Mum’s Room
When my mum became unwell last year we decided to convert my youngest’s bedroom into a room for her to live in. Our daughters would share a bedroom, bring on the bunk beds! It’s not a big room but it has a window out to our back ‘yarden’ and is East-facing so has a lovely sunrise which I knew she’d appreciate.
The project became a speedy, budget renovation, which we hadn’t planned but life has a funny way of playing out sometimes. The first part, and most important part of the project was damp-proofing one of the walls. This part of the house is South-East facing and is the most exposed and suffers from damp in the colder months, in the time we’ve lived here we’ve taken temporary measures to improve the situation but as my mum has health issues with her lungs, damp-proofing was a non-negociable. We had to take the affected plaster off going back to brick, then we sealed around gaps in the window frame, then we added a membrane around the window and remortared around the window and sill (thanks hubby). Then we plugged a damp proof membrane to the wall to create a sort of cavity space where air flow would prevent moisture hanging around. The system was called Permagard. We then added plasterboard, re-plastered and once dry I did the mist-coat to prep for painting.
Next, I ripped up the carpets, I love getting rid of old carpets! Underneath the carpets were more scrappy floorboards that needed sanding down and treating as well as some repairs. Anyone who knows me knows I like to take up carpets and sand down floorboards, and I’m not after perfect polished flooring, I like a painted scrappy floorboard! Which is lucky because I’m not an expert, nor do I have the funds available to fully restore and replace. The scrappy wooden flooring was sanded back, gaps were filled, then the boards were primed with a hardwearing undercoat (Zinsser primer everytime).
The Mood
Then came the fun part, the look! I put together some ideas to get mum’s approval, I wanted earthy tones, natural textures like linen, wood, woven baskets and dried flowers and also some contemporary matte black finishes in lighting and sockets. I found a lovely rattan bed head on sale. We had a piece of furniture my granny owned which we needed to incorporate, it’s a tall boy from Heals that I adore, I just wish the wood was less ‘orange’ I think it may be teak, anyway it is gorgeous despite it being a warmer tone than I would have liked for the room.
I wanted to add dado rail into this room as it is the only room in the house that lacks any original features of a period home, I wanted to make it look more in keeping with the rest of the home, and having researched them I discovered they have a practical use, which is a bonus. I decided the dado rail would divide the room in to two main colours. I chose Little Greene’s ‘Tea with Florence” for the base which included the bottom half of the door, and the radiator (this was primed with a specialist metal primer and then I bought the metal paint in the same shade), and “Pearl Colour 100” for above the dado rail and the ceilings. The shades have a beautiful richness to them even though they’re cool colours, which I decided would be perfect for the East-facing light. I hadn’t considered the room’s aspect when I chose the peachy/terracotta shade I had painted it prior, but I was deeply in my pregnant and nesting stage so drenching the room in peach felt right at the time. On reflection, it never looked right!
For the floor I used a treatment I hadn’t tried before, but as everyone seemed to recommend it I went for Rustoleum Chalky Finish floor paint in “Oyster”. It is highly pigmented and the colour options available are fab, it also seems to be very hard-wearing and hasn’t chipped, however now I’ve lived with it for a while I don’t think I’d use it again. The matte finish means it gets grotty quickly, so in comparison to my glossier-finish floors in the rest of the house it looks a bit grubby already. I’m a hard-working mum of two little ones and a dog and I don’t want to spend any more time cleaning floors, nobody has time for that.
Next came the fun part, finishing touches and styling. I went for dusky pink textured floor length curtains with a linen look natural shade roman blind. The matte black curtain rail, bed frame and lighting elevates the more traditional elements of the room and nicely contrasts the rattan bed head and natural woven baskets and dried flowers. The painted radiator and door treatment really helped tie the colour scheme together and I now want to paint every radiator in my house.
