right. It would be very expensive to get wrong!  I can’t wait to get the guy round to do this so that we can start using our sink.  We do have a functioning dishwasher, but larger items are currently being washed in the bath!

The tile of my life

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Many of my posts include the words I can’t decide, or something to that effect.  I hadn’t realised I was so indecisive!  Because we’re spending a lot of money on the kitchen especially (and will continue to do so for, oh, the next three years), we want it to be perfect.

I’m going to continue with affirmative phrases.  I like kitchen tiles.  We’re having an upstand made of the same wood as the worktop (walnut), but I believe that we need something above that to protect the walls.  We will be getting tiles of some description.  I like the tiles that are rectangular, like bricks.  I like these ones from Wickes (pictured).

But!  Is it boring to have white tiles, or is it chic?  Do we have enough colour with the purple units on the bottom?  What shall we have for tea?

Decisions, decisions…

Barry and I made a little trip to a friend’s this weekend so Barry could put a coat hook in their solid wall because he’s got a fancy drill.  We were talking about how nice it was to do a job and it having a definite ending!  We were also instructed to take a photo for the blog.

He’s spent the weekend here plastering and sanding – I can’t even help at this stage, which is frustrating for me, but probably more so for him.

We’ve had our first visits from friends to see the new space (and have a cup of tea, of course!), and the items we were selling on eBay have all sold, which is good.  Money is now being automatically translated into its equivalent value in DIY or household materials.  But would you pay £26 for a used loo (= a tin of paint)?

Shades of grey

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It’s difficult when we haven’t finished the living room, but are trying to get cracking with the kitchen as we’re under a bit of pressure as they’ve delivered the oven yesterday and are trying to deliver the units in two weeks.  We still have ideas that we’re working on in the meantime for the living room, but they’re having to go on the back burner for a little while.

One idea we had was of having lots of photos across the green wall in the living room, under the spotlights.  We liked the thought of having loads of images of friends and family, although I initially thought more order would be better.  I’ve since been convinced that orientation and size doesn’t matter.  I will put my foot down and say I want all the same frames though, to stop it looking too unruly.  White wooden ones!

This idea then developed into a black and white theme. As white wood complements our new décor, I started thinking about how the photos would look inside the frames.  I’ve spent my lunchtimes at work using Illustrator to turn colour images greyscale and I now have 37 to print!  The selection may require some editing down and we’d need to decide which ones we wanted larger than others.

I didn’t want to put someone’s image up without asking, so this is one of me taken in the Maldives on our honeymoon five years ago.  Not all of them are quite as artsy, but it gives you a feel for how it will look.

If anyone has any suggestions where one may procure dozens of reasonable wall frames, ranging from A4 down to standard photo sizes, please let me know!  I’m willing to paint them, but I would like them all to look the same style.