Southern comfort

I watched 'The Help' for the zillionth time last night - the houses and lush backdrop never fail to inspire.

Hilly's kitchen below is sort of how I'd like ours to look; the colour is so pretty.

Celia's kitchen (above) is also pretty dreamy. Imagine having that much space!

It's a fantastic film and incredibly stylish, well worth watching.

Fun, retro kitchen

Loving this retro kitchen (uncannily similar to how ours is now)...

Carpet time

We bought our carpet off the roll at Carpetright - it was in the lowest price bracket, but I liked its wheaty colour and woven texture. We had a wooden dining table, chairs and coffee table and needed a neutral, natural-looking material to tie it together. Seeing the carpet go down was the most exciting thing yet; it instantly made the room feel warmer and less hollow.

The dining table was a snip at 30 quid (from a charity shop), while the chairs were free (from a relative).

The living room - carpeted! And with a new dining table, plus Mid-century chairs

We had it in our heads that the flat should be decorated in a way that fitted with the period of the building. I'd already lined up an extremely kitsch (vintage) drop leaf table for the kitchen, and our chequered floors were also a nod to the 50s. We ordered a button tub-style sofa to go with Billy's Mid-century buttoned armchair - the flat was finally coming together and becoming a home.

Ploughing on...

When we first viewed the flat I said that the kitchen floor didn't really bother me that much; that we could give it a good clean, and it would be fine. That quickly changed. When I realised how easy it was to remove the faded, dirty old tiles, there was no stopping me, and they were gone in a jiffy.

Below you can see this lovely pile of them, crusted with baked beans and dust, which were under the (broken) stove. We fancied a classic chequered black and white floor, which one can do oneself very cheaply. Billy was the man to lay them down (with the slightly obsessive precision to be expected of a graphic designer).

The result can be seen here. We were thrilled - it was starting to finally resemble a kitchen (without any appliances, but still). It was clean! You could take off your shoes and dance around on the spanking new floor. And there was some sort of refuge from the surrounding chaos. Being able to grab a seat and have a cup of tea in there was just blissful.

And finally, the bathroom, which got the same treatment. As it was such a filthy little space, we wanted to keep it as simple as possible, with a monochrome palette. We planned to carpet the living room, while the floorboards in the bedroom had to be enhanced with a couple of coats of paint.

Having a bathroom and a kitchen that were freshly clean was wonderful - but there was still so much more to do...

Not so mellow yellow

Stripping the walls was probably one of the most exhausting and grim tasks. The wallpaper in the bathroom and kitchen was saturated with nicotine, and when we started to steam it there were trickles of brown water running down our arms and onto our feet.

Bathroom, prior to stripping

It was also very satisfying, as I believe it was only with the wallpaper gone that the flat began to smell a little fresher. In the bathroom we removed shelves, a sticky towel rail and a toilet roll holder. We also took down a medicine cabinet, which revealed that the wallpaper had originally been a pleasing magnolia shade (this had, over the years, developed into a much deeper mustard).

Me, wrestling with the wallpaper...

Bathroom, stripped

The kitchen was a mammoth task, as there were so many nooks and crannies to sort out. And that funny little hatch (below) must have been a way of serving dinner directly into the dining room next door. Ah, the 50s.

Kitchen, wallpaper

Billy, already a broken man

Kitchen, stripped

With raw floors and walls, the place was looking fairly derelict. However, it meant we could finally start thinking about the next, more exciting (and transformative) job - painting!

I couldn't wait to apply that first lick of white emulsion.

Where to start?

The first step was to get rid of as much as we possibly could. Me, Billy's mum and aunt arrived early in our work gear and, in a frenzy of activity, we started ripping up carpet from every room. We threw out curtains, blinds and dated bits of clutter like wall-mounted kitchen towel dispensers.

Our hallway and living room, minus carpet.

The bedroom - floorboards!

We started, tentatively, to clean - though knowing where (or how) to start was certainly a struggle. As the weather was on our side, we were able to open every single window, in a bid to clear out the build up of smoke-stink.

The bathroom needed a deep clean (to say the least). It sure was difficult to imagine hopping into the shower or taking a bubble bath...

The toilet.

Filthy bathroom tiles

Gratifyingly, by the end of the day, the place already looked so much better. Removing the stagnant carpet from the bedroom, hall and spare room revealed (somewhat grubby) floorboards; downstairs we were left with bare, cold concrete. 

The stairs, stripped of carpet.

Spare room, floorboards.

Leaving an empty shell (plus bags of disgusting carpet) behind us, it was now easier to imagine how the flat could look, with a hell of a lot of paint and even more elbow grease.

The next step? Stripping the walls...

Our House

I am pasting everything from my Wordpress blog here (partly because I just cannot get a hang of Wordpress). So here goes - this is the story of our flat, which we renovated last Spring and are just enjoying now.

Stained by years of heavy smoking, the walls, ceilings and carpets were foul and reeking. Deeply unwelcoming, the flat was dank and dark on entering, with crusty curtains framing sticky yellow windows.

I found it hard to hide my revulsion (it was like something out of How Clean is your House), but I'm so glad that we were able to see past the grot to the positives - this was a good sized flat with two floors, two bedrooms and loads of storage space. The best thing? We could do whatever we wanted to it. Compared with the flat we lost (in which we would not have been allowed to sing or light a candle, according to our tenancy agreement), here we had total freedom.

The kitchen and bathroom presented the biggest problems. There was no stove, fridge, freezer etc - it was a bare shell. The shower and taps didn't work and the toilet hadn't seen a brush or bleach for at least a decade.

Working freelance as a stylist's assistant, I had the time to take on this beast, starting with a day of stripping all carpets and beginning to tackle years of dirt.

These images, I hope, serve to show what we were (rather courageously) taking on. So just watch this space for the next instalment...

The bedroom/spare room. Nicotine levels soaring.

Our bathroom. Shower, anyone?

Our bedroom (main)