Our May trip was organised around a visit from 'I Escaped to the Country' to film a follow up episode. We had hoped for a little more time to make some real, positive changes to the house, but they like to send the same presenter again where they can and this was the week that Sonali would be available. So we agreed for filming on the Friday, giving us a good couple of days to try and make it look more like a home than an empty house that we had so far just removed even more fittings from. The day was then brought forward to Thursday....crikey!
We'd bought a whole load of items for decorating the guest bedroom and Liz had an ambition to get it done on the Wednesday in time for filming. It was an ambitious plan as we had to paint the entire room, including inside the wardrobe and the radiator. Then put up a new lampshade, new blind and the mural, which would be a first as we have never put wallpaper up before. This was nerve-racking as if it went wrong the room would look a mess and the whole plan would be ruined. This was my design.
The mural for the wall above the bed was from Amazon and shows Japanese cranes. I thought it needed some sort of border so I designed a surround of fake Japanese shoji screens to frame the mural and make it look you were looking out of the window. My sister, Jess, approved so we bought all the wood and got some colour matched paint from the Dulux Centre in Leamington (lovely guys and super helpful, and the paint is definitely superior quality!).
We started early and got the light blue on the walls and painted the ceiling. John spent time inside the wardrobe caulking the gaps and refining the coving to the ceiling properly. We realised we were getting short of time in the day and had to make a 'go no-go' decision on the mural. We decided to paint the whole of the last wall in the darker colour as it was unlikely we would be able to put the mural up in time and it look good. After the first few roller rolls John called me through to assess - it was very dark.... We were committed by that point so had to see it through.
We finished painting late in the evening and hung my three obi belts on the hangers John had made specially out of some garden bamboo sticks. We were rally pleased with the end result, and are actually considering leaving it like that.
We hung a bamboo blind and an origami lampshade to complete the look and we think it looks awesome, with the Japanese inspired touches that we were aiming for. That night we tried out sleeping on the futon for the first time and enjoyed a night in the newly decorated room and woke up to the sunlight filtering gently through the new blind.
Here are the before and after shots. What do you think?
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