Our Home

In June 2024, we took the plunge and bought a 1886 Victorian terrace, since then we have slowly making it our own and rediscovering original features long since forgotten!

Living Room

Initially, we thought the living room would be a quick task, naive, I know now!

The first thing I did was paint the fireplace matte black. No one liked the idea, but all came around to the final product. We bought a great sofa… and then the chaos began… the ceiling above the bay window fell in. We found out why, got it fixed and then had the whole patched and the entire ceiling skimmed. Then, picking paint took about 3 months, with us eventually landing on Farrow & Ball Estate Sudbury Yellow. The carpet was pulled up, and it looked like luck was finally on our side when we found that the original floorboards are beautiful. It is still on the to-do list to get them sanded and stained.

Dining Room

On our very first viewing of the house, the previous owners told us they had been told by a carpet fitter that the original quarry tiles were still there and appeared to be in good nick. So as soon as our offer was accepted, we started researching the process of restoring them and thought we could box it off in a weekend. Oh, how wrong we were, 5 incredibly painful WEEKS later, we had the dining room floor of my dreams. It was all worth it in the end, but it was a lot of late nights and doubting every decision we have ever made. We painted first because we knew the carpet was going to the tip eventually.

Bathroom

The bathroom is probably the room I am the proudest of so far. It was the first room we tackled because after 11 years of renting, I couldn’t face a beige bathroom anymore. But we had just moved in, so the budget was tight, so after researching the best budget options, we landed on painting the tiles on the walls and vinyl stickers for the floor. In total, it cost around £200 and nearly 2 years later, everything still looks great!

The paint is from Rust-Oleum in the shade ‘My husband said no’, but my partner said yes! We did discover during the process that some of the tiles had been siliconed rather than grouted, and the ceiling had been painted a weird off grey/green, so that was painted white. We also removed the plastic bath panel and smiled at my step-dad to fix a wooden one, painted in the bathroom woodwork version of the tile paint.