Home Transformation - Living Room Before and After

This is our home in the West End of Glasgow. Graeme lived here during his University years and subsequently moved back to Edinburgh. About two years ago, we decided to renovate the flat and move back in. In the lounge, we freshened up the walls with a new paint colour, sanded the floors and re-finished them, moved a radiator, changed the window dressings, replaced the ropes and hardware on the sash and case windows and put in new furniture.

Initially, I had chosen a paint colour that I expected would look like the colour of plaster; it didn’t! The poor painter had painted the entire room and it just looked magnolia! I instantly broke out in hives, it had to change, eek! Graeme wasn’t sure about having the whole flat painted in dark colours but I managed to talk him round, so, we ended up painting the living room dark green. There is a lot of green in our flat but I’m a firm believer that green is a neutral!

I was worried that using green with red would look like Christmas spewed on our front room but it all came together nicely. Autumn is my favourite season and this room always screams autumn to me. The curtains were hand made by our neighbour. We traded services, she was downsizing so we played removal man and woman for the day and loaded up our van and helped her move house. I bought the fabric from my upholsterer for about £15 per sqm. It ended up costing me £400 for a pair of curtains to cover a bay window of a period property with ceilings over 3 metres high, which is unheard of!

We ended up putting our TV on the wall above the fireplace. We rarely watch TV and we toyed with the idea of even getting one but in the end we decided not to be total outcasts and actually do something normal for once! Well, kind of! I still bought the Samsung Frame and I love it! It has an art mode which is effectively like a screensaver. You can choose one of the default artworks or upload your own. It looks like a picture frame and blends in nicely. An interior designer’s dream! We have blown so many minds with this, as soon as we turn the TV on people get a fright, wondering where the noise is coming from, so clearly the concept works! It’s so realistic, sometimes it even has me fooled!

Our décor is very eclectic. It’s a mish mash of things we’ve collected on our travels, personal touches and a lot of my mum’s things. I remember thinking, as a child, that my mum had so much junk and none of it matched. She brought home rocks to paint, made features out of sticks and spray-painted pine cones gold. I criticised it when I was a grumpy teenager but now I realise I’ve actually morphed into my mum and her taste is my taste! Things to spot: The Turkish coffee set is from one of the bazaars in Mostar. I have upcycled an old G-clamp into a book shelf. The box light says ‘It started with a swipe’ because Graeme and I met on Tinder.