Decorating

By February we finally had received a visit from the gas man so had the luxury of installing radiators for central heating upstairs...relief! We decided to go with 2 column radiators from b&q as they are a bit prettier. We are going to be installing under floor heating downstairs but can't do this until the extension is built.

We decided to redecorate the current master bedroom and extension bedroom as these won't be affected by plans. Our small box bedroom will become our family bathroom. I share our plans in my next post which illustrates this more clearly.

Whilst we still have a brown bathroom and will do for a while yet, we have amazing pressure due to the mains water pipe being redone and the 300l tank so having a shower is in the words of Larry David, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good.

We had to take multiple rawl plugs out of the walls of each of the bedrooms being decorated, this video made it a much easier job: http://youtu.be/MiAsGGe1TOY. We then needed to sand each wall and fill any holes with filler. One of the walls and ceiling was plastered by our neighbour who really luckily is a plasterer! We then sanded a couple of times more and once we had a really smooth base white washed the walls and ceilings approx 3 times before adding about 3 coats of white paint. We then chalk lined the ceilings to mark where we needed to cut out the holes for the spotlights. The job wasn't easy as the room is not symmetrical! Having installed the spotlights we went with daylight bulbs, which as the name suggests replicates daylight vs the more warm LED spotlight. Anywhere that got decorated was going to be painted white until the extension is done for ease. We needed to do the same process for the master bedroom. Neither of these rooms are anywhere near finished as you will see from the pics (missing skirting, fitted wardrobes, carpet etc). Both rooms have been rewired and fitted with chrome sockets and chrome dimmer switches.

We have also made the lamps and Roman blinds in each room. The clear set of blinds were made from some clip top Kilner jars a couple from homebase at £6 a go, the lamp holders and the coloured cord are from eBay. The clear lamps cost about £20 to make minus the shades which are pure linen from Neptune, one of my favourite shops http://www.neptune.com. 

The lamps in the master bedroom are made from converted vases from habitat and using a bung to insert into the vase opening to hold the lamp holder, against both bought on eBay and the shades are pure silk from M&S.

In total we paid less than a third of the cost that John Lewis quoted for both blinds and used the left over fabric to reupholster our stool. If you would like to know any of the eBay suppliers I can dig them out.

Extension bedroom

Before

After

Master Bedroom

Before