Our style tips for revamping our Victorian house
For those of you who have been following my blog and social channels will know that we moved out of our flat and bought a victorian house in South East London earlier this year, and I am loving living in a house. We have more space, each child can have their own room, plus we can also have guests to stay. If you’re reading this that might sound pretty normal to you, but we have come from a small two-bedroom flat where space was fast running out.
To make the move work for us financially we needed to buy somewhere that needed a little bit of love and TLC, and this house certainly needs just that. It’s not unlivable, but it is need of a full modernisation to make it work for us as a family, and also to bring it up to the design trends of 2018. So here’s what we are doing to revamp our victorian home.
- I’ll start with the exterior of the house. To generate curb appeal and to ensure that the house is warm in winter we needed to replace all the windows on the front of the house. Getawindow can help you find the style of windows to suit your home, requirements and your budget in just three easy steps. We opted for UPVC casement windows in a traditional style to work with the style of our home, plus to remain in-keeping with the windows that would have once been here. Alongside this we have also removed the render and restored the victorian brickwork, and what a difference that has made.
- Next up we have focused on our children’s bedroom and guest room. We are big fans of a grey room, and find that it’s stylish and the colour works well for pretty much every room in the house. We opted for both of the kid’s bedroom to be painted in a light grey which looks great against the bright white of the high skirting boards and coving. It also lends itself really well to creating a yellow and grey themed room for my daughter and a monochrome themed room for my son. Our guest room is painted in a deep dark grey, and I love it. As the room is pretty big with high ceilings, and gets the afternoon light, it can take a really dark grey. It also means that it’s nice and dark for sleeping when it can be light until late in the evening or light very early in the morning.
- Our next major project is the kitchen. Currently we have a separate kitchen and dining area adjoined by a knocked through arched wall. The current layout doesn’t work for us as family, as I really need to be able to see the children whilst I am busy in the kitchen. So we will be adding a kitchen extension to the house, with a brand new kitchen, creating the heart of the home. I am really excited about this project as it is something that we have had in the pipeline in our minds since we offered on the property almost a year ago. Although it’s going to be a lot of upheaval and disruption it will look fantastic once it is finished.
- We will then move onto the bathroom which needs a complete overhaul. I’ve already started looking at ideas on Pinterest and love the idea of a monochrome themed bathroom, with white wall tiles, freestanding or semi-freestanding bath, bronze taps and shower, and a Victorian tiled floor. The bathroom for now is way down our list, but that doesn’t stop me from looking and putting ideas together.
- You may be wondering about our bedroom. This is pretty much complete as the previous owners put the loft conversion on a couple of years ago. The room is a lovely size and has huge views across South East London, making it a great space for working. There are some things I would love to do to it, but for now we will leave it as it is as we have the rest of the house to focus on.
- Lastly we will update our living room to bring character back into the room. This will involve opening up the fireplace, replacing the existing floor, moving the radiators, and replastering the ceiling (taking off the 1960s paper that has been placed on the ceiling to mask the cracks). It’s also likely that this room will be painted in a shade of grey too, I just need to decide how dark we will go with it. We have lots of time to think about it as it’ll be done after the kitchen extension is completed, as this room will house our temporary kitchen for about four months.
So that is what we have done and plan to do with our home to make it the dream home for our family. I’ll keep you updated on Instagram with the latest developments, and I can’t wait to see the finished result and to start buying furniture.
Have you recently updated your home? I would love to see what you did for inspiration.
Claire x
This is a collaborative post.