Colour Your World: Design Seeds

My bedroom is one of the only rooms in the house right now that I'm pretty clueless about which direction I'd like to go.  I've been concentrating so much on the other 'common' rooms in the house (the living room, the dining room, the guest bedroom and now the kitchen) that it's been a bit forgotten and the only thing we've done is paint it pale grey (the same colour that is in the living room).  And even that, I'm not entirely sure will stay (I keep thinking I'd like to go darker but we'll see).  So, stumbling upon Design Seeds recently on Apartment Therapy has my little brain in overdrive.

Admittedly, with the grey, olive and mustard yellow, this one is a favourite.

I heard long long ago that if you want to see what colours go with what, just look to nature.  Well, Jessica goes one better on her beautiful blog. There's just so much beauty and inspiration in this incredible growing collection of images, you'd be hard pressed not to find a colour combination you adore.

Her experience of colour forecasting lead Jessica to begin an online journal but the journal has flourished into a treasure-trove of beautiful ready-to-steal-for-your-next-room colour palettes. Jessica purchases photographs, plays with the colours and creates gorgeous swatches from the hues. 

Beautiful no?

I implore you if you haven't already done so, go and have a look for yourself and tell me you've not been inspired!

Design Seeds images used under Creative Commons Attribution (No Derivative Works).

Adventures in Sewing: Pom-Pom Trim and Other Prettification

I know I keep going on about the guest bedroom and you are probably sick of it all by now.  If you are, you might as well skip this post.  It's okay, I promise I won't take it personally.  You won't be missing much to be fair...  I'll look away and you can quietly slip away.

Hmmhmmhmmmhmmm... (that's me humming by the way while you make your escape.)

Hmmhmmhmmhmmhmmmhmmm....

Oh!  You're still here?  Aww, bless ya, you do humour me, don't you! Well, then, I guess I shall just get on with the post, eh?  (Yes, Red, for crying out loud, get ON with it already.)

Okay, okay, so I teased that I was working on a few cushion covers in my never ending quest to have a cute guest bedroom without spending a lot of money.  I've already gone through my inspiration and initial changes here and my further tweaks here.

I had been using some deeper claret cushion covers that I had from long ago but I knew eventually I wanted to replace them with something lighter and brighter.  I had been keeping my eye out for ready made ones in cherry red and white, but when I wasn't able to find anything I really liked, I took matters into my own hands.

Yep, eBay to the rescue.

I'm sure the admin team at work were starting to question whether I was running a separate business when tiny parcel after tiny parcel were being delivered to me at work every other day.

As I said in my previous post, I really like the mix of patterns in this room and my theory is that as long as the main colour remains white with the accent of red (rather than huge swathes of bright red), it can remain a happy balance without being too overpowering.

So I looked for 3 different fat quarters of fabric with white backgrounds and red as the secondary colour - a polka dot, a stripe and a pattern (a happy chicken pattern which I showed you before).  I ended up purchasing about 5 different fat quarters and then chose my 3 favourite.

Well, here is my little trio of lovelies... What do you think?

I went to town a bit on the last one.  Honestly, it was a challenge because I've never used pompom trim on a cushion cover before so wasn't entirely sure how to do it.

Essentially, I "sandwiched" the trim between the fabric.  Although small and 'buried' between the other layers, I just made sure it was directly under the needle as I fed it through.  I have to say, I am very pleased with my amateur attempt and I think it looks really cute!

Total cost for all 3 cushions:  £21.90 and that includes a more expensive white cotton twill I used for the backing and as lining for all three to give them a bit of extra weight.  They are all envelope backed so really simple to do, easy to keep clean (just pop it in the wash) and I can change them out when I tire of them.

If you want to see a really good tutorial on how to do an envelope backed cushion cover, have a look at this video because it's exactly how I do mine except that I added an extra piece of white twill material to line the cover as the material was quite thin.  All in, however, it's easy peasy lemon squeezy.

So shall we do a before and after?

Before...

Sad.  Boring.  Booooooo.

After...

Happy! Bright! Yay!

Oh, I also managed to make a small change with a little tin of red spray paint (£4).

This mail holder used to be black wrought iron and I've had it for years and years.  I'm pretty sure I got it from Ballard Designs when I lived in the States and liked it so much I brought it with me when I moved here so it's at least 10 years old!  I spray painted it white a couple of years ago but it was looking like it needed a refresh.

Because it was white against a white wall, it was getting a little lost.  Enter said tin of red spray paint.

Here's our before...

During.... (looks like a bit of an accident victim here, but I promise the after is better)

And in the finished room...

I use it to hold envelopes, sticky notes and address labels.  Now it really pops against the white wall along with the new red framed prints.

Little changes make a big difference I think...

The next change I make will be a big one though.  As you can see, I've been trying to see how the new wallpaper will go with the room.  I'm liking it.

With the kitchen in progress, I'm not sure when we'll be able to hang the paper but I'm hoping it will be within the next month or two, fingers crossed.

If there was a way I could clone both myself and W, I'd definitely do it.  Either that, or we are going to have to start campaigning for a 3 day weekend because there's just not enough time to do it all!  Thankfully, clocks went forward this past weekend so it's staying light until 8pm.  It's amazing how much more energy that little bit of extra day light provides, doesn't it? 

So have you ever used pom pom trim on a cushion before?  Went to town with some bright coloured spray paint?  Gave a room a makeover with a few budget buys?  Or maybe you are just tired of me talking about this bloody room already and would like the opportunity to sound off?  Do tell... (but be nice, I'm sensitive like that)

All images my own.

Immediate Gratification: Dressing Room Floor Discovery

After finding out that we had a false ceiling in the kitchen and spending this weekend putting up plasterboard and generally getting very excited about how the kitchen is shaping up, I had no idea the house wasn't done rewarding us for our hard work just yet.

I'll go into more detail about the kitchen in a later post and share our progress but I had to tell you about the most recent gift the house has bestowed upon us.

Yesterday, W was putting up the plasterboard in the kitchen with one of his very kind workmates who came around to give us a hand and he went upstairs to mark out where the kitchen lighting is going to go. The beauty of these old houses is that everything is pretty much accessible so all it takes is lifting up a few floorboards upstairs and you can see the ceiling of the floor below.

When W came back down the stairs he said to me, "What kind of flooring do you want in your dressing room?"

"Why?" thinking it was an odd time to be planning flooring for that room when we're in the midst of chaos for our kitchen remodel.

"Do you want wood flooring?" he asked.

"Um. Yes...."

"Well, you've got it. Go have a look."

When I got upstairs this is what I saw.

Now you may be wondering why the hell I never looked under the carpet in this room before.  And I'll tell you - it's because I couldn't get the carpet up.  It had been glued around the edges right to the floor and as I knew the flooring in the master bedroom under the carpet was unfinished, I kind of assumed (I know, I know) that this room would be the same.

So it seemed a bit pointless to try to rip the carpet up (which could have very well been glued to anything, including hardboard or concrete or anything else) so I never bothered, I just assumed when the time came, we'd be replacing the flooring.

Well, once I saw that,  I had that room cleared out faster than you could say FINISHED WOOD FLOORS.

I pulled the entire carpet up, vacuumed and put everything back in while the guys finished up downstairs.  It was all very exciting and I'm sure I was lifting heavy things above my head with minimal effort due to the surges of adrenaline I was feeling.

But before I show you what the room looks like now, let me remind you what the incredibly manky carpet looked like previously.

Here's what the room looked like the day after we moved in.

And here's what the room looked like back in July...

Note manky carpet as well as unpacked boxes...

And this is what it looked like once the room was cleared out (in my excitement, I moved the clothes horse back in before picking up the camera)...

Pablo was checking himself out in the mirror.  Well, it IS the dressing room.

And here's what it looks like now...

There's a bit of wear in the centre of the room as there would be with older flooring but I am considering now getting a cute rug which will hide that.  I also have yet to get my Ikea shelving units which will free up all the boxes of clothes and shoes that you can see piled up.

The room looks so much brighter now with the floors.  Bear in mind there is SO VERY MUCH to do in here.  I talked a little bit about my inspiration for the room long ago in this post but my ideas have evolved a bit since then.

I spoke previously about wanting to replace that chest of drawers with something slightly bigger and change the mirror above it. There is also the messy job of stripping the existing wallpaper, fixing whatever we may find underneath that and re-wallpapering (not sure which wallpaper yet, I've changed my mind about 20 times).  I just know that as this is a dressing room (and MY dressing room at that - W keeps his clothes in the master bedroom wardrobe), I really want something INCREDIBLY feminine. 

Some of the boxes have been covered with a spare bit of fabric 
because I got tired of looking at them!

I wanted to put more shelves up above the clothes rail but the wall there is a bit crumbly so previous attempts to hang things there didn't work out which is why we added a shelf above the chest of drawers and a shelf above the full length mirror. 

So yeah, lots to do but I can't tell you how much of an improvement those floors have made to the room and the best part is the cost.  F-R-E-E baby!

Now those are the kinds of before and afters I like.

WTF Moment: Concrete Chesterfield

If you have been reading Swoon Worthy for any length of time, you'll know I'm completely and utterly in love with my fabulous velvet Chesterfield sofa.  It was the most money we've ever spent on any one piece of furniture and every day I want to give it a little kiss and cuddle when I come in from a long hard day at work (of course, just after I do the same with W, I mean we don't want to play favourites here *cough*).

So why on earth would anyone want to buy one of these absolutely beautiful pieces in ummm...concrete?

Apparently, Selfridges will be carrying this delight in their summer range.  And it will only cost you £4,000 for the privilege of this pile-inducing wonder.

Just don't try to fluff those sagging seat cushions.

Your wtf moment brought to you from here.

More Tweaking: Guest Bedroom Bargains

I introduced you to my guest bedroom in a recent post where I've made a few bargain changes (totalling less than £100) to take the room from "a room with a bed and a desk" to a "guest bedroom with a desk" and eventually hope to take it to "guest bedroom slash home office".  If you missed that post, you can read about that here.

Well, I'm still in the process of "zhushing up" the room and I've picked up a couple of budget bits to help continue to pull together the colour scheme of bright cherry red and brilliant white.

First up, I swapped out the frames on the prints I purchased from Etsy.

Here's how they looked when I showed them to you the first time...

I realised when I took the pictures how plain the prints looked in white frames against the white walls.  I was considering painting the frames red until I popped into Sainsburys at lunchtime the other day and they had these bright red glossy pretties on clearance for £3.50 each.  Bargain!

Cute no?  Now the frames really pop against the white background.  It makes me very happy.

I also found these little sweeties on eBay for less than £5 for a set of 2. 

So at that bargain price, I had to get two sets of course.  Well, it would have been rude not to.

At the moment, they look a bit bare but I plan on hanging a little sign saying 'welcome' or 'make yourself at home' or something along those lines from the hooks but leave a couple bare so that guests can still hang their things on them.  Practical and pretty?  Why I don't mind if I do, thank you.

I also got a couple more fat quarters of fabric from eBay and made 2 cushion covers this weekend to replace the dark red ones I had on the bed. 

As I seem to be unintentionally creating a bird theme here (with my peacock print, my birdie chair and my birdie hooks), I figured I might as well add some chickens to the mix! Here's a sneak peak of one of the fabrics (the white fabric with the red chickens).  Bless, don't they look all happy??  They are obviously free-range birds!

via

Hopefully I'll get the rest of the bits for the last cushion cover this week and will be able to share my trio of patterns with you.

I decided that I am quite enjoying the mix of fabrics and patterns in this room and so I'm just going to continue going with that.  I think perhaps because it is a monochrome scheme, it doesn't end up looking too busy.  One other thing I'm conscious of is that this is a white room with red accents, rather than a red and white room.  Does that make sense?  The red can be quite overpowering so I think using it in small doses against a substantially larger base of white makes it seem less "Valentine's Day Gone Wrong" and more fresh and bright.  That's my theory anyway.

Hmmm what else?  Oooh speaking of patterns, I think I found my wallpaper for the room!  It's funny because I had a sample of this paper from a number of months ago and dismissed it for being too subtle but now that the other changes in the room have taken place, I realised it's actually perfect.  Again, you'll see it's a much smaller percentage of red against a mostly white background.  It's exactly what I've been looking for and I am hopeful it'll work well in the room.

via

Isn't it funny how rooms evolve after a while?  And how one thing may not work right away but later on you realise it was actually right all along?  Wanna hear the best part?  Only £19.99 per roll!  Get in!

There's also a little project I'll be doing involving a can of red spray paint.  No, vandalism is not in my future so you don't have to worry about that.  Stay tuned...

With regard to the 'desk' side of the room (which I haven't shown you yet because it's still kind of ugly), I have started to devise a cunning plan for the desk (currently a bland laminate but entirely practical number) but I need to talk W around on that one first!  I also need to look at replacing the big black comfortable-but-falling-to-bits-and-doesn't-match-my-colour-scheme chair we've got going on in there.  That one may take more convincing.  More on that later...

So, I feel like the room is coming together now.  Sometimes I actually just go in and look at it because the bright cheery colour makes me smile.  Am I the only sad one who does that?  C'mon, tell me that I'm not because I reckon Pablo thinks I'm a little mad.   Sometimes he follows me into the room (he does this sometimes, just follows me around) and I just stand there, looking and dreaming of what else I'm going to do, and he'll look up at me and meow as if to say, 'What ARE you doing?'  Yeah, when your pets start to question your sanity, it's never a good thing.

All other images my own.

New Heights: Adventures in Ripping Down the Kitchen Ceiling

I mentioned in this post that we'd made the rather delicious discovery that our short, stout, boxy kitchen had a false ceiling and as the kitchen was our next big project, we figured we might as well remove it to gain those extra precious inches in room height before we began tackling all the other work.

Well, while I was at work on Friday, W (who had taken the day off specifically for this purpose and it had nothing at all to do with horse racing on the television *cough*) took the false ceiling down.  The actual process of taking it down was a lot easier than we'd imagined which was a good thing.  The whole thing only took a few hours (the mess and dust it created, on the other hand, continues to be a constant battle).

As a reminder, here's what it looked like before we began work.

Here's the first hole.

And here's what it looked like in process.  You'll see there was a wood frame that held up the plaster board and fabulously groovy swirly artex - or else what we thought was artex - decorating the ceiling above the false one.

W realised it wasn't artex at all.  It was actually plaster.  And it could be removed - whilst creating the most INCREDIBLE mess - very easily. So that came down as well.  In for a penny, in for a pound as they say.

This is what we are now left with.

I know it's incredibly difficult to show in a tiny picture what a MASSIVE difference to the room these extra 22.5cm (9") has made.  The room has gone from feeling quite clausterphobic to a rather nice airy space.  It's added almost 3 square metres of space to the room and considering this is an English kitchen, where space is normally at a premium, we're over the moon.  It also now seems to flow with the rest of the house where we enjoy healthy 9ft ceiling heights.

And just for a bit of side-by-side comparison, I cobbled this one together from a couple different images so that you could compare like-for-like.

The difference is quite noticeable above the clock and blind.

The other discovery was that there was still a working light in the centre of the room.  We won't be keeping this but for now, it means there's a light source until we can put up the new pendant lights.

There's so much more to be done here obviously.  We will be putting new plaster board up and skimming the entire ceiling along with the area just below, blending the top 9" of the wall with the rest of it.

Because the current ceiling isn't in great condition and is a bit crumbly, we've had to use expanding foam along one of the walls to stop rubble from falling from the ceiling every time we walked around upstairs.  The dust is continuing to settle literally so it's a constant battle to keep the counters free of dust and flaking paint.  Not the kind of thing you want in your breakfast cereal.

So, next weekend, we'll get the plaster board up so that the kitchen will be usable again but in the meantime, we've been able to utilise the dining room for the items that would normally be on the counter top.  So far, so good and the disruption hasn't been too bad.

In fact, to make myself feel considerably better about the mess, I bought some lovely roses for my dining table, just to give me something extra pretty to look at. It's all about balance, people.

Ya know, I have to tell you while we're looking now at pretty things, I'm so excited about what lay ahead.  About the changes we are looking forward to for the kitchen.  I said to W last night, "This is proper, grown up DIY now!!" and he agreed.  I mean, sure, we've done plenty of painting and decorating, we even tackled replacing and refinishing flooring by ourselves, but this?  This for us is more like the big leagues.  This is proper renovation, something to sink our teeth into!

So very much to come in this room and this is just the very first wee step we've taken.  We are not rich nor do we have a huge pot of money for this project.  It's going to be done as absolutely as much as possible by ourselves to save money.  I'm in digital marketing, W is an automotive paint sprayer.  We don't come from construction or architectural or interior design backgrounds.  We both work full time so any work will be done at the weekends and where possible, in the evenings after our work day.

Lovely as it would be, we don't know any amazing plumbers or electricians or plasterers that are going to do us favours.  It's a learning process and it's an adventure.  I know lots of bloggers take on these kinds of jobs so it's probably no big deal to anyone else.  But knowing that we're tackling this completely by ourselves, that we're willing to make mistakes and have successes and be able to stand back at the end of all this knowing that WE did it will be so pride-inducing and I can't begin to describe how cool that is.

And I know this isn't a sexy post and there's no 'before and after' like we all love but this is real life.  And I'll be blogging about this in 'real time'. So yeah, I just want to say a big thank you for joining us in our little adventure.  It's going to be very cool to share the process with you. 

 

All images my own.