DIY central - another weekend dedicated to the house

Since we have moved into our wonderful house, we seem to have become rather unexciting Londoners. Every weekend, we dedicate quite a bit of the time to making our house prettier, and when we do go out, it is my favourite subject to talk to anyone who will listen. The first big project was painting all of the rooms which we whizzed through over two weekends, and with a little help from my jet-lagged brother. We decided not to paint the hall and landing as the colour was neutral already and it seemed like quite a lot of effort! The three bedrooms and two downstairs rooms all got a splash of 'off white', with the little third bedroom (my den), having a delectable feature wall in a teal colour. I'm just so with the home decor fashions.

Since we have finished the painting, it has given us time to do some more exciting work on the house. First project was putting the dartboard up in the games room. You know you have too many rooms when you have a den and a games room! Part of my negotiations with D to secure full power over the third bedroom has resulted in him having full power over the dining (games) room as long as there is a table in there for dining purposes. He is currently ordering pictures for the wall (I fear we are going to have an Alex Ferguson poster...) and there is already a trophy shelf up to show off his sporting accolades. We went quite artsy with some shelving for the 'sports TV' by buying a cheap pine shelf and boring white brackets, but then staining the wood a darker colour and spraying the brackets blue to make them look rather funky. Photos to come once they are up on the wall!



My main project has been my curtain making, one room down (the smallest one), four rooms to go. It turns out that curtain making is quite time consuming and took me about five hours to make the pair. I chose a classy elephant design (rather than a childish elephant design) in neutral colours. I made up how to make them after having a look through a few tutorials, but am pretty pleased with the outcome; they hang well, slide across the rail smoothly and look pretty darn snazzy. Now I just need to get cracking on the second pair!

The most exciting development of the weekend has been knocking the board out that covered our living room fireplace and finding out what was behind it. There was a lot of dirt and dust, but also quite a cool exposed brickwork which will be a perfect backdrop to the artsy flower and candle set up I am planning. Now we just need to work out how to stop the drafts coming in before it is cold again!