Bedrooms are coming together

While we were at Camp Bestival (post to come on that shortly), the builders popped back for a day of final fixes. Coming home to a virtually finished house after camping for four nights was a pretty amazing feeling.

I'm so happy to have a proper bedroom instead of the cluttered mess we had before...

And a good size wardrobe - for the first time in nearly six years! Will be great to get a free weekend (When? When?!) so I can unpack the various boxes and bags of stuff into the space.

The kids room is a little lo-frills right now but will come right. This bed has a spare underneath for sleepovers, so much better than a bunk bed as once the novelty wore off, no-one wanted to sleep in it.

The kids have a huge wardrobe too but not as many clothes as us, so we're storing linen and toys in here too.

And building a bed over the stair headspace means the room feels so much bigger than before!

Before pics: kids bedroom

Feeling blue... and green

Still twiddling our thumbs while waiting for the last bit of phase one to happen. Apparently we should see some action next week. In the meantime, here are a couple of pics to show how we're slumming it on the top floor. This our bedroom. I feel like I should say something like "... this is where the magic happens" as per Cribs, but uh, I won't. Our king size bed at least has matching drawers now (pictured top), so that's a bit of an improvement on our last bedroom. We have Kartell bedside tables (and bigger versions for storage in the TV room) and a cheap Ikea rug is keeping us off the laminate flooring until it's time to lay some carpet. I guess it doesn't look too bad in the photo, but you can't see the ye olde panel cut doors, linen curtains and awful light shade.

I've just borrowed a couple of books on how to design a garden which will be really useful as neither Rob nor I has ever got to grips with anything garden related. We haven't even mown the lawn yet. It feels like spring is here - the weather's been mild, the sky is blue - so it's definitely time to start thinking about planting something.

Kids room

We've got two girls and you can imagine their main decorating concern revolves around when we're going to paint their room pink. I was almost going to cave in and do it, as it would be a temporary colour scheme anyway (Phase 2 would mean their room would be stripped back and re-done... in white). Then I remembered that I know next to nothing about preparing walls and that it would potentially be really messy and difficult.

I've been perusing kids decorating ideas for a while now. There are some fabulous wall stickers out there, like these ones from wallglamour.co.uk - I particularly liked the butterflies and flowers motif, but heck, £28? Then I found toysandinteriors.co.uk who had retro flower stickers for £7.95. Bargain. It was so ridiculously cheap that I got the girls a pink chandelier (£14) from the same place. Photos to come (the one at the top is pre-girly update...)

20% off nothing

We ordered this Muji bed by phone last Saturday afternoon as we had a guest staying for a few nights last week. For some reason Muji won't deliver on Monday or Tuesday so the earliest we could get it was Wednesday. Come Monday and I checked my inbox and was horrified to find an email… a 20% off everything at Muji voucher - ARRRGHH. Too late, as the bed had been paid for over the phone via credit card. It would've saved me about £70 to have cancelled the bed, and re-ordered it but my brain was too foggy to attempt that negotiation. As it transpired, we were too shattered to empty the spare room of boxes so our guest ended up in the girls' room in the bottom bunk for her stay... while the bed remained leaning against a wall.

Last night we got motivated enough to assemble it and it didn't take too long actually. The packaging is insane, so we're hoping a neighbour will procure a skip sometime soon so we can dispense with the miles of cardboard...

Actual photos of the house

February 2008...