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!

Office Make-Over - Part 1

We have had a little shuffle round in the house and decided to move the office out of the guest bedroom, and into it's very own room, which used to be the spare guest room with a single bed in it.

We gave it a quick lick of magnolia paint when we moved in two years ago, but other than that, it was left as it was, and to be honest, it became a bit of a dumping ground.

I also gave the hubby (almost) free reign to pick a colour of his choice, as it would be his office after all.  He had taken the mickey so much out of my Farrow and Ball colour cards, that when he picked a colour I think he was just being flippant.  But to show him I'm not a wimp, and I really can paint our house in a colour other than magnolia, I went through with it.

The colour he chose was Farrow & Ball Sudbury Yellow.

I've never used F&B paint before, and it was eye wateringly expensive - but I wanted to give it a go.  With it being a tiny room, I would only need one 2.5L tin, so there was some damage limitation. (But still, £40!)

Prepping for plastering by removing the skirting board (yes it was screwed on...)

One bit of prep that I wasn't bargaining on was removing this little bugger of a piece of skirting board:

After wrestling with it for quite some time, I realised the reason I could not extract it from the wall, was in fact because it continued THROUGH the wall, (yes, that's correct, through the wall), and into the master bedroom on the other side!  I'm not often lost for words, but that really left me speechless!  I mean, really?!  There is no way this was ever a two bedroom house, there are no other signs that the two rooms used to be one (that and all the neighbour houses are the same as ours) - so why on earth would someone think this was a good idea?! 

They really was no way it was coming off by pulling it, so out came my trusty hammer and chisel, and I chiseled the little bugger off.

And then plastered over him like he never existed...

So next up was, plastering.

I cleared everything out of the room, and put some scrim tape across the minor cracks on the ceiling.  No idea if that's a good idea or not, but I thought I would give it a go.  I also split the ceiling into two halves using scrim tape (which I would peel off after doing the first half) to give me a nice clean edge to work off for the second half.

Half of the ceiling plastered - scrim tape removed to leave clean(ish) join

It took me 7 sessions (each about 3 hours) to get the whole room done.  The room is approx 2.4 x 2m.  Plastering is all about time management, and making sure you have the right amount of time to go back and do the second coat, just when the first coat is at it's sweet spot.  It's all about good prep, setting up all your equipment ready, and making sure the surface to be plastered is clean and has sufficient coating of diluted PVA glue - this is to stop the wall prematurely sucking all the moisture out of the fresh plaster, making it unworkable too quickly.

I found a great solution for plastering around light switches and sockets.  What I did was that I turned the electrics off first, and then detached the front plates of the sockets from the wires behind.  I then cut out some small pieces of cardboard to cover the remaining hole and protect the wires.  I then plastered straight over the top as if it wasn't there, and cut the cardboard out after I had finished all my 'wets' (last finishing trowels). Simple, and so clean looking when it's done - something our plasterer who came in after the re-wire could have taken a lesson in!

Some progress shots:

Prepped (left) and after (right) shot.  The paint on the left is where I had sampled the colour before buying.

The hardest bit for me was around the window as there were so many fiddly bits like the valves for the radiator, and the narrow edges down each side of the window.  It really does look a bit pants, but the radiator does cover most of the worst spots, so I'm not too concerned.

Let's just say my plastering isn't perfect, and when it was all done, I did need to rub over the walls in some places with some really fine sandpaper.  But it's not horrendous!  After sanding I then wiped the walls with a wet cloth to get rid of any surface dust before painting.

I did two coats of a watered down white emulsion and then one coat of full strength white emulsion.  I love Johnstone's premium contract matt - it goes on so well and the coverage is excellent.  That and the paint shop at the end of the road sells it which is very convenient.

Look how huge it is now it's all white and clean looking!

Due to time off work, it was at this point that I decided to sand the floor back.  The carpet in here was the original carpet that the owners before it had left, and for some god awful reason (in terms of god awful points the previous owners have racked up quite a few on this room!) they had decided to fit it in two halves. As the room was so small, I just hired one of the edging sanders to get the room done, and it only took a couple of hours.  Not bad! (Absolutely killed my back mind. Will I ever learn?!)

Halfway through

And done!  Ignore the dodgy plumbing in the back of the shot.  This will get sorted out when we next drain the system down, but as we had just put some inhibitor in the system, it seemed like a bit of a waste to do it there and then.

And covered up with a plastic dust sheet to protect whilst painting commenced.

This is where I will leave you with part one. Join me shortly for Part 2 - the paint!

Motivational Monday - Balance

This quote makes me laugh :) I hope it makes you smile too!

This weekend has been a nice easy weekend.  After last weekends hectic few days, I just needed a weekend with no fixed plans that I could pick and choose what I wanted to do when based on how I felt at that particular moment.  So I have plodded on slowly doing lots of small finishing jobs on the hallway so that it really is done.  I had no appetite for a huge project this weekend, so it was the perfect opportunity.  I also swore to myself that I wouldn't start the next project (living room) without first completing the hallway, so it had to be done.

I have also done a bit of shopping this weekend.  I have purchased these lovely chairs from eBay:

I intend to reupholster them in a new fabric, but that won't be until the living room really starts coming together and I know the best colour to go for to complement the scheme.  I have been looking for a while for chairs like these, but it's not that often that they come up in pairs.  I really wanted a matching set of armchairs so I took the plunge.  Can't wait to see what they look like in real life but I don't think that will be for a few weeks as they are coming all the way from Devon! 

I also bought some paint tester's this weekend for the living room.  Some of them as soon as I got them on the wall I knew they weren't right, but Farrow and Ball's Hague Blue is just singing to me.  It was like love at first sight.  

I'm thinking Navy for all of the walls.  Yes, all of 4 of them.  Everyone is telling me I should just do a feature wall and have the rest vaguely beige, but I want to be bold. 

What do you think?  Bold or beige?