Le décor

As I’m finding it hard to describe exactly what Jon has been up to at the house at the moment, much less get any photos, I have decided to think ahead to a time in the hazy distant future when we will be doing more of what I refer to as the ‘fun stuff’ - colours, furnishings, basically anything that doesn’t require a rubble sack or soldering iron!

Starting with the kitchen.

Jon has spent a lot of time shopping around to find us a good kitchen deal. With this being the single largest cost in the house, it is important that we keep to our budget. I had no idea everything was so expensive!

We decided on Better Kitchens as they had a sale on and a showroom relatively close-by in Weston-Super-Mare. Although we are a long way from actually fitting the kitchen, because of the long lead time we had to make a final decision now on the style of the units. We have decided on their ‘Shaker' design, in matt with a wood grain affect. We like it, but in our forever dream house, I think we would splash out on something of better quality that we both love.

We have been back and forth on the colour we want for the work tops and units. Originally we were thinking wooden work tops (cheap-ish and smart looking) with neutral units (off-white or light grey), so that anyone looking to buy the house in the future couldn’t take offence. But after getting inspiration from Instagram and Pinterest, I flirted with the idea of a colour theme (dark green), then went pastel (baby blue island) and have finally decided on a super dark navy blue, with white marble-effect work tops. I like the idea of coordinating this with cool copper accessories.

Day dreaming about a finished kitchen!

Our concern is that our kitchen/diner isn’t huge, and being North-facing, it also won’t be particularly light despite the huge bi-fold doors, so these colours could make it feel even darker. Jon assures me the lights we have chosen will help though, and my friend Rachelle actually says that dark colours give the feeling of infinity…not sure about that one. I have these gorgeous visions in my head, so I really hope reality lives up to them!

The bathroom.

Tiles - as mentioned previously, I had never thought about tiles until this process. They just existed. Then Jon told me I needed to start thinking about what type of tiles I wanted for the bathroom and I was given free rein to choose whatever I fancied, which was quite exciting (in the loosest sense of the word)!

Then he mentioned the budget, so immediately the pool of tile options got significantly smaller. Unfortunately the pool has now been reduced to barely a puddle, because despite Jon’s best efforts, the joists on which the bathroom floor will sit are super springy and we are worried that the movement might cause larger tiles to crack. This means I am limited to small tiles only (<30cm). I may just be in sulk mode, but right now it feels like nice, cheap, small bathroom floor tiles just do not exist!

We are going to have a lovely washroom stye walk in shower, we already have our large modern (possibly cracked!) freestanding bath, a counter top sink (I am keen to find a nice vintage wooden unit for it to sit on*) and a floor to ceiling storage unit. It’s not a huge bathroom, but it’s not super pokey either. We haven’t decided on colours for the wall tiles and paint yet as that will likely be determined by the floor tiles if we ever find something.

Nice for me to have something to day dream over...

Getting ideas for Vanity units. Etsy does gorgeous ones but they are so expensive!

*Jon saw this picture of a possible vanity unit and he hates it, so back to the drawing board!