My Renovation Mistakes & How You Can Avoid Them | Trades Timeline

I cannot even begin to tell you how many times since beginning this never-ending renovation I’ve thought to myself “I wish we’d known this…” or “If only we’d done that…”

Luckily none of our mistakes have been disastrous in terms of the general health of the house (I’d say it still needs a flu jab and maybe some IV morphine) but our budget certainly would’ve stretched further if we’d had some extra knowledge under our belts. I decided to start a new series of posts covering our f**k ups, stuff we wished we had/hadn’t done and things we wish we’d known in the hope that it may help someone out there (you?!) out at some stage.

The first post in the series relates to the different trades you’ll no doubt need to bring in when undertaking a complete renovation. I’ve chosen this as the first topic because it affects almost anyone working on any project in the home and is certainly where the lessons we’ve learnt have had the most impact, financial and otherwise.

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Not-So-Pricey Paint

Just a quick post on this, but one I thought may prove useful for some.

When you’ve plastered your whole house, the next costly activity (wow, they come thick and fast) is painting it all, and it tends to be something you don’t really think about when budgeting (or we didn’t, maybe we were naive).

 

Obviously there are some cheap options on the market, like this B&Q Matt Emulsion coming in at £0.99 per litre. However, it is so important you don’t just look at price – you can waste money and time with a cheap paint like this, just read the reviews!

Anyway, the point of this post is mainly to recommend a great eBay find we came across that has worked wonders for us. Buying a pallet of Leyland Trade Contract Matt Emulsion (12 tubs/120 litres) has worked out great value and it has been brilliant for everything, including watering down for a mist coat. Buying in this quantity means it only works out a little more than B&Q’s own brand at £1.25 per litre (FYI the Valspar equivalent comes at £2.54 per litre!) and is incomparable in quality.

A Bathroom that won’t Break the Bank

Our Master Bathroom is complete, with the exception of a few finishing touches (like a mirror, which I guess is an essential), but I’m excited to have a room that feels semi-finished so have jumped the gun a little with the blog post.

Also important to note may be the fact that our Master Bathroom is actually smaller than our En Suite. Being a small room and a bathroom that is going to get very little use as it is just the two of us, we wanted to come up with something that we’d be really pleased with but wasn’t going to absorb a huge chunk of our budget.

I’ll give a run down on the bathroom as a whole, let you see some pictures and end with a breakdown of the overall cost. 

Five Favourites | #2 | Interior Design Trends

There’s been a bit of a delay since my last post, sorry for that! Our progress has slowed as nothing else could really be done whilst the walls were being plastered and then drying out, but over the next few days I’ll be blogging about what has happened in the past few weeks. Since the plastering has finished we’ve been doing some painting and working on our en suite, so keep an eye out for up-to-date photos.

In the meantime, I thought now was as good a time as any for this month’s Five Favourites feature on the interior design trends that are pleasing my eyes the most at the moment. I’d love to hear your thoughts, or if you think I’ve left any off that you’re particularly keen on at the moment; always looking for inspiration! 

Five Favourites | #1 | Interior Retailers

I’ve been blogging about our renovation progress so far, but with the plasterer now in there isn’t too much to say on that until next week. So, I’ve been getting ahead of myself creating mood boards and ordering furniture to adorn our freshly plastered rooms.

I’m getting in so much trouble for buying things we (apparently) don’t need yet, that I thought I could at least put it to good use and write a blog post about my five favourite places to shop all things for the home right now.

In fact, I’ve decided to make Five Favourites a regular feature. I’ll be blogging monthly about my Five Favourite things across a range of topics in the hope that someone will find it interesting (no? Okay).

Anyway, this month’s Five are below and in no particular order…