Nice shady spot

Left over bit of railway sleeper + left over fencing post off cuts + free lead flashing section= shady spot garden bench. :)

Nesting time!

When I had my little girl we were in temporary accommodation waiting for our new build to be finished. This time of course we are in and settled so I get to nest for my baby. :)

It all started with the Raskog unit I bought from Ikea

I liked the colour, kind aqua but not cold. Also ideal for nappies and changing kit. 

I thought about chevrons, but really didn't want something that would make the medium sized room feel small. Then I was scrolling through our holiday snaps and saw this...

Haha! I thought. I've got my theme. 

So I drew the lighthouse freehand on the left hand side of the wall.

And then bought 4 sample tester pots (on buy one get one free) and mixed the three with white emulsion I had in my reserves to paint the sky. Then I painted the lighthouse in stripes and then used other tester pot leftovers to do the grass, sheep and the sea. Basically the whole thing cost £3!!!

Here's the finished lighthouse

The birds are cartoon birds I sourced online and printed on transparent stickers, cut them out and stuck them up!

Next I got to work on the black metal edged mirror we brought from the old house, originally from ikea years ago, and painted it up with some rustoleum duck egg blue paint. It took three coats, but well worth it I think. 

  (As you can see I remembered the before photo just in time!)

And here it is:

Oh, and I painted the inner panels of the ikea wardrobe door in the sky colour. Y'know, just because. It's only emulsion, so I can wipe it off one day if I want to. 

Really want to paint the black double bed and the side of the wardrobe, but think I'm going to have to pick my battles!

So far it's probably cost me £4 (in stickers and paint) as I had so much of it already or was upcycling stuff I already had.

Just need the baby to put in it now... ;)

It was a long journey - but so worth it...

So it's done. I'm finished. My longest project ever.

When I stopped work I really wanted to work on the house's 'Magnolia-ness' and my biggest project was the lounge.  So, points to consider in this room:

1. It's North facing - this ruled out my favourite colours of Duck Egg and Eau de Nil as they would have been way too cold. I wanted something that would be warm, but something with depth, yet something which would allow the light to bounce around. Not much then!

2. It's a new build - I wanted to do some kind of wood panelling effect in there that would work in a new-build without looking tacky or like I was trying to make it something it wasn't, and yet add the character I felt it so badly needed.

3. The shape of the room - it's longer than it is wide, with the window on the narrow wall.

4. My furniture, specifically the sofa, which is a 3 seater from the old place. Ideally I would have a two seater which would be more flexible and less of a block, but there is absolutely no point replacing our functional cheap sofa with an expensive one til the kids are grown.

5. Budget - I've not done my sums yet, but I didn't wanna spend a fortune in here, and I don't think I did. The wood was the biggest expense.

6. Practicality - it has to be resistant to kids and it has to hide toys so I can clear them all away at the end of the day for the adult space to relax.


Inspiration and sources:

Panelling:
I saw this really helpful pin to an article on pinterest, so that gave me the idea for the height of the wainscoating (which I assume to be panelling)

I also saw this pin too which gave me the idea of creating my own frames to fit the size/lengths of the wall, and painting the wall, skirting and dado rail the same colour.

My next challenge was to work out how wide I should make the panels. I decided to make the panels fit the gaps I had and that would mean each section of wall would have different widths of 'frame' - but I did try to keep them as close as I reasonably could.

Here were my first drawings to work out heights and widths etc. 

I needed a 32" height overall from the floor to the top of the dado. Then I went for a 3" gap between the skirting and the frame, a 3" gap between the top of the frame and the dado and a 3" gap between each frame. So the height of each frame would be whatever was left of the height between the skirting and dado, minus 6". Hope that makes sense!

I then measured each wall and with a lot of head scratching came up with 11 panels of the longest wall which meant each frame was 12"1/2. The frames on other walls were mainly the same, but the ones in the bay window walls were as narrow as 9"3/4.

Then the loooong process of cutting the wood to size. I bought long strips of 10cm wide by 1cm deep timber. I cut them at 45 degrees on my Dad's metal angle saw jig thingy and I have no idea how many cuts I made. Frankly, it was traumatic by the end!

So here was my first panel, thought I'd start with an easy one (not!). I was determined to work around the sockets etc in that corner, So I did the best I could and filled the rest with filler. I started off tacking them into the wall, but I didn't like that look, so I ended up using no more nails, which was much more forgiving!

So here's the end of the wall getting finished:

This is the point at which my dear Mum and Dad came to say "Hi" and see how I was getting on.  What you can't see to the right on the next wall (under out TV) was two double sockets, two TV arial sockets and two phone sockets. UGLY. My Dad casually mentioned I should try to cover them up. Which is how I spent pretty much the whole of the next day fashioning this out of the mdf and the timber I was using and some corner brackets. Thanks Dad… ;) No really though, worth it. So it's a removable cover with a big hole in it (behind the unit) for all the wires to go into the consoles and then back through up the wall to the TV. It messed up the panelling on my first wall I'd done, but I decided to live with it.

Here are some progress shots:

I then primed all the frames and dado (oh, I added a decorative strip to the dado, just a simple one but enough to give it some 'weight'), sanded the skirting and applied at least three coats of iced latte duracoat from home of colour (Homebase own brand). I could go into how many blinking tester pots I bought and how different they are from the colour guide books which are RUBBISH AND NOT WORTH THE PAPER. But I won't. Honest.  And that was the panels done. Only took four weeks……….. (not everyday and all day but still).

Above the dado

Next I lined the upper parts of the walls with vertical lining paper - apart from the long uninterrupted wall (see below). I went with 'white scatter' from the earth balance range from Crown. It's basically an off white. 

All my paints were chosen to try and be a good match in tone and shade to the wallpaper which was going on the upper half of the feature wall. It was (half price) from Laura Ashley, it's called Lilac and we went for the dark linen/white colouring. It only took a couple of rolls and had some spare then.

Here it is going up one night. It's worth mentioning I had lined the wall by hanging lining paper horizontally first. I did this to my last house and it really seems to make a difference and feel more luxurious, somehow!  

I love love love it! I don't understand how, but it's made the room feel wider and thus squarer. Result!

Frames:
I also got to work on some frames which had been varnished wood. They displayed a photo my Grandpa had taken in the 1970s, and a pen and ink he had then done of the photo.

I also got to work on the mirror. I need to re-mount them with a darker colour mount (maybe the iced latte type colour) but they look good for now.

 Storage:
I also took the plunge and replaced the toy chest with this three drawer unit. My poppet can get toys in and out much easier and it is probably safer than the heavy lid of the old chest. It was from Dunelm Mill. I was so glad it was Ivory as described rather than the yellowy ivory you can find. Phew! (by the way I don't get money or reward for these links, they are just to save you searching).

And so here the room is, in all its glory.

 Apologies, I really need to get a decent daytime shot of the room so it doesn't look so yellow on the screen from the artificial lights. :(

Mirror mirror on the wall

So I've recently gone to being a full time Mum (my choice and very lucky/happy), with another little one on the way in September I know I have a small window of opportunity to get everything in the house sorted before chaos of two under two takes over.

This is the first post in my lounge series. I've been busy redecorating in there, but haven't quite finished yet, so more to follow on that later… but I recently took a mirror from my grandfather's house when we were clearing it out after he passed. It had been on their landing for years, and I wanted something of theirs to remember the house by. When we got it home I was glad I had it but it didn't really fit the look I was going for. I was somewhat relieved to find that it wasn't a priceless antique but from Wilko… should've known my thrifty Grandpa wouldn't spend more than he had to (I come from a long line of bargain hunters/DIYers/fixer-uppers!).

That was a relief because I could keep it, but not have to feel guilty about giving it a makeover. Here it is (with one side painted… remembered just in time to get a before photo!

And a close up shot

1. So  first up I gave it a good clean, masking taped the edges and used a multipurpose primer.

2. I used the darker colour of my decorative palate as the base (Iced Latte by Home of Colour - Homebase own brand).

3. Then I got quite a dry brush with the lighter colour (White Scatter, Crown earth balance range) and just ran it over the paint lightly so that it would bring out the detailing.

I'm really happy with this as I get to keep the Wilko air loom(!) and trigger memories of waking up to their radio alarm clock (normally Radio 4) on visits to them, and at the same time not compromise on the vision I have for the room. Also, because all the paint was already in the house and it didn't take much, I've saved money by not buying a new mirror - and as I think we've established, Grandpa would approve! ;)

I'll be sure to add a photo when it's up in situ.

Bedroom finished at last!

I started on our bedroom quite some time ago, but haven't blogged about it as I never quite felt it was ready for it. But I think I'm finally there. As you may know we moved into a new build about 1.5 years ago now and I've been desperately trying to inject some character into it. One of these projects was our room. I LOVE our bedroom - built in wardrobes and an over the stairs cupboard has set us up for success in keeping it as reasonably clutter free as we can for everyday living. It's also light and airy - and even though it's North facing it always seems to be bathed in (sun)light. 

So - my challenge was to see how to add character without losing the lightness and clarity of the room. Also - how could I integrate the black frames from our last (period) property without them looking out of place? (We spent a fair bit on the custom sized one signed by everyone at our wedding so I didn't want to mess with it, well, not yet anyway!).

I love our head and footboard on the bed and because they are white slatted I thought some kind of muted colour behind them would work well. But I didn't want to do the whole wall because it would become too dominant and be too flat. I didn't really want to introduce a pattern either. So I bought some wood edging stops from Homebase (I also used these downstairs in the lounge/living room), and cut them at 45 degree angles to form a three sided frame to go around our bedhead and nailed/glued in place. I then painted the frame and the interior of it in a lilac/grey colour.

For me this really:
1. Made the bedhead pop
2. Didn't dominate the room too much
3. Added character (And I hadn't seen this anywhere else - although I doubt I'm the first to think of it)
4. Gave me a frame to work in some other bits
5. Looked good despite the fact the bed is off centre on the wall


I then hung three cardboard lids of bird shaped boxes (I'll replace with ceramic white ones if I can ever find the perfect ones) I already had once I'd painted them up in an off white.

I added two frames I'd bought on sale in M&S and put black and white baby pictures of my step-daughter and daughter in them (not sure what I'll do for bump when he arrives, but I'll cross that bridge later).

Then time passed, life got busy - until I finished off a few other big projects. In that time we were faced with exploring little fingers of my 20 month old, who loves to pick up ANYTHING on the side tables, books, phones (not so bad), academic papers of my husband's, cuff links, pens, you name it. When she picked up the house phone and dialled 666, which could easily have been 999, I knew I needed to take action. (Eek!)

In our dumping ground, sorry, I mean study, I've had these wooden shelving boxes without a back, they were originally part of an IKEA set, but I thought I could just pop them on the wall and paint them all the same colour as the frame I'd done earlier. The effect would be similar to palette shelves. So that's what I did…  They are just perfect for the purpose, dead chuffed! I just used two small L shaped metal brackets (literally 1.5 cm wide and each side of the L was about 2cms) per box. They won't take a tonne of weight but certainly good enough for what I wanted. 

Finally, I bought a Jones clock in Waitrose I'd been resisting for at least 6 months, and rediscovered (in the process of sorting out the dumping ground/study) some flower lights, one set went in the lounge, the other around the grey/lilac frame on the wall. 

A spring clean later and hubby and I both feel like it's a hotel holiday room, finally a place we can chill out. And another room ticked off in my nesting list of things to sort before bubs comes! You may be able to see the three hearts on the right of the top image - one for each child. :) Speaking of which, check out my baby room update to follow soon...