The bedroom is one of the rooms (along with the hallway and living room) that we anticipated would need little more than a coat of paint and new carpets to get it looking good. Lets now follow along the journey of why that was totally not the case!
The main issue we have had in this room and other rooms (and anticipate finding again) is that the wallpaper hid a multitude of sins. The hallway also had similar issues, mainly in that the plastering in this house is old (some of it even probably original) and has been drilled into, painted, picture rails hung then removed, nails put in, filled and refilled etc etc and then all wallpapered over several times so we had no idea how bad it was underneath.
The bedroom started out looking like this
A pretty dated but good size room, the carpet smelt a little urine-y so was out asap as was the stairs and landing. The floor had some questionable stains so got a good disinfecting and a steam clean.
We also got the wallpaper off (including off the ceiling) and started the never ending wall plug removal, filling, caulking and sugar soap scrubbing.
We were getting it near to being ready to paint, so we took off the skirting boards as we were going to replace them and they turned out to be these original tiles. They are lovely but have been painted over so many times over the years unfortunately there was no saving them. They were also broken and chipped in lots of places. I do hope to save some of them and remove the paint and use them in other areas of the house, I am keeping a stash of the ones that are in decent shape! Some of the windowsills are made from them too so I hope to strip the paint from them and keep them as a nice feature.
Unfortunately removing the tiles took off half the plaster under the window. The plaster on the lower part of that wall was completely blown and just fell away from the wall. We took it back to the point it seemed to actually be attached to the wall and then got the plasterers booked in again to do that and skim the stairs and landing.
While the plaster was all off we figured why not investigate the fireplace. We knew that we would need it recovered at this point so it may have needed plastering over while they were doing the other wall.
The fireplace had been covered with some plywood and filler (literally it was just crumbling off when we took off the wallpaper covering it) which was warped and sounded hollow behind. We thought it best to investigate thoroughly and see what was behind there as the house was full of surprises!
It seemed that the chimney not been capped and soot, bricks and egg shells had built up in the fireplace behind the plywood (much more than in the photo above, all those bricks were in there too. We cleaned it all out and uncovered a nice little brick fireplace. We chipped some of the plaster away and it came off easily and the bricks behind were in good condition so we thought we would see what it looked like as feature chimney breast in bare brick, if it looked terrible we would get it plastered with the other wall anyway.
I loved it! It needs a bit of TLC and a good clean but my dad can repoint the brickwork for us and I plan to tile the inside of the fireplace.
We tidied up, painted the room and the ceiling white and then basically forgot about this room for 2 months whilst we were waiting for plastering to be done and carpets to go in.
Once the plastering was done and the new window was fitted it was ready for carpet, paint and clearing out ready for the bed to be put together in there! Back to where we thought we would be about 2 weeks after completion, but after about 3 months instead. We had been sleeping on the mattress on the spare room floor for that time so I was beyond pleased to get the bedroom back.
As you can see above the room had become a bit of a dumping ground, any room not in use in a house having this much work to it generally becomes a store room for paint cans, ladders, unused furniture etc etc etc! I cleared it all out on a Saturday, and gave the fireplace and floors a good clean, then on the Sunday we painted, on the Tuesday the carpets arrived and Tom hung the curtains and put the bed together. After all the delays it came together quite quickly in the end.
Tom chose the colour in here, I was going to go for something lighter as the front of the house where this room is doesn't get the most light (it means we have a south facing garden so I'm cool with it), but the tester looked really good. Its Dulux Heartwood, its one of those nice colours that looks different at different times. In darker artificial light it looks quite a dark purple, but in sunlight it looks more heather coloured and muted. As its the bedroom we thought its the one room that can carry off being a little darker with a moody colour like this as its more cosy and we don't spend a lot of daylight time in here anyway!
The carpet is a nice silvery grey, along with the lighter grey in the hallway it is from a local carpet shop The Carpet Hut.
The curtains are from B&Q, I love the subtle botanical pattern. I am trying to source nice second hand curtains for the rest of the house but we needed them asap for this room so we could sleep in here so I went for new. I am hoping because they are quite neutral though we can use them for years and years because they will work in multiple rooms and with different colours. I went for quite a neutral colour as the walls are such a bold choice that I want to keep the accessories lighter. All of our bedding is just white cotton anyway as we rented for so long I kept things like that quite neutral so they went with different houses and flats. The throw is a recent Dunelm purchase, in the sale for £7.50!
The succulents were £2.50 each picked up at Sainsburys with the food shopping. I have another three on the landing window.
Furniture wise in here we only have the bed and chest of drawers as bedroom furniture as we have a built in wardrobe that holds the rest of our clothes (I will cover our wardrobe makeover separately when it has lights inside and I can take decent photos of it as its one of my favourite projects).
The plan in here from now on is to put the skirting boards back on for a start, then we can finally push the bed back up to the wall and put all our stuff under it. It is an ottoman bed so we will store lesser worn clothes, coats and shoes under there. Then I want to add some shelving into the nook on the left of the fireplace for things like jewellery boxes, hairdryers, cufflinks etc etc, add a laundry hamper at the bottom of those shelves in that nook, add artwork and accessories like a light shade and some nice blankets and pillows. We also have plans for either bedside tables or an alternative to them if they don't fit when the bed is pushed back.
The fireplace is also not finished and the brickwork needs re pointing, inside the fireplace needs tiling and the bricks need to be sealed (so they don't brush brick dust off all the time). The metal sheet leant against the fireplace in one of the photos above is an aluminium sheet that will go up the chimney to keep the warmth in, I just need to figure our how to do this! When all that is done I would like to add a mirror to the chimney breast and a mantelpiece type shelf under that so that can be my "dressing area" - I don't wear make up day to day so I don't need a lot of space for that!
Other than that I would like to keep this room relatively simple and clear as I am loving it not being as cluttered as our rental, it makes it so much easier to keep clean! Here's a quick before, during and after shot to finish off the post :)
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