Problem areas part two

Well as I said we have been working on finally repairing the damage from the huge and depressing bathroom leak, and also putting our own stamp on the house, having lived here for six months without doing anything.

The kitchen, which was hit worst from the leak has now been painted - or at least half of it has. It was a rubbish job as the walls were so damaged I had to sand a lot of it back to the plaster. The other half of the kitchen looking towards the garden needs to have a coat of white paint to neaten it up, but since shelves will need to come down for that it's been put on the back burner.

The dining room, although it wasn't damaged by the leak, has had a bit of a makeover too. It isn't a large room, and is north facing, and the north side of the house looks onto large oak trees so can be a bit dingy. The dark purple has warmed it up a lot. 

I did splash out on a couple of the super kitsch dinosaur planters from Morrisons. I love dinosaurs and these made me laugh. 

The hallway has gone red. This is another fairly dark area of the house, but the red has made it cosy rather than gloomy, and is much  more inviting than the stark white. We bought a few of these wire plant rings off ebay and are gradually scattering them around the house. 

Lastly, I mixed some of the leftover purple from the dining room and used it above the picture rail in there, and also to paint the chimney breast in the bedroom. I was going to lighten it again and use that to paint another wall but I think I'm actually happy to leave it as it is. 

The lounge still needs to be painted (blue) and there is quite a lot of repair work to be done to the walls after the leak in there, but we have done what we can to make it more cosy in there too. We picked up two of these shelves from the woodstore in Ystradgynlais for £10 - they just needed to be sanded down and painted white and now are perfect. The other one is in Ivy's bedroom and we have spare blankets and sheets in there. The rug I picked up last year from the free box outside a charity shop in Swansea, it's perfect for this room. 

There are still quite a few areas that we would like to sort out and a few rooms to decorate, but as far as decluttering goes we have given away a great deal of our things and no longer really have anything that we don't use often. Cleaning the house has become much easier and surfaces don't collect clutter as quickly as they used to, though there's still a lot of work to do here. We have had to spend a little money on the house lately to get it the way that we want it, but the changes we have made make our daily lives nicer. I have also spent a bit of money lately on my wardrobe, having given away nearly everything I have restocked it with a handful of very plain, versatile clothes mostly in black and grey. I am enjoying having a more uniform-like wardrobe as my enthusiasm for dressing up has waned with other things there to take up my time. 

We are intending to get the house as we want it, or as close as possible by winter so that we can spend a lot of the colder wetter months sorting out the garden while everything stops growing for a bit. 

That's all for now!