Friday, March 23, 2012

Spare room inspiration... even when damp attacks

When we moved into the house in 2008, I did notice a smidgen of damp in the back bedroom. "Must get around to doing something about that," we muttered, adding it to a list of urgent works that included a new path, front door and a large-scale excavation of the back garden make part of it level with the ground floor of the house.

After those exhaustive (and expensive) projects were complete, into the spare room we dumped boxes containing all that stuff that's difficult to part from such as old college newspapers, childhood photos, favourite books, letters and postcards throughout the years, notes from college courses (okay, I was too lazy to begin sorting through 'supply chain management' and 'administrative law'). The possibility of the room looking something like the photo below seemed a more remote possibility.


This back bedroom, notionally titled 'the study', is where a well-made but lonely foosball table sits among the boxes. There has been a few mass-clearing out rampages over the years, but my decision to do a post-grad in primary teaching led to more books, stationery and notes taking residence. We prefer to keep the door to this room closed.

However, avoiding the area has proven costly, as the little bit of damp has now spread in a dramatic fashion, requiring a deal of work that would have been significantly lessened had we tackled it a few years back. So, a big job ahead.

Treating the damp, which may involve rebuilding the chimney contributing to the leak along with repointing it, plus wall treatments, will mean that whatever funds we have to finish the spare room will be minimal. However, I don't want to spend too much on decorating this room, as it may become a bathroom if we decide (funds allowing) to embrace negative equity (see previous post) and build a two-storey extension.

I had spent the past few weeks happily collating images in my Spare Room Inspiration folder on Pinterest (seriously addictive and the reason for less blog posts of late). I'd like muted white or grey walls, blackboards and punches of colour. Here's a selection:



Source: google.com via Sorcha on Pinterest


Source: westelm.com via Sorcha on Pinterest



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