Best Room in the House
In Paid Partnership with B&Q - ADVERT
If you’ve followed me for a little while, you’ll know that we rent our current home. I have to admit, it doesn’t feel ‘rented’ anymore, it just feels like home - cosy and full of love.
We’ve made lots of changes to this lovely big rambling country cottage since we moved in almost 3 years ago. We painted a lot of the walls, created an outside living space, but there are some things we agreed we would “live with”. These are things that would be very costly and time consuming, things that required hiring a professional to do the work for us. One of those rooms was our dining room.
It’s a beautiful big bright room with exposed beams, dual aspect windows and a higher ceiling than the rest of downstairs as we step down to it from the kitchen. Around a year ago, we painted the lemon walls white and changed all the light fittings and curtain poles. We bought some new furniture and agreed to ‘make do’ with the dark mint green carpet that had been there several years while covering as much of it as we could with an enormous woven rug under the dining table.
Admittedly, making those changes made a big difference to the room, and we have spent many gorgeous evenings there entertaining our friends and family. I can’t say I’ve ever really been able to LOVE the room though, that’s why you'll rarely see a picture of it, and mostly it was saved for those dark candlelit evenings that hide a multitude of green carpet sins!! Carpets in dining rooms just don’t really make sense do they? The boys would spill gravy, I’ve got an awful habit for tipping my wine, and it just never felt like a carpet was right this is light airy room.
Can you relate? Do you have a room in your house that you know has heaps of potential, but you just can’t LOVE it because there is something you are desperate to change?
Well if there’s a moral to this story here… it’s to make that change!!
When B&Q got in touch to tell us about their Good Home Range, I was dubious. Firstly, neither of us have a great deal of experience with DIY projects, I mean we can paint a wall, or do a bit of digging in the garden, but laying tiles or hardwood flooring sounded complicated and a little scary. B&Q reassured us that the Good Home range is suitable even for first time DIY’ers. They have ‘How To’ videos and experienced staff in store to help guide us through the process and be on hand if we needed help or advice.
With only 3 days to complete the entire project, we thought, well if we can do this, anyone can. The next thing you know we were choosing our floor, paint and other accessories ready to click & collect from store the following morning.
We chose the ESLOV Natural Oak Real Wood Top Layer flooring. I loved the soft colour and brushed wood finish to lift and open up the space, and the Herringbone style felt more classic for a room like this. There’s a handy little section on the website that works out how much you’ll need to do your room. You’ll need a few more things like Underlay, expansion and a few tools if you don’t have them already. We asked a friend (who also didn’t have a great deal of experience laying flooring) to help us, but neither of us had the tools, so we invested.
The night before work started, we emptied the room of furniture and pulled back the old carpet. So satisfying!! The underlay was in surprisingly good condition considering its age, but it feels good knowing there’s fresh cork underlay under the flooring now. We brought the floor into the room for it to adjust and expand ahead of laying it.
Day One was mainly filled with prepping the area. Getting rid of anything we didn’t need and laying the underlay. I was amazed that we also managed to get the middle section of the flooring down on the first day too. It’s incredibly easy to click into place ensuring a smooth level finish.
Day Two work started on the edges of the flooring. This was the tricky bit, and the part Col was most nervous of, but we soon found our rhythm and by lunchtime on day three, the job was almost complete!
While the boys finished the floor, I got to work on painting the feature wall. We chose GoodHome Walls and Ceilings Wipeable Paint in Philadelphia, a really easy medium warm grey.
Day Three was all about the finishing touches, the edges to the floor and a second coat of paint. By the time we’d finished clearing up the sun was setting and the room looked so lovely in the soft evening glow. We were THRILLED!!!
It’s still not quite finished, I’m waiting for a huge mirror to cover the alcove to arrive, some new cushions and a few fairy lights for our olive tree, but we LOVE it! We really love it so much, and every time we walk in I just smile. The boys have already deemed it their ‘Race room” as their ride-ons whizz around a little faster now. I can just see that there’s so many happy memories to be made in here now we have a room we can be really proud of. I really wish we’d changed that carpet sooner and we’re excited to get started on the next room ...now Col has all the tools anyway, y’know! ☺
To find out more about how you can get going with your own project, check out simple “how to’s” on diy.com and the explore the GoodHome product range here
