Our home: The living room

We recently bought of very first home and are currently undertaking a full house renovation. It's such an exciting yet stressful time. As so much needed doing we just got stuck into everything. There was no time to do a room at a time we just needed to leap into it head first. We have a long list of jobs to do and every time we complete one job another couple are discovered and added to it.

Today I thought I would write all about the progress with our living room. For some reason I don't seem to appear to have any "before" photo's on hand just images from when we began. I have some somewhere though. 

The room was decorated with wood chip and painted yellow to begin with and it wasn't that bad. But as we are going to be redecorating every room we decided to do it anyway. 

Some area's the wood chip came off really easy but in some places it was really tough. It took us a good two days to get it all off. When we were stripping wallpaper off in different parts of the house we discovered bad walls underneath (cracks, holes, uneven plastering etc) but thankfully the living room walls were in an ok condition. One thing I have learnt is that with an old house you have to expect bad walls amongst other things. Still give me an old house over a new any day!

After we had tidied up I used sugar water to clean all the woodwork and fireplace. We have original wood features and coving which I love, it gives the house real character. I then sanded all the skirting boards and window ready for painting at a further date. Nick's Grandad then papered the entire room with lining paper, also ready for painting! 

We decided to paint the front room in Natural Hessian from Dulux. It was a shade we kept going back to as it was neutral and light but warm too. It will also look good against any colour so we could frequently change the colour accents in the room without having to redecorate the whole room again. 

We chose to paint the ceiling Natural Hessian too so the coving would really stand out as they were painted white. All the woodwork was sanded, painted with an undercoat and then glossed.

We had the radiator and new electrical sockets installed while we were painting the room. Once everything was dried we then went out looking at carpet. I wanted a neutral carpet that was light enough to compliment the wallpaper but was practical too. I would of loved to of gone for a nice cream carpet but that isn't feasable with a baby and three cats. We opted for a light sandy colour and I think it's perfect.

I am so happy with the living room because although the rest of the house is a shambles this room is almost complete and exactly how I wanted it. We just need a piece of skirting board and need to remove the old sockets and then we are done. I intend on having cabinets in the alcoves with floating shelves above them. Nick wants to put the TV on the wall too which frightens me but we are limited with space in the front room so we will have to do so. 

Now that one room looks finished it makes me so excited to see how the rest of the house is going to turn out. We have a long road ahead of us but we have certainly made a good start. 

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?