No Mo' Au-bergine!

Well, Mum & Dad, it's the update you've been waiting for (almost)... the spare room is clear and decorated!  Although we don't want the bed yet, still got all those doors to plane/strip/paint/rehang, and our new free space is just the place to do all this!  Next week, I promise!

Anyway, I'm sure you remember the state of our spare room:

And how we tidied it and blogged about tidying it more than once...

Well, now we've not only tidied it, but we've cleared out all the rubbish and painted it and hung actual curtains in the windows that have been curtainless for almost 6 years.  We threw a ton of crap out and are still sorting through some stuff (why is it so hard to get rid of stuff even though you haven't even thought about it for years?) but hopefully with a big push this week and next we should be all sorted.

And now, the moment you've been waiting for...

Tadaaaa!

I told you the wardrobe would eventually be painted too!

We were decorating using the curtains as inspiration, so after looking through a lot of taupey-grey paints we settled on Skimming Stone from Farrow & Ball, and we love it.  No more shiny aubergine wall.  No more badly painted shiny yellowing walls.  I also found a new passion for filling when patching all the dents in the walls.  So relaxing and rewarding and thinking about it now I had probably breathed in too much dust and it addled my brain but still, patching walls is fun!  I may or may not have run around the house shouting for Kevin to point out more places that needed to be filled, and he may or may not have told me that I'm crazy, but pointed out places anyway.

The skirting boards got a new coat of Crown Milk White silk paint after we pried off the floor edging and scraped all the old paint off it.  Apparently the people we bought the flat from were very slapdash in their decorating.  Although, we sort of can't blame them, because we found more evidence of the previous colour scheme in that room.  The walls were bright pinky-red, the carpet (some is still in the wardrobe) was dark pink, and the skirting boards were... bright blue-green.  Lovely.

Once the skirting was painted I glued the edging back on, which was trickier than you might think.  We have a nice cartridge of Serious Stuff glue, which had managed to glue itself shut at the bottom end so that it's impossible to squeeze anymore.  But I didn't let that stop me, oh no!  I got the longest skinniest screwdriver we own and used that to jam in the nozzle of the tube and use as a spatula once it was nice and covered in glue.  Which was a bit time consuming, but hey, it worked, and the edging is still stuck down.  I also gave the radiator a couple of coats of Hammerite, and now it's not yellowed anymore!  I did spend about 5 minutes just staring at it once it was done, but I blame at least three of those minutes on the fumes.  I blame a lot on fumes, you may have noticed.

Anyway, remember that lovely picture above of all that lovely floor and space and openness and joy?  Well, about two hours after that was taken, this happened:

You didn't think I was gonna waste the opportunity to make a mess, did you?  Hah!  In all seriousness though, it's awesome to have that space to work in instead of painting things in the living room and worrying about the carpet and breathing in the fumes all day.  So, here's what happened in the hour or so after that pic: 

 

 

The plan is to get the drawers done, then use them as the base for a desk to go next to the wardrobe (which we'll hopefully get done next week).  But more on that in another post, I'm off for my dinner followed by another round of painting and varnishing and trying to avoid flicking varnish all over the walls.  Wish me luck!

Happy 2013!

To celebrate, we've decided to return to blogging!  Also, we actually got off our arses and have stuff to blog about!  Only one of those statements is true!  And now I have to stop putting exclamation marks at the end of my sentences!  Or not!  Haha!  Okay, enough now really.

So, I have a multitude of things to update you about, but I don't think there are any that are amazingly spectacular, so don't get too excited.  I misled  you with all the exclamation marks, didn't I?  Sorry.

Anywho...  here is a list of things we've been doing:

• The living room mantelpiece has been put back together and screwed back to the wall, but no pics yet because we haven't hung the mirror.  There'll be a post coming shortly.  Here's a nice before shot for you though:
  
  
  
  
  

  The cardboard was taped to the brick to keep the draught out while we built a nice wooden insert to do that job permanently.  

• The hall has been painted, but I don't have any pictures of it newly done yet, so there may be a post about that in a week or so;

• The bathroom and toilet have been painted, panelled and prettified and are almost finished apart from the missing doors (bathroom cupboard and toilet), which are likely to be missing for a little while longer, so that's another future post.  Here are a couple of before pics for you to see what we were dealing with (warning, they're not pretty!):
  
  
  
  
  This is where the sink goes... I like that it looks like some kind of alien trying to break through with his little wavy arms.
  
  
  
  
  

  This is the toilet, obviously, with its beautifully stained/painted concrete floor.  I bet this went well with the dark purple walls and bright green door that we found underneath layers of paint.  Ahem.
  
  

  

  
  No, this is not carpet in the bathroom, this is coving in the living room.  To go in the bathroom.  Which it did.  And you will see photos that prove this.  Eventually.

  
  

• Kevin has bought a nice shiny plane to use on various doors to make them fit, but still has yet to use it due to lack of space, which will be solved once we finish the spare room.  I'm sure once he's used it he'll want to tell you all about it.  I'm very sorry, but I don't have a picture of the plane (I know you're just dying to see it) and I'm not about to go searching for it in the disorganisation that is our spare room.  It's very pretty, you'll just have to take my word for it.
  

• Way back in the summertime, when the weather was fine, Kevin screwed this lovely piece of trellis to our balcony wall.  There is currently a passion flower growing all over it (thanks Kevin's dad!) and so far it has survived all that winter has had to throw at it.  Except that this week we're half a foot deep in snow, and now that I've jinxed it it definitely won't make it, but still, 6 months is a looooong time for a plant in this place! 
  
  Here's a mildly amusing story; when we bought the trellis we forgot that we only have a tiny little car and struggle to fit anything larger than a couple of shopping bags in it at a time.  So we bought the (fairly large) trellis, and then had to ring my uber-generous mum to come and get it from us in the Homebase car park and drive it all the way to our flat in her not so tiny car.  I hope you think it was worth it Mum, you've helped us keep a plant alive!
  
  

• The spare room is a lot clearer and will be painted this week(!) so expect that post in a couple of years days, but until then, here's a before picture from ages ago.  It was even worse when we decided to clear it out.
  
  
  
  
  This is the before pic, obviously.
  
  
  
  
  And this is the what it looks like after moving a shedload of stuff to the shed (haha) and driving three car loads to the tip.  Still not amazing, but waaaaaay better than before, and only full of stuff we need now!  Soon to have my old bed in it.  (I promise Mum and Dad, we will get it from you in the next two weeks.  Your six years of waiting is finally over!!!!)
  
  And now, for your viewing pleasure, the AMAZING colour that the former owners decided would look good in a bedroom.  I have to add this wasn't a child's bedroom, and to top it off, the paint is insanely shiny.  It's migraine inducing, I swear.  Also, note how they didn't bother to do anything about the clashing former wallpaper behind the radiator, so this is the view when you walk into the room.  Stunning.  It's gone now though; as soon as the room was clear enough two coats of white paint went over that hideousness, and we're off out tomorrow, weather permitting, to pick up the new paint colour, woo!
  
  

So that's seven months' worth of work, which really doesn't seem to amount to much when you put it all in one blog post.  Best get back to it, I suppose!