Renovating my bedroom - carpets, cupboards, blinds, and a feature wallpaper wall
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I decided that I’d had enough of sleeping in ratty bedroom with holes in the walls, more shiny, vinyl paint, dirty carpets and ugly fitted wardrobes.
I had a week off work, my parents were coming to stay and I had a brand new sledgehammer to try out.
It was time to decorate my bedroom.
I wanted to clear out the bedroom before my folks arrived to give me a hand. I moved into the spare room for the week and popped all my furniture into the front room downstairs. I had been impressed by how much easier the mini skip had made DIY last time, so I hired another one for the week.
I started by tearing up the carpets. I cut them into long strips before dragging them downstairs and chucking them into the skip. The carpet underlay soon followed. Again the floorboards in the bedroom were in fantastic condition and it seemed almost a shame to cover them back up, but I prefer carpets upstairs so I decided to stick to the plan and not get sidetracked by thoughts of sanding them down.
I posted a job looking for a carpet layer and got in a couple of quotes for the whole house. Both carpet layers were happy to do the carpets on a per room basis (ie do each room as I needed them to, not all at once), and the prices and online feedback were very similar so in the end I just picked the guy I liked the best.
I decided to schedule the carpet laying for the end of my week off, so that I would have a full week to complete the work on room. In hindsight this might have been slightly optimistic, as I really had to work flat out like a lizard drinking for the last two days to get everything done in time.Once my parents arrived (and I’d given them a cup of tea) we got to work with tearing out the fitted wardrobes. These things have been the bane of my life for so long. They’re ugly, badly made and really badly fitted. We started by unscrewing the doors and lifting them out of the way, before carrying them down to the skip.
There didn’t seem to be any obvious way that to get the rest of the wardrobes out, so a combination of the sledgehammer, some brute force and the removal of few strategic screws later, we had a pile of broken bits of wardrobe to dump in the skip. It was then that we realised exactly how much work that week was going to be. This is what we found behind the wardrobes
Oh dear. I started to wonder if taking the wardrobes out had been such a smart move after all or if I should just have left them where they were.We spent the next two days plastering, filling holes and cracks with decorators caulk, sanding and prepping. Finally on the third day we were finally ready to start painting. I’m so pleased that I had people to help me with this because it would have taken me a month to do all the work on my own. My plastering job was no where near as good as the one Pete had done downstairs, but I figured it was going to be hidden behind the new wardrobes, so it wasn’t the end of the world if it looked a bit ‘rustic’. I did my best to get it as smooth as possible though, sanding it down with an electric sander once it had dried.
We got three coats of brilliant white paint on the walls and ceiling in one day, by starting very early in the morning and finishing very late at night. The woodwork got two coats of eggshell, with the intention that the final coat would go on the next morning. At this stage I had one day left before the carpets were going to be laid and an absolute mountain of work left to do. I was starting to think that I was going to have to cancel the carpet fitting.
The next day we split forces. My mother attacking the final coat of the eggshell on the woodwork and my dad and I hanging the wallpaper on the feature wall. Fortunately the wallpaper went up really easily and in the event we were finished by lunchtime. Then all we had to do was build the new wardrobes that afternoon. I’d opted for flat-packed wardrobes from IKEA. I’m not a huge IKEA fan, but these were a cheap, practical solution as I really couldn’t afford to get someone to build some bespoke fitted wardrobes for me, and once they were together them looked great. I fitted wooden battens to the walls behind the wardrobes and screwed them to the wall to stop them moving around. As I’d thought, once they were in place you couldn’t see my amateurish plastering behind them either.
Somehow the room was ready in time and the carpet fitter did a really excellent job fitting the carpet around the new wardrobes.
I can’t believe that there was bare brick in that alcove under a week ago!
The whole room looked so much cleaner and lighter and I totally love the feature wallpaper. My dad was really sceptical about it when I showed it to him, but even he has to admit that it looks really good now.
What do you think?So my mistake this time round was scheduling the carpets to be fitted before I had finished the room. If I hadn’t had a serious amount of help this week I would have had to cancel the fitter and have ended up wasting his time.
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Wow, what a read, you should make a movie. Good on ya for booking the carpet. It seems to have given you focus and a deadline. Good on ya inviting the parents over too, very clever.
over a year ago by Bruce Phillips
I would have canceled the carpet though and polished the boards. I love the feel of the boards.
Anyway, good stuff, can't wait for the next room.
Cheers
Bruce
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