What's-Making-Me-Smile Wednesday

It's official!  In an attempt to get back on board with this blogging lark, I am now officially addicted to coming up with alliterative titles!  So as I missed out on Lakota's 'Ta-Dah Tuesday' by doing my 'Tuesday Try-Out' I had to come up with a fitting title for my intended post on our (so very nearly finished) bedroom.

But make me smile it does, every time I go in there.

There are no before photos.  Imagine grubby grey carpet, peach walls, cast-aside clothing and clutter and you'll not be far from the mark.  

But here it is now - shall I take you on a guided tour?

 

The wardrobe doors have had a lick of paint now.  When I started with the Annie Sloan 'Pure' last Tuesday, I almost immediately regretted it.  Maybe the 'orange' doors...

...weren't so bad after all, I thought, about two hours into the job and only about a quarter of the way through the first coat (which was clearly not going to be the last).

But I persevered, and although they are still short of a top coat, I do think that it was worth the effort (even if my wrist is still complaining about the task, a week later).

To the right as you go in is the bookshelf.

Wall colour - Calico from Wickes

I have tried to cut down on clutter by selecting just three things to have on its top...

...shoe stretchers I bought from Trixie of 'The Vintage Bothy', a tiny bobbin keeper from a vide-grenier a few years back, and a tin I acquired this summer at, needless to say, another vide-grenier.

Further over, I now have a mirror with a frame on it, which I got for a mere £15 at the charity shop where I volunteer.

Beside the bookshelves I have placed my wedding shoes.  Seemed silly to have them in a Tesco bag in the top of the wardrobe.

At the end of the bed is my chest of drawers, which was the first piece of furniture I ever bought.  It used to have lots of bits and pieces on it, but again I have tried to have less out.  

Mr U-t-B and I found the ewer and basin at a sale at Farnham's United Reformed Church.  It's probably not to everyone's taste, so it was going cheap, but it looks perfect next to the black and brass of the bedstead.

Beneath the chest of drawers is a little bit more unfinished-ness.  When we took the carpet up, we discovered that there were some Victorian tiles where the hearth would have been.  They had been painted over thickly with quarry-tile-red paint and most are in pieces, but three have survived whole and several others are more than half complete, so we will use these at the edge of the hearth, which shows as the chest of drawers is narrower. We just haven't got round to doing it yet.

 The bed, ah, the bed! 
I have always wanted an iron bed (must be the influence of 'Bedknobs and Broomsticks') and now I have one!  I had planned on getting plain white bedding from 'The White Company' but the set I wanted (Limousin) has been discontinued.  So the much cheaper Ikea bedding 'Birgit', which is lovely fine, 100% cotton, will do.  

Wallpaper - 'Pelham' by Sanderson in Ivory and Linen from John Lewis

I wanted to inject a bit of colour into the neutral scheme, and had been pondering the 'Heidi' quilt from 'Forever England' all summer, before finally succumbing to its charms last Monday.  It arrived the very next day - great service.

It is actually a single bedspread but it is really huge, enough to deliver an extra 2.5 tog when we need it (there's no heating in our bedroom, by choice, but sometimes you need that extra layer!)...

...and it is made up of some of my favourite types of fabric - checks, toiles, textured plains, florals, and velvet...

...with bits of appliqué...

...and a toile reverse...

Snuggly!

The other side of the bed is the alcove which I previously showed, Mr U-t-B's little chest of drawers, a laundry basket, and the magnificently-restored-to-their-former-glory sash windows!

We're short of curtains.  I have decided on the fabric, but need to measure up and order it.  With my teaching for the term beginning next week and continuing till mid-November, we may be watching the trees change colour as we wake each morning till they are bare!

It goes without saying that we didn't expect the job to take as long as it did, but, that said, we know we have done things 'properly' which will make decorating and upkeep easier in future.  

Mr U-t-B has already noticed a marked difference in his ability to wake up in the morning - so getting rid of the carpet seems to have had the desired effect on his dust allergy.  If it continues to improve, the tables might be reversed and he might start bringing me a cup of tea in bed each morning!

But probably the best thing for me is that I now have a decent sized wardrobe, with the rail going all the way across it, plus a drawer section and some sturdy boxes, all magnificently well-organised, a novel situation for me.  I may yet find a hitherto undiscovered interest in fashion and carefully planned outfits (but most likely I will stay as  lackadaisical as ever on this front!)

Nearly done!

After a couple of days' work on the windows, come yesterday afternoon, we were able to drag our mattress back into the bedroom and make up the bed, titivate and consider the joys of sleeping in our room again.  

Here are a few glimpses.

The black and yellow ewer and basin look more in keeping with the bed than my beloved Minton one, which I am now keeping safe in my sewing room.

My seasons cross-stitcheries have gone up...

A plump new duvet...

 There used to be a not-so-stylish (actually, not AT ALL stylish) tallboy in the alcove at the side of the bed, which had just been turned into a giant set of man-drawers by my other half.  With it now ejected from the bedroom, the alcove looked a little bare, so I arranged a few of Mr U-t-B's knick-knacks on the floor.  I thought this would be met with derision, but (step back in amazement) he likes it, and it means that no clutter-collecting piece of furniture or shelf is likely to go in there!

So all is calm and restful in the newly decorated room, but we now have to reclaim the rest of the house from the dust, debris and discarded tools that have landed in every nook and cranny!  

'Let's do the job properly'

The words (from Mr U-t-B) that filled me with horror this morning, when I was all ready for a sprint finish in the bedroom revamp race.

We'd achieved the sanded and varnished floorboards, going from this...

...through this (and a day and a half spent looking like extras from an episode of Dr Who in strange face masks)...

...to this...

And pasted,  papered  and painted walls to (near) perfection (even if the Sanderson's paper did run out  one-and-a-half inches short of the finish!)...

We'd even put the bed back together, and were thinking about dragging the mattress off the floor in my sewing room back into position, when the dreaded words were uttered.

'Let's do the job properly.  I think I'll sort the sashes out!'

So the sash that doesn't close properly because the weight is hanging in the wrong place, needing a wooden prop to keep it closed in the depths of winter, is to be tackled, along with the one that refuses to budge at all, and whilst we're at it, the outsides of the windows will be scrapped and made good.  This thoroughness is all very well but I was so looking to finish by lunchtime today!

I know I'll be glad in the end, but when you're ready for a sprint, hearing you have to do a marathon isn't very welcome!

Stripped and plastered

No, not a description of me the night before last

(my birthday - when actually I was tucked up under two blankets with nothing stronger than a weak cup of tea as we went out for a pub lunch and my tummy objected to something I ate...) 

but of the current state of our bedroom.

Stripped of the yucky grey carpet (this bit looks okay because it was under the bed.  The rest of it was flattened through 20+ years of being trodden on and had picked up lots of tea, coffee and food stains last year when Mr U-t-B was flat on his back in there for weeks on end with his slipped discs and I kept tripping over him or the mattress on the floor when adminstering to his nutritional needs!)...

Gone to make way for the floorboards, which, once sanded, we hope will be attractive, and cut down on Mr U-t-B's allergies (gosh - he sounds a right old crock, doesn't he?)

Stripped of the narrow pair of wardrobes that were built in the alcoves either side of the chimney breast, which allowed each of us two short rails running the opposite way to normal hanging rails for our clothes, and may well be to blame for the fact that neither of us would win any prizes in the sartorial elegance competition...

Gone to make way for a new, deeper pair of wardrobes, complete with Ikea metal frames and drawers and 'secret' extra storage behind the false wall we created rather than having the wardrobes stand proud of the chimney breast.

(Don't worry - the doors which we are too tight-fisted to change  thriftily re-using, will be painted!)

Stripped of the woodchip wallpaper on the ceiling (put up maybe thirty years ago to prevent the ceiling from coming down!)

Gone to make way for a new, plastered ceiling, ready now for coving...

And stripped of all vestiges of wallpaper, to make way for the Sanderson's one I finally chose and ordered last week...

All those deliberations on grey, eau-de-nil, green, red, and I went neutral in the end!

Big cheers for my clever, not-much-of-a-crock-at-all husband, for all his hard work so far!

Pictures from my scrapbook

My thoughts are turning towards a 'little' re-decorating project Mr U-t-B and I have in mind, so I have been hunting through my scrapbook of pictures cut from magazines for inspiration.

Although our room is neither likely to grace the pages of Country Living, Homes and Interiors, Ideal Home and the like, nor to achieve the look of sleek perfection in these shots, little bits from each one have been helping ideas form in my head of how I'd like our bedroom to look.

I love the iron and brass bed in this one, the seagrass flooring and the collection of framed samplers...

How lovely to have a sofa at the end of the bed, but if we did this, we'd have to climb over the chest of drawers to get to the far side of the room!

I love bergere style furniture, and this combination of neutrals looks very serene.  I love the tall lamps and the symmetrical arrangement, though this is impossible in our room - there's a short bit of wall on my side of the bed!

Not sure that Mr U-t-B would be delighted to have those trees, stars and birds dangling above his head as he slumbered, or digging into his shoulders when he sat up in bed!

I love this treatment above the headboard - maybe it's the little girl in me who thought she was a princess, crawling out - but again, it wouldn't work in our room, due to it's strange shape and alcoves.   I like the combination of floral and velvety quilts,  and the rich reds.

Another of those treatments - I like the toile lining of this one, and the fact that I can imagine being able to make this one (just not for this bedroom).  And another bergere bed - quite liking this dark, original version.  Sweet table beside the bed!

I love gingham, especially when it's red and combined with a floral.  In a magazine, I love the casual, unstructured blinds at this window, but I know in reality I'd be driven spare by them!   

Same bed as before, but this time with a more curvaceous bedside cabinet.  Pretty bedding, but not enough of it!

 

This one is the most achievable of the looks.

A pretty antique bedstead,

simple furniture

and an air of calm.

It's going to be a big job:

 wardrobes need enlarging, re-building and painting;

carpet needs ripping up, floorboards sanding, repairing and varnishing;

wallpaper needs stripping and replacing, woodwork to paint;

and that's just the start!

I'm working most of this month, but next month we want to crack on.  

There will be photos, but only once there are some 'after' ones to take attention away from the 'before' ones!

Sunday decorating

With Mr U-t-B off in Paris, it fell to Miss U-t-B and myself to finish the bedroom revamp we had unwittingly started when we got the new wardrobe/chest-of-drawers thingy last Monday.  

The bedroom was painted pale blue, dating from a brief phase Miss U-t-B went through when pink was a definite no-no.  But now pink is back in with her and she asked if she could please paint her bedroom her favourite colour.  I agreed to one wall, because, quite frankly, I was dreading all the upheaval that painting a whole room entails.  

We went to choose the paint and I was somewhat surprised to find that pink did not mean a delicate shade named something like 'Whisper of Pashmina', 'Fairy Dust', or 'Dreamtime'...

Image from www.pinkbedroomideas.com

...but something of a rather bolder nature, with a name like 'Shocking Pink', 'Raspberry Diva' or 'Sexy Pink', none of which I liked the sound of, for obvious reasons!  In the end, 'Raspberry Bellini' was settled upon as a lesser evil...(I'm hoping she doesn't know what they are!)

So it was that we began yesterday morning with this pale blue and rather shabby room, which we'd already stripped of shelves, pictures and paraphernalia...

...and ended with one stunningly pink wall (broken up by the wardrobe, it has grown on me already)...

...and then we got carried away and did the other walls anyway (and the woodwork, of course), 'Vanilla' (and white) this time...

 

 With the new skills I learnt when I impatiently created my workroom I managed to put up the hooks, mirror and pictures.  It now looks like a room that has half a chance of staying tidy!

Luckily the window treatment works well with the new colour scheme.  Here's what happened a few years back when we couldn't decide which of a particular Globaltex (now Clarke and Clarke) range we liked best...

Dress curtains in 'Dotty' and 'Tilly', blinds in 'Lulu Stripe'!