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Simple Tips For Making Your Bathroom Look More Expensive

April 24, 2017 by Bel

After the kitchen, the bathroom is probably the most expensive room in the home to fix up. A quick look online will show you exactly how much some people pay for their bathrooms, Are you in a budget and is looking to have small bathroom renovations? Then you must find a bathroom remodeling services company that can help you with lots of bathroom ideas such has lighting, color, height, reflectivity and many more.

But the honest truth is that you don’t need to splash out on a rain shower to make your bathroom look the part, with a frameless shower door or any of those high quality shower doors you will notice the difference. Look for some shell stone tile or marble flooring to have an stylish bathroom floor. If your renovation would affect the bathroom’s plumbing system, make sure to hire a plumbing services company to help make the necessary adjustments.

Take our bathroom, as the perfect example – it looked awful when we moved in, but I think we managed to do a pretty good job in the end. We also consider using an odor eliminator like toilet drops that has a clean, refreshing scents. With creative bathroom remodeling ideas– and a lot of hard work – you can turn the tiniest of dingy bathrooms into a beautiful place to relax.

Here’s a few tips that helped us improve our bathroom’s look by a significant amount.

Storage and Containers

You never see a plush, expensive bathroom full of clutter. So the first step is to ensure you have plenty of containers and cupboard space to put everything away when it isn’t in use. You could even go down the traditional route of keeping things in large glass jars or ceramic jugs rather than plastics – just keep them well out of the way of the kids!

A beautiful bathmat

You don’t have to spend a lot on bathmats – when they are brand new, they always look great. But let’s face it, in a busy household they tend to get pretty unkempt very quickly – and it has a serious impact on your bathroom. So, lose the Terry cloths and look for something a little more long-lasting. Persian or turkish rugs are a great substitute, and you don’t have to go too wild on size, and you will still benefit from a more sophisticated look.

Swap out your taps

I think a lot of people would love to splurge on something like a freestanding bath. But the reality for most households is that they are far too expensive to justify, and most bathrooms don’t have the room anyway. But you can make the most of your current tub by switching out the bath taps – and you can do the same for your sink, too. It makes such a difference to the style of the bathroom and is such a cheap way of getting an instant improvement.

Go big on mirrors and artwork

There are some spectacular and beautifully framed mirrors out there which you should invest in – they will give your bathroom and instant lift, no matter how dull or boring your tiles are. Look for best quality hollywood mirrors, HD Mirrors sell the best hollywood and illuminated led mirrors available on the market. You can also hang artwork or pictures – just make sure they are framed nice and tightly, so they don’t suffer from moisture leaking in. It adds a little personalisation to the bathroom, too, which, ultimately, is what separates a great bathroom from a standard one.

Improve the lighting

One final and easy fix for you is to include new lighting in your bath remodel. Try using spotlights in the bathroom, and you can even pick up chandeliers these days for a reasonable price – or create one yourself.

Set up some dimmer switches so that you can dim the lights for a nice, relaxing bath and you will enjoy your bathroom even more or simply add a yellow light fixture. Any thoughts to add? Let me know in the comments section!

If you are in Australia and is looking for bathroom renovators in Brisbane then Shane Rolfe Plumbing is one company you need to check out. With over 20 years of experience in bathroom, kitchen and laundry renovation you can’t go wrong with them.

Filed Under: promo Tagged With: artwork, bathmat, bathroom, decor, decorating, home improvements, house, interior design, lighting, mirrors, taps

March Round-up

April 11, 2016 by Bel

I thought that doing a monthly round-up would be easier than doing a weekly one but seems instead that months just escape me and I end up so late doing my round-up! It won’t be very accurate, but here is my March.

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Watching: Catching up on loads of TV in the evening, as we only did DIY in the day. I/We caught up on SHIELD, Agent Carter, Flash, Arrow, Legends of Tomorrow, Grimm, Dance Moms, The Walking Dead, NCIS, Blindspot, X-Files, Gotham, Catfish, The 100, Limitless, Ink Master, Casualty, Holby City and probably more that I don’t remember. I also got quite addicted to watching old episodes of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares USA.
Reading: Fantastic Mr Fox, Six Lies, Kingdom Keepers: Disney at Dawn, Fated,.
Sewing & Making (for Closet Geek): Several custom dresses with Disney fabric including; Inside Out, Jungle Book and Lion King. Also a Belle inspired dress and an Aurora inspired dress. An adult Alice in Wonderland dress. A Jessie Dress and Pinocchio outfit from my store listings. I made Aurora and Rapunzel bows on custom request too. Closet Geek was closed for 2 weeks for DIY though.

And in other news…
– Mum got back from New Zealand! After spending the whole of February away, it was really nice to have her back at the very beginning of March. I didn’t realise quite how much I missed her.
– Megan got accepted into her first choice for Secondary School. To be honest I had expected as much but considering 90% of her class/year at her school didn’t, it made me even more grateful. We took her out to dinner at NYC bar and grill to celebrate.
– World Book day was fun! Lily went as Harley Quinn and Megan went as Wenda from Where’s Wally/Waldo.
– Lily was in Shine assembly and it was also the last week for her teacher before going on maternity leave. It was a really sweet but sad moment in assembly and Lily even got to give Mrs Riley her leaving gift.
– Lily’s birthday happened! She turned 8 and honestly as usual, she just grew up overnight. We had a lovely day with birthday lunch out at Pizza Hut but relaxing for the most part. It’s always nice when a birthday falls at the weekend.
– It was a busy weekend with Lily’s birthday Saturday and then Mother’s Day on Sunday. It was lovely though and I was spoilt by the girls. I got a new Disney Tradition ornament and a new Disney Pop Funko too. We went out for lunch with my mum, my sister, my brother and his girlfriend and son too. It was nice to get together as a family.
– I finally edited the girls’ first YouTube video and it was pretty funny to watch. I have no idea when we’ll get around to doing another!
– Some MAJOR DIY took place in our house during March. We started with the kitchen floor on a day off but moved to finishing off the whole house during 10 days off that Chris had booked (and I closed Closet Geek).
– Chris’ birthday was mid-March. He’s way too laid back about doing anything on his bday so it was hard to figure out a fun day. In the end we played mini-golf in Sheffield and then went to Meadowhall where we shopped a bit and had Five Guys for dinner.
– Chris and I tried Cosmos for the first time. Cosmo is a chain restaurant of buffet food. However where most are Chinese and/or Indian, this one is sort of everything. You do still get Chinese and Indian but you also get English (like roast dinner stuff), Italian (like pizza and pasta), loads of nibbly bits like chips, onion rings, curly fries etc. Japanese (like Sushi) and so much more. On a lunchtime it’s £7.50 for as much as you want so it’s really not that bad.
– The girls broke up from school and we celebrated (as always) with Pizza Hut for dinner. It was nice as Chris was actually off work for a change so we all got to go together.
– We celebrated Easter at my brother’s house as it was also a birthday party for his twin boys. It was nice for the girls to get to spend time with their cousins and other kids their age – not to mention play out in the garden and have an easter egg hunt.
– I finished off the month feeling really ill. I totally burnt myself out with all the DIY and letting myself get tired. I was pretty ill for 2-3 days and then had a bad headache for another 1-2 after that. It sort of sucked after achieving so much with the house.

Looking forward to in April:
– Getting the house officially on the market was my main thing to look forward to in April. Since I’m late writing this post, this has actually already happened. We had the person around to take photos in early April, then the house went on the market and we got a copy of the brochure, then our “for sale” sign went up the very next day.
– Mum’s birthday. She’s actually away for her birthday (and I wish I was going to Storybrooke), but we’ll celebrate just beforehand I’m sure.
– Finding some time to work on new ideas for Closet Geek. After shutting the store for two weeks, it took about another week to get caught up. It’s been nice having the odd time here and there to try new projects and I hope to have some more this month.
– Time off with the girls. Most of Easter hols has been in April and as always I look forward to spending time with them. It’s funny how sad I feel when they go back now, rather than the relief I used to feel when they were smaller and more annoying!
– Honestly there isn’t much happening in April as far as I know so not much to look forward to!

Filed Under: monthly round up Tagged With: chris' birthday, cosmo, decorating, diy, Easter, Easter holidays, home improvements, Lily's birthday, March, mother's day, Pizza Hut, round up, school, secondary school, selling the house, Shine Assembly

DIY Disasters

April 1, 2016 by Bel

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!

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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.

 

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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.

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This was pretty much before we started…

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

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Until the plaster started falling off everywhere!

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

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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!

Filed Under: about me, promo Tagged With: decorating, diy, diy disasters, glossing, home improvements, interior design, moving house, our house, painting, plastering

Guest Post: Top Tips on Buying a Cheap Bed Frame Online

June 16, 2015 by Bel

The following tips have been provided to me by the mattress bloggers at www.cutpricemattresses.co.uk for helping you buy beds online.  They will help you to get it right the first time!

If you are in the market for a new bed frame, don’t make some of the silly mistakes that I made. Not only did I choose the wrong bed size, it was not a good fit for the room and I wound up having to pay to ship it back and reorder the right one. When you are ordering a bed frame online, you want to be certain you get it right the first time so that you don’t have to deal with the hassle and cost of returning it.

What Room is Your Bed Frame Going?

Consider the room that the bed frame will be placed. If your bedroom, you want a piece that will become the focal point of the room. If for a guest room, you can opt for a less fancy style. For my master bedroom I chose a bed frame that created a calming environment. Keep in mind the room the bed frame will be so you can price accordingly.

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Do You Have Enough Space?

Maybe you are like me, and you just bought a new mattress and need to get the bed frame to match. Problem for me was I purchased a frame for a queen mattress when we had just upgraded to a king. Slipped my mind, but this was a costly mistake. Be sure that you know exactly the size mattress you have that you need the frame for before pressing that order button.

Have a Budget in Mind?

The bed frames can range from cheap and inexpensive to extremely costly. The fancier design you fall in love with, the more expensive this purchase is going to be. Be sure to have a solid budget in mind, then shop within that budget to avoid going overboard and spending more than you had anticipated.

Is the Bed Frame Movable?

One thing that I completely overlooked when I bought my bed frame was how movable is the piece. Many of the larger bed frames will not disassemble into small pieces, so you had better be sure to measure doors and hallways to ensure it can make it to the room without incident. If your home is on the small size, consider a bed frame that has the ability to be taken apart. Consider a bed frame that has casters, this will make it much more easier to roll it around the room if you ever have to make decorative changes.

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As you know we have recently decorated our bedroom. Though we haven’t bought a new bed, we have needed to purchase a variety of other items. Living in Gainsborough and needing the items quicker than buying them online, we were fairly limited. However we sourced curtains from Argos, shelves from B&Q and new bedding from B&M Home. I can’t wait to share my new look bedroom with you soon!

Filed Under: promo Tagged With: bedding, bedroom, beds, curtains, decorating, home improvements, interior design, shelves

Hi, my name is Bel!


I’m a forty something, mother of two, self-confessed geek!

Here on my blog you’ll find;
books I’ve read, clothes I’ve made, movies I’ve watched, cakes I’ve baked, products I’ve tried, places I’ve been, pictures I’ve taken… plus lots and lots of DISNEY!!

I’m a lifestyle blogger – covering a little of everything I love <3

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