I am obsessed with houses and home interiors. I am a daily user of Rightmove, purely to be nosey and I'm constantly saving pictures on Pinterest that would never work in our home.
Our house is home to two growing boys, so it constantly needs to change and evolve as they grow.
What once needed to be safe for a baby finding his feet now has to provide space for two big boys, their friends and two dogs to play.
This means for me, a constant battle of wanting to have a house that looks nice, but also needing it to be practical. It’s a hard combination, but not an impossible one.
Wayne and I have never wanted a house that felt unlived in. We want people to come in and feel at home, not like they can’t sit anywhere or are too terrified to put a drink down.
This has meant that I’ve often leaned towards darker tones. It’s easier to keep things looking clean!
We tried decorating the house ourselves, but over the years I’ve learned that I ended up wasting money by making bad decisions. While I always have a rough idea of what I want, I do find it hard to properly implement that.
We’ve been in our current house for about five years and have always known we wanted to redecorate the dated bathrooms. They weren’t offensive at all and we knew it was going to be a messy and expensive job, so we put it off for years.
We finally took the plunge last summer as we were going away for five weeks, so I challenged interior designer Jess Weeks and her team to complete two bathrooms and our bedroom within this time.
I wanted a warm, hotel-like feel and they totally nailed it. A mixture of textures and neutral tones has totally transformed the space.
Our latest project is the downstairs of the house. I feel like my design tastes have shifted slightly and the way that we as a family use the rooms in the home has changed. We're no longer utilising the space we have.
I also want to move away from the darker tones and move into a lighter, earthy, calming and fresh feel.
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The perfect people for this are interiors oracles Haus of Hyde. They have already helped us to use our space more effectively. As I work from home a lot and the boys no longer use a toy room, I now have an office and we are currently creating a content room for my social work.
This means the boys now have their own space too. They had already taken over our living room for gaming and messing around with friends and Wayne and I always stayed in the kitchen to chill after dinner anyway.
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The boy’s bedroom has now been decorated in a calming colour, they have their own beds, as they still choose to share a room, but they both have their own individual stamp on the space.
They have shelving above their beds that they can choose to decorate however they like and skateboard art on the walls. It’s a style that will grow with them, which was important to me.
© InstagramIn the hallway, we have already started by spraying the doors an off-white, which has made a huge difference to the feel of the house. We’ll be changing the carpets to something more hardwearing and practical with Carpet Right.
With the rest of the house, we will be maximising storage and creating a more natural flow throughout, with all spaces being used to their full potential.
As our family’s needs change, the home needs to reflect this. Neutral tones, natural textures such as travertine, rustic wood, clay, sisal and linen will be used throughout each space for cohesion. I want our home to be a practical, but calming environment, that people can come to relax and have fun… Basically, so that the boys never want to leave!
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