Downstairs Loo - Before & After

It's been months since this room was finished and I took photos back in January but have only just gotten around to blogging it since I wrote about the plans and before photos here.  I adore the new wallpaper and I'm so glad we decided to splash out on the F&B Lotus pattern.  In the end though, we couldn't justify the cost of doing all the walls in such a small room so opted for just the back wall in paper and actually I'm so glad we did, it looks fab with the other walls in the dark grey background colour, Plummet.  The amazing Matt and his mum from MRJ Services did a fantastic job hanging the wallpaper and painting the room.

Going for gold - top tips for DIY spray painting!

The guest room is coming along nicely now, I've managed to get rid of all the furniture we no longer wanted, all donated to a local furniture charity shop.  It's a brilliant way to get rid of furniture you no longer want, saved us more wasted time trying to sell it ourselves and benefits the local hospice, plus they collect it free of charge, check out the Hospice in the Weald website.

Priya waving goodbye to the truck carrying away our old furniture.

As for the fun stuff, you may have noticed on Instagram that I've been going mad with the spray paint over Christmas.  I decided some gold touches with the Hague Blue walls in the room would look nice and started with this gorgeous hexagon mirror from Oliver Bonas.  I had hoped to get both the small and large sizes to hang together but they sold out of the larger one and although I found plenty of other ones, none were much larger in size to go with the small one.  In the end I opted for a circular one to hang with it and actually think it'll look nice having the two different shapes.  While on the Oliver Bonas website, I also found this gold edged tray which is perfect in the room.

Our Christmas Tree & other decorations 2017

Every year I've planned to post about our decorations and I don't think I've managed it once since having the twins!  I struggle to keep up with everything at this time of year and end up thinking I'll take the photos and write it ready for next year!  Happened once in 2015.  So I'm surprised at myself for getting this year's decorations photographed and on the blog before Christmas!

Cable & Cotton lights - Brighton store experience

If you love colour like I do, you must visit the Cable & Cotton shop in Brighton!  I already have a set of their lights in green and grey (our wedding colours) from 2011 but now they do LED ones and after seeing their window display for Brighton Pride, I knew we needed a new set for the twins' room in rainbow colours.  When Ma asked what she could get the twins for Christmas this year, I knew just the thing!  

Downstairs Loo Redesign

This post contains affiliate links.

It's a while since we updated anything in our house but there are quite a few things I'd like to do to it.  As our house was pretty much liveable when we moved in, we concentrated on one major thing (ripping down a wall), one fairly major thing (designing and preparing the twins' nursery), a quick redecoration and then all the minor stuff like organising our things, an obligatory Ikea trip, framing photos...

The thing is, although it was liveable and we did redecorate the main rooms (and even those are still a work in progress with quite a few temporary features like a bookcase I hate), we didn't really sort out any of the other rooms.

I'm starting small and doing the downstairs loo first.  Mainly because Nik and I had a look around Farrow & Ball in Tunbridge Wells recently and fell in love with a wall paper design.  Rather than looking for a wall paper for a room, we found a wall paper and had to think of where we might be able to put it!  We both agreed it would look fab in our WC along one side (as we think it would be too much on all the walls in such a small space) and would really spruce up a very plain room which is used a lot by both us and visitors.  It's also Kalyan's favourite place to wash his hands.

Feedback Survey

You may have noticed I've been back to blogging more regularly lately and I'm working on improving the blog.  I've been wondering about lots of things and have a few ideas for features and further ways to improve the blog overall.  It would be massively helpful if you could please fill in this short survey I've made, I'm hoping it will give me a bit of insight into what people like about Olive Dragonfly and how you came to be readers.

I love this blog, being able to write about everything I love, share my photos and connect with people.  I hope it inspires you, be it through using my recipes, visiting somewhere I've recommended or just enjoying my photos.  Blogging has led to me making friends, trying new experiences and some wonderful opportunities along the way and I've made a few tweaks here and there as I learn more.  I'm hoping to keep tweaking and working on it to make it even better, hopefully with your help!

Image Source - Amy Tangerine's gorgeous watercolour quote, via Pinterest

So tell me, what do/don't you like, what would you like to see more/less of...?  There are just 10 simple questions, mostly multiple choice and you can remain anonymous so please be honest.  I'd love to know what you think.

Click here to take the survey.

THANK YOU!

It's come a long way already...

Sneak Peek of Into Mills - Home Wares

Yesterday I had the pleasure of taking photos and helping to style products for a new website launching soon.  Sally Ashen runs a home wares business, INto Mills, from her home in Lewes and after we met at Joy Festival in June, she asked me to take some photos of her beautiful products.

Sally has such great taste and this is one kind of photography I wanted to gain more experience in so I gladly accepted.  As well as the benefits of gaining experience and building a more commercial style portfolio, Sally also agreed to a collaboration on the blog too so we will be running a little giveaway promotion when she is ready to launch her new website so watch this space!

The Pink House - Lego loft! by Amy

I'm so excited we have another post from Amy today!  This attic makeover is simply awesome despite having minimal work done to it.  What an amazing space to play in!

In the absence of any real progress on any of the other rooms lately, I'm going to share one of our favourite rooms in the Pink House with you. It's our Lego room! When we saw the loft we knew it was the perfect place for our Lego play den and we are so incredibly happy with it and love being up there - which is a good thing as it's going to become our main living space for a while soon whilst the downstairs is being redone!

I only have a couple of 'before' pics of when it was storage - it's not very exciting but as you can see was already painted and carpeted.

We didn't have to do much in terms of decorating - just added some IKEA wall lights, and some B&Q blinds - we don't ever close these at the moment but they'll be needed when we have a full house of guests and it's being used as an extra bedroom.

The sofabed, armchair, TV cabinet and shelving is all IKEA, as are all the soft furnishings except for the blue campervan cushion which was from John Lewis. The black lamp is from B&Q and the lightbox and brick lights were gifts. The green frames are also from IKEA (I've put this in just for Bex's info 😉)

We've also added this snazzy multicoloured LED strip lighting behind the beam at the end so we can light the room up in any colour.

As you can see, I didn't bother tidying up the ongoing builds scattered around the floor by my window bench, because a Lego room is not somewhere where your Lego should be carefully tidied away, it's a space for playing!

Everyone says this is the room they can't wait to visit, and we are excited about having our first friends over to stay soon. Side note - if anyone fancies a holiday in Essex you know where we are!

Upcycled Boutique - A review by Bex

I've started writing a bedroom makeover post but in the meantime (until I can take some better photos), I wanted to write a review of Upcycled Boutique who helped us find some awesome new furniture and give a new lease of life to my old dressing table.   Upcycled Boutique will paint old chests (or any other furniture) to match your decor and add whatever knobs you wish.  I was very impressed with the service, value for money and quality provided.

I found them on Facebook when I spotted a chest of drawers I thought would look lovely when painted.  Unfortunately the one I had my eye on turned out to be too big and another I liked was sold to someone else in the meantime but Emma said she'd find something for me and before long, she sent me pictures of an old cherry wood chest of drawers complete with gorgeous brass handles.

We discussed the colour and finish I'd like and I have her a swatch which she then mixed up a chalk paint to match before sending me a small wooden swatch to check.  The finished result shows off the gold colour of the brass handles against the mid-dark grey which matches our bed and is so much nicer than the old Malm we had, I love it!  It cost us just £140 for a custom hand painted, solid wood chest of drawers.  You also have 14 days after delivery to change your mind if you're not happy with it which is a great reassurance when you don't really know how it will look once painted.

Now I just need to get those orangey doors painted to match the wall!

Of course I then changed things around a bit and added my new golden elephant I bought at a flea market in Seremban, Malaysia.  We still love Nik's cufflink box which we bought in Sorrento, Italy and I switched the painting from Sri Lanka for my peacock drawing from Etsy.

I was so pleased with the new drawers, I contacted Upcycled Boutique for a quote to paint my dressing table.  My dressing table cost me around £500 8 years ago and I still love it.  It's made of solid Oak with a vintage look and without being too chunky.  It just didn't quite fit in with our new, modern house like it did in our Victorian tenement flat.  It looked too dark with the brighter furniture and double aspect windows.  I wanted to freshen it up a bit and get it to fit in with our new, more modern decor a bit more.  I chose a colour to tone in with the new wall colour I have planned, as well as re-upholstering the stool in the same fabric as our ottoman and we were quoted £120 plus the fabric cost.  I'd already bought new knobs for the drawers although could only find 4 in the design I liked (with gold dragonflies on) so I decided to remove the one from the false drawer in the middle and have the hole filled in and painted over.

Obviously the same returns guarantee can't be applied when having your own furniture painted as you own the piece so choose your colour wisely.  Unfortunately, and through no fault of Upcycled Boutique, the colour I chose did not turn out as I expected and I wasn't sure of the policy in such an instance.  I had waited for a swatch to confirm the colour again as with the grey, since they were going to mix up the chalk paint to match my chosen colour (a paint swatch from Little Green which was a lighter shade of the wall colour I planned, I didn't want everything to be grey but I didn't want a bright colour so I went for this muted blue-grey-green), instead they found a place which could colour match to make up a chalk paint in any colour so they went ahead with that.  When my dressing table came back I was initially surprised by how very green it looked, despite being a perfect match to the 1" swatch, it was not the muted, fresh shade I had imagined.  It was much more intense colour than expected but I thought I should check it in daylight and artificial light to decide if I liked it or not.  I did not.  It's amazing how different a colour can look when not in a book of tiny swatches with differing shades surrounding it!

On closer inspection I'd noticed a few areas around the drawers which were showing the old wood at the edges and on the top of the stool under the new upholstery as it no longer had a trim.  I contacted them about the issues with the wood showing and Emma sent the perfect response apologising for the areas and the other issues we'd had involving some delay in getting it back to us.  She offered to repaint it all to their usual standard and when I mentioned that I was actually quite unsure about the colour and was happy to pay something towards re-doing it if it could be in a different colour, she offered to re-do it in the new colour if I bought the paint.  I was more than happy with this as a fair option and this time I double checked my choice myself by buying a tester and painting a large sheet of lining paper to see it in the room.

The new colour is Salix by Little Greene.  I absolutely love it, it's how I originally imagined it although is more blue than I thought it would be depending on the light but is still more green than a duck egg blue.  It goes much better with my dragonfly knobs too.  (I took the old middle one off as I could only find 4, in the sale from Zara Home in Saudi, and the middle is a false drawer anyway as the top lifts up.)  I had been very nervous as I was worried in case it didn't turn out as I imagined and I might regret ruining such an expensive item.  Luckily (despite the little mishap in the middle where I worried I'd done just that), I now love it even more than before and it looks so much fresher and better in the room!

Of course I then had to tidy up the top and windowsill to match too.  I bought a white glass tray from TK Maxx to make my perfumes look a bit tidier (they used to be lined up along the middle at the back - I had already moved them when I took the before photo).  I put some new white frames from Homebase on the windowsill and moved my big vase to the spare room.  The silver plated animals are from a set of four which I bought in one of Lewes' wonderful antique shops.  The little oil lamp is from our trip to South Korea back in 2013 and was the item I was using to match the new colours to.  I'm so pleased with the final match, it even goes with my favourite perfume!

My antique silver plated animals could do with a polish!

I would definitely recommend Upcycled Boutique for furniture painting jobs and beautiful up-cycled pieces at great prices.  Although we experienced a couple of delays, this is just an unfortunate result of being a small family run business, things come up and I was happy to wait.  Emma was great at communicating and answered my many questions quickly and gave us lots of advice.  I'm sure I was an awful client what with being so fussy and changing my mind about the colour but she was always friendly and helpful.  I love my new furniture!

The Pink House - guest room before and after by Amy

I absolutely LOVE our first before & after peek inside Amy's amazing new house!  It's inspired me to want to sort out our mish-mash of a spare room soon.  I love what they've done with this space, so calm and stylish.  Over to Amy...

The room we decided to make our guest room had previously been the master bedroom.  It's got a lovely river view and great inbuilt storage but is on the corner with the road so we decided it was better for occasional rather than regular use.

The final result

You can't really tell from the before photos but the whole room, including the ceiling, was covered in woodchip, which was a real effort to remove!  And after we had removed it we were pretty scared the ceiling was going to fall in as it was covered in large cracks.  All of the plasterwork is lathe and plaster so it would have been a massive and very messy job to redo the ceiling so instead we elected to fill the cracks and paper it. One piece of advice for you all - papering ceilings is bloody hard work and WILL lead to arguments. 

BEFORE:

The ceiling:

We decided to go nautical in this room but we wanted it to maintain a high end look and not feel tacky or themey.  There were a few bits from our old flat we'd originally intended to go in here but have decided they don't quite fit.  James found this AMAZING Cole & Son wallpaper and that really set the tone for the rest of the room.  It's an original wallpaper pattern from the 1900's and is based on Hokusai's Great Wave which I'd studied at uni so it was perfect in lots of ways.  We decided to tie that through with other nods and added the Hokusai print and book.  We also decided to have a bit of fun with our ceiling ordeal and frame this vintage Puffin postcard.

AFTER:

We've still got a few bits still to do - I'm looking for a mirror for above the fireplace (I'd seen a lovely white wooden round one in The Range but it was too small) and once we've found one we will hang the frames currently on the mantle on the opposite wall. My uncle has also given us a lovely curvy old wooden chair that will go in the corner by the door and I'm trying to find a nice fabric to reupholster the seat pads that will go well with the wallpaper in a complementary clashing sort of way.  Overall though we are so pleased with this room and it has turned out exactly how we wanted it to, which makes all the blood sweat and tears worth it!

Where we shopped:

• The chest was left for us by the previous owners and we think was home made. 
• The fireplace and floorboards were both original features that we uncovered. 
• The blue wall is painted in B&Q Valspar Sea Swirl, the white is just Crown trade matt brilliant white, and the gloss is Wilkos own brand one coat brilliant white (which is ace!)
• The bedside tables were from ebay and also we added brass knobs from The Range to those and the cupboard doors which were just painted white.
• The bedside lamps and the glass ombre lightshade were both from Dunelm. 
• The white frames are from Poundland and the wooden ones were BHS.
• The bedspread was from Homescapes and the cushions are John Lewis and Primark.
• The bed is our old one from John Lewis bought in the sale a few years ago but with an ebay headboard.
• The wallpaper is Great Wave from Cole & Son.