So the decorations have been packed away leaving a pile of glitter and rather empty looking rooms. It’s always at this time of year that I want to totally redecorate our entire house. As we are not millionaires that’s really not possible, but there is a few rooms we can give a spruce up.

Working as an Interior Designer it is very easy to get caught up and want to keep changing the décor all the time. People always say to me “your home must look amazing” which can put immense pressure on having a home that looks like it is straight out of the pages of house and garden magazine. Unfortunately I don’t have the same budgets or the houses that most of my clients have.

Our house is a lovely fairly new built 3 bedroom house we have been living here for two years now. Previously we lived in a very small Victorian two bed (more like 1 and half bed) house that we loved but after 7 years living in very compact 3 rooms and no parking we were ready to move.

The one room we (I) really want to update is the living room. It’s a tricky rectangle shaped room with a  small bay window at one end. It is the walk way from the entrance hall through to our inner hall that leads to the WC, Kitchen, Dining and Conservatory. So a lot of the space is needed to keep the walk way free. It’s what we call the cosy room where we watch TV and have gas fire. The fireplace is a pretty awful faux oak looking, we painted it black last year in an attempt to make it look better but now it just looks too dark.

We changed the flooring recently from carpet that always looked grubby (from all the foot traffic and our two little dogs) to vinyl grey oak planks that are extremely hard wearing, it looks like real wood and is so easy to clean. So the list of things I want to change is:

1. Remove the dark feature wallpapered wall and replace with the David Hicks for GP & J Baker la fiorentina small dove grey wallpaper. It has a lovely texture, the grey tones are warm and work perfectly with our floor.

2. Change the fireplace. We are going to attempt to add some mouldings to the fireplace to give it some detail to make it look less flat. Then we will paint it probably in a soft grey.

3. Change the modern black lacquer drawer unit to a wooden sideboard I want to go with either a more mid century look or a vintage piece.

4. I would really like to change the sofa but this might be a stretch to far with our budget at the moment

I am going to take some before and after pictures and a list of sources.

Also next time I will also talk about the other projects I am hoping to do in the house