Our Retro Inspired Living Room Makeover… (Our Old House)
We have lived in our little house for four and a half years now, and we love it a lot. It is by no means our forever home, but it is full of love and memories. Slowly but surely we are getting it how we want it but budget and time means that it isn’t happening as quickly as we would like.
Our living/dining room is the hub of our home. It is the room we are in most of the time- we do our relaxing, playing, eating and entertaining in this room but for ages it has just been a blank canvas. When we moved in it had wee yellow walls and green shagpile carpets (no joke) and we gave it a lick of paint, added some other touches and put down beige carpet throughout the house, but it hasn’t had our stamp fully put on it until now.
I decided a couple of weeks ago I was fed up of it in it’s current state, and set to work giving it a revamp. The first to go was the Artex on the ceiling, I loathe Artex and got a quote from a plasterer to see if he could reskim it all. It was reasonable and so I begged Mr E to let us get rid of it. He agreed, so we had this done while also getting rid of the rubbish lampshades and having swanky new spotlights put in.
We then had wallpaper put up on our long wall, gave the whole place a lick of paint and added some finishing touches. The room originally had a purple and brown colour palette but I also introduced mustard. Yellow makes me happy. I realise it might not be everyone’s cup of tea but I love it. I love the bright colours and am really pleased with how it has turned out. We still have a few finishing touches to go but I thought I would show you our new living room makeover in photos.
Before
Before we started our living room looked like this. Not offensive but bland, boring and uninteresting. Note the horrendous Artex on the ceiling and the cheap, slightly crappy lampshades!
After
This wall was already previously painted purple but we gave it another lick of paint to brighten it up a little. I took this photo before we put it back but we have a little desk to one side of the sofa where Mr E’s iMac sits.
This wall has our BC (Before Child!) photo frame on it. The rest of the house is full of photos of our little ladies but we like to keep this one the way it was before.
I fell in love with this cushion from Nicki McWilliams. It was a bit more than I would usually spend on a cushion but who doesn’t love a Custard cream? The Love cushion is from Homebase.
Our wallpaper is from Orla Kiely. I absolutely adore it and think it has transformed the room. It was a brave choice to go with such a bold mustard print but I love it. The stripey mustard cushion and purple velvet one were from H and M Home.
I also fell in love with this mustard cat cushion from Howkapow. The knitted brown cushion is from H and M Home.
This mustard throw is from Laura Ashley, it’s lovely, big and cosy.
I struggled to figure out what to do with this space above our understairs cupboard, but found this lovely garland from Southwood Stores and thought it was perfect.
In our town there is a huge vintage bric-a-brac shop, three floors full of treasure. I found these old fashioned milk bottles and thought they would be perfect for our retro inspired living room.
I got the little decorative purple stones from Ikea.
Our table was getting wrecked from the girls drawing and eating on it constantly, so I found this dotty wipe clean purple fabric- perfect as a tablecloth. The flowers were a birthday present from a lovely client of mine!
I have had this vintage polaroid camera for a long time, the certificate is from 1978. The Haarlem tea light holders are from Howkapow.
Our print is from Old English Company, and I love it. Think it looks great up on the wall.
Just love our wallpaper! The rug we had previously but I like the colours together. It’s not for everyone but it makes me feel happy. Next job is the bathroom, but think we need to save up some pennies first- this makeover went *slightly* over our budget!
Some of our other room tours…
NB. We paid for every single bit of this makeover, but I wanted to include the links in case anyone is after any inspiration.
Discussion