When an interior designer design her own home... part 1

New seaside home

 

Being an interior designer is an exciting thing, but we do meet many challenges and here is the one I am having right now designing my own home.   I want to create a light airy feel with colours which echo the seaside with the odd splash of colour.

So, this will be the first in a series of blogs on my journey into buying a half finished seaside house and making it into a home.

24 August

 Although the house is a new build, it is not quite finished.  We have decided on hard flooring as the most efficient as we have underfloor heating. Some rooms were already tiled and that posed the initial conundrum – pale brownish in the kitchen and pale greyish/greenish in the bathrooms.  Now, I like the same tone of flooring throughout the house, so sourcing the right tile was a real headache!   After many samples, we decided on a large oblong matt tile.  The tiles duly arrived at the appointed time and the tiler immediately started work.  The lounge looked wonderful but half way through tiling the hall we were in for a shock, the fresh box of tiles were not the same shade!  Not only that, but the suppliers had delivered three batches all in different shades.  So I now have half a hall and a study with concrete floors.  It is August Bank Holiday and as the tiles are Italian, Italy is still on holiday until the beginning of September, so nothing will be done to supply the extra 20 or so in the same shade to finish the upstairs.  Worst case scenario, rip out what has been laid in the upper hall and have a slightly different shade going into the living room, these tiles are not supposed to be different shades!  At this point  I must point out that this house has the living accommodation upstairs and the bedrooms/bathrooms downstairs.

 

Above is the upper hall and door into study.  This is how it will remain whilst moving in!

 

29 August

 

More bad news,  as only half the tiles arrived we decided to order a separate batch for the rest of the house – the tiler has not ordered enough!!  I did query the amount with him and was assured there was sufficient.  So  downstairs is now only three quarter tiled.

 

1^st September

 

Just seen the living room tiling, most of the grout is still on the tiles, its rock hard, only grouted yesterday!  Picture below, top left hand corner is where they started cleaning up, must have lost interest by the time they got to the bottom right!

 

 

Down on hands and knees with a scouring pad for two days.  Looking better already!  Next job on that room is to repaint the walls in something more neutral than yellow and mushroom! 

Good news, some of the window blinds have arrived and I am really pleased!!  Picture below is my solution to one of the windows which looked down on the garden next door but it also had a lovely view of the mountains.  The blind is fitted to the window frame and pulls up instead of down.

 

 

                                       

 

 

 

You can just see Mount Snowdon on the right hand side.

 

4 September

More good news!  The suppliers have managed to source the same batch of tiles for downstairs, will be delivered tomorrow.  The bad news, the tiler is going away for a long weekend and we are moving in on Monday so he will finish off downstairs on Tuesday.

 

Much head scratching trying to source the remaining 20 or so for upstairs.

 

Watch this space................................

 

 

Anne Stuart