My Flat in Progress: March 2017

Time for another DIY update!

In March my flat took two steps forwards and one step back, as we ticked a whole bunch of DIY jobs off the list but also uncovered some new ones that needed doing - which was, as I'm sure you can imagine, rather frustrating.

We swapped the bright pink blind in the kitchen for some plain but functional curtains, plus voiles for privacy (because if I can see into the kitchens of the houses across the way they can definitely see into mine).

The curtains were a great find, really thick and cheap as chips as they'd been discontinued and heavily discounted. We hung them up quickly without taking the time to properly pull the cords and I am slightly embarrassed to admit that a year later this is a task that remains undone! I shall have to add that to my To Do list.

The purple blind in the spare room got replaced with lovely grey curtains and more voiles (which had been sticking out from below the curtains like this for a whole year until writing this blog post shamed me into finally turning them up)...

 

... and we took down the old curtain track from the living room bay window to give it a good scrub (which it very much needed!) so we could save a few quid and avoid buying a new one.

 

After sanding and filling them in February, we painted the window frames in the living room a lovely fresh gloss white which made them look so good that I still actively enjoy dusting them (this probably makes me a total weirdo, doesn't it?).

Elsewhere we put up new smoke alarms and carbon monoxide alarms, cleaned doors and scrubbed windows, and I got a new (actually waterproof) shower curtain (after discovering, via puddles on the bathroom floor after long showers, that my previously purchased shower curtain was only "water resistant").

Juggling work and life and DIY continued to be a bit chaotic, with the spare bed under a dustsheet...

 

... the landing full of craft supplies...

 

... boxes piling up in my bedroom...

 

... and DIY detritus everywhere.

Running my business was also still an interesting challenge, as my work and my home renovation competed for time, space and daylight. It led to some funny moments though, like the morning when I photographed one project while my dad was sitting on the floor next to me painting skirting boards, each of us carefully trying not to bump into the other!

As well as painting the skirting boards in the living room, we painted over the replastered areas of the living room walls (see February's post for in-progress pics), began painting the wall surrounding the window... and discovered a whole other section of wall in need of some TLC.

Then (most frustratingly) we made the error of saying "all we need to do now is paint the skirting boards and we'll be able to get carpet down in the spare room!" and immediately discovered more plaster in need of repair.

Working on a big project like this - doing a bit here and a bit there and finding new tasks to add to your list along the way - it can sometimes feel like you're not making any progress at all. But slowly, gradually, you're moving towards the finish line... and looking back at these photos makes me realise how far we've come already!

I'll be blogging about the rest of our Spring 2017 progress sometime soon. In the meantime, follow the links to catch up with December & January and February.

My Flat in Progress: December & January

A couple of weeks before Christmas I made a big change: I moved across the country (to the seaside!) and bought a flat. Since then I've been busy with lots of DIY and new-home admin and cleaning... as well as buying what feels like half the contents of our local branch of B&Q! I'm incredibly lucky to have my parents helping me out, gifting me their time and expertise and giving me lifts to the shops, but there's still a lot to do between us.

As this is going to be such a big ongoing project in my life for a while, I thought it might be nice to do an occasional blog post about how my flat is progressing. I've been taking lots of photos of all the changes we're making and I thought it might be fun to share some of them - I hope you'll enjoy following along in the coming months.

Moving day: using a box as a makeshift table for our first cups of tea!

The first of what will no doubt be many bits of flatpack furniture from IKEA (I love IKEA).

I shared this pic a few days after I moved in because it made me laugh that I had hardly any furniture and no fridge or cooker but I did have a big pile of handmade blankets. Priorities. I'm moving all my boxes and the few bits of furniture I own gradually, so I can live out of part of the flat while decorating the other rooms.

In the first few weeks after moving in we did lots of cleaning and I bought what felt like all the things: everything from paintbrushes to curtains to an ironing board to sandpaper to a plug for the bathroom sink.

I won't bore you with the full list (it's a very, very long one!) but I also bought a new thermostat (wired in by my dad, what a star), a fridge/freezer (and a cooker! hurrah!), some super energy-efficient LED lightbulbs (which also look much nicer than those old long ones), and some moisture-absorbing thingummies to help prevent damp (weird looking but very effective).

Mostly though I have bought DIY equipment, which is starting to take over the place.

The flat has some lovely old features, like the doors...

... and some less lovely newer features! Yes, that is an iron mark on the carpet. Luckily it's a carpet I was planning on replacing anyway.

My mum has been gradually painting the living room white - she is a whizz with a paintbrush and is happy to paint pretty much anything as long as you keep her well-supplied with cups of tea. We're cheating a bit by painting over the wallpaper in the living room instead of stripping it but after several coats it looks pretty good.

It's amazing how much lighter and bigger the room looks replacing the light grey with brilliant white. It all looks very bare at the moment but this is a blank canvas for all my colourful stuff, not the beginnings of a new minimalist lifestyle. I'm quite excited about the possibilities of those alcoves!

We've also started prepping to decorate the spare room: filling and sanding the walls and replacing the wall vent.

We've made lots of little changes too, including: updating the light fittings and adding simple white shades; putting up a new white curtain rail, some thick curtains and some sheer voiles in the bedroom; giving the radiator in the living room a fresh coat of paint (and cleaning inside and behind it too - those things trap so much dust!); and moving one of the bathroom mirrors to a wall with better light.

Oh, and I'm not going to show you a photo of my new loo seat but: I got a new loo seat! I never thought buying a loo seat would make me happy, but it totally did! We also put up a shower rail in the bathroom, bought a new shower curtain which turned out to not be entirely waterproof (not great), took down an old cabinet, and painted over the lilac bathroom walls with more white paint.

Not bad for a month and a half, right?

365 / 228 - Sailboats and Cupcakes

Last night I watch some episodes of Doctor Who (very excited about the new series!) and made sailboats and cupcakes...
The little seagulls were my mother's suggestion. My mother is not only good at suggesting things like that, she is also a tea-fuelled painting machine! This is very lucky as the bathroom we're painting is large (almost as big as my previous flat, haha), none of the walls are flat (very old house) and the room is full of fiddly bits, weird doors, edges, pipes, all kinds of funny things to paint very very slowly... but it's pretty much finished now, hurrah:
The white looks lovely and crisp against the light wedgwood blue (it is a wedgwood blue, I promise! the photo isn't great) - how I thought it would in my head (phew) and perhaps even better. For my first ever bit of decorating it has gone quite well, I think. Now if only we can get rid of that awful frilly lightshade! It looks like the skirts of those frilly women people put over their loo rool and it is sort of welded onto the fitting having been there for (literally) decades. It will not budge. I may throw a small party to celebrate when we finally manage to get rid of it!

I am of course now itching to paint everything in the house, and am already casting my eyes over aspirational design blogs and delicious shops like H is for Home for just the right accessories for my dream retro-modern look... Shopping aside, an important part of this look is having much less junk than I do now: so I am doing my best to spring clean, giving things away and swapping them via the UK Etsy swap group. It's great clearing stuff out and knowing it's going to a new life in another crafty home! Ooh, and thinking of swapping things, before I sign off I must show you the truly delightful bird brooch I got in a trade from fellow Etsian Guerilla Embroidery:
I can't wait for the warmer weather so I can wear it out on my spring jacket. Too awesome for words.

365 / 222 - Hundreds of Circles

I was a bit sleepy yesterday and spent the whole evening curled up on the sofa watching videos, and cutting out teeny felt circles from my stash of felt scraps...
... colour therapy at its finest! In other colour-related news, I bought some delicious plants yesterday to add a bit more colour to our balcony and am most annoyed at the rain we're having today cos I can't get outside and plant them... plus: we're busy picking paint colours, starting with a blue for the bathroom. The bathroom has a blue carpet, so it's going to be blue walls to match. Test patches are drying as I type, and so far we're leaning towards this one, the imaginatively titled "blue sky":
Not too dark, not too pale, looks half-decent with the carpet, etc etc. I rather liked the look of this one... .... but it ends up darker than that and we definitely want the whole room painted one colour, it could be quite oppressive (though it would make a lovely and chic accent colour). Named "stormy sky" it may have similar effects on the emotions as real life stormy weather, and paint colours that seem likely to cause Seasonal Affective Disorder are probably a bad idea, haha. Also the boyfriend thinks it rather revolting and has vetoed it completely! Hopefully we'll have some sunny painting-friendly weather sometime soon - the bathroom does look rather funny at the moment covered in blue patches.