Let the sunshine in!

After a ”little” setback” due to soot and smoke, our TV-room is finished at last. The result is a lighter and brighter room, which is exactly what we wanted. 

Here you can see what the room looked like previously. Old darkened pine panel absorbed most of the sunlight, so even on a bright day, it was not possible to sit here and read without the lights on.

The ceiling and walls have been painted, the carpet has been replaced and the dark plaid couch has been thrown out, otherwise the room is basically the same. Still, what a difference this makes, don’t you agree?

The corner sofa and the chairs were left behind by the previous owner of the house. They were probably super cool back in the eighties when pink was in vogue, but, strangely enough, they fit in pretty well here now. The grey, pink and white colours match the new floor and walls quite well. With a brown sheepskin and a nice rug, we can live with it for a while.

Hopefully, it won’t be too long until we can afford a new sofa, but at the moment we decided to use the money on upgrading the electrical system. Now we have earthed sockets in the room, and what’s more - plenty of them. Behind the TV there is no longer a jumble of extension cords, now each gadget has it’s own socket.

On this wall there used to be a seventies-style orange lamp that controlled everything electric in the room. Not quite in accordance with regulations, one can safely assume. This new lamp has a dimmer and can be used both as a reading light and to create a cosy atmosphere.

The mirror was bought on sale last weekend. It also helps to reflect more light into the room.

At the other end of the room, we still have the old wall unit. It is not exactly fashionable either, but it provides a lot of storage space, and we have to have somewhere to keep all our CDs and DVDs. Previously, all of Hubby’s trophies were exhibited on the top, but now all but the most coveted is placed inside the cupboard. Actually, I would like to see them in a box in the attic, but we compromised. Now they're available if he should want to show them off, and I don’t have to dust them.

This stack of small trunks also provides a little storage space, which is something you can never get enough of.

With great technical skill, Hubby has fitted the room with a hi-tech sound system with full surround sound, subwoofer and all that goes with it. It sounds really great when we listen to music or watch a movie here. My only contribution to the house's musical content is this cool CD rack in wrought iron.

A couple of small souvenirs have found their place in the room: The elephants are from Namibia, while the shell is a polished pearl oyster that I brought home from Rarotonga. A black pearl was beyond my budget, the only thing I could afford was this shell, but it’s very pretty.

The large glass bowl is from the Hadeland glass factory. I bought it years ago and have never quite found a good spot for it until now.

Husfruen’s old TV-cabinet now houses Hubby’s whisky collection. Ideally, I would have liked to hide the TV away in a cabinet, but as big as TV-sets are these days, they do not fit in these cabinets anymore.

On top sits the old lamp that we painted. Looking good!

Now the room is so bright that the plants have started to thrive here. This flowerpot is something I found at the back of a cupboard, while the linen table runner was bought at a Christmas market many years ago, if I remember correctly. Hubby’s old coffee table was sprayed with black Hammerite paint. The original finish was not in good condition, but since the table is so large and handy, we wanted to keep it. Now it has a new lease on life and will probably be in use a few more years.

It feels good to be able to use old stuff that has been hidden away in cupboards and drawers or was on its way to the scrap heap, instead of just constantly buying new stuff. We have, in fact, not spent very much on our new room. All in all, it cost just under 600 GBP, and that includes carpet, paint, lamps, mirrors and curtains. The electrician cost more, obviously, but the electrical work was as much a repair as an upgrade, and was therefore unavoidable.

I am notorious for starting big knitting projects that I never finish. Just this once, I hope to be able to finish a nice fluffy blanket in brown and white.

I am very pleased with the curtains. They are light and airy and let in plenty of light. The plants seem to thrive on the windowsill where the spring sunlight floods in, and we too are very happy with our new TV room. It has become so nice here now, that we actually use it as a sitting room, not only as a place to watch television.

Carpet capers

At last the TV-room is starting to resemble our original plan for the room. Today we laid the new carpet. Wall-to-wall carpeting is not very popular in Norway so the choice of carpets is limited and they are expensive. We wondered for a while if we should have parquet floors, but in the end we decided that we wanted the warm and cosy feel a carpet provides. The room is, after all, a basement, and there’s a concrete floor underneath.

We brought a number of carpet samples home with us to find the right one, and we were quite pleased when the one we liked best also turned out to be the cheapest. That doesn’t seem to happen too often for us.

It was a real hassle just to get the carpet into the room and more or less in place. None of us had any experience with laying carpets, and just to make the job extra difficult the skirting boards are flush with the paneled wall so the carpet is lying against them instead of underneath requiring precision cutting in order for the edges to look good.

Hubby managed the job well, and the carpet was cut to perfection.

Isn’t it nice? I feel that the whole room has been totally renewed.

We have already carried in the TV and two armchairs, so that we can use the room tonight. The rest of the furniture has to wait until the electrician is finished. He should have been here this week, but we haven’t seen hide nor hair of him. It is perhaps unfair of me to complain, but I feel that it's the same thing every time we need a craftsman for our house. They never arrive when agreed. The electrician has now promised to come here on Monday, so we hope that nothing happens to delay him.

This dodgy old lamp is causing the problem as all the electricity in the room passes through it. Actually I think that it is a bit cool in its uncompromising seventies style, but it does not fit in with the room’s new look. Maybe I should advertise "Original orange retro lamps" on the internet, though I doubt if anyone would be interested in the pair of them. However, I may be surprised.

Now, we are about to settle down and enjoy the evening in our new TV-room. Enjoy yourselves tonight too!

Watching paint dry…

… is a seriously underrated pastime. As I have discovered over the past couple of days, it isn’t as mind-numbingly dull as some would have it. In fact, I have found it positively stimulating.

After seriously long hours of painting every day, I have flopped down on the floor, stretching my aching neck, arms and back, staring up at the ceiling and admiring the results of our handy-work. Revelling in the effects of an increasingly lighter and brighter room, I have found inspiration. Would one go as far as calling it epiphanies, or just the confused imagination of an exhausted anaemic?  Who cares? I have had ideas - good ideas. At least I think so, and so does Hubby, or at least he will when he’s had time to reconsider after the first reaction I predict he’ll have when he hears them.

However, before I tell him, and you, here are a few pictures of the work in progress.

The sun shining in through the small windows finally had something to reflect from, and what a difference it made.

We used the colour “Classic White” from Jotun. The Sens paint is fantastic to work with,  as it is water-based there is hardly any smell at all, and that is obviously a great advantage at this time of the year when we can’t leave the windows open for too long.

Around the windows and on the mouldings and skirting boards we used the same colour but in a glossier oil-based paint, to create a contrast. I know that glossy is "out" these days, but I think that having everything matt is just too dull. 

We didn’t want to paint the walls white too, as that would have simply been too monotonous. We considered some sort of beige but Hubby wanted to try and preserve the texture of the wood underneath. Whereas the planks in the ceiling are just plain and drab, the wall panelling is actually rather nice. The only thing wrong with it was it’s dark colour. We thought about whitewashing it, but ended up with a thin water based lacquer with white pigment. 

I have to admit we were a bit apprehensive about it after painting the first wall. The effect was not quite as we had imagined, but we decided to carry on, and after a bit of sitting and staring the effect started to grow on us.

By the way, watching this paint dry is certainly not boring. We have never worked with anything that dries so quickly. In fact, you can only paint one plank at a time because by the time you have reached the end of the plank the beginning is already drying.  And the thing is, it changes appearance as it dries, so it is rather exciting really. 

There was a bit of discussion about whether or not to put on a second coat, but we decided we wanted to try and get it one shade whiter.

 As for my ideas – well, there’s one concerning an 80’s pinkish (oh yes!) sofa that the previous owner of the house left behind. Could it possibly be given a renaissance? Since we are on a strict budget, buying new furniture is out of the question, and I really don’t fancy bringing that tartan sofa back in the room.

While the new colours of the room have gradually emerged, I have given a lot of thought to the colours of furniture and fabrics. Although this renovation is basically a quest for light, just painting all the furniture white is not an option. I am much too fond of dark wood to do that, so I have decided to accentuate the pinkish beige and white with a very dark brown, and hope I don’t ruin our quest.

Moreover, I have an idea that I wonder if I dare to put on the table, so to speak. It involves Hubby’s old coffee-table and dark brown Hammerite paint. O-o, I can just imagine what sort of reaction that will provoke. After all, the poor man nearly fainted when I suggested putting the white lacquer we used on the walls on his pine lamp-holders as well.

I’ll let you know how it goes tomorrow. 

Room for Improvement

Here at Hilltop House there is a downstairs room that has many names: "The Cellar room" is pretty obvious, "The TV room"  because the television is there; "The Boy’s Room" because Hubby is allowed to play to his heart’s content with technical gadgets and other man stuff; "The Tartan room" because both the carpet and the couch is in Scottish plaid – albeit not matching; and last but not least, my personal favourite "The Room for Improvement", because Oh My God! There is plenty that needs improving here. Just have a look:

What on earth possesses people to think that it is a good idea to paint window ledges dark brown is beyond my comprehension, especially in a gloomy basement room. As if that wasn’t enough, there were thick dark green curtains hanging here, effectively blocking out what little daylight penetrated the small windows. As you can imagine, it didn’t take long before they were given the heave-ho.

The cupboard in the corner is the furnace room. Burning oil is an effective way to keep the house warm, but is neither cheap, nor eco-friendly. It takes forever to regulate the temperature, if you want the house to be warm tomorrow you had better turn up the furnace today. We would like to have installed under-floor heating cables, but because the electricity supply to the house is severely limited we can’t. We have installed two heat pumps and they just about manage to keep going without blowing fuses all the time. When it’s really cold though, we have no choice but to light the furnace.

The walls and ceiling of ”Norwegian Wood” were both light and fashonable and when they were fitted, but after forty years of darkening they seem to absorb all the light in the room. No matter how many lamps we use, this room always seems to be dark and gloomy.

Speaking of lamps, what do you think about this one? It was left behind by the previous owner. Probably it has been both fashionable and expensive once, so I've been a little reluctant to throw it out. It’s not pretty but I like the size of it. I wonder if it is possible to change the colour of it somehow. Can porcelain like this be painted?

And here is a lamp that is really dodgy. The retro style is one thing, but to our great dismay, we discovered that all electric power to this room goes via this lamp. Unless it is turned on, none of the other electrical appliances in the room work. To have the power to both heating and the TV going through a thin wire is hardly in accordance with regulations, so next week an electrician will come to ensure that we get earthed sockets throughout the room.

We have found many of these odd solutions since we moved into Hilltop House and have concluded that the previous owner probably had more enthusiasm than common sense when it comes to renovation and maintenance of the house.

And here is the carpet in all its lack of grandeur. There is really only one thing to say: H-O-R-R-I-B-L-E!

The heat pump is not exactly an object of beauty either, but I must just learn to live with that. Or is there anyone out there that has found a good way to camouflage a heat pump?

Hubby’s tam-o-shanter hat is another element that contributes to the Scottish plaid image. He has also been allowed to give his trophies the place of honour here. Are there other housewives out there who are struggling with husbands who desperately want to show off old third-place trophies from obscure championships? Is there a gentle way of persuading them that such things really would be better off in a box in the attic?

Believe it or not, it is actually Hubby himself who has suggested that we’d give this room a complete makeover. I think it was sheer frustration over the lack of light that made him willing to swing a paintbrush. As you can well imagine, my response was enthusiastic.

So here we have the challenge - how can we turn this shabby room into something chic? Obviously, if we had enough enough money it wouldn’t be a problem, but since the budget is stretched a little thin post-Christmas, we must do what we can with what we have. This will be redecorating on a tight budget. We'll have to see what we can manage.

Tomorrow, we begin carrying out the furniture and tearing up the carpet. I look forward to getting started! :-)