The First Room

After being in the house for a few weeks, the rose tinted specs had well and truely fallen off and I was struggling to pass off having 3 different kinds of wallpaper and mismatched curtains in one room as "character". I was also conscious that we had decided to have both of our families over for the first Christmas in our new home. Said Christmas was now about 5 weeks away and we still had boxes to unpack and we only had enough space for 5 people to sit down, there would be 9 adults on Christmas Day, one toddler, one baby, 4 cats and a labrador. It was time for action. New sofas were ordered, wallpaper was stripped (this was about 4 layers thick in some places), and paint was chosen. Sam had to go away with work so I was commuting to work (I couldn't drive then) from Brighton to Surrey everday, coming home, decorating like mad, going to bed and doing it all over again everyday for a week. The front room went from looking like this:

To this:



We used the money we had been given for our housewarming presents to pay for the curtains and tv cabinet, we got the sofas on one of those buy it now pay for it in 100 years deals you always see on tv and I made most of the cushions (mostly after Christmas when I got my sewing machine).

I found the sideboard you can see in the second picture (behind the sofa) in our shed. I think it was one of the original free-standing kitchen units from when the house was built in the 50s. It was covered in dirt and cobwebs but I fell in love with its rustic charms. I cleaned it down and took the cracked, peeling laminate off the top and sanded it down. I bought some dark varnish and painted 3 layers on the top. I keep meaning to sand down the wood and paint that but there are always plenty of other jobs to do.

I painted the dining room chairs that we bought with us from Sam's Dad's house where we lived before the move. I bought a length of oilcloth from Dunelm for a tablecloth (this worked out much cheaper than buying a ready-made table cloth and you can't tell the difference). I also revamped our tired old pine dresser which was donated to us by my parents. (This will be the subject of a separate post.)