
A double mid-green bedspread and double faux fur double throw!
It's been a good week for snuffles. I haven't had much chance lately, what with work and very strict financial budgets, but all work and no play makes Steel a dull girl so on the way home Thursday afternoon I dropped in on two charity shops.
And am I glad I did!
You know I'm doing this back bedroom up? Yes, I know still! Well the three snuffles I found fit with the colour scheme we've decided on so I was well chuffed.
First off, a double mid-green bedspread and a double faux fur throw, the fur throw being NEW! Obviously the latter is a massive cat magnet but I'll have to deal with that when the time comes. So out of one charity shop I struggled, with the two heavy large bedspreads shoved in the world's smallest bags, and into the next charity shop to discover this:

Yes, a brand new ceiling light for £6, so out of that shop I staggered with another huge bag to add to the previous two and my handbag. Amazingly straight across the road was my mind-reading husband who had a fancy what shop I'd be in and had parked across the way.
Anyway, the light is still in stock at the retailer, so I've tracked down the matching overbed lights now, and at the same time I found the curtains for the room half price in their sale!

In fact, apart from the overbed lights, some lining paper, a curtain pole and the carpet, everything else I've either bargain hunted for, re-used, been given or intend to refurbish.
Now you might remember originally I had grand plans for the decoration in the room. I think I posted before about planning to do the room in a masculine hotel chic style:

That hasn't quite worked out!
I sat down with Martin and went through all the different magazine features I've saved over the last eight years to see what appealed to him. I was fairly confident being a man he would appreciate hotel chic.I couldn't have been more wrong.
He gave all the various styles of bedrooms a score out of ten - and the one above only got five. Most got six, a few seven, but only one got eight, and it wasn't at all what I expected. It was this one:

This is a picture of the bedroom of natural paint retailer Georgina Barrow, which I saved from an Ideal Home magazine from September 2004. He loved the combination of colours - the red, green and pale blue with touches of brown in the furniture and cushions. Once I looked at it more closely, I started to really like it too, not just for the colours but for the vintage style it had. It's a vey forgiving style too - nothing too formal or matched, which in reality works well for us as nothing we own has ever matched anyway!
So that's why the curtains I bought are red, the bedspread green and a faux fur throw brown. It's why I'm buying thick grade plain lining paper to paint pale blue and stripping back the varnish on some modern pine furniture we have in the loft so it looks softer and less jarring on the eye. The floorboards are in appalling condition and even painting them won't hide the problems, so carpet will have to be laid.
It's why I've spent evenings and weekend getting the bedroom doors looking like this:
60+ years of paint on both the doors and metal surrounds...
...not to mention the rim locks and handles

....to this...
The doors stripped, sanded and matt varnished to give them a deeper colour. The metal frames stripped and painted with Farrow and Ball paint leftover from doing the cupboards in the ktichen.
Stripped and polished, the rim locks and handles turn out to be brass (or perhaps bronze?) and copper, well worn on the handles

Who knew the house was hiding such great doors and door furniture? We didn't until we decided to strip them and see if they could be saved rather than turf them out as everyone has done before.
Suddenly the house has begun to acquire a personality.
Isn't it odd how the tiniest details can suddenly do that and bring everything together?