Last year, when we first discussed buying a house that needed work on it, I naively thought that it wouldn’t take that long to renovate each room, if we took them one at a time and really focused on getting the work done. We initially wanted to renovate the kitchen first, but realised we probably wouldn’t be able to afford it, as it is a big project, requiring a wall to be knocked down, as we want a kitchen/diner, and all new appliances needing to be purchased as well. Instead, we decided to focus our attention on the upstairs bedrooms, starting with the bedroom that the boys are currently sharing, as it didn’t seem to need much work doing to it.
I figured we could get most of it done in the half term, which is only a week long. Oh how we laugh now. In fact, it took a month in total to finish off our first bedroom, with delays mainly coming from a lack of time (Ed was working on most of it after finishing work and at the weekends, once the half term was over), and not being able to book tradespeople in as quickly as we had hoped.
It was also more costly than we originally assumed, largely down to jobs such as the plastering, which came in at £500, and needing to buy new carpets, including underlay. We initially considered fitted wardrobes, until we discovered the cost would run into the thousands, just for them! Instead, Ed built the window seat and wardrobe that made up my Pinterest window vision, for a fraction of the cost, and I had great fun adding the finishing touches, which I bought from Amazon and Wilko (again, total bargains).
The most satisfying part, for me, was ripping out the old fitted wardrobes and the sink (so bizare) and taking the foam ceiling tiles off (so much fun). The worst by far was the wallpaper stripping, which took hours and hours and was so difficult, as we didn’t have a steamer and instead had to spray the walls with warm water to try and get it all off. It was awful!
I knew I wanted a feature wall, but Cameron chose the paint colours himself, as well as the carpet, which gave him some input into his room. I had seen a gaming station on Pinterest that I knew the boys would love, so we set to work finding the furniture and additional touches to make it happen.
The desk is from IKEA, whilst the prints are from a previous collaboration with Desenio, and the backlighting strips are another Amazon bargain. The gaming chairs are from Argos and cost around £70 each, which was the cheapest I found online. We had already bought the boys bunkbeds when we moved in, so we kept these and added floating shelves to the walls for their books, and to give Cameron somwhere to charge his phone and keep his glass of water at night. These were another IKEA purchase, and I am really pleased with them.
Finally, we changed the sockets to chrome, with USB charging ports, and added a new light fitting and curtain pole to fit in with the gaming theme. The curtains were from Amazon and I am in love with the shade of blue and the pattern on them, which finishes the room off nicely.
As I say, the room took a lot longer than we anticipated, likely because we decided to do so much of it ourselves to cut costs, but I am really happy with how it turned out, and I cannot wait to start our next room now, Carly’s bedroom, which is going to be decorated in a selection of pastel shades, picked out by her.
Have you renovated a bedroom before? Do you have any tips going forward?
