Back garden

Front garden

Dyson unboxing

Garage

Bathroom

The bathroom was a tired yellow-white, with no storage, and some old looking wooden accessories which needed modernising.

Front room transformation

First we had to strip the walls.



We found some most surprising  messages left by previous owners...

We had to protect radiators and the fireplace from steamers, water, and debris. We wrapped and masked them in dust sheets.

We found some pretty dodgy holes when pulling off unsightly old air vent covers.

There was a bit of TV Ariel cable that just emerged out from a wall, so the rest if the way down the wall had to be chiselled out, and a proper socket put in.

There were two types of wallpaper on the walls when we started, and they met in the middle where a pink flowers with green stems border covered the join. The top half was flowers and the bottom half pink and white stripes. In the early 1990's, which is when I'm guessing this room was last decorated, I'm sure it would have been all the rage. However now it looked like someone had been bulk buying on a shopping spree at a Chinese shop. Or as I prefer to describe it, perhaps with a more.brutal tone, it looked like someone had threw up whilst on a diet of exclusively eating blemonge. Around the window we found thick white anaglypta styled wallpaper underneath these pink layers, which meant even more layers of paper to strip!

We had to tool up with masks and goggles before we could sand the walls down. This made us look very silly!

We covered the windows with creamy windolene, which is very hard to find in the shops these days. When we ran out of that we used newspaper and masking tape.

I debated the idea of swags over the window, however with nets and curtains up now, its hard to see how they'd hang without dragging.

The best and cheapest curtain poles and finals I found were from b&m bargains.

I later went back for some more poles from there for the bedroom. I liked eyelette taupe suedette curtains from the range. However on inspecting the packet realised they sold them singularly rather than by the pair, and they weren't lined, so weren't half as cheap as they appeared. I did manage to grab some nice black nets with flock design while there though, which matched the patio and window and came in pretty near as dam it the right sizes.

I found much cheaper overall lined suede taupe eyelette curtains at Argos in the end. Again I looked for and found pairs to match either end of the room, both patio and front window, and fit without much further sewing.

I got the cafe rods for the net curtains from Wilkinson's. I got the poles from B and M bargains. I must have looked at a million chandeliers.



They were either not very nice looking or too expensive to buy two, one for each end of the room. In the end I got them from Ikea. When on they kind of create multiple mini spot lights on the ceiling.

The wall lights came from BHS. The had a sale on so were half the price they had been. I love the way they look so much like a mini gallery with a picture hanging underneath.

We had some fun drawing in the Windowlene, before cleaning the windows and finishing the room.