PROJECT ONE - ORGANISING TOY STORAGE

I'm spending 14 weeks trying to complete 14 projects that we had started and never finished (spending as little money as possible) - this is project no.1

Although we're planning a bigger upgrade for the Trysil dressers in our living-dining room I wanted to make some quick updates to make them look and function a little better.

When we assmbled the drawers we just chucked the toys in without much organisation and it was hard for the girls to put their stuff away so that they could easily find everything again and it ended up looking like this

Time to organise!

I love the simple design of these drawers but I wasn't so hot for the grey wood effect veneer around the top and bottom of the exterior and on the bottom of each drawer.

I started by adding some washi tape - I tried gold and silver and decided on gold - it was so easy because the tape was almost the exactly the right width and I only used one roll of tape for both dressers...win!

For the bottom of the drawers I added some simple wrapping paper that the girls liked (it was £1.50 from saisburys) and attached it with Photomount.

To organise the drawers I used a mix of fabric boxes from Ikea and DIY cardboard boxes that I made from some old kraft paper files using this tutorial.

I also added a big basket I got when we first moved from Homesence for soft toys (it also hides our wireless router) and another one from Ikea to hold all the pictures the girls make until I can sort and store them.

I added a simple cardboard box for the kids drawing paper (I'd love to upgrade it for a wooden or metal one down the line) a lamp that we had on hold for our master bedroom, a marble box holding crayons and a framed picture of Misha's to the top of the dresser. I also added a little bowl for change - I find pennies everywhere so I like to have somewhere to drop them in each room (I would love to move the radiator from the adjacent wall so the dressers could be opposite the fireplace one day - then we could style them with some oversized art and a big lamp).

It makes a big difference for the girls when everything has it's place - it makes tidy-up time so much less stressful for all of us - it's something I hear all the time, and really it's a no-brainer, but I'm always surprised at how much easier 'a place for everything and everything in it's place' makes life!

Because the living-dining room is our only living space I love that when the kids are in bed the toys can be tidied away out of sight - so much better than the befores!

There are a few rouge toys that still don't have a home but 90% of the girls toys live in these drawers and 90% of the time toys end up back where they belong - and I'm loving those numbers.

For this project I used - wrapping paper, skubb boxes and washi tape that I had previously purchased for this project - and kraft paper folders, Photomount and PVA glue that I had on hand - so the cost of this project on the day was - £0 - yay! 1 down, 13 to go.

I LOVE DINING

Not long ago I was planning a dining area that looked like this

but in reality it was looking like this

We got rid of the old sofa and camp tables and for a while we lived with it all empty

It was a pretty awesome dance party/lego city space but we took a trip to Ikea and purchased a table, two dressers and some chairs - and spent a romantic evening doing this 

and now it looks way more like a dining area...yay!

I remember when we used to go to Ikea and imagine what it would be like buying furniture for our house - it still feels so crazy that we're living the dream and doing it for real- it still hasn't sunk in yet!

The table is great - I love the simple style and it can seat 8 people cozy-squwushed-up style when it is small and around 12 when it's extended. I've always been drawn to dark wood but I'm really loving the lighter tones - and because it's solid wood we can paint or stain it later if we want.  

We bought the chairs knowing that we'll upgrade when we've got the money. Our perfect chairs are these ones from Marks and Spencer but at over £200 each they are way out of our budget - so we're planning on getting these ones from Ikea and using this tutorial to make some more kid friendly covers. When we upgrade the foldable ones we've got now will be great for extra seating when we have guests. 

We're also using some metal stools I bought from a junk shop a couple years ago - I paid £40 for three of them for our old house and I still love them (I've seen similar ones here)

At over £1000 the Westelm dresser in our moodboard is a total dream item! We bought two Trysil 3 drawer chests and put them right next to each other.

We're planning on upgrading them one day either by hacking it to look like the wood tiled one (like this) or maybe just by adding a new top and hardware. But for now it's working great for holding the girls toys - and looking way better than the old plastic box set up we had before

The next things on the list in here are refinishing the floor, adding some curtains and deciding what to do with the fireplace (you can see it peaking out in some of the pictures at the top of this post - it's just an unfinished hole at the moment and we don't know whether to block it up, add a surround or just tidy it up and fill it with wood or candles) and I'm excited to start styling with art, lamps, flowers and books - but for now I'm just so happy to have a place we can sit and eat a meal together with our family and friends...100% good times!

DINING ROOM PLANS

Getting our new sofa has me itching to start on the other side of the room! The long living-dining room takes up around three quarters of our ground floor and is our only living space - so this room has to function as many things - play room, dining room, den, formal sitting room, craft room, extra guest room and office. Although part of me dreams of a bigger house with a designated room for everything, a much bigger part of me is really happy that this room forces us to be together and, because we want to have an un-cluttered and relaxing look, forces us to pair down and only keep what we need.

The dining half of the room especially has to work hard. We need easy to access and maintain toy and kids craft storage - and be set up for easy clearing and cleaning after meals and playing. We want it to work for cozy family dinners and big party meals and be a practical space for work and meetings.  

rug (no longer available, similar here)- light shade - console - dining table - chair

We're hoping to store all the kids toys and craft supplies in a console...right now our toy storage looks like this

and I'm so looking forward to getting everything organised and out of site! We didn't have much toy storage in our old house - we kept most of them in our old sofa foot stool so when we moved we bought plastic boxes to use until we knew what we wanted long term (we're planning to use the boxes for loft storage when they're finished with down here). We'll have to have a big donation trip but having a system that makes it easier for the girls to access their toys will hopefully mean that they can easily reach all of the toys that we do keep.

  

We want to keep this room looking cohesive as a whole so we're planning to keep some repeating elements from the sofa side of the room.

We'd love to bring in Persian rugs for both areas and stick to the same mix of wood tones, neutrals and bright whites. We're thinking a traditional table with more a more modern console and chairs will hopefully create a nice balance and not make the super-modern sofa feel out of place.

Our old house didn't have a dining space at all so I'm so excited that soon we'll be able to have big messy kids painting sessions, serve over-night guests breakfast pancakes and have romantic dinners around a big table...I love food so I think having a dining table is going to make me really happy!

MY FAVOURITE GREY AND A NEW SOFA

Our new sofa is here! YYYYAAAAAEEEEHHHHH!

But before it arrived we painted the walls with a mix of Dulux Natural Hessian and Polished Pebble.

We had been searching for a warm grey and found the perfect colour from Farrow and Ball - Ammonite - but at over £100 for enough paint for the whole room we decided it was just too expensive. So we tried out mixing light grey and light beige paints in equal amounts and it worked perfectly. We bought them in a 2 for £25 sale at B&Q so enough paint for the room - with plenty left for touch ups - ran us £50.

For the tester we tried out with the sofa fabric we had mixed equal amounts of each colour but when we painted a whole wall I felt like it was reading a little too beige - so I mixed in another 2 liters of the old living room paint (it was a 50/50 mix of Wickes Nickle and Pure Brilliant White and almost exactly the same colour as Polished Pebble) - so it ended up being close to a mix of 3 parts Polished Pebble to 2 parts Natural Hessian. It turned out a really neutral and warm grey - I think it looks similar to Benjamin Moore Revere Pewter. It changes with the light and sometimes looks pure grey, sometimes greige and even sometimes a little green. It instantly made the room feel warmer and cozier and I think it's going to be a great background for whatever we bring into the room - I love how it turned out! 

We also gave all the trim a fresh coat of Colours Everywhere Satin in Pure Brilliant White - my go-to white for everything. 

The paint was dry just in time for the sofa delivery and it took us about 2 hours to create this monster cardboard pile 

and this

Yay! It's just as big and cozy as we remembered it from the store. The colour is neutral and modern but not too dark or cold and I really like how it works with the walls

The corner seat is super comfy and my new sweet spot for movie watching

We still need to add some throw cushions and maybe change the legs (we're thinking of trying these but these wooden ones look great too)

As you can see the next big job in here is finishing the floor (we're planning to install dark wood flooring through out the house one day but until them we are working on painting all the old floorboards white) - they're unfinished and looking pretty grimy right now.

We swapped the room around so the couch is at the back of the room and the dining area is at the front. We're not sure if it will be a permanent layout but so far I'm liking it this way. We want to make some big changes in here one day - opening up walls, knocking out chimney breasts and lengthening windows - so who knows where the layout will go in here.

Full disclosure - the dining side of the room looks like this:

not too much dining going on right now! 

We still have a long way to go until this room is finished but already it feels so much more like home - it's the perfect sofa for a night of Modern Family, Mac & Cheese and getting cozy with the Face - 100% home. 

LIVING ROOM PLANS

Our living-dining room is the biggest space in our house and it's where we relax, eat and play.

You can see from the floor plan that it's long and narrow and closed off from the rest of the house - we'd love to open it up with some wide doorways between the hall and the kitchen one day, and maybe a big square arch between the two sides of the room to define the living and eating areas - but because the walls in our house are solid brick it's going to be a big job that we need to save up for. 

I was having a hard time visualizing where I wanted the living/dining room to go, it was such a huge, blank room and we knew that we'd be swapping out our old sofa, foot stool and TV stand (we didn't have a dining area in our old house so we don't have any dining furniture) - we were starting 100% from scratch. But after we ordered our new sectional it became a little easier -  just having one definite item really made it so much easier to imagine the different ways the room could look. I pulled together all the things I knew we definitely wanted to use on the sofa side of the room to make a really simple mood board

The little fabric swatch is Svanby grey for the new sofa, the paint chip is a 50/50 mix of Dulux Natural Hessian and Dulux Polished Pebble, the basket weave is a hand-me-down foot stool that my auntie gave us a while back and the two blankets are both old from Homesense.

Here's what I'm imagining:

Lots of texture and lots of cozy (always!), lots of neutrals, whites and wood tones, very slick and masculine but layered with lots of softer, more feminine accents. Growing up all my favourite houses to visit were full of persian rugs so I'd love to incorporate one in here. It's a long way from where the room is right now

Not so slick! But still progress from where we started

We've already removed the carpet, removed the fireplace and picture rail, changed the chandelier style fittings for these and these from Ikea, removed the textured wall paper, temporarily painted the walls with Wickes Nickle (mixed 50/50 with pure brilliant white to take it down to half strength - but you can see that we've already started to prep for new paint), and changed the vertical blinds for these from ebay (I'm planning on layering them like this). One day we'd love to remove the popcorn ceiling, lengthen the window, widen the door way, install dark engineered wood floors and maybe even remove the chimney breasts.

It will be a little while before we can save up for the other big items for this room but we're all prepped for the new wall colour and I want to try and Ana White a thinner TV unit (Anna White can be a verb right?) so fingers crossed I'll have some updates soon!