For the past few months we have been decorating our sitting room. As is the way with decorating, or as is our way, it seems, this has taken much, much longer than anticipated.
We have lived in our house 13 years and have only decorated the sitting room once in that time, during the first year we moved in. So a ‘freshen up’ was probably more than a little overdue. After much deliberation we decided to change our sunny yellow walls for a more subtle grey. I am actually all about the colour so the grey walls will give me the freedom to be bold with colour in other ways, or that’s the plan.
We optimistically took a week off work thinking we would have the whole thing done and dusted in that time. What we hadn’t allowed for was the damage done by recent repairs to rising damp, lining paper that was literally superglued to the walls, our seriously feeble ability to in hang new lining paper and the resulting hundreds of air bubbles that emerged and had to be individually ‘dealt with’ before we could get anywhere near a paint brush.
As part of our revamp we had ordered new sofas, beautiful blue velvet sofas. We waited weeks for these to arrive, eventually the day dawned, we had sold our old sofas on eBay, the room was ready and so were we. The first one was manoeuvred into place, the packaging removed and all was well. The second, slightly bigger one was brought into the house, through the front door and into the hall which is pretty much where it stayed before it was taken back to the depot because despite much twisting and turning and careful manoeuvring, there was no way it was going to squeeze through our 1920’s size sitting room door.
So here we are 3 months on. We still have a big gap where a sofa should go, we have a collection of unframed prints on the floor, that will eventually form a gallery wall, and we have some beautifully painted white shelves littered with a random collection of bits and pieces that need desperately sorting out. There is still much to do.
However, as I write this a very lovely local lady is hanging curtains she made for us and I’m feeling optimistic all over again. At some point I might share some pictures of the finished room (presuming it will be finished one day) but for now here is a little preview of the curtains just because they are making me smile.
Have a lovely weekend.
image 1, indulgy
