The Far Land of Spare Oom

Before

A little over a year and a half ago, when we moved into this house, the box room at the back was exactly that - filled with the boxes and furniture that we didn't immediately need (and given how much work was required to make the house habitable there was an awful lot of stuff we didn't immediately need.) The rewiring had left the walls in a pretty horrible state - the old plaster held together with the backing-layer of the (mostly stripped off) hideous vinyl wallpaper, and badly-applied daubs of new plaster over the new cable conduits.

Even with regular doses of design blogs & interiors magazines I struggled for inspiration - until one weekend in September the whole room came to me in a flash, from colour scheme & furniture to window treatments & accessories!

A quick sketch after my flash of inspiration

The plan - to create a grown-up boudoir, using, as far as possible, furniture and accessories we already owned. The inspiration - a room I'd read about months earlier, probably in LivingEtc. I can't remember if it was a dining room, a bedroom, or even a hall - just that it was painted aubergine-purple & the whole ceiling was covered with gold leaf, and it was utterly beautiful. I didn't feel that our little room (and little budget) could handle quite that level of bold, deep colour, so I settled on one wall of aubergine set off by plenty of cream, our walnut furniture and splashes of gold.

Choosing the perfect purple

Having had that blinding flash of inspiration, life yet again got in the way of progress, and it wasn't until a friend asked, in mid-November, if he & his girlfriend could visit in December that we finally began shifting boxes & making preparations.

Yes, we have hardwood-framed double-glazing, but by God the frames are a particularly nasty shade of fake mahogany!

Tatty as the floorboards were, staining them such a dark colour was nerve-wracking. I needn't have worried though, as soon as I started I knew it would work - in fact, I did the whole floor with a big silly grin on my face, feeling certain that the result would be even better than I had imagined!

I think I was right - the dark floor pulls the rest of the room together so well - not to mention making an asset out of the battered, stained boards, which now look aged rather than scruffy.


Furniture-wise, the only thing we were lacking was a bed. Now, this isn't a large room - about 12ft x 9ft, at a guess, so a double was out of the question, yet most of the people likely to stay with us are couples, so a double was essential! Ikea to the rescue with the really rather nice Hemnes daybed - a couch or single bed by day, it rolls out quickly & simply into a double by night.

Our trusty old desk & glass-fronted bookcase combine to make a nicely functional dressing table & display unit

A sheepskin rug, a standard lamp & a curtain warm up the space

Several items remain on the to-do list for the room, but they could all be classed as "dressing" - there's a stack of pictures to be framed & hung, the lamp needs a new shade, the window treatment needs more work and we need to buy a new mattress topper & a set of sheets as, being Ikea, the bed is a non-standard size(grr!) Luckily, dressing a room is my favourite part of the process!

• walls, ceiling, woodwork, radiator: Homebase matt emulsion & satinwood in Classic Cream
• feature wall: Dulux matt emulsion in Mulberry Burst
• floor: Ronseal Quick-drying Woodstain in Dark Oak
• curtain: Ikea Bomull unbleached cotton
  

And the mess goes on...

That big jagged line is where the plaster has come away from the wall

A month ago today I wrote my last post, in the midst of panic attacks and not-yet-packed boxes. Today, with my broadband up & running (thanks Sky - for all Mr Murdoch's faults, your customer service is marvellous!) I'm sitting in the midst of plaster dust and not-yet-unpacked boxes!

There has been progress - the bathroom has been decorated, in very pleasing shades of mocha & duck egg

the outside loo has been converted into a utility room (though the loo is still sitting in the yard and the top of the washing machine is stacked with boxes); the exterior doors have been painted Oxford blue; one of the outhouses has been transformed from dumping ground to bike shed;
the pantry has its extra shelves and is well-stocked

and dinky spice shelves, too

the bedroom is a beautiful & usable space

if still curtain-less and rather cluttered, and check out the wardrobe!

On the down side, this is the current state of the kitchen, complete with this week's to-do list on the fridge (I do love my dry-wipe markers!)

and as for the spare room...

A week is a long time in new home-ownership!

View Larger Map

The story so far - since getting the keys last Thursday, we have:

• removed the vile stair carpet and sanded, primed & undercoated the stair treads & landing. I've sprinkled fine sand into the undercoat to reduce the risk of slipping (especially outside the bathroom door, which is opposite the top of the stairs!)
• Still to do: paint stair treads & landing black, wallpaper stair risers, paint woodwork & walls.

• Stripped the kitchen of wall-units, tiles and wallpaper.
  
• Bought two rather handsome lights to replace the horrid strip-light (which is tucked in behind a beam so half of the kitchen is bright & half dingy)
• Still to do: Too much to even think about! To begin with, though, a coat of white paint (although eventually it'll be yellow to match the pantry, there are currently at least three different colours on the walls which need covering up) and some shelving to design & place brackets for before the re-wiring begins, so the electricians can fit the countertop lighting and extractor hood.
  

• Painted the pantry walls (Homebase "Lemon Juice.") It took four coats, but at last the Germolene pink does not show through! Primed & undercoated the window frame and given the existing shelves a first coat of white gloss.
• Still to do: Add more shelves, including space for my bargain marble slab (picked up in a charity shop this morning for £1.50!), add wine rack, give shelves & other woodwork a coat of shiny white gloss, add corkboard to inside of door for combined insulation & recipe display.

• Stripped the top layer off most of the living room wallpaper. I curse the name of the person who invented anaglypta. Vile, vile stuff. The steam from the stripper doesn't penetrate the top layer, so that has to be scraped off (for which task I'm loving my blade-on-a-stick), leaving the backing paper to be steamed off later.
  
• The gas fire has been disconnected (it was broken, and therefore dangerous) and the surround offered up on Freecycle - though why anyone would actually want a plastic, sorry, teak-effect gas fire surround is rather beyond me. My opinion has been borne out by the complete lack of replies.
• Still to do: finish stripping this bloody wallpaper, then, well, everything, really.

I'm waiting for the quotes to come in from the two electricians, and meanwhile I'm writing epic shopping lists for Ikea (with my mum on Thursday) and the rather wonderful DIY store/ timber merchant, handily en route from old place to new (Friday, when he has his next delivery of carpet edging doo-dahs.) The tininess of the storefront belies the absolutely vast range - he seems to have pretty much every bit of timber we could possibly require, and the tools & accessories to turn it into useful bits of furniture!

We have a house!

Or rather, the bank does, and we're paying them for it for the next two and a half decades...

We also have a lot of work to do.

1. The kitchen. Nothing on this end wall is level (no, it's not just the photo.) I went to our local DIY mecca as soon as I'd picked up the keys, where a couple of very helpful gents sold me a heavy-duty scraper and a pair of safety goggles so I can make a start on the destruction of the tiles this afternoon.


2. The pantry: On the (absolutely massive) plus side, I have a pantry. On the minus side, it's extremely pink. It also needs more shelves, at least one of which needs to be stone (OK, would be nice if it could be...)


3. The hall/ stairway: two bannisters on such a steep stair might be a good idea - the fact that they are at different heights is just irritating. As for that carpet...

The yellow can stay, it makes for a lovely warm welcome to the house, and, inspired by Anna at Door Sixteen, I intend to wallpaper the stair risers - in fact, I've already bought a roll of this Sanderson wallpaper.


4. The master bedroom urgently needs de-wallpapering, before the pattern gives me a migraine! I've got paint for one wall already, and fabric for blinds, now I need to decide on colours for the rest - my starting point's lavender, if anyone's got any suggestions!



5. The living room is probably the least in need of work, except for the small matter of electrical outlets. It has three. All on different walls. And our TV set-up alone needs about five. One of my jobs for this afternoon is to arrange quotes from electricians - we're working on the basis that wiring is a messy job, and is much better done before we start decorating & moving furniture in so we'll probably get the whole place rewired now, bugger the cost.

Part of me wants to build shelving across a whole wall, but that may have to wait until funds allow.

Eventually, this gas fire will be going, too. In fact, maybe sooner rather than later - I'm happy to be without a fireplace for a while. And the gas-man will be coming anyway to check the boiler & install our cooker...


6. The second bedroom & the bathroom are low priorities - they're liveable for now. They'll get some form of window treatments for privacy, and a lick of paint, and we'll work out the rest later.

7. The garden: My good intention is to leave it a year to see what comes up before I start digging it all up & moulding it to my will. I fully accept though that this is unlikely to happen, I'm far too impatient.

Have you been charity-shopping...?

Blue pressed-glass dressing table set, £5 from Thorne House shop

Why, yes dear, I have.

All I need now is a powder-puff!