Living Room: Before + After

When the lovely people at Ocean Finance got in touch with the challenge of making over a room for £50 or less, it couldn't have come at a better time.

Working on making our house a home has very much been a marathon rather than a sprint and a few weeks ago we finally got around to painting our living room. Our friends Richard and Fran were on hand to help and it was pretty amazing how quickly we managed to get things done, they were even sneakily up early to finish up the trim, we definitely owe them more than one.

[Before]
So, obviously it didn't look like this all the time but it should give you an idea of what a blank canvas this room was.



We are planning on putting a fireplace at some point but for now a makeshift radiator cover - what was left to us by the previous owners - will have to do.



Repainting things white never fails to make me feel a bit uneasy. Funny how your eyes can trick you.


So, the deal was that once we got this room painted we would be able to get curtains, put pictures up, finally pick up a dining table and basically just make the room feels like it was more 'us'.

Ocean sent over a voucher for Dunhelm to see what I could find to makeover my chosen room. Dunhelm has been one of my savior shops since we moved, all our curtains have been from there and I just think it's really good for everyday bits and pieces at a great price, it's definitely up there with Wilko as somewhere I'd recommend for general house things.


Pro tip: radiator paint is awful.


In need of so many more house plants!


After we'd tried to put things back to normal post-putting the curtains up.
Now I've had practice with a lot of other rooms in the house, I feel making a room over can be as simple as a lick of paint and a few personal touches, so I wasn't going to go too far out of my comfort range with my £50.




Every meal I've eaten has been here since we put this up on Saturday afternoon. ♥


This little ladder shelf was a TKMaxx find, just what I was looking for and much nicer than the MDF versions I'd been watching on eBay. Now we just need to work out what to put on it...




Most of the voucher went towards the map blind, I chose them because they're a little different but neutral at the same time. I didn't want another set of curtains as we got long curtains for the patio doors and because they're pretty close together I figured it would look weird to have different lengths next to each other. The rest went on curtain rings and picture frames (which we're yet to put up).





This 65daysofstatic poster has had a little re-frame and is looking much healthier now it's out of a bendy clip frame.



We used to have this poster in our bedroom in our flat but it's been promoted to living room since the space above our bed is a little too small for it. I'm pretty happy to have it more out on display now anyway though.


This mirror was one of our first Dunhelm finds, I love the wood.


My mum treated me to this Atlas Moth a few weeks ago when I was in Covent Garden with her. I'm actually a little obsessed with insect taxidermy recently.






I picked up this table on Saturday to match the other one we got when we first moved in. I'm so pleased that IKEA still had them as they're one of my favourite IKEA purchases - they're actually meant to be plant stands but they're the perfect shape for what we need as they don't take up much room.





I guess I'd have to admit that because of all the other things we picked up at IKEA at the weekend, as well as our new dining set (with IKEA bench), making over the room for £50 was a bit of a failure but I think you'll agree that I've certainly managed to put our stamp on it, even if it's from a few different places.

After 7 months of a combination of hard work - and being a bit lazy - we're actually pretty much there with this whole 'nestmaking' (not in a baby way) things and I feel much better about the prospect of hosting our first Christmas, our next milestone.

Would you be able to makeover a room for £50? Which room would you choose?

Yamas, Corfu!

I forgot how much I like video, I think the next few weeks will be focussed on a few projects I completely neglected when I lived in the land of terrible laptops. Moon and I spent the whole evening a couple of nights ago watching some old videos I made, they just feel so much more tangible, I'm excited.


My tan is starting to fade a little now but the scars from my incredible mosquito bites are still holding on. Here are some photographs from an amazing week with my best friends.



View from the kitchen balcony.
We chose Corfu completely at random based on our great Villa Plus holiday last year and where Villa Plus villas were. Corfu was pretty different from my experience of Athens and I could not recommend everything any more, it was great.

We stayed in the small village of San Stefanos, it had completely wound down for the end of season, which made it nice and peaceful, something that became particularly clear when we went to busier parts of the island.

It was just such a nice, relaxing week, I swam in the sea so much and saw more fish than I ever have while doing so. I would actually go as far as to say not only that Corfu is somewhere I'd like to return to but that particular part and even that particular villa!



There were a lot of 'wild' cats around, they were terrible beggars but they were very much up for affection too. We had one that was a nightly visitor. Unfortunately some of them were flea-ridden and a little mangey but overall they seem to be treated pretty well, better than what we saw of the ones in Portugal last year anyway.

A 'Long' Welsh Goodbye.

...but just hopefully, 'Auf Wiedersehen'.


Seriously, seriously hoping to be a little more regular now. I've finally invested in a brand new laptop so it won't take me 10 million years to get anything done any more. Seriously, just editing a few of my holiday photos over the weekend took less than an hour from import to upload, so much better than the close to 3 hours it had been taking in recent months. I'm not trying to make excuses for my absence but I think it's pretty well justified, doing everything on that old thing was such a chore. With that being said, for 7 years and the amount of hard work it's been through, from CVs to final projects, my old Macbook didn't have too bad an innings.

These are some photos from the beginning of the month, when I said 'g'day, mate' to one of my closest friends as he totters over to the other side of the world with his girlfriend for the foreseeable.

I'm actually a little annoyed with myself as I somehow managed to delete the Friday evening up to the middle of Saturday from my camera. I've tried recovering it but unfortunately it hasn't worked. Still, I'm really pleased with the photos I did take. I also took some video so I'm hoping it will still work even with the missing files. These things happen though, I guess, and it doesn't take away from the fact it was a really nice weekend.

House - Warmed.

One down, one more to go...

I feel out of the swing of hosting, still getting used to a new area and how to use our space have knocked my confidence a little but it was so nice to gather some of my closest friends to warm our new home, and hey, it's not even looking that bad - except the front room, but we don't need to talk about that.




*Spot the cat-botherer
Pro tip: if you are hosting a housewarming party, potlucks are the way forward, not only will you be surprised by some of your guest's culinary skills, you'll also have more than enough food to go around.
Starting to wonder how we're actually going to cater for twice the amount of people by ourselves when my family comes at the end of this month (omg!)

It was a nice, relaxing weekend, rounded off on Sunday with a trip to a (not so) local farm because we're left-field like that.




The smallest rabbit I've ever seen. SO SMALL.




In other news, we're on a painting break but even with just our stuff in and no paint, can we just take a minute to appreciate this 'before + after'? Parts of this house are resisting my love but I think the living room has my back ♥