Direct Wood Flooring - New Floor Part 2

Its official, I'm in LOVE !  Our new engineered wooden floor has been down for a couple of weeks now and it has completely transformed how the upstairs landing looks. 

Direct Wood Flooring - New Floor Part 1

If you are a regular to my blog you will know that we have spent many DIY years working on our home.  We took on a run down 1930's house and have slowly transformed it into a lovely home over the last 13 years. 

Pine Wardrobe Makeover

It wasn't so long ago that my bedroom caught the grey bug.  I loved it for a while, but then, like always, I just had to go back to mostly white with blue accents.

DIY Halloween Decorations

image trendenser.se

It's that time of year again.  Although the twins are fast approaching 13. THIRTEEN ! How did that happen ? They just reminded me that they are not too old for a Halloween party and PLEASE can we have one again this year. 

Garden Makeover - Part One

A glimpse of the work so far - A lot of grey 

The Summer has been busy with school holidays and our wonderful once in a lifetime visit to Florida, so the garden makeover has not moved along as quickly as I might like.

Garden Makeover Plans

Photo : ATGStores.com

After twelve years of living in our home we can finally turn our attention to the garden renovation.  The winter is a perfect time to sit and plan how we would like to makeover the garden.

Magnolia - Fixer Upper

Photo credit : Magnolia 

I don't remember when it was, but I do remember the impact the wonderful Magnolia - Fixer Upper programme had on my husband and I as we had our first ever experience of watching this inspiring and uplifting couple.

DIY white stool makeover

Although I no longer paint or renovate furniture for a living, I still enjoy an occasional project.  When I saw two badly decoupaged wooden stools in a local Devon charity shop I knew they would be a quick and easy DIY painting project.

Easter DIY The Bathroom

Its nearly Easter and that time of year when all good interior DIY decorating enthusiasts get out their tools !  With the promise of better weather and a long weekend off work, its a great time to finish off all those little jobs around the house or just give a room a freshen up.  

The Industrial look Boys Room

Sharing a room when you are twins will always have its ups and downs.  Least of my boys worries though, is the decor. They really don't care.  Although their own personalities have crept into each of their personal spaces, they are happy for me to decorate how I see fit, Result !

Tips for Decorating with White

When people see my home for the first time they always exclaim "how do you keep it clean"  or "I could never have an all white home with my children" . 

Trend - Decorating the house for autumn

Autumn is here (despite the glorious weather).  Always in the past one of those seasons for me that was just the in between stage from the fun of summer to the excitement of the buildup to Christmas in winter.

Winter Preparation - House and Garden

So Summer wasn't all that this year and now that its officially Autumn, its time to start thinking about cosying down for the colder months.  If you are anything like me,

Front Door Makeover

How long have I been married ? and blogging ?  and how often have I reminded my husband to PLEASE take before photographs if he is going to embark on some DIY when I am out !

It's finished ! The kitchen / dining room Renovation

 When we moved into this house ten years ago this month, life seemed like it couldn't possibly get any worse.  We had lost our main source of income, I was on maternity leave with six month old twins

Video of the Utility Room Barn Door

My first attempt at adding a video to my blog.  I have no idea how to make it bigger so any advice would be gratefully received !  Please excuse the shocking Birmingham accent but do admire the amazing hand crafted skill of my husband.

The Utility Room Renovation - Finished

It's done ! Finally enough cash and time have allowed my very clever husband to finish the utility room.  You can see how it all began HERE and followed up HERE .  I am so thrilled with the end result and reckon we could give any DIY Makeover programme a run for their money. The utility room started life as an outside toilet and coal shed.  When we bought the house they were enclosed with  just a small conservatory tagged onto the back of the house.  We lived for ten years with a cold, damp space for our second toilet, a boiler that broke down all the time and nowhere except for our radiators to dry damp clothes.

NOT ANYMORE !!!

The handmade (by hubby - post to follow) Barn door slides open to reveal a great space for the washing machine, hanging space for socks, pants,smalls etc and storage of laundry basket and washing powders.  This used to be the entrance to the first outside shed and housed our old boiler.

We decided to take up the old wooden flooring and lay these beautiful slate grey tiles from Homebase.  Running the tiles through into the utility room makes for a much more stylish and seamless look.  These were budget tiles (you can see details in the previous posts) but they are really good quality and are a dream to keep clean with dirty feet coming in and out of the garden all the time.

The view through the door !  I LOVE IT ! My hubby did an amazing job. New toilet ! We now have 3 toilets.  That should be enough with four men in the house.  The shelving is from IKEA and the black and white photo art I made myself.  See the post on how easy it was HERE

It was really important to me to make the most of the small space.  A priority was to have somewhere to hang washing to dry when the weather was bad.  With my almost finished new kitchen dining room I did not want to go back to having wet clothes draped all over radiators around the house.  We found this fantastic modular system again at IKEA that you can build as many or as few shelves, baskets rails etc that you want.  Its perfect for what I wanted to do.    Because its a small space I wanted to make good use of as much of the wall space as possible, so put the broom and dustpan and brush on the wall.  The bag from The White Company holds old towels and rags for cleaning the floor and shoes .

Another thing that irritates me is chargers and plugs in EVERY socket around my home so insisted we had what we now call a  "charging station" ha!  Plug sockets and a shelf but it did the job.   It didn't take long to train them all to put their phones and tablets on charge in the Utility room.

Loads of storage baskets for balls and smelly shoes.

The new boiler is boxed in and has its own magnetic catch door for easy access.

That's it !

 All finished and an absolute dream of a space now.  

The Utility Room Renovation ( Part Two)

I say it often, but I really can't believe how talented my husband is.  The utility room is almost finished and it really is a transformation.

Affordable Photographic Wall Art

I've always loved black and white photography. It seems to capture something about the subject that colour photographs don't.  My favourite picture of all time was a black and white one of me and my son on my wedding day.  These days I click away with my phone on a daily basis, storing hundreds and hundreds of pictures of my family.  On a recent visit to my mum's home and seeing all the photographs she has on display, I realised how few photographs we actually have around our own home.  Thanks to the nifty filters on my phone I am able to get all sorts of  effects so decided to print three black and white images of the boys and make them into wall art for the new utility room wall.

I bought these great value Ribba frames on a recent trip to IKEA.  perfect for the job. Really easy to take apart.

We had some photo quality paper at home.  I downloaded the photographs from my phone onto the computer and printed them off.  Cut them to size and stuck them onto the white mount.

Put the picture back together again.  Took me about 10 minutes to do all three.

 Can't wait to get them up on the new utility room wall.

March #StyleWise DIY Artwork

For this months #Stylewise post I decided to have a go at some DIY Art.