interior design | A Crafty Chai

Tag: interior design

08
Jan
2015

Redecorating my Home Office

At the end of the summer last year, my partner and I swapped rooms for our home office. This meant that we both needed to redecorate. As I had more stuff/junk, we decided to do mine first. It took us ages, for a number of reasons but we finally finished it before Christmas and I’m really happy with the way things turned out.

Our house is over 150 years old and it’s had a lot of DIY done to it over the years, some good, some bad, some very, very ugly. (Artex, I’m looking at you). All of this means that every bit of work we do on our house causes us a real headache and generally takes twice as long as it should.

In my office, we took down part of a built in cupboard to make way for some shelving and to increase the space in the room. We repainted the walls, ceiling and woodwork, including the remaining built in cupboards and we swapped the curtains for a new blind.

One wall was in a bit of a mess. It was the original wall and was pretty uneven. We probably should’ve had the walls replastered, but as we were on a budget, we decided to try the Polycell Smoothover instead. It’s not an easy task, but it is definitely worth it. While it isn’t as good as having the wall plastered, it is a lot quicker and easier. While stripping the wallpaper, part of the plasterwork came off the chimney breast, right down to the brick work underneath. To repair it, we used the Polycell Deep Gap Polyfilla. We didn’t do anything fancy to it, other than layer up the Polyfilla. It worked a treat and we were able to finish it off quite nicely, without any fancy tools. Then it came time to paint. We repainted half the room and then I decided that I didn’t like it. It was too blue and I wanted a grey colour. In the end, I went for Dulux Night Jewels 5 and I love it! It’s really calming. We painted the woodwork using Milk White and it really compliments the grey.

One thing I did learn, after painting the entire room using a satin paint, is that if your walls have imperfections, then you should you use matt paint as it’ll help to hide the imperfections. To be honest, there are so many imperfections in the walls that I don’t think any type of paint would hide them!

Fortunately, the office my partner now uses doesn’t need this type of work, as we had the walls replastered when we moved in, though we’re not redecorating that just yet. I need to get over doing my office! Do you find redecorating completely exhausting? Or is that just me?!

04
Nov
2014

Tuesday Treat – Great Interior Design Challenge

categories: Tuesday Treat

Last week saw the return of a TV gem – Great Interior Design Challenge. I stumbled across series 1 earlier in the year and it’s brilliant. It’s like Great British Bake Off crossed with Changing Rooms. It’s basically a number of different amateur interior designers who are given a challenge to redecorate a room, according to the client brief, and have two and a half days in which to complete the challenge.

For those of us who can remember Changing Rooms, it’s so much better than that. The aim is for the clients to be happy with the end result, rather than devastate them. (Anyone remember in Changing Rooms when they painted the floor and it wouldn’t dry?!) It’s really inspirational too. Having been in our house for nearly 5 years now, we’re still redecorating. At the moment, we’re working on my study, as my partner and I swapped rooms. Then we need to do his study, our hideously awful bedroom and the kitchen. As with everything, it’s all done on a budget, which is fun so I’m watching the #GIDC for inspiration!

21
May
2014

#BEDM – Workspace

categories: Blog Everyday in May

My workspace has quite a few functions: Its my office, my craft room, my gym and more often than not, a bit of a dumping ground. I would love for it to be more organised and have a space for everything and I’m constantly looking for ways to make everything fit within it. I’m failing at this at the moment so have started a Workspace Pinterest board to see if I can some ideas and inspiration. Here’s a few of my favourites.

Found via Pinterest // Original Source Unknown

I love the prints and simplicity of this workspace. Having inspiration is so important in a workspace and I love the typography in these.

Found via Pinterest // Original Source

Now this is what I’m talking about! Check out all the organisation here. Little drawers for paper, pens, odds and ends, shelves and cups for other bits and pieces. Perfection!

Found via Pinterest // Original Source

I love having the space to spread out when I’m working. Paper, pens, post-its etc are always all over the place, as well as having somewhere for my computer, my phone and my Filofax. Ideally, I’d also love somewhere for my sewing machine and other bits and pieces that I use to make things.

What does your workspace look like? What’s the most important feature for you?

14
May
2014

#BEDM – Home Sweet Home

categories: Blog Everyday in May, Home & Garden

I’ve written a few posts about the ongoing changes we’re making to our home. It’s still a work in progress – does that ever change? The list of things we need to do is quite overwhelming and with a very depleted budget, we’re kind of stagnating and ignoring all the jobs. We’ll probably tackle the garden next, when we’ve got a few good weather weekends. We’ve spent soooooooo long on the garden that we want to just get some plants in and leave it the hell alone. It’s sucking out my will to live! We still only have one plant in it and it wasn’t something we put in. It’s much easier to make small, but noticeable changes to the house. For instance, we switched our lounge around a bit by bringing in the big wingback chair from my room and moving the bookcase out. It’s practically transformed the lounge. Love when that happens, and it didn’t cost a penny! Some of our other most recent changes have been born out of necessity.

This littls unassuming spice rack has made a massive difference in our teeny, tiny kitchen. Previous to this, our spices were just in the cupboard, taking up a lot of space and it wasn’t easy to find them. With the resurgence of cooking from scratch, being able to see what spices we’ve got, what we need to order and which ones are going out of date, has been essential. We desperately needed a better way to store our spices. So one Sunday, we headed to Yarnton Antiques, one of my favourite places, and spent about 15 minutes, looking and picking up these few things. That’s all the time it took and boy, where we pleased with our purchases! This little spice rack cost about £12. It looks like a chap put it together in his garage for his wife to store her spices and for that reason, it reminds me of my grandad, because that’s the kind of thing he’d have done for my nana. It’s absolutely perfect, fits in the kitchen a treat and is ideal for our little collection of spices.

We’ve also been looking for something to store our kindling in. We’ve had it in a basket, but this doesn’t work well, as you get bits all over the floor. Plus we wanted something fire resistant, as we keep it all quite close to the wood burner. We found this old bread tin, and again, it was really reasonable. I’ve wanted something like this for ages, but there’s just no room for it in our kitchen and we don’t eat that much bread, but the kindling fits in perfectly so we’ve got it in the lounge, ready for next winter.

We also spied this little unassuming box. I had a peek inside and found these old spoons. They were on sale for £2.50. It would have been a crime to leave them there, so they were added to the pile, knowing it’d take me about 10 minutes to clean them up when I got home.

It didn’t take long to get them clean. I used some silver polish and my silver cloth to get them spruced up and they are gorgeous! They’ve got some markings on the back, which is on my list to research to see if we’ve picked up something really ancient. Either way, we’ve got a lovely set of spoons for a really good bargain.

It’s not very often I can walk into a shop and find three things that I really want/need, find them within budget and agree with my OH that they’re the right thing. They’re just perfect for our little house!

Have you found any great things for your home recently? Any planting tips for the garden or good places to find antique bargains?