Room For Improvement: A £50 living room makeover

A normal person, whilst exhausted, hypo and receiving radiotherapy, would not agree (whilst half asleep) to redecorating their house! However, I think we have established, partly by my blog name (and moreso in recent events), that I am not normal.

Further still, having sat shamefaced, head in hands, seeing my entire pigsty living room being broadcast on BBC1, I realised, I don’t like my living room. It is a mess.

Please note: The mark on my living room wall during the interview on tv, was in fact chocolate, and not POO what it looks like!

So when Moneysupermarket caught me napping offguard with details of their Room For Improvement challenge, I said yes! I was given £50 and less than a weeks notice, to improve a room in my house. So we chose the living room

BEFORE

AFTER

This is the view from the sofa.

It’s actually not quite finished, but this is how far we got before the deadline.

It was Messy, cluttered, bland, uncoordinated.

We spent ages trying to decide what to do with the room.

I don’t like having all our books and DVDs on display. I think it looks cluttered and unpleasant. Also none of our shelves match.

Our dining table is too big for the room and the rug doesn’t match either. The coffee table is only used for storing junk.

I also don’t like the trunking for our tv cables going straight across the wall.

So when Jonny was out at Gymnastics with Bunny on Saturday, and the twins were napping, I started redesigning our living room. Jonny added some ideas to the mix when he got home.

I emptied all the cupboards and shelves, moved all the furniture round and started tidying up. We moved the DVD shelves round the corner out of sight. We put the bookshelf on freecycle and I put the books in our cupboard unit.

We put the rug in the attic and the coffee table upstairs. We pushed the dining table up against the wall to give us more space.

Jonny ripped the trunking from the wall and painted the main wall a pale coffee colour.

Then we bought shelves to go under the tv. We also bought baton and ply wood, which we are going to use to box in all the sockets and trunking, which we will then paint to blend in with the wall. (This is the bit we couldn’t finish in time).

We have been loaned a Rug Doctor to clean the carpets too, which will be done in the morning!

We are also waiting for a large family photo on canvas, which will go above the dining table (given as a Christening gift).

What we spent:
Paint £13.98
Shelves £18.48
Baton & Ply £12.00

Total:
£44.46
(The rest went on BBQ food as we were banished outside while the paint dried).

Disclaimer: We were given £50 by Moneysupermarket to improve the look of a room in our home. All ideas, words, opinions and decorating, are entirely our own.