If you follow me on Instagram then you may have noticed that we've started a new renovation. Since we bought our house almost 2 years ago, it feels like we've never been far from dust, visits to a builders merchants or a {Farrow & Ball} paint chart. You can see our previous renovations in the archives here and here, we literally stripped everything back to start again. Last year we finished the downstairs with a kitchen extension and having thought I'd recovered mentally we decided it was about time to finish the upstairs off.


I think I've touched before on the fact that our house is Grade II listed and so any plans that we have have to first get past the conservation officer. After lots of hard work on my husband's part & 10 months going backwards and forth we were allowed to extend the ground floor of our house to build the kitchen on the back. As such, we have the dream downstairs space that we've always wanted for a long term home but the upstairs has always needed some improvement bedroom/layout wise. The house is 3 beds as it is with a landing study, a bathroom & separate toilet. We're still hoping that one day we can extend out on top of the kitchen to add an extra bedroom, and ideally bathroom but we're still battling planning for that {the appeal that we have in the system currently can take up to 9 months!}

Whilst we're more than happy with our current bedroom {here}, for future proofing and adding value to the house we've wanted another upstairs bathroom. Because we don't know when/if we'll get permission to go out the back, Ben came up with the idea of creating an en-suite bathroom in one side of the loft space with a staircase down into the new master bedroom. So our current bedroom will turn into a guest room/one day perhaps a nursery, then we'll move into the biggest {and sunniest} bedroom with the en-suite above. The other bedroom will remain as a guest bedroom/dressing room.

I'm really excited to create the two new spaces. The bedroom that we're converting is the sunniest room in the house with windows on two sides and the sunrise views in the morning are really pretty & flood the room with light.

We're planning a wall of wardrobes on the right hand side as you come in, with smart square, Victorian style, panelled doors. And then we'll carry on the panelling behind the bed up to the staircase. The bed will be on the back wall and I'm planning to have wall-lights out of the panelling. I still need to find a headboard I really love and some bedsides. Because we need lots of storage we'll have to find a bed with a divan base with drawers in. I think, again for future proofing, we'll go for a super-king bed this time {more room for starfishing!}.

I haven't decided how we'll dress the windows, I'm tempted by shutters but I think I want to wait until it's all finished to get a feel for the room first. And will putting shutters on these windows mean that we'll have to add them to the other 2 windows at the front of the house where they wouldn't sit quite as well in the other rooms? We'll definitely have blinds. And we'll fit column radiators under the windows similar to the ones we have elsewhere in the house. I want it to feel hotel style but also relaxed if that makes sense? There's a corner cupboard in there already which we'll shelve out for storage and hang a TV on the back of the door to open at night to watch.

I think colour wise I want to stick to {predictable, I know} grey & white just to create a calm space. I know that panelling looks amazing with dark colours but I don't think I want that kind of dark, moody feel for our bedroom and I think with the amount of sunlight in here, it wouldn't feel right. So light it will be, but I don't want it as light as our current Blackened. I think more of a mid rich grey? 50 shades springs to mind. The hunt for the perfect grey continues! There are original floorboards in here that we had sanded a while back so we'll keep these as they are.

The loft bathroom will be in the eaves with a velux {hopefully two but that's another story...} and just room for a toilet, sink unit & bath. The restricted head height means that we can't have a stand up shower in there. It will be small, but still a useable space and perfect for just the two of us. It's a bonus bathroom I guess. We've chosen nearly everything for the bathroom but I'll keep some of it secret for now. I'm really excited by it though and I'm in love with the floor tiles! We're currently working out the best option for underfloor heating up there as with the tiles I think it would feel too cold underfoot. The walls will be panelled up there.

The velux is in already and I really love the view out over the rooftops. It's an old part of our village and an angle I'd never seen before!

I'm still battling Ben over staircases. As usual, our battles go something like this... I see a photo of something I love. Convince myself that this will be the only option. Show Ben and he points out why it won't work with the shape of the roof/size of the room/head height/conservation restrictions, insert as appropriate. We then go round in circles until we find something we both agree on. But in my head we'll have a painted wooden staircase without much detail, and a painted stair runner going up the middle.

So that's pretty much where we're at so far. Have I made any sense? I feel like I'm rambling on. We don't know exactly when it will be finished, there's no deadline and this time around Ben is a main man short {our very special Vaughan has cancer so we don't know when he'll be back} so it's definitely slower progress than usual as Ben manages some other projects at the same time. But that's fine I keep telling myself. We'll get there. I'll one day have a finished, dust free house again! Until then, I'll keep you updated on the progress {and my moaning no doubt ha}.

The room before - 
When we first bought the house it looked like this...