DIY Disasters

To be perfectly honest, until this last week, our house has pretty much been one big DIY DISASTER! I met my current partner about three and a half years ago and since me and the girls lived in a rented house and he owned his own, we all decided to move into his house. To say it was a wreck, is really an understatement. He’d bought it as a project house but sadly hadn’t really gotten very far. He was also a guy, living alone – so without being too sexist, it didn’t have much interior design!

Before moving in, we tackled the loft, the spare bedroom and the lounge. The loft was really just an easy place to start and we took it from the horrible black you can see in the picture, to wallpapered white, to pale blue. This was the first time Chris or I had wallpapered and it was definitely an experience!

Next was the green room – which we turned pink. It was the first time ever that we’d lived in a house that was owned, so giving the girls a pink room was really their dream. I wanted them to feel at home in this house which definitely wasn’t homely and I wanted them to feel comfortable with my new partner. When we finished it was pretty good, though I did make a bit of a disaster by slitting the carpet in a fairly obvious spot! To clean it, I used any all these 15 different chemicals to treat a large variety of stains.

 

In association with HMC Furniture UK I was asked to share my biggest DIY Disaster and in the spirit of April Fool’s Day, this seemed like a great idea! Until this house, my biggest faux pas when it came to DIY, was probably some shelves that I once put up (they were in a cellar and were meant to house alcohol). Sadly they came down within a few weeks and when they did there was a lot of broken glass and wasted liquid! However since living here, I can honestly say its been disaster after disaster!

If I had to sum it up to just one though, it would definitely be decorating the lounge. As you probably saw above, our lounge used to be red. Chris had his TV on the wall, dark black curtains and it just wasn’t my style at all. Instead we painted the walls a sort of stone colour, took down the tv, lessened the black and brought splashes of the red in with curtains and cushions. I was pretty pleased with the finished room. However the process of getting there was definitely interesting.

This was pretty much before we started…

There were some areas with loose plaster – in one corner and just behind the sofa. No biggie right?

Until the plaster started falling off everywhere!

Luckily, Chris was pretty handy with the plaster, but what a disaster!

And don’t even get me started on the kitchen… or our bedroom ceiling. I can’t even tell you how many issues we’ve had! However as you know, this last two weeks we’ve been working on getting all our DIY up to scratch! I can’t wait to share it with you next week!