How Renovating One Room Turned Into An Entire Upstairs’ Renovation

If you’ve been following our upstairs renovation tales, you’ll know we ended up having to do the entire upstairs hallway, which meant removing the glass panels from the wall adjoining the bedroom, which meant that the bedroom wall needed replastering, so we decided to bite the bullet and do the whole room. Yep, another room. Whilst the landing and hallway and my home office are still not complete. Gluttons for punishment aren’t we? But it makes sense to get it all done at once, rather than doing one wall and leaving it half done and then waiting a year or so to finish the rest. Plus, I cannot wait to have a bedroom which is an oasis of calm amidst the renovations, rather than a power-tool-filled obstacle course as it is at the moment!

I’ll share my bedroom décor inspiration next week, and that’s all I’m going to say on it for now, but I thought it was high time I posted a few post-plastering pics, to show just how much of a huge difference it has made. We have done some painting in the hall and office, but since we are still doing a lot of work I don’t want to do the final coat in the corridors or landing because ladders and things are still being moved around and we’re liable to end up with some scrapes that I’ll want to cover. The office has stalled completely while we work on the bedroom, because for now I am fine in the dining room, and it’s more important to have a finished bedroom! And in typical us style, we are away or busy most weekends (we’re just back from a beautiful weekend in Suffolk for my lovely friend Kaye’s wedding to Adrian – I’ll post some beach pics soon, and next weekend we are off to France with my little sister to collect our wedding wine!), so we just have evenings after work to do all of this. It gets pretty tiring working until 9 and then sitting down to eat. Most nights we barely manage an entire episode of Peaky Blinders after before needing to go to bed! Crucially though, we are getting there, if very slowly.

Sorry about the quality of these pics, they have been mostly snapped whilst my hands were covered in paint so I didn’t want to press too many buttons, and I didn’t see the point in heavy editing to fix them because, let’s face it, they are all quite ugly anyway! But here’s how our upstairs renovation is coming along. I’m not calling them before and ‘afters’, because we are not finished yet! Before and ‘now’ is more accurate.

Office ‘Before’

Office ‘Now’

I absolutely love how it looks, and my worry about it being too dark with the burgundy walls has thankfully not been warranted. It’s almost too bright in there on sunny days!

Landing ‘Before’ (before it was even a landing and was just the office)

Landing ‘Now’ (with door to office on left)

Look at it! So bright and airy! Such a lovely open space, and I love seeing the garden through the doors (yes, we have to sort that out too!).

Hallway ‘Before’

Hallway ‘Now’

You can’t see it in this photo, but the ragged brick has gone, replaced by a sharp, tidy corner. The glass is history, and the door has been properly plastered around. Even with one lightbulb instead of 5, it still feels brighter now!

Bedroom ‘Before’

Bedroom ‘Now’

Wahey, look, a solid wall all the way up to the ceiling. It makes a massive difference to the feel of the room.

We are hoping to get the bedroom finished in terms of painting and building etc in the next couple of weeks. Unfortunately we can’t afford the new bed we would like at the moment, or the big sparkly chandalier, but I think it is going to be a massive improvement regardless. I can’t wait to show you!

What do you think? Hard to tell from the photos I know, but you can see we have actually done a lot, though of course we still have a very long way to go.