Decorating on a budget and The Great Escape

By far the cheapest way to decorate is to DIY.  Once, many years ago we paid a 'professional' decorator to paint our living room and dining room.  He dribbled paint on the carpets and left a few hand prints on my dining chairs.  And he overestimated how much paint he needed to buy.  That was the first time I realised that I could do just as good a job.  It takes me longer but I get there in the end!

In the last few years I've realised that painting is cheaper than wallpapering (unless you get a really good EBay bargain!) and white paint is hugely cheaper than colours.

I like Dulux paint, I know not everyone does. It's more expensive than a DIY store's own brand but I think it's better quality and I use less.  In B&Q a 10 litre tub of Dulux Brilliant White Emulsion is £22 or 2 for £40.  Same paint in a colour eg Natural Calico (that I used in my living room) is £20 for 2.5 litres!!!  About 4 times the cost of plain old white!  (to be fair I had loads of leftover Natural Calico from my previous house and only needed to buy 1 tin).

Same goes for the Satinwood I used on the woodwork.  £24 for 2.5 litres of Brilliant White or £18 for 0.75 litres of a colour!!

So for my dining hall and stairs I bought 2 x 10 litre tubs of Emulsion (£40), a 2.5 litre tin of Primer and Undercoat (£34) and a 2.5 litre tin of Quickdry Satinwood (£24).  Grand total of £98 for paint.

If I had wanted to use a coloured paint it would have been so much more expensive.  Hmmm, I'm now thinking the difference in cost between wallpaper and coloured paint might not be as big as I thought.

I did make a mistake though.  I bought specialist floorboard board for the actual stair treads.  It was nice but the colour was too yellowy beside the Brilliant White banisters.  Hopefully I can use it on another project.

All the walls, stairwell, treads and banisters are finished but I still need to finish off the half landing area.  These are the only windows so the room can be a bit dark.

I need to sand the stained wood and the weird light beige surround so it can be painted Brilliant White too!  Then I'll whitewash the floorboards and put down a rug.  Shouldn't take me too long.

I made a start on clearing out some craft stuff from the guest bedroom.  I found these 5 wee pictures I made ages ago for a craft fair.  I've put them up in the Family Room.  They're strategically positioned to cover a few holes in the wall!!  😄

The chickens spent today in their run with the gate closed and they were NOT happy hens!  Ginger MarmaLady escaped yesterday.  Luckily she only got as far as next door before my neighbour rescued her.  She managed to squeeze through a teeny wee gap round the side of my house and walk along a narrow wall before going under another teeny wee gap under the fence.  Sheer luck really!  The gap is now blocked and OH will add some chicken wire to the bottom of the fence to prevent another escape!  But they're confined to barracks for now and I have put lots of different treats in there for them.  My Lovely Mum is coming tomorrow to help me do a Spring tidy up outside so they might get back out if they behave.

Hopefully it will be another lovely sunny day like today 😎