The last four years have been a blur of pregnancy and newborns. There’s been a lot of cleaning and decluttering going on (kids have so much stuff!) but we’ve not really done much in terms of decorating of our house.
Looking around my house, I realised that it is so boring and doesn’t really represent our personality at all. Everything is cream-coloured. Every piece of furniture we have was chosen because it was cheap, or would stand up to whatever the kids could throw at it.
Other than an impromptu porch makeover we did during lockdown, the only rooms in the house I’m happy with are the kids’ bedrooms, which we decorated especially for them before Ava came along last year.
I’m keen to strike a balance between quality and price. I love looking for bargains so I will be doing a lot of research to find good deals on furniture and decorative items. I have my eye on some beautiful lighting and rugs online so there are lots of options to get our home transformation underway.
We’ve decided to concentrate on three main areas that are crying out for a makeover.
Bedroom
We’re making a concerted effort to reclaim this space as our little oasis of calm away from the kids, we splashed out on a new Emma mattress at the beginning of the year (we’ll be reviewing that in a few weeks).
Again, the decor in there really dull. Plain walls, grey bedding, grey curtains. I think I was trying to strike a balance between something that both Scott and I would like and instead I seem to have ended up with a boring hotel room with absolutely no character. I’ve seen some great ideas on Wayfair and, of all places, Sainsbury’s. I’m leaning towards a really rich peacock green but I have a feeling I’ll need to talk Scott into that colour scheme.
Conservatory
This is the biggest wasted space in our house. It’s a good size conservatory but it’s completely useless for most of the year. It has one of those corrugated, plastic, flat roofs that are absolutely useless for anything other than keeping the rain out. It means it’s like an oven in the summer and freezing cold in winter. We’re investigating whether we should just replace the roof with something like an aluminium lantern roof, or get the entire thing replaced with a new conservatory or orangery.
At the moment, it’s an underused dumping ground with a criminally underused treadmill and a lot of baby items we’re trying to donate or sell. I’d still like to get some use out of it this summer so I’m going to be looking to give it a bit of a
makeover with some seating, rugs and cushions. It might be the only room in the house not covered in kids toys.
Living Room
This is the room in most need of an update, as it’s the one we spend the most time in. The beige nightmare continues, and we’ve made it look even more boring with our old brown leather sofas. The sofas themselves are really good quality, we paid quite a lot of money for them, but that was about 10 years ago and even though they’re still in good condition, they just aren’t really us anymore.
The rest of the room is just toys and toy storage. We don’t have a second reception room so we need to find ways of hiding toys so that we can turn the space into something we can enjoy when the kids aren’t there.
I’m also really looking forward to being able to deep clean everything and start from scratch in that respect. I feel that no matter how much everyday cleaning and housework I do, the house constantly feels like it’s cluttered and untidy. With two small kids, it’s also really difficult to keep on top of the ground in food, mountains of toys and handprints on almost every surface. As we makeover each space, we’ll clean and declutter as we go, hopefully having less mess and being able to clean up more easily.
Needless to say, there are many Pinterest boards set up for inspiration. I don’t think I have a natural eye for interior design like some people seem to have, so I really need to find images and videos to give me ideas. It’s just a case of narrowing down the look we want and then getting creative to make it happen. Watch this space!
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