Honey I'm transforming our home

Given that I chose a career in marketing rather than a career in flipping houses, I didn't expect to be doing another of these blog posts so soon! But you know what they say, life is what happens when you're busy making other plans. So after getting with Ollie 2 days after buying my first house, and then selling it a year and a half later to move in with him, I've been a busy bee transforming another house into my/our home. 

Ollie's house was what can only be described as a blank canvas when I moved in (as you'll see), and this blog post is only showing the transformation from when I started living here. I've been transforming it for much longer than that, as he didn't have a desk, a bed with a headboard, a coffee table, curtains in the living room, a tumble dryer or a house number when I first started coming here! Thankfully, my beautiful house number box was fairly easy to change - I just prised off the old number tiles, varnished it in a darker shade and then added adhesive silver numbers (which I got from eBay).

The main key difference between transforming this house and my last one, was having to factor in someone else's opinion (shock horror) but I'm very lucky in the fact that Ollie let me have 99% of what I wanted anyway (the 1% being that he vetoed the Vogue print going on the wall so it's staying on the floor instead). The other main difference is that I wasn't starting from scratch this time and a lot of the furniture was obviously already chosen and in. Me and this black leather sofa in particular have a very love-hate relationship; only a man would choose a leather sofa as they have absolutely zero cosy value. But I'm learning to live with it! The positive though was that the big things were really the only things already in; all the finishing homely touches were still to be decided. So I started with a black, white and grey colour scheme and went with teal and burnt orange as asset colours, with lots of gold accessories (obsessed with gold at my last house, obsessed with gold at this house). The teal was a great choice not only because I love it, but because teal was one of my main colours at my last house, which means I was able to re-use a lot of my stuff. You'll notice as we go through that I've tried to repurpose as much as I can, and then sold or donated the bits that I couldn't find a home for (like my old sofas). Our living room is quite big and so we had a really big empty area near the window that needed filling. Having always wanted a window seat (I think due to the way they're romanticised in hollywood films), I placed my teal ottoman (made.com, previously in my dining room) under the window and then added a couple of burnt orange cushions; the small terracotta one was from George and the gold leopard print one was from Cult Furniture. I didn't initially plan on having quite so many cushions in the living room but burnt orange is a surprisingly hard colour to match so I kept buying them, deciding they didn't look right and then buying another. Lather, rinse, repeat. The cushions on the sofa were all actually from Shein, believe it or not, and were only about £2 each! Once I had my window seat in, it became a bit more of a "reading corner", with a beanbag (Dunelm, with cushion from Shein), artificial bamboo plant and bookcase behind the door (Ikea). I felt like the wall above it looked a little bare and I love this decorative shelf that I got from Etsy; both of the candles on it are also from Etsy, the plants are Ikea and the gold leopard is Dunelm. I also think that curtains are far homelier than blinds so I added the teal ones that used to be in my dining room, although they had to be shortened a lot for their new spot (Victorian houses have ceilings that are a hell of a lot higher than new builds). Over to the other end of the room, and again, there was previously emptiness. Enter me, and now one corner has artificial plants in tall black planters and the other is home to the decorative gold display stand that was previously at my house. I added lots of black and white ornaments, books and candles to tie it in with the rest of the room, and then finished off the gold thread by bringing the gold light fitting from my old living room. I also did a good job of repurposing not only things from my house, but things from other areas of this house. See if you can spot where these art prints were before; I reframed them in black and knew they'd work perfectly with the new living room colour scheme thanks to the splash of orange on them.

Into the kitchen-diner now and I'm going to tackle this in two halves as there's way too much to say in one go! The dining room is probably my favourite transformation of all. As you can see, it used to be home to a black Ikea dining set and that's it. Now, it's a teal and gold haven. I always loved my super opulent dining furniture, and so it was simply picked up and dropped in. Actually, it works even better in this house than my last one, as the room is more open and the chairs are much easier to move on a vinyl floor. The table was from Cult Furniture and the chairs were from Danetti, although that was nearly 2 years ago so I don't know if you can still get either now. Something else that was obviously coming with me was my bar! And I may be biased, but I think it's looking better (and more loaded) than ever. I've taken most of the glasses off it and kept it more for spirits and mixers and other bar paraphernalia; gin on the top, non-gin on the bottom. I actually tried the bar in a couple of different corners, and had it where the ladder shelf is for a while, but I think it works best where it is now as it's easier to get to and works well there height-wise. Only yesterday, it was perfectly finished off with two art prints that I'm obsessed with (gold frames re-used from my old dining room); the cocktail print was from We love prints and the Amalfi one was from Iamfy. The other corners of the dining room were filled with new bits! We had such a nightmare with the cabinet; this was third time lucky as we actually purchased 2 others before it, where one was cancelled (due to Brexit) and one just didn't arrive! Just when we were losing hope that we'd ever get one, this one turned up successfully and millimetre perfect. I love the wooden top as it matches the table nicely, and I added gold hexagon handles (rather than the silver ones it came with) that I got for a couple of pound on eBay. And as you can see, it's home to all things wine! Wine glasses, wine coolers, gold wine rack (VonShef) and even our wine stash. In the other corner, we added a white ladder shelving unit (Dunelm) and filled it with ornaments and plants that largely came from my old house but we also bought a couple of new bits. At one point, we had all of that luxury decor in and still just a hanging lightbulb so I was delighted when we got this gold hanging LED light fitted; not only is it the perfect light for doing my nails, but it also finishes off the room so beautifully.

On to the kitchen half of the room and most of the changes here have been practical ones. That is, apart from the very first thing I wanted to change about the house and the one that took me the longest to convince Ollie on; the gold handles. I love gold (as you can probably tell) and the silver vibe that previously inhabited the kitchen was doing nothing for me, especially once we'd got the dining room looking so opulent. While convincing Ollie had been the hard part, I expected fitting the handles to be the easy part. Wrong! They were from Handles4u and are lovely quality, but I hadn't counted on having to take a cupboard door off, investing in a new screwdriver and looking up the dishwasher fitting manual in order to fit the handle on the dishwasher! It was kind of a nightmare but well worth the effort as I'm so happy with the result. The handles were actually the last of a slow gold takeover; the kitchen roll holder, the fruit basket and the tap. Although I obviously love the look of the new sink and tap we had fitted, the decision to swap them was actually a practical one. The old sink was so shallow and the old tap so low that it was a logistical nightmare to fill the kettle, top up the Brita or wash a large pan! But with our new deep sink and swan-neck tap with pull-out spray, washing the pots is practically a dream. The new black sink was from Tap warehouse (£200ish) and the gold tap was from Home decorous (£100ish). Other practical changes in the kitchen included swapping the placement of the kettle and toaster so I could create a little "hot drinks station" (tiered stand complete with tiny jar of mini marshmallows for hot chocolates), getting a dual compartment bin (very exciting) and fitting a spice rack to the inside of the cupboard door. It literally had to be millimetre perfect in order to shut properly but luckily I knew just the man for the job (my dad is the very first person I call for any DIY that I don't want to risk attempting myself).

As you can see, the utility room was not massively utilised before. Now, it's filled with all the girly items that were part-and-parcel of me moving in; vases, decorative serving boards, gardening stuff - and tool kit! At fear of having you start to think we're alcoholics, this beer and wine fridge was one of those purchases that you don't know how you lived without it once you've bought it. It's a Russell Hobbs one and was a moving in gift from my grandma and it has the perfect set-up of racks and shelves to fit all our beer, wine, cider cans and cocktail mixers. Like I said before, I tried to repurpose as much as I could from my old house and so these rose gold baskets (that used to be in my bedroom) were lined with fabric (to hide the mess) and offered a great storage solution. I kept to the rose gold theme with rose gold glass jars for laundry stuff and rose gold handles for the doors (eBay).

It sounds crazy because it's literally a toilet but this is one of my favourite rooms in the house. Not because I'm a weirdo, but because this colour is simply so gorgeous. It's the Dulux Once in Mulberry Burst and it's such a rich colour; I love the way it's transformed the room. I added a gold hexagon mirror (a gift), a gold monkey towel ring (Dunelm) and a tiger art print from Iamfy. All of the prints in the house were bought unframed and then the frames purchased off eBay; I find that these art websites rip you right off for frames!

Upstairs now and first up is our bedroom! This bedroom has always been gorgeous as it's so big and has a nice layout, it just needed a woman's touch. The colour scheme so far was grey and white, and I added pink and navy into the mix which worked well because that was the colour scheme of my last bedroom, so a lot of stuff could be dropped straight in. Like my corner dressing table and gold and navy chair, which fit perfectly in the space (like within a centimetre of the window sill) and my pink ottoman stool, which just kind of fills the empty space near the wardrobes (it's not like we go and sit down there for no reason). Again, I think curtains belong in rooms like bedrooms and living rooms (blinds are for functional rooms like kitchens and bathrooms) so I added these dusky pink and gold ones that used to hang in my living room. The navy runner for the bed was a gift and all of the cushions were repurposed; half from my old bedroom and half from the old living room here. My favourite part about our bedroom though is the feature wall. It was one of the first things I did and I used Wilko paint in the shade After hours. I almost always opt for Wilko paint because it's great quality, reasonably priced and the colours are usually an equivalent to the Dulux range but the Wilko versions are normally richer and brighter. Once I had my statement wall, I added a white picture shelf which worked perfectly for all the art prints and made it so much easier to put them up, as opposed to trying to hang them straight. The star map was one I got made as an anniversary gift, the almost kiss was from Desenio, the leaf print was from Iamfy and the perfect match box was from Pretty average prints.

When it came to the en-suite, unless I was planning to rip the whole thing out and start again, there wasn't really much to be done. However, I still managed to give it a little makeover. Normally I'm a fan of white-washing but in this house, it felt a little more like white-drowning and so I was desperate to inject some colour into as many rooms as Ollie would let me. This wall was the third that I managed to convince him to let me paint and again I used a Wilko paint (always matt), this time in the shade English sage. I went with green because I already had the art print for in here in mind and I had done since I first saw an advert for it nearly a year ago (chase your dreams kids). Again, this beauty was from Iamfy.

Across the landing now and into our office, where you can see there have been a number of DRASTIC and RADICAL changes. I joke of course, it looks mostly the same. But we have cut down on storage a little to get rid of some of the drawers, and made it an office slash guest room. When we initially planned to buy a new house together, we were looking at 4 bedrooms so that we could have the set-up that we have now but with a guest room too. Turns out we didn't need it, as we managed to make this room work for both! The sofa bed was from made.com and again, it fits millimetre perfect. It even extends into a bed without having to move the drawers or anything, which is ideal. I love the dark blue colour and it's a cool cord fabric - I even managed to use it to rehome some of the old sofa cushions!

Again, there was white-drowning going on in the main bathroom and I knew it needed some colour adding pronto! I started off small with plants and candles, until I'd convinced Ollie to let me paint the fourth and most recent wall (I won't go as far to say last). Another lovely Wilko paint in here (this was only one coat with a couple of touch-ups round the window) in the colour Biscuit crunch. I decided not to go into the window cavity which I think was the right decision as it's kept it nice and bright. It was love at first sight for this Moroccan art print by Sabina Fenn - I absolutely love her style and could happily paste a number of her prints all over the wall. Instead, I managed to control myself and kept it to just this one from Iamfy. I have loved Moroccan influences in bathrooms though since before I even did my last house and I really wanted to add more of it this time. I love statement tiles but worried about how big of a job it would be to try and incorporate them; luckily, I found a shortcut. I created this little statement indented section by using tile decal stickers which I got on eBay. It was another perfect fit as well and I think it makes it look really beautiful - not bad for a £20 job eh? The final finishing touch that I'm super in love with is this wire 'Get naked' sign. I got it on Etsy and you can get them in all different words, wire colours and sizes. And if you choose to have it floating, it just comes with a bit of extra wire that you bend back and stick straight into the wall so there's no fixings!

You didn't think I'd move house without it meaning a bigger and better dressing room did you? Guys, I'm in love. Not only with Ollie for giving me such a beautiful dressing room, but with the room itself (for fairly obvious reasons). It's interesting doing up a house so soon after you've just done one, as you can immediately take on board the things you learned last time. Like in the kitchen, I no longer have so many things on display as they just get dirty (from cooking etc). And in my dressing room, I knew pretty early on that I wanted it all open-plan this time. Last time my plain white wardrobes effectively became the decor of the room and if it wasn't for my handbag wall, it would've been totally plain. This time, I allowed the clothes to be the decor. After measuring up the previously empty and unused second bedroom, I planned wardrobes for every available inch that they would go in. Another lesson I learnt last time is that pre-done wardrobes are a waste of money. It's much cheaper to buy the carcasses from Ikea and then create the rails/shelves that you want. I went with two full-length rail wardrobes on the left-hand side (for playsuits, dresses, jumpsuits and occasion wear) and then fitted drawers in the bottom of each one for underwear, tights, bikinis and pyjamas. I just bought the cheapest white drawers from Argos that would fit in the space and then kitted them out with cute gold t-bar handles from eBay. On the other side of the room, I created my own custom corner wardrobe, simply by pushing two normal wardrobes together (because corner wardrobes also waste a lot of space and are weirdly over-priced). I fitted the wardrobe that was half hidden with shelves, so that I could still easily access the things in the corner part; that's where I keep things I don't need very often (Christmas jumpers, holiday clothes and gym kit lol). On either side of the corner wardrobe, I went with double railed wardrobes for tops, skirts and trousers. Having previously always stored my trousers in full height wardrobes, these 5-trouser hangers have changed my life and are an amazing space-saver. I went with another shelved wardrobe to complete the set (for bodysuits, crop tops, roll necks and other foldable bits) and then filled the rest of that wall with accessories towers (they were originally CD towers and came from my old house), hat-holding heads and giant shoe rack. To the delight of everyone who ever visited my old house and experienced the struggle of trying to get into my dressing room with the shoe rack on the back of the door, this new shoe rack doesn't interfere with the door whatsoever! Every inch of space in my dressing room is accounted for, which means no gaps anywhere! As you can see, I've barely left enough of a gap to move around. So the gap in the corner between the two windows was filled with a double clothes rail for my coats (I had to buy a super heavy duty one after the first collapsed under the weight in half an hour) and the gap next to my door was filled with a jewellery storage stand. This was a great example of repurposing because this gold mirrored unit previously lived in my old living room but now it stores jewellery, I can see that's what it was always born to do. My favourite thing about my dressing room though is something that I've alwayyyyys wanted; a centre island. They seem to be super popular on pinterest but if you go to try and buy one, they seem pretty hard to find. So I simply created my own! I already had a dressing table unit from my old house that I was planning to keep, so I had the idea of standing it back-to-back with another unit to create my island. I then simply had to crawl through the entirety of white storage units on Google to try and find one with the same measurements as mine and I hit the jackpot with this grid unit from B&Q. I then just bought a white table top from Ikea and laid it on top! The cupboard/drawer side of the island is home to loads of my makeup, nail kit and other random crap, and the grid side of the island is my new handbag wall! On the top is all my acrylic makeup storage, perfumes and hollywood makeup mirror, which is easily the best thing I've bought all year. Obviously there are no plug sockets in the very centre of my room, but a rechargeable brick solves that problem just fine! The chair (Dunelm) is one that came with me from my last house and it definitely sees a lot more ass now that it's my makeup chair instead of just my dump-my-clothes-on-it chair (I mean, it still serves that purpose too of course). I finished the room with a few cute homely accessories on the window sills and I'm currently still toying with the idea of putting some artwork in here.

To say how much more liveable this one started out than when I started transforming my last house, it's still taken a surprising amount of work and time! But it's SO paid off, as we now have a home that we truly love. It just needed a woman's - this woman's - touch, to make a house a home. Next project; the garden!