I occurred to me today, as I stood admiring my patchy wall primer, that if you’re reading my renovation blog for the purposes of product reviews or advice for beginners, then you should definitely read this first.
I thought I’d better mention the look we’re going for in our house. If for example, you’re renovating to achieve a perfect finish, then some of my updates may not be entirely perfect for your needs. Even when we were planning to do a new-build ourselves, we always wanted our house to look old and rustic, like it had stood for centuries. Well, we are now lucky enough to have a house that really has stood for centuries, the look we’re going for is a lot easier to achieve! It’s just as well really, because i don’t think I have the capabilities to have perfect looking rooms.
With our previous houses, I’ve never really put a huge effort into the decoration: a slap of paint over whatever was there before seemed perfectly fine then. Now however, we wanted to do it properly. The problem is, properly is difficult. It’s the time it takes that has shocked me the most. At the end of September we decided we would really like the living room completely done for Christmas. We’re now approaching the end of November, and although we haven’t taken it easy, there is still an awful lot to do. And as I said, we’re not even going for a high-end look.
So my advice is if you’re building or renovating and haven’t done things like plastering and pointing before, it’s probably best to get the experts in. I think even though we have done it all ourselves, it’s going to look really nice at the end of it, but that’s only because we want it to look a bit rough and rustic.
