It’s been a long time since I have posted with any updates on the house, mainly because it’s been a long time since anything has been done.

After quitting my job in June, it was a couple of months before I found a new one. Although we had money to fall back on, we preferred to wait a while and top up our savings again once I had a new job.

Now that we have done this, we have started again with the home improvements, and where better to begin than the living room?

The living room is the area I feel most conscious about, especially when inviting people over. It’s supposed to be a place to relax but I found that when spending time in there I would fixate on the un-plastered walls, or the walls where we’d ripped off the wallpaper, the stained carpet or the mould growing on the wall below the window.

I felt I had to apologise about the state of the room and explain myself to visitors.

It has also taken the longest of all the rooms to decide on how to decorate and have probably caused the most arguments of all of the rooms. (You may, by now, have noticed a common theme with the arguments about the decor)

Despite a long time thinking, discussing and planning, I am still uncertain about the colours I have chosen. I know it’s only paint but I think we would both be frustrated if we finished and had to re-decorate because we were unhappy with the outcome.

After buying some testers and painting patches around the room, I agonised for days and even now I am still tempered to change my mind.

Paul and I then agreed to the quote issued by the building company. They were going to change the location of the radiators, plaster, put in our windowsills and switch the doors around in the frames (we can’t do this ourselves because we have metal door frames).

I opted to use Farrow and Ball paint for this project. I was gifted a Farrow and Ball book, ‘How to Decorate’ and after looking through it, I have decided that I would like to give it a try. Their paint is highly pigmented, with a completely matt, almost chalky finish, and not only are they eco friendly, the paint is non-toxic (pet friendly) and (almost) Odourless.

I measured the rooms and calculated the size in meters squared to allow us to buy only as much paint as we need (because it’s bloody expensive). More on that in the follow up posts.

I have opted for the colour ‘Hay’ in the living room and ‘Light blue’ in the dining room with ‘Down pipe’ on the arch to separate the rooms. I was very close indeed to painting the living room a beige ‘String’ colour and the dining room a much lighter ‘Powder’ blue, however, even Paul thought I was playing it safe with those. Paul chose the dining room colour (which was a surprise because I’m usually the one trying to convince him to go for a darker colour rather than the other way around), and well as the arch colour, which is a dark grey.

We also opted to remove the coving from the rooms, after some thought. Although I think I like coving and feel that it ‘finishes’ a room, I think it might be a little old fashioned and the house is a 30’s house and wouldn’t originally had coving anyway. Paul and I pulled of it off in about an hour, and it really makes the rooms feel a lot bigger without it.

We also pulled off the skirting boards. This was something of a last minute decision that Paul wasn’t keen on. We had a decision to make, becase they were in bad shape and there were bits missing. Although they were salvageable, it would have taken a lot of time (like the skirting board upstairs). I was happier ripping them out, buying new and having it look as good as the rest of the rooms, but Paul wasn’t so keen as it was a job we hadn’t done before and we’d need new tools to do it. But we went ahead anyway. We were pretty sure that the skirting was original as it was nailed into the wall very deep, and they simply refused to come out. Even when using a large crowbar, and a considerale amount of force. And when it did, it brought half of the wall with it.

But one thing Paul was happy about, was that this meant that he could finally justify buying a multi-tool, as this was the only thing we could think of that would be able to cut all of the nails out, and get new skirting boards in. And as it turned out, this became one of the most used tools we had throughout the project.

Despite our plans of an extension, we decided to decorate the dining room because of the time that the extension is going to take, and because we do find it difficult living in the house as it is. It never feels clean, and it’s depressing when we’ve spent almost 3 years in our house and it still feels like we aren’t getting anywhere. It’s an affordable thing to do, since the adjacent rooms will be done at the same time, and it will make a big difference.

We have tried to take photos of all of the stages of project. And below are a selection of the works we did prior the the work taking place.

This meant that we were ready for the builders to arrive…[see part 2]