Phew, what a busy week I've had! We're finally seeing some real progress in the house as we've been able to get some of the jobs done that make the house look prettier.

The most of the week was focused on the bathrooms so I thought I'd show you the story so far of the Master Bathroom.

When we purchased the property the Master Bathroom was quite a small room with a separate Toilet next door in one sense having the rooms separate seemed like a nice idea but the toilet room was absolutely freezing with no room to add heating it also did not have a sink so didn't seem like that hygienic of an option.  We came to the decision that we would knock the two rooms together to make a larger space but whilst planning layouts we hit some snags.  I really wanted a bath, my partner really wanted a stand alone shower but we couldn't fit both no matter how hard we tried.


The room next door was labelled a bedroom but we didn't really need it as one and a spacious bathroom is one of those home luxuries we dream of, so we decided to extend into that room too.  We've weighed up the pro's and con's and I'll admit taking away a bedroom was something we questioned a lot as to if it was the right decision, but at the end of it all this is our life house and the bathroom will be a greater benefit to us than a bedroom, we're both firm believers in do what makes you happy not do what people expect.


The new room needed the outside wall re plastering to bring it all to the same level and a new ceiling to even out the height difference, we also built a little wall for the sinks.

Once the plaster had dried which took forever, our lighting was put in (I'll do another post all about recessed lighting another day since that's a huge post in it's self) and we could finally get the tiler in which is when things really started to change.

Happy New Year! Can you believe it's 2013 already?
The holiday season passed with a little bit of an anti-climax for us as we had hoped to be in our new home for Christmas. I had visions a me in a beautiful flaring dress carrying a big golden turkey to our fantastic dining room all dressed in Christmas finery but as you can see from the picture's posted so far that plan went very wrong. 

It wasn't the only thing that went against the plan, since the heating has now been off for a long time the fan decided it didn't feel like working anymore, without heating the plasterering that has been done was taking longer to dry, carpets that have been laid aren't relaxing (they'll need to be stretched when relaxed) and it's really not fun to work in temperatures below 7c.  To add insult to injury the beautiful silver wallpaper we loved for our guest room just did not want to stick to the wall, there were bubbles (although bubbles is an understatement) and edges curled, if you could tame the edges then there was a very visable white joins on each and every piece so it had to come off and now we are painting instead.

sneaky peak at the bathroom.

So today when life after New Year's returns to normal we waited for the sun to come up (thank you insomnia) so that we could go once more unto the breach armed with paint rollers and watered down elmusion to first coat the bathroom ceiling and today finally I feel like I achieved something.

No this isn't the latest trend in maniicure's

Oh yeah and a little tip for the future....paint the ceiling before the lights go in because those things are almost impossible to get out and by the end of the day I feel like I've undergone a mild form of bamboo fingernail torture.

I just wanted to do a quick post to show you what we've been doing in the Dining room, the room had quite a large ceiling rose as well as a Picture rail and Chair rail but we decided to dress it up just a little bit more.

Original Room

I think most people have some feature they'd really like in their homes, my other half has always wanted a decorated ceiling so taking everything back to bare bones and doing such a big renovation gave us the oppotunity to that. 


And here's the finished design.....

We also decided to add some panels (wainscotting) under the chair rail and even though the room is no where near finished we're already thrilled by it.

Is there a dream feature you'd love for your house? Are you lucky enough to already have it?  Let me know in the comments.

The saga of the Navy Blue paint seems to have more episodes and drama than the Twilight Saga so despite finally choosing a colour the universe conspired to throw a spanner in the works and Fountains Blue was not to be.

I had to order the Fired Earth Fountains Blue paint since the store did not stock this colour and when I went to collect it something did not sound right, the paint seemed very watery I could hear it sloshing all the way to the car.  On to the room to be painted, lift off the lid and we were greeted with this

Dry sample to the right, wet sample on the bottom, mystery paint on top

Even though the dark sample above is wet the colour which is practically black did not change when it was dry it also developed a really oily residue, not a good look on a matt paint, clearly something had gone wrong and to top off it off we were now on a bit of a time crunch as we needed to get two coats on the walls before the carpet arrived, re-ordering was not option.
Farrow & Ball to the rescue!  Armed with sample pots of Drawing Room Blue and Hague Blue it was back to the nest to re-chose my problem blue. In the end there was a winner in Hague Blue, we did encounter a few more hiccups on the way but we made the deadline and today the carpet went down on time. Farrow & Ball were a tremendous help and I'm incredibly happy with the end result just going to show you things really do happen for a reason.

Farrow & Ball Hague Blue (sorry for the dust)

Walls - Check, Carpet - Check, Wardrobes - Next

I thought today I'd show the inspiration and progress in another of the rooms but first I should explain the origins of it's name The Gray Room.  When I was looking of inspiration on decorating and dressing rooms I, like many people, turned to Pinterest and while browsing I stumbled upon a the most peaceful, comfortable and sophisticated looking room in a beautiful gray palette, it was love at first sight.  Then because I was almost constantly discussing rooms and showing my other half pics to help keep them straight conversations almost always started with "you know that gray room"  we decided that the spare guest room should have a neutral hotel feel to it and that gray room was just perfect so the spare room in our home became known as The Gray room.  Now whenever you lose someone or something it's so much easier

 "Have you seen the paint brush?" "Yes it's in the Gray room"

 So that's the story and the inspiration now for the progress

Original room from property listing

After it's stripped bare, dark and dingy

First step was to fill some holes left by removing the sink and addressing some cracks to the ceiling before covering it and the walls with heavy lining paper.

Next step was the white coat for the ceiling, coving, picture rail and woodwork and the followed up with the first part of the gray makeover.

We've choosen a wallpaper for the main body of the walls but the picture rail section is painted, it did take a little while and quite a few samples to find a perfect gray as a lot looked too blue in the room but in the end Farrow & Ball's Pavillion Gray was perfect so with two coats on the wall that's where we are today.

Carpet fitters arrive on Thursday and after that we can wallpaper the wall and the room is almost ready to be dressed so I'll be sure to so you more progress when it happens.

So it turns out I'm the Goldilocks of paint, the previous sample pots I mentioned (here) weren't quite right, Sapphire Springs was very close and a really lovely blue but not quite as dark as I wanted it. However the good news is that I have actually found a paint, I know amazing right.

So the paint in question? Fired Earth's Fountains Blue

It took an extra 3 samples to get here

Described as:

A strong blue but at the same time, quiet and tranquil, like the ruins of Fountains Abbey in the twilight.

Fountains Blue definitely has a purple base colour, in fact it looked so purple when I first painted the sample I dismissed it. However once it dried it darkened down and more of the bluey tones came out.  It's not the same as Midnight, it's definitely more purple but it does have that dark night sky look I was looking for. 

I mentioned in the last post about the Kitchen that we'd started the plastering, that was finished earlier this week and is drying out quite nicely, in fact most areas are now dry the dampest area seems to be the curve but that has had two layers. 
Visitors seem determined to give me a heart attack in there as every person I've spoke to so far has reached out a hand and made a move to lean on the freshly plastered slightly damp walls (que my movie style slow motion "NOOOOOOOOOOO")

Don't touch the walls!

The second leap in progress in there is that we now have power and lights!  Switching on the lights in a room you've had no power in for months is a great moment and really helps bring the room to life even though there's no furniture in there.  Power cables have also been run through to the island area so the next step is to get the screed done to level out the floor ready for dressing up.

Power cables for the Island