Category Archives: Before & After

Home tour ~ Bathroom

Home tour ~ Bathroom-5

We are about to start a big renovation project in our home. Walls will be coming down, floors will get replaced and I will be saying farewell to that awful chip wood wall paper. I wanted to share these home tour pics for a while now so it’s probably best to start with the smallest room in the house: bathroom. Our small, cozy, vintage, avocado green bathroom.  Some call it vintage but let be honest it’s puke. This was never my favorite room and it was the first one to go.

Home tour ~ Bathroom-4

 As you can see I tried to make it homey by adding some greenish pastel floor rugs together with extra soft Egyptian cotton towels from John Lewis. I’ve thrown in a few ornaments from around the world; like these orange & purple Buddha’s from Burma & Maria Guadalupe statue from Mexico.  A few frames around are handovers and mostly car both  items.

Home tour ~ Bathroom-1 - Copy

Metal cabinet was sourced in a small vintage shop based in Bourne End, it was on sale together with the towel rail aka wooden duckegg ladder. I think we paid £80 for the lot.

Home tour ~ Bathroom-3 - Copy

I bought my duck shower curtain from Homebase. The quality was catastrophic and it was the first thing that we binned. The loops started tearing down after a few months of use and by that time it was way too late to claim any refund.

Home tour ~ Bathroom-2 - Copy

And here comes the bonus! All in all this is/was a decent size bathroom. It needed a new set of tiles, a lick of paint and new toilet, sink & bath. Making it fresh and modern but still in touch with the county cottage feel. Our renovation process was very well coordinated (just under 2 weeks for bathroom) until our plumber discovered some extra space! I know how lucky are we? Behind the bath stud wall lays extra 40 inches of space followed by the whole bath size wall that is currently being demolished. Our bathroom doubled in size and changed it shape overnight; from a small rectangular to a spacious square. Needless to say my original Victoria Plumb order was sent back and a new plan was hatched. I will be sharing my Pinterest inspiration with you shortly.

Ines x

 

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New additions to our quirky country home

I have spent these last few months decorating our spare bedroom…things are moving slowly mostly cos of the lack of time. Busy season in SI headquarters🙂 I manage to sneak a moment here and there on the good old net and even a quick trip down to the Homebase this past weekend. This is our spare bedroom progress so far:

new buys

1. I bought these blackout gray blinds in hope to be installed this weekend. They were 50% off of the original price + the 15% off of this past weekend. I needed a 3 awkwardly sized pieces as my bay window is a weird one. Have to cut each one of them! Cost of all together was : A bargain for £43.20! Normally, they would cost over a £100 and more…I felt really happy about myself once I bought them.

2.I will post a picture of the new blinds fitted on my bay window shortly together with the new bedding from Fab. The bed set(duvet x 2 pillow cases) was: £28, on sale again from £34!

3. While in Homebase I couldn’t resits buying this new shower curtain. The old one was soooooo outdated and this new one fits perfectly with our old fashion, slash modern bathroom. Hombase again: £7.99 – 15% = £6.77

I also got a new bed for the spare bedroom too. My friend Al gave it to me. It was wasting time in her garage and its brand new. All I need now is a mattress. I found a few but still thinking… It’s one of those things, hmm do I spend loads of monies on a mattress that nobody will sleep on or not? On average I have people staying at ours …30 days out of 365.

bed painting

Anyway, it was in pine and I have spent last few weekends(yes, that’s correct) weekends painting it in dry/mat white! I was originally thinking of shabby chic but changed my mind and went with cold neutral tones for the hole spare bedroom. So grey, white and a bit of black it is/with a splash of colorful bedding + wall art!

prints sp bed

Lastly: These two amazing prints that hubby bought on his trip to Mexico, last year in November finally got framed. Again, that is another thing “to do” on my list. Put them on the wall. But I guess that is the last thing I will be doing…in this mess of the spare bedroom!

Hope you all had a great weekend and good start to a working week,

Lol, Ines

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Organizing your wardrobes ~ ideas!

I was over the moon when we first moved into our new house! I had a little walking in wardrobe, that I naively hoped to keep just for my self. Three years down the line and I was still sharing my space with the boy! I was not impressed! As we didn’t have that much space(read these lines:I have a male version of Imelda Marcos in the house)..I constantly had to swap my winter wardrobe with the summer one! And trust me, climbing up to the attic to store your coats or your dresses was not my favorite thing! Especially as I have so many of both. So…what do you do when you lack space and have to share your wardrobe with a guy?

Build him his own!

It started with us moving out of the spare bedroom and getting our new studio. Spare bedroom become free and suddenly a massive storage of bits and bobs that we accumulated trough out the year. It was a time for a change. The old office shelves were perfect to store t-shirts and all I had to do is install a hanging rail! Quick trip down to the Homebase (metal rail + fitting ends= £15!) Perfection!

Here are the photos of before and after!

before

wardrobe-2-horz

And the guest bedroom, (without the bed!) was turned into a private walking in wardrobe. His! Oh, you should see the joy in Mr. B eyes. He loved it! All of his stuff in one room. Together! Priceless…not even a MasterCard can buy you that.

After spending whole afternoon with drills and measuring meter I was ecstatic. I finally get my small cupboard to myself. I spent hours, days, months getting it all into the place. This is what I came up with and no, there is no more daunting trips up to the attic.

wardrobe-6-horzAs I didn’t need my old filing cabinets in our new office, I decided to transformed them into some kind of a storage. In this case, storage for sock, knickers, bras and belts.

wardrobe-13-horzI am a sucker for hanging clothes in a certain way. I like to hang mine by lengths, shapes, materials and colors. Hence it looks like this. Whilst cleaning rooms, I’ve found this old & cute material hanger which I hanged on the door of my cupboard  together with my favorite necklaces.

wardrobe-12-horz

My antique women’s bust is a charity shops find and I tend to put all my current jewelry on her as I go…

wardrobe-7-horz

I finally got that amazing chest of draws and put all my winter sweaters in it! On top of it I store the rest of my jewelry. I have accumulated a lot of it in the past few years so again I need a lot of boxes to keep the things tidy. I used some old tin candle boxes to store my earrings in …

wardrobe-17-horz

And my bracelets are nice and organised in this long African wood box 🙂

wardrobe-19-horz

I have still kept my vintage wardrobe for my coats and fancy dresses as I don’t use them that often.

wardrobe-23-horzThis is my favorite box where I keep my little trinkets and brooches. It was bought for me by one of my besties ~ Matea, my bridesmaid and dearest friend.

wardrobe-25-horz wardrobe-26-horz

I will finish this post by a framed picture of us on our wedding day which is perked up on the top of the chest. Frames can be used to store your jewelry too!

wardrobe-27-horzHow do you store yours? Done any spring cleaning recently? Would love to hear your troughs?

x Ines

 

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Paint it yourself – Cardboard letters

So after I painted my Mexican inspired candy skulls, (which proved to be quite a hit among my crowd)  I had Jordan’s mum asking me if I can do anything similar with the letters she recently purchased via Nononthehighstreet. She had her’s and his initials(J & A)and she wasn’t sure what to do with them except displaying them somewhere in the house for everybody to see.

You can really find these letters anywhere, these for example are from here:  and are a tad cheaper…

Working on them:

I used the same deluxe paint for wood that I bought  in Homebase a few months before to paint my tired & plain wood kitchen chair and later on my skulls.

And here they are like a finished product:

If you do have time and a bit of £££ you can make this as a really nice present for birthdays, newborns or just yourself,

X Ines

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