The master bedroom was a bit lackluster when we first viewed the house. The walls were a tired white, with several minor cracks in the wall. The built in wardrobes were ancient and took up a large part of the room. The light fitting was offset in the room (near the window), which annoyed my OCD husband no end! And the floor was just bare floorboards – not even nice ones, or even treated ones – just bare.
We knew the whole house wasn’t going to be perfect instantly, so we just wanted a room that was completely finished – a bolt hole if you will. And this room, we decided, was going to be the master bedroom.
We started by ripping out the wardrobe, which I showed you in my last post. This took a good few hours. We wanted to save the as best as possible to see if we could give the to a charity furniture shop, but we just couldn't get them down the stairs in one piece. – so unfortunately they all went to the tip. We managed to salvage the very large mirror (although it’s so large and heavy we now have no place to hang it!) and the bridging units. I have plans for the bridging units to flip them over and use them as shoe storage units, although more of that in time (when I get round to that project!).
There was some wallpaper behind the wardrobes, which we had to strip but nothing too serious, and certainly not as bad as I was anticipating. We pulled down the vertical blinds, which were very dated, and the curtains.
Right, a blank canvas!
We started by filling in the cracks with a fine surface filler, and the bigger holes with a chunky filler. Once this dried we just lightly sanded the filler down to create a smooth surface.
There was also a gap in the skirting behind the old wardrobes, as well as a missing floorboard. Both were fixed by a quick trip to Wickes. The skirting was a bit of a palaver until we invested in a mitre box from Screwfix which made the whole job a lot easier. We fixed the skirting board to the wall with adhesive (probably not the correct way to do it but it looks neat and does the job very well).
The floorboard that was missing we just measured the width and depth and then got a standard floorboard as close as possible to these dimensions, and cut it to length.
Once we had had the electrics done (light moved to the middle and lots and LOTS of extra sockets put in!) we had the chases filled by a plasterer and then we were ready to decorate.
We painted the ceiling white and used Dulux Endurance in Magnolia for the walls. The Endurance stuff is pricey but I have heard lots of good reviews so we went with it. A few coats of White Satinwood on the windowsill and the skirting and the basic decoration was done.
The carpet was a bit of mission. We umm-ed and ahh-ed about whether to take the plunge because it was going to stretch out budget to breaking point. But… in the end, we went for it.
We went to Carpet Right and met a salesman who was interesting let’s say. A bit pushy, as they all are. He convinced us that we needed the luxury underlay, which admittedly was lovely, but when we sat down with the numbers I nearly fainted at the total price with all the add-ons! Anyway, we agreed to have the salesman round to measure the room up – even though I had already given him the measurements he said that was lovely but he didn't trust me…
Between going to Carpet Right and having the salesman round I was a woman on a mission. I was determined to get the best carpet for the best price. I started with the underlay. The underlay was an absolute rip off in Carpet Right, and armed with the facts about density, sound absorption etc. of the underlay that I liked in Carpet Right I went searching on the web. I came up trumps when I found Flooring Warehouse Direct http://flooringwarehousedirect.co.uk. I found a better specification (apparently it’s all about density when it comes to new types of underlay) for less than half the price including delivery. It worked well in this instance because the size of the room was just smaller than a roll and the trade websites only sold it in rolls. If you have a very small room, or a room just bigger than a roll, then this might not work out better for you, but always worth a look!
I also sourced a Carpet Fitter myself through www.mybuilder.com (fab website where I got a lot of our tradesmen). He was the same price as the Carpet Right fitter but I could see this chap had good feedback –who knows who or what Carpet Right would send?
As the bedroom had had no carpet previously, there were no existing carpet grippers which meant we had to buy some. Once again, Carpet Right were taking the biscuit with their quote, so I found a shop on eBay that sold branded ones at a much better price (even including delivery). I can't deny I got some weird looks when they got delivered to work but it was worth it!
Whilst it took a LOT of extra legwork, in the end I believed we saved 35-40% off the original Carpet Right quote without compromising on quality. When renovating on a tight budget you can’t sniff at those sorts of savings.
(By the way, when the Carpet Right man came to measure up, funnily enough it was exactly the size I told him. Imagine that, a woman who knows how to use a tape measure...)
All the furniture was existing including curtains and curtain pole. The only new item was the voile panels and rod to hang them on.
I LOVE our Indigo Bed and Bedsides, and this seems like a lovely room to put them in. I wish we could afford to furnish our whole house with Indigo Furniture :) www.indigofurniture.co.uk
Final reveal... (Updated July 2015 - with new radiator installed)
