Tuesday 26 August 2014

DIY SOS!

by Roz

Okay it's official the Forever House has become exceptionally stressful!  To be honest it's been challenging from the start juggling the renovations ourselves with two full time jobs, throughout my pregnancy (painting 14 feet high ceilings when you're 38 weeks is not much fun!), and with the arrival of baby star and selling our flat, things have become pretty strained.  I'm torn between spending every single second with A and spending some time doing work in the house to help us one step closer to moving in.  That's one of the reasons I've been pretty quiet on the blog - not having internet for over 2 weeks didn't help either!

Bump and I and our very tall ladder!

So we sold our flat, we got a fantastic offer for it so decided to accept it and are now renting a one bed flat next to our forever house.  Literally next door!  Our fabulous new neighbours saved the day and let us rent their basement flat. Moving from a three bed to a one bed is certainly interesting, the flat is stuffed full of boxes of our stuff, add to that all the baby stuff and it's permanently a mess.  The TV doesn't work either... but enough complaints, it's lovely living in the area with the park on our doorstep and so handy for getting stuff done at the house.  We hope to move in at the start of October, so in 6 weeks time, the countdown is officially on!

We are still doing a lot of the work ourselves - as I type this, B is removing the last of the old bathrooms in the house and when he gets back, he'll look after A while I go and paint.  Decorating wise we have a lot of decisions to make... there have been more than a few heated discussions regarding paint colours, tiles for the bathroom and en suite, wallpaper and the number of TVs to have in the house, hence the title of this post.  B would happily paint the whole house magnolia and he says I would happily paint every room a shade of grey!  We are slowly getting there though, the nursery is nearly complete, I can't wait to share a post on A's room but for now here's a sneak peek:

Yes, baby star's room is grey

The two living rooms have been painted cream so that we can add colour with sofas, curtains etc. and live with the rooms for a while before deciding if we want to add some colour on the walls or leave them as is.  After a great number of sample pots and large swatches of colour painted all over our bedroom we have finally found a colour we agree on!  It's a lovely warm golden cream colour to go with this fabulous All Star wallpaper from Rockett St George.


I've also done a lot of work in my library, the walls are painted a lovely deep blue and I've nearly finished painting the bookcases, fireplace and shutters.  I honestly cannot wait to get my books on those shelves.  The last decision to be made in this room is the colour of the carpet.  I'm tempted to go with a black carpet, the floor area is quite small and the white fireplace, shutters and door add a lot of white to the room.  The only pieces of furniture with be a big comfy chair (no idea what yet) and a table, to sit my glass of wine or cup of tea on :)  Do you think a black carpet would go??


The library shelves

The main thing that's holding up our progress at the house is the plumbing, from the central heating system to the bathrooms there is a lot to do.  We have made great progress with the new boiler system and hope to order it very soon and our en suite is nearly ready to tile... all B and I have to do is agree on the tiles!  Tiling is part of the plan for tomorrow.

We do have our beautiful kitchen fitted, thanks for all your comments on my kitchen planning post, although I can't share the finished look yet.  The worktops cannot be fitted until the floor goes in (and the island will have quartz running down both sides and on to the floor), but the floors cannot go in until the boiler is installed and the heating system is tested.  I did post a picture on Instagram the day it was installed though.

Our kitchen

It's a beautiful bright room and I love the pale green paint.  There is a space at the window to fit a small table for everyday meals and I recently bought A a second hand tripp trapp which is white with a green baby set and cushions.  I can't wait till we sit down in the kitchen as a family of three to eat our first meal here :)

I promise to get back to writing some posts more regularly, A's birth story is nearly finished and I can't wait to share it.

Roz xx

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Your house is amazing, I feel your pain regarding the boiler, my parents bought a large farmhouse, and had re-plumb the full house and find a boiler that could heat the full house, its no joke!!
Loved your post on the new house, your kitchen is gorgeous!

Laura said...

I can't tell you how excited I am to see photographs of your finished forever home! I can't imagine how stressful the journey must be to get there, though - we're redecorating a small second bedroom and I'm close enough to tears. What a beautiful home you're going to have at the end of it!

Amanda M said...

I cannot tell you how much I love that starry wallpaper!

Ax

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