We've been busy starting our new renovation project over the past couple of weeks, and it's a super exciting one - the nursery for our baby bee! It's not at all finished yet but the first stage, of getting the floorboards prepped and painted, is done so I wanted to share a tutorial. 

This room used to be a spare room, and we've never really done much with it. Just put carpet down, plastered and painted the walls cream after we'd moved in until we knew what to do with this room {and one day hoped that we'd be using it as a nursery}. I knew that I wanted painted white floors in here from the start as a base for the nursery {my Mum & Ben tried to convince me to stick with carpet as it would 'feel warmer' for a baby's room, but I just had this interior image of white floors and couldn't be budged - also lots of people have said how practical/wipeable floorboards are with young children, and we'll put a big rug down}. 

We have painted white floorboards in our bathroom and whenever I post a photo of them, I get asked about how we did it. We actually had a decorator do them for us so I didn't really ever get around to writing a full DIY post on them. This time, we've done it ourselves and thought I'd share the process step by step. 

I've always been a big lover of plantation shutters. The look that they give to a property, both inside and out, the privacy, the options to have just some of them open or to close out the world completely. Plus, that old Snow Patrol song 'crack the shutters open wide' is one that my husband & I always reference {it was a favourite of ours years back!} and so most mornings, whoever is the first one awake will shout 'crack the shutters open wide' before we even had shutters in our bedroom haha. One of those silly private jokes from years back that's become part of our daily life. We fitted shutters in our old house, a Victorian terrace which seemed made for them. But in this new house, other than our bathroom at the back of the house with a small, square window, we weren't sure if the shutters would work with the windows. The bedroom windows are such a big feature of the house that let in crazy amounts of light, would we be covering them up too much by fitting shutters? We decided that blinds were fine until we moved into this new bedroom this summer. In our old bedroom, I could get dressed without anybody seeing in, yet in our new bedroom, the floor level is that bit higher so you can't really get dressed {unless you had the blinds shut} without worrying that somebody from the street could see in...  Which is why I was thrilled when California Shutters got in touch to see if we'd like to work with them to fit shutters. YES PLEASE! 

Our master bedroom is finished! 2 and a bit years after getting the keys to our house, it's been stripped, plastered then panelled, with a staircase added up to an en-suite in the attic above. It's such a dream come true and I'm so, so happy that it's finished and we're able to move into here now. The full transformation below if you'd like to see...

Morning! So a couple of weeks ago, we had a very exciting photo-shoot at home for a large national magazine. I shared a few behind the scenes shots on Instagram but thought I'd give you a little more insight if you're interested?

I'd love to share some updates on our latest renovation project - you can see the first post talking about our plans & inspiration for it all here.

Hello! Sorry for the lack of blogging recently, it's been a crazy couple of weeks. We've just got back from a long weekend in Barcelona {more on that next week} and also my mac is in for repair needing a new hard drive, sobs! Blogging just isn't the same without it and takes me twice as long. Anyway, I wanted to share that today a mini house tour of ours is featured over on Keepmoat Homes inspiration section today {online here}

And also I never got round to finishing our Utility room makeover. When I last posted about it, way back at the end of May when summer was just beginning, the bare bones were in but nothing was quite finished. You can see that post where I left off here. Since then, it's all pretty much complete! I think the only thing we need now is a blind for the window and door. So this is part two with all the finishing off and some recent photos.

This post has been a longgg time coming but I finally sat down to go back through all the photos from the last few months, since May, with the kitchen being fitted. The last time I left you with a kitchen update was on this post {with all the painting/floor going down etc}. Since then, we've pretty much finished everything off. So this post is an update of all the finishing bits, starting with the kitchen herself being fitted! 

One of the big decisions in any renovation is heating. So many people these days seem to go for underfloor heating so as not to have to worry about taking up wall space with radiators. But we've never been a fan of underfloor heating. My parents have it and it seems to be either boiling hot or cold, it takes a while to respond so if you're too hot then it takes ages to cool down. We're not people for a boiling hot stuff house either. There's the risk of it going wrong too and you having to dig up your whole floor. Obviously a lot of people do like it, and I'm not saying not to go for it. In a lot of houses it's the right option and it would be lovely to have toasty warm feet {side note - it's not great for plants on the floor or any food, my parents can't put food christmas presents under the tree because the floor gets warm}. It's just we much prefer old fashioned central heating with thermostatic valves that are easy to control. We recently had Hive installed too which means we can control it from our phones and switch it on before we come home etc. But what I wanted to share today is our love for old fashioned radiators. 

When we first viewed our house, we instantly fell in love with the sweeping staircase, an original feature - over a couple of hundred of years old - that we couldn't wait to bring up to date a little. The staircase itself luckily was still in good condition, it just needed a little makeover. You'll see the lovely green carpet in the photos below that we instantly ripped off, planning a classic stair runner with rods instead.

We now have a kitchen sink, and worktops, and a shaker peg shelf that I've dreamed about forever! I'm so so happy that the kitchen is almost finished and before I start sorting through all the photos to write a post about the whole thing, I thought I'd share Ben's DIY shelf today which I feel really helps to finish the kitchen off. And it's also been one of the most requested posts through Instagram. He's made one for the utility too and I can't decide which is my favourite; in different colours and settings they look so different. You could use them for a million things, the kitchen shelf so far is more decorative whereas the utility is more utilitarian with brushes, colanders and towels hanging from it. I love that you can use both the top and the pegs and would look equally good in a child's bedroom or by a back door for coats etc. A how to guide below;