Office Make-over - Part 2

It's been a bit quiet on the blog recently as I have been overwhelmed by house stuff.  The fact we had the living room and the office on the go at the same time, left me in a state of disarray.  There was nowhere in the house to relax, and we had two rooms worth of stuff filling up the rest of the house, that the whole place felt overwhelmingly cluttered.  That, and I was killing myself evenings and weekends trying to make progress, that I just exhausted myself.  It dawned on me one day, that I had no idea why I was pushing myself so hard, so decided to slow the pace of renovations down to give me some space to breathe. It certainly helped,  but obviously meant that everything took a lot longer to finish.  We are nearly there now, so I'm going to take the next couple of weeks to catch up the blog on where we have got to with the house.

You can read all about Part 1 of the office makeover on this post.  Now is where it get's exciting and it starts to come together :) The paint!

 A new trick I tried out on this room was a technique my Polish friend told me all about.  Apparently it's the done thing in Poland, to put a strip of masking tape at the top of the wall, to bring the wall paint down from the ceiling line, to save you faffing with the impossible task of trying to paint a straight line at the wall-ceiling interface.  I don't want to spoil the punchline, but I am in love witht his technique!  It gives such a crisp line, is way easier, takes much less time and heartache, and in my opinion looks pretty darn classy, so for me it's a keeper.

I used the thicker version of Frogtape (35mm I think) and I think it gave the line some impact.  I've seen it done with 25mm and I think 35mm gives a much nicer effect.

I started with painting the edges with my trusty Purdy brush.  It was a bit nerve wracking putting the first colour on - it's a bit dramatic!

I kept the light switches hanging off so that I could paint around them to save getting paint all over the light switches.

First coat done - see below.  I actually found on the second coat I could get the roller up to the masking tape at the top without hitting the ceiling - but I did have to be really careful!  Not a job for the gung ho!

Pulling the tape off was soooo satisfying! Look at that line!

Next up, it was time to stain the floor.  I had already sanded the floor in Part 1, due to timing of days of work.  I used the same stain and products that I had used in the hallway makeover so that there is consistency through the house.  This room also runs straight off the hallway so it should blend seamlessly.  The products are:

- Manns Pine Floor Stain (in Dark Teak) - watered down

- Manns Extra Tough Floor Varnish

I also remembered when doing this, the reason why I write my blog. It's a way of documenting and recording what we have done to the house.  Since it had been a while since we did the hallway, I had completely forgotten how much I had watered the stain down by - oops! A quick look on the blog, and my question was answered almost instantly. 

It always goes on a bit dark, so I didn't panic this time.

I then popped the new skirting boards on before applying the varnish (again just because of timing of work and the weekends etc.).  I think they balance the white strip at the top really well.  I went for primed mdf bullnose skirting, the same as the rest of the house that we have done so far, and stuck them on with the non-solvent Gripfill (the yellow one). 

Please ignore the crappy central heating pipe in the photo below.  We had just drained the system down and topped it up with new inhibitor so the thought of draining it down again to re-route this pipe under the floorboards was too much to bear.  The next time we drain the heating system down we will sort this pipe out....

From the hallway, you can see that the colour of the floor now runs straight into the office which is great.  It's so much better than that old crappy stained piece of carpet that we inherited when we bought the house.

The final step was to caulk and paint the skirting board, and this is where I hit a bit of a rough patch...  Look at what happened when I pulled the masking tape off after caulking :-o  :,-(

I literally could have cried.  After all that hard work, and the coloured paint just came straight off.  Devastating.  I'm not really sure who or what was to blame for this - was it my application and technique? was it the paint?  was it the tape? Who knows. All I know is that I was peeved.

There are no words.  In the end I just had to suck it up, and lightly sand the affected areas, and touch up by hand.  It ruined the sharp clean line I was going for though which was a bit of a bummer.

Is it weird that I have a favourite corner of the room?  I have a similar favourite piece of skirting board joint that I did in the hallway.  Everytime I look at these 'favourites' it makes me proud of what I have achieved with my own bare hands.  

[Weirdo alert] This particular 'corner' (is it a corner if it sticks out??) is on the left of the window recess. And I feel like I really nailed the plastering here.  It's such a clean sharp external corner - I just love it.

Another really cool thing that happened was that Farrow and Ball regrammed my photo on Instagram! Eek! I couldn't understand my Instagram was going nuts until I saw this :) So cool.

I reinstated some of the original art work in this room, and the bike mount on the wall.  This one below I made myself on Word and printed out on A3 paper in an Ikea Ribba frame.

I was so jubious about this colour when I bought it, when I started painting it, and even when it was painted.  But now the furniture is back in, and I had a few days to mellow to it - I absolutely love it :)

It's just so sunny and warm and happy.  I love getting a glimpse of this room as I walk down the stairs.

The grey blind is new and is from Ikea.  The voile panel we had before and just reinstated.

I also made a new "Race Bling" holder for all the hubbie's medals - more in keeping with the room.  The old red one didn't look right in this room.  More about how I made this coming up in a few posts time.

I've lost track a bot on how much I spent on this room.  I had to aquire all new plastering tools, but a rough breakdown below. I already have a great corded drill but I didn't want to trash it mixing plaster which is super hard work on a drill, so I bought a new cheapie for £20 from Screwfix for the job.  Also cheaper than a specific plaster mixer.

Tools

Marshalltown Trowel - £50

Hawk, Buckets, Sponges, Mixing Paddle, Corded Drill, Bucket Trowel etc. - £70

Hire floor sander - £35

Materials

Plaster (Thistle board Finish) - £15

White Paint (Johnstone's Premium Contract Matt) 10L - £23.95

Farrow and Ball paint 2.5L - £40

Frogtape (2 rolls) - £12

Skirting Board - £23.05

New Blind (Ikea TUPPLUR) - £12

Floor stain and varnish - already owned, leftover from hallway

Paint for woodwork - already owned, leftover from hallway

Decorator's caulk and adhesive - £5

Total - approx £290

However, this includes all my plastering equipment which shall keep me plastering as long as I wish to plaster!