Work in Progress - Our Garden and Dining Room

This months' Work in Progress is a bit of a mammoth project, and has been 'in progress' since we moved into this house nearly 2 years ago. We are lucky enough to have a large open plan kitchen and dining room with big glass doors into the garden - this room was the clincher for me when we were viewing the house. When the sun shines the space looks fantastic and it's such a wonderful room to spend time in (which is good as we all often hang out here!)

Photo credit: Zoopla

However, things are rarely perfect and although the developer who updated the house did put this extension in he also ripped out the garden too. I have seen old property details and there was a lovely mature garden at the rear bursting with plants. Unfortunately we were left with a very dull rectangular garden with poorly laid turf, a dominating new fence, a small patio and no plants whatsoever!

Photo credit: Zoopla

Last year I made a start on the planting and even grew some tomatoes & runner beans but there is still a lot to do. While the plants take their time to establish I thought I could at least inject a bit of colour myself. The fences provide a backdrop to all the plants so I decided to paint them with Cuprinol 'Wild Thyme' from the Garden Shades range - it's actually more teal than grey as it looks in the photos below. There are so many shades in the DIY shop these days that it's really easy to liven up your fences (& protect them at the same time.)

I've also mentioned before that our dining room is a bit of a white cube. Great as a blank canvas but it just doesn't feel homely enough to me. I want to use some bright colour in here and I thought it would make sense if I used similar colours in the garden and the dining room; connecting inside and outside.

I bought this poster from a flea market years ago and it now hangs near the patio doors so using this as a starting point I echoed the pink to give a new lease of life to our old garden bench and table (Sweet Sundae from Cuprinol)

 

I got carried away with 'finishing' this little corner of the patio so stayed up late on Sunday night to sew up a cushion pad for the bench (I know I can't be the only one who does this?!) Its made using Cloud 9 Geocentric Circles in Teal which is an organic canvas fabric (from my stash) and simply quilted using 2 layers of left over batting. It's hardwearing and comfy but still easy to roll up small for storage when not in use, and can be washed too. I think I'm going to make some more of these for our hallway bench indoors - so much quicker than a boxed cushion cover. I made new envelope cushion covers using more fabric from the stash and the finishing touch was to hang the white ball tea-light holders (from Habitat about 6 years ago) on the fence.

There's still lots to do - paint the coloured feature wall in the dining room, finally get round to putting the fronts on the shelves I made (about a 18 months ago!), tend the garden and find a solution to the clothes horse that seems to be permanently up by the back doors! But we're getting there... Hopefully I'll be able to post some pictures of the finished dining room and garden soon.

What projects have you got on the go this month? I'd love to see so please leave a link in the comments below or you can tweet me a picture @thisiswiss, and we can encourage each other to finish them!

Kid's Bedroom Makeover Challenge!

We moved house at the end of the summer last year, and although one of the reasons we liked this house is that it didn't need any DIY doing to it, it is a bit of a white box. Well, a white and magnolia box. A white and magnolia box with stained pine woodwork. Grrrr!

Now I don't mean to offend anyone who likes magnolia or wood finishes, but it's really not for us. So I've had 'decorate entire house' on my To Do list for a while now! We've obviously put our furniture in, and (nearly) unpacked all the boxes. The dining room had a mini-makeover but we've not got round to some real decorating. Until now!

Wiss has been asking for a yellow bedroom since we moved in. He loves yellow. And getting up early! We have had enough of early morning calls (pre-6am, sometimes pre-5am!) so we thought that if we gave Wiss a 'big boys' bedroom then he may stay in his bed like a 'big boy'. Yes, we are that desperate!

Wiss went off to Nanny and Grandad's for the weekend on Saturday morning and the secret Changing Rooms challenge began! This is how the room looked before:

 

Nothing that awful but generally very bland, nothing exciting and too many toys! Our requirements were: yellow, more storage, less toys out, and just generally cooler! I also wanted to use things that we had already if possible, rather than buying more stuff. Lots of things that Wiss had in his nursery at the old house had been in storage so we rediscovered those, along with old shelves we no longer needed.

On Saturday we cleared the room and painted. The woodwork had two coats of undercoat and a top coat of white gloss. This made me so happy! The magnolia walls were repainted white :) and then the chimney breast became the feature wall (Crown Funky range 'Taxi'). Sunday was spent attaching the new light fittings. (I guess we/you should use a qualified electrician to do tricky stuff like this. We didn't though.) Then we had to put up all the shelves for storage before putting the room back together and adding the finishing touches.

I tweeted pictures and updates as we went along using the hashtag 'changingrooms' and I received so many lovely comments, and questions about certain things I thought I'd detail everything here. Just in case you were interested too.

This is what the room looks like now:

• Kids chair and road rug (hung over radiator) from Ikea
• Grey Blackout blind from Ikea too
• Inside of window recess painted dark grey (Urban Obsession from Dulux)
 

• 'Buzz' moon pendant light from Habitat (bought about 5 years ago)
• Metal Bus Eireann sign from Crystal Palace Antiques
• Perspex storage unit (on the wall) from Ardingly Antiques Fair (think it's from an old sweet shop originally)
• 'Star' wall light fitting from John Lewis, painted to match wall
• Vintage school desks from Ardingly bought for £20
  
  • Brilliant Lego storage head from Amazon 
  • Patchwork quilt made by me (with help from Ray Stitch)
  • Red bunting made by my mum for Wiss's birth
    
• Perspex Rocket on wall (I hope Wiss will make some flames to add to this)
• Multi-Storey Doll's House (which will have a blog post of it's own soon!)
  
• Robot Wall sticker around the light switch from Not on the High Street
• Unseen, but I covered the ceiling in 100 Glow in the Dark stars too

We were exhausted after a very busy couple of days, but couldn't wait to see Wiss's reaction. He was truly amazed and it was so sweet to see his face as he ran around the room looking at each bit in turn. It really did make it all worthwhile.

And I'm happy to report that on the first night in his 'big boy's room' Wiss stayed in his own bed all night and woke up at 7.05am! He could just have been exhausted by Grandad or maybe (fingers crossed) it may have worked. We'll see.....!