Our home: The master bedroom

Our bedroom is one of the rooms in the house that is totally finished now, minus a bit of furniture and decor. It's one of the rooms that I feel we spent ages on as it was the first room we began stripping and a room that we've dipped in and out of as our renovation progressed. 

It was probably one of the easier rooms to renovate too. We of course stripped the dated floral wallpaper and retro green carpet as soon as we bought the house. The room needed new plaster here and there but other than that the walls were fine. The ceiling was then lowered, plastered and spot lights were installed (something that I wasn't really bothered about but Nick prefers spot lights over one main light.) We also had new electrics and central heating installed as that was needed throughout the entire house. The new central heating and electrical rewiring was so expensive and cost almost half of our renovation budget. Which is very daunting when you still have a new bathroom, kitchen and a dozen other things yet to pay for! 

After all the big jobs were completed it was time for the fun part, the decorating. We first painted the ceiling white and it took a few coats as fresh plaster loves to soak up paint. Then we decorated the room with lining paper and painted with a Dulux shade called Mellow Mocha. It's a strange colour because in some light it can appear to have purple hue's and others it's the taupe type shade we were looking for. The light rail, skirting board, door, door frame, window frame, window sill then had a couple of layers of undercoat and gloss. 

With all the messy DIY and decorating jobs out of the way we then had to decide on a carpet. We decided to go for a silver grey (which is bang on trend according to our carpet fitter!) as I thought it would really compliment the colour and decor of the room. 

Here is our bedroom renovation journey from start to finish, enjoy! 

Our home - The bedroom so far

Along with the bathroom one of the rooms we are really getting stuck into at the moment is the master bedroom. Although there is a lot of work still to do on the house once we have a working bathroom and kitchen, a living room and bedroom that is livable we can pretty much move in. The other jobs aren't major and can be done as we go. 

Here is our progress on the master bedroom -

As you can see the bedroom was very dated and decorated in a rather unattractive pea green. The previous home owner certainly had a thing for green as the bathroom was also in the exact same shade and they have even gone as far as painting some of the doors that colour too!

The bedroom was the first room I started on and it's one of those rooms we keep going back to when we couldn't go any further in another. First thing we did was strip the walls. The wallpaper came off very easily and underneath the walls were in an okay condition, thankfully. We also ripped up that awful green carpet too!

But you know how it goes. If everything ends up being straight forward and easy there is always a little hiccup. The hiccup in this room being the chimney breast. The wallpaper was really tough to get off on this area. It wasn't just wallpaper but it had been sealed with some sort of pink putty stuff which was so sticky and difficult to remove. It took us absolutely ages to remove the majority of the stuff and we ended up leaving it till another day. (A few weeks later the chimney breast was plastered over so we didn't even need to do it in the end!) 

The wallpaper on the ceiling came off incredibly easy to remove too. So easy infact that we didn't even need to use a steamer we literally just peeled it off in big chunks. We did have another one of those hiccups though as when pulling it down some of the ceilings plaster came down with it!

Rather than simply re plastered the ceiling we decided to have the ceiling dropped and re plastered so we could have spot lights installed. I wasn't really fussed about the lights as I do like a big feature chandelier or light shade but Nick loves the little spotlights so we went ahead.

The walls were lined with lining paper ready to be painted whilst the ceiling was plastered. This is when we really saw our bedroom coming together. 

We've decided to paint out ceiling and all woodwork white and the walls Mellow Mocha from Dulux. We are doing this at the moment so the next time I update on the bedroom it should be finished! Very exciting! 

Our home: Paints, paints and more paints

Oh my gosh, if I look at one more colour swatch I think I may just explode! The amount of hours I have spent looking at hundreds of different paint colours is simply ridiculous. I find myself looking at them and they all just blend into one giant splodge. I am a terribly indecisive person at the best of times but when it comes to trying to decide of paint colours for 7 rooms; living room, dining room, kitchen, hallway, bedroom, nursery, bathroom.. I feel totally out of my depth. If it was simply deciding on one paint for one room then it would be fine but I need to pick 6 or 7 colours that compliment one another, are neutral but not boring, aren't too light or too dark and so on and so forth. 

This week we bought half a dozen testers from Homebase to try out the colours for ourselves. We have rolls and rolls of lining paper at the house so I cut a bit off and painted it with each tester. I wrote the name above each shade to avoid any confusion. I also wrote down my initial feelings for each paint below each sample but I have changed my mind a little since then. 

I wish we had done this sooner cause paint colours look so much different in a catologue or on your computer screen. The colours also change dramatically when drying, some go lighter and some actually go darker, which was surprising. It was a good idea painting them onto the base they will actually be painted on once we choose as we can really see what the colour will be like. I also took the sample paper into every room in the house, in all the different lights to see how they would look. 

Here is what I am thinking at the moment:

Living room - Mellow Mocha

Dining room / Lounge - Natural Hessian
Kitchen - Caramel Latte (Not sure yet)
Hallway, Stairs and Landing - Natural Hessian
Bedroom - Dusted Fondant (Feature wall) with Mellow Mocha
Noah's Nursery - Natural Calico or Natural Hessian
Bathroom - No paint as room will be fully tiled
Box room - Whichever paint we have left

As you can tell I am a huge fan of neutral tones and going to add pops of colour here and there with accents such as picture frames, lamps, vases, rugs and so on. I'm really excited to get all the renovations out the way, have everything painted and then I can have fun furnishing each room.

This is the plan for now but I am not 100% on the kitchen colour. Our kitchen has cream cabinets, oak work surface and will have white tiles so I need a colour that's darker than cream but is not too dark. It's really tricky. I want to go for a shabby chic/cottage feel in the kitchen and dining room so need a shade that is suitable. I wish I was brave enough to go for a lovely pastel colour or even a nice sage green, but I'm not, so I am sticking to my trusty neutrals. 

Do you have any favourite paint colours or any advice on what colour to paint the kitchen?