Sunday 6 February 2011

Decorating to Joseph Heller

The house that we moved into about 3 months ago is painted entirely in this dull sandy colour, every room the same. As with most rented housed it is designed to be inoffensive to temporary tenants, and boring as shit. We were however told that since we took the house in a depressing state we could have free rein with the decorating:-) It is such a big chore that I was not sure where to start, so I decided to begin at the front door and work my way through the house from there. The first stage of the job started during my week off and finished (sort of, bar a bit of touching up) today, with the accompaniment of Joseph Heller's 'Catch 22' on tape.

Before pictures (though I had started on the skirting boards when I realised I had forgotten to take any)

I chose (I could say 'we' but Dunk just agrees with anything I suggest) a sea green colour with duck egg blue for the woodwork. I usually do woodwork white in keeping with family tradition but decided to do something a bit more adventurous.
This is the landing. The doors are all white, partly because I ran out of the duck egg and partly so it was not too overwhelming. Downstairs the doors covered beautifully because they are solid wood, these ones upstairs only look ok on close inspection, they are *very* cheap doors consisting of a frame with two sheets of hardboard nailed on.
Downstairs looking towards the front door:
Started taking a couple of photos the other evening down the stairs and realised I was getting an interesting shadow effect from the bannister. The trouble with freshly painted walls is that it has the unfortunate side effect of highlighting how awful the carpet is ... but that will have to wait.

7 comments:

  1. Looks nice... And isn't it great that one can listen to books while doing other things!

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  2. ...With Martine not Dawn :-/

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  3. How lovely for your landlord/lady to allow you to do up the house to make it your home! Yay!!! The new colour scheme is certainly a very striking and soothing difference to the before pics!!! Take care
    x

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  4. you are a powerhouse Martine, unfinished rooms all over the place at ours, newly decorated rooms are so lovely to be in! I like your choice of colours. And btw what is Dunk the Rugged disagreeing with?

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  5. I claimed he just agrees with me ... so this is him asserting his independence:-)
    much love
    martine

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  6. Ahh yes just reread, oh what an opinionated man you are Dunk!!

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