Kitchen tided up ready for action

After writing my blog yesterday, I decided to get cracking on some of the messier areas of the kitchen so this is it de-cluttered, now needs a lick of fresh paint before deciding what to tackle next.

Project: Kitchen inspiration

The kitchen needs more of a tidy and a freshen up than a total revamp, as I still want to keep the candy colours & cupcake theme.

The kitchen is going to be quite a challenge as there are so many things that can't be changed, including the inbuilt features of the house such as the floor and cupboards, and also the appliances as they are not cheap to replace.
Ideally we would like to own an all in one fridge/freezer but sadly unless we win the lottery we are going to have to stick with the separates that we already own for the time being.

Also I would love to have the space to have the dining table in the kitchen but even if we did have a joint fridge/freezer then there wouldn't be room because of the tumble drier.

Here's some pictures of what I have to work with:

This is Rolo's corner/bedroom, also as you can see here at the moment we have a notice board and some random hula necklaces on the wall- to be honest we don't really use the notice board very much and it's not really in the best place over Rolo's bed. 

Ideally I would like a more tidy little bedroom area for rolo & I would like to repaint all the walls in this room as well as sorting out all the chewed areas of wall and skirting now that he is no longer a puppy.

Some inspirational photos...

I love this dog feeding station, it looks really tidy with no bowls on the floor although I'm not sure how we could achieve this in our smallish kitchen as the toilet door opens where Rolo's water bowl is currently and we usually feed him in the living room as well:

I am also really liking this all in one dog area, with a bed, toy box, food & even pictures which is cute. We could definitely do with some kind of storage where we could put all Rolo's toys, food etc together in one place:

Finally I really like the dog bed in this pic, although this is in a bedroom I think it would look good with something along these lines in rolos corner to help keep things nice and tidy:

At the moment this area of space next to the door houses our drier and various accessories on the wall:

Behind the living room door we have this quite large wall space, at the moment it has a random little jumble of accessories, including a chart of foods healthy & unhealthy:

Then we have the sink/windowsill area (sorry it looks really dark in this pic), as you can see it gets really messy due to the fact that there is not a lot of worktop space in this kitchen and we have a lot of appliances.

The window sill is rather cluttered and I have decided I am going to throw the plants away, apart from the money tree which is going to be moving to the bathroom upstairs. We also have the kitchen roll holder and mug holder on the window which looks quite untidy but there is not really the space anywhere else for them at the moment.

I really love this blind so that will be staying and I also have 3 small cupcake pictures above the window which I also love so they will be staying also.

As you can see under the work top we have the washing machine which is white whereas the drier is black which was a bit of a silly choice really as we should have stuck with one colour theme for appliances but that can't be changed now.

Then on the small bits of work top space we do have you can see we have a metal drainer which I really like as it's more hygienic than a plastic one, we have  just bought the turquoise washing up bowl as well so again more things that will be staying.

Then we have the chip pan (black), the halogen oven (white) and some hooks which hold our towels & oven glove (which does not match the kitchen theme, could do with a new one of these).

We then have the main part of the kitchen, the oven, cupboards & as you can see a very limited amount of workspace cluttered with a lot of appliances, not good when you fancy doing some baking.

The appliances on the side include: toaster (black), kettle (black), knife block (wood), microwave (black), our two trays (on top of microwave, again these need replacing), the sauces & some oil.

Then finally we have what you could call this the overspill area, where ideally the dining table would be.

The bottom half of the room consists of our fridge & freezer, the top of these has now turned into an extra storage area for fruit, veg, cereal, eggs, glass worktop cover, and a box of Rolo's toys.

The top half of the room we have a shelf which again has some of Rolo's things on mostly, food & treats. It also has on our cook books, a pot of utensils & a glass of straws.

This area is the area of the kitchen which annoys me the most really it is just a big mess that never looks tidy:

As you can see I have a lot of work on my hands with this room.

Here are some photos of gorgeous kitchens & similarly coloured units for inspiration:

Project: Cloakroom - complete

I have painted the skirting boards and door/frame brilliant white (used a small tin of gloss I have had hanging around for years) as they looked a dirty cream colour before - I think this makes all the difference.

I have also moved out the kitchen dustbin as it seems after a few days trial our dog can be trusted with it in the kitchen - we will see how long this lasts.

I have put up a toilet roll holder & towel ring (Argos value set around £7), this was tricky as there wasn't a lot of room to put them.

And finally for a finishing touch I have added some teal candle holders & fake flowers that I took from our living room.

The makeover in all has hardly cost me anything.

Project: Cloakroom.... In progress

I have decided to try and tackle the house one room at a time while I'm on maternity leave, starting with the downstairs toilet. I already made a start on this last year, changing the colour from magnolia to white to make it a bit brighter since there is no natural light in this room.

Today my mission was to paint the skirting boards white as for some strange reason all the skirting boards & doors in the house are white apart from the two bathrooms which have a yucky yellowing magnolia colour.

This is how it looks now:

Here are some pictures I will be using for inspiration...

I love the flowers in this one & just how tidy and clean it looks:

I love the shelves behind the toilet here:

I love the flowers on the sink here:

I love the crisp whiteness of this, definitely going to be having white towels in our downstairs loo when it is finished:

Project: Bathroom inspiration

I have decided that I would like to achieve something like this, in our bathroom:

This is what I have to work with:

My latest love...

...is of interior design.
I have always been a fan of programs about home makeovers, I think my first ever home makeover program obsession was changing rooms back when I was a teenager. Despite living at my parents house, it inspired me to do what I could to change my living space, even though at that time my 'living space' was just one bedroom. Ways in which I managed to add changes to a small space were simple touches like re-organising the items within the room, painting, up-cycling furniture & adding key pieces such as flowers, shelves & ornaments - over the years my teenage bedroom received many transformations.

My latest program of inspiration has been the Grand Interior Design Challenge which was on BBC 2 & it has relit my enthusiasm for making the most of my living space for minimum cost, what I found surprising about the program was that with a budget of £1,000 per room, was the amount they managed to achieve for this such as new carpeting & just an overall transformation.

Now I am about to embark on my maternity leave it means that I will have a little more time (at least until baby arrives) to give our current home a bit of TLC & without having to spend large amounts of money, at least this is what I am hoping.

I have always been pining crazy on pinterest & have a board on there for each room in the house and recently I have found an app called houzz which also consists of the same kind of idea, so I have plenty of inspiration to get me started.

Since moving into our rented home (a challenging factor) we have already made many changes to brighten the place up, as on moving in every room consisted of beige carpets & magnolia walls.

So I here embark on my journey to revamp our house & make it as beautiful as possible.

My home in pictures - 13/02/14

Kitchen:

Downstairs toilet:

Living room:

Hallway:

Spare bedroom:

Nursery:

Master bedroom:

Bathroom: