So I thought I better show you what we've started on here at Home Love. Like I say, we've been in just over 3 weeks now and we've managed to re-paint the entrance hallway, stairwell and landing, the front lounge room, the dining area and small sun room. Not forgetting the powder room and the upstairs bathroom too. There is still so much to do!
I thought I'd start by showing you our entrance hall. The walls were painted in a custard coloured cream, which was by no means offensive but just needed a fresh breath of air injected into it. As the house is very light and airy as it is I decided to go for a gorgeous chalky white coloured paint with a washable matt finish.
We gather from what we can see here that the previous owner was a bit of a wanna-be DIYer. Nothing has been finished or prepared correctly or for longevity so every job we tackle takes us 10 times as long to finish as we are going back over work that has already been done to a very poor standard.
So when we started with the entrance hall we had to remove a dado rail wallpaper freeze that had been painted over with the existing custard colour. It involved alot of soaking and scrapping to remove the boarder. To paint over the walls that had so many gashes and chips out of them, took a good 3 coats of paint.
Once we had the walls sorted, we went back and sanded most of the woodwork. We still have to do all the existing door frames and doors, but we did all the raw wood like the skirting boards and dado rail. The I painted them all in a the same paint that I used on the powder room wooden walls. It's a low sheen wipeable wood paint in Brilliant white. It looks really great against the chalky grey white walls.

Our lounge room comes off the main hallway- being a 70's house it has 'feature' glass panels. This is the custard colour paint the walls were to start with.

The wooden dado rail. (AND very funny light fitting, which we have since taken down).

The glass front door and wooden built in cabinet to house the phone cords and broadband modem etc.

Like with the powder room, we painted everything in site- well almost. Still have to do the stair balustrade. The little cabinet has a matching one up near the ceiling above that houses our fuse box. After painting them white I thought they needed a little something so I bought two lovely glass handles to replace the old ones.

Do you like my 'home sweet home' sign there on the wall? It's not even going there I was just seeing what it looked like against the freshly painted walls. It's pressed tin and I bought it at the local florist here in Cellbridge called Absolutely Fabulous Flowers. I think I may put it near my kitchen door that leads to the side of our yard. Not sure yet, but cute all the same.

The old carpet was ripped off these stairs the first chance Mr Home Love had, he was delighted with himself as the carpet had a real odour. He threw it into the skip we had out the front and was impressed at the wooded floor underneath.

View from the front door, straight through to the back kitchen window that overlooks the yard.

The old carpet was a very dark green colour. This is a 'before' photo if ever I came across one!

The underlay beneath the carpet even had large stains on it...wonder what that could have been?

The upstairs landing once all the carpet was removed. Not in that bad of a condition but needs a good sand.

The stairs before Mr Home Love removed the carpet grips off every riser!

All in all the hallway, stairway and landing took a full weekend to paint but it was so worth it as the house feels so much fresher when you enter the front door!

Improvement? I think so!!!

Jane xxx