Making a Chalet Bungalow a Home

Firstly, I love our house - well chalet bungalow to be precise! We have done a lot of work since picking up the keys back in November last year to put our stamp on it. Most work so far has been cosmetic but we are now starting work on some bigger and meatier projects - posts on which to follow.

The living room and bedroom were the first two priorities:

Living Room - Before

Living Room - before

Living Room - work in progress

Living Room - work in progress

Living Room - work in progress

Living room - finished 

Living room - personal touches - guitars (including our wedload one), drinks cabinet, and nice big mirror

Bedroom - Before

Before - Estate Agent brochure picture of the bedroom

Bedroom - work in progress - reading the instructions for my first time wallpapering

Bedroom - work in progress - edging

Bedroom - finished feature wall (pattern matching is the hardest thing EVER!)

Bedroom - finished - we moved the feature wall so the bed now looks out towards the window

The kitchen just needed a lick of paint to make it more us:

Kitchen before - very vanilla

Kitchen before

Kitchen in progress - from yellow to grey

Kitchen after - excited foxes

Kitchen - finished - cool greys

Kitchen - finished - lots of cook books!

As you may be aware pink is not my colour and we had 3 rooms that were pink. And not just pink walls - pink carpets too! The upstairs rooms were easier to transform:

Office - Before - Super pink

Office - After - muted grey tones

Guest room - before - another super pink room

Guest room - before

Guest bedroom - after

Guest bedroom - after (still a work in process - we hope to build a bed at some point to replace the airbed)

Downstairs though I had an inkling that there might be gold under the bright pink carpet. I wasn't wrong:

Downstairs room - before, after an Ikea delivery - very pink carpet!

Downstairs room - pulling back the pink carpet

Downstairs room - wood floor discovered!

This led to one of the bigger projects we had to undertake - sanding and staining the floor, so we got some professionals in to do it.

Despite having to deal with a water feature in the room thanks to some previous shoddy work (whoever put the floor boards back after installing the heating failed to mark where the pipes were and put a huge screw through the pipe which was then sealed through pressure - taking in out resulted in some hurried re-screwing and locating the stop cock) we were really pleased with the finished floor.

In progress - damaged water pipes

Floor taken back to it's original colour

Close up of the floor showing the amazing patterns in the wood following staining

Finished floor

Finished room

Next project was one for Andy - sanding and varnishing the front door (he had been waiting for good weather for months in order to do it).

Front door - before

Front door finished and restored

Now we are starting on the bigger projects - namely the garden but also what will become my craft room/spare office. Oh and the garage too. Still so much to do!