DIY in style: A new room in a day courtesy of Graham & Brown
With the help of design specialists
Graham & Brown, we created a new look for both our daughter's bedrooms, each taking a day, (give or take a shelf being put up here and there).
Graham & Brown has a wide variety of designs and a brilliant choice of colour, ranging in style from the beautifully understated to the downright weird and wonderful.
Looking on the website at the children's collection of wallpaper, Esme (my creative 7YO) and I, first fell in love with this
frame paper, but my husband, Simon, put his foot down as far as having that as an option. I really like the idea of being able to encourage the children to draw on the walls, but I guess his playroom over bedroom argument won out on that one. Shame we don't have a playroom as the frame paper really is creative fun at its best.
Esme eventually settled on a very girlie
polka flock paper, a pink velvet raised dot which is now covering all four walls. Sofia on the other hand, (my gregarious 4YO) went for a bold blue paint, with a feature wall of
mermaids - yes you read that correct.
I think it is fair to say my pictures in this post, don't do this beautiful foil type paper justice, for I couldn't achieve a clean photo with flash photography or the light streaming in through the window. Frankly, it is exquisite -with a name containing the words
Mermaids and
Moonbeam, it was always going to be. I love how the two children chose so differently, reflecting their personalities. Look in Fia's room and you see a bright blue background and a drum kit, and look in Esme's and you see a tidy desk, offset with pink and pretty.
Why and how? Well this week is the inaugural
National Wallpaper Week and to be honest, with all that has gone on in my LIFE AS IT IS recently, I welcomed the opportunity to redecorate the GraceFaith girls rooms with both arms. Our house build (ground floor extension) that was set for March 2016, has been rescheduled to start this week, and as a) we are going to be spending a lot of time upstairs over the next few months, b) the girls are in the same rooms that we decorated when I was pregnant with Esme, and c) they both totally deserve a special space, it is a welcome change of scene.
In this house, when it comes to decorating, we are usually your average
tin of paint sort of people. Truth is, neither of us have ever tried to wallpaper in our lives. Naturally I asked
wonderballs Simon to help and he did brilliantly. Especially as the walls are over 200 years old - wonky walls and all that. There are a couple of tricks we picked up along the way; using a pin to help release stubborn air bubbles and going for
paste the wall over
paste the paper, and although the walls do not bare close inspection(!), we are really pleased with the results. What do you think? Here are the before and after shots...
