Home Inspirations from Homelife Direct

I love browsing magazines and websites for home inspiration, I can and do spend hours looking at gorgeous pieces of furniture and accessories. In the past I have made many mistakes and purchased various bits and pieces because they were cheap or something that would make do until I found something I really wanted.

Since we moved to Meadow View, I have given a lot of consideration on how I would like my home styled. I am a home bird and love spending time in my home, whether it is baking fresh bread in the kitchen or relaxing on the sofa in the living room with the soft glow of candles flickering away. Moving to a place that needed renovating has meant that we could create a lovely home that is to our taste.

Homelife Direct is a fantastic website, a great source of inspiration and sell lovely quality pieces of furniture and accessories for the home and garden. My wish list is quite extensive!

As I like my home to reflect on the countryside that I am surrounded by, I like the modern country look. I like to keep clutter to a minimum and have a few nice pieces scattered about the home. I also like the change my accessories with the seasons. My newly decorated lounge has been kept simple with white walls to create a bright fresh look.

I love these tub chairs from Homelife Direct. How perfect would these chairs be to relax in during the evenings? I can just picture one in my living room, drawn up near the fire in the colder months. I think these tub chairs would be perfect for the summer house too. I can just imagine sitting in one, with the double doors wide open, reading magazines and sipping home made lemonade. These chairs come in a wide range of colours and patterns too.

Pictures taken from www.homelifedirect.co.uk

Homelife Direct also sell these beautiful cushions and at a fantastic price too. I love hessian as I think it really goes well with the county look Im trying to achieve. The only problem is, how to decided which ones to buy! I have several different ones on my wish list. I do like to change my cushions with the seasons. I like soft pastel shades for Spring and Summer and earthy tones for the Autumn/Winter.

Pictures taken from www.homelifedirect.co.uk

I think every home should have a sideboard to display pretty decor. I have two in my home. One in the hallway and another in the living room. Would it be greedy of me if I had another one in the summerhouse?

Picture taken from www.homelifedirect.co.uk

The Padstow Off White Large Oak Sideboard would be perfect for any home as if offers lots of storage space. A pretty lamp, photo frames and a vase of flowers would look perfect on it.

I didn't have a garden when we moved into the place and I have worked hard to create one from scratch. Much to my delight Homelife Direct sell garden furniture too! I simply adore the Windsor Garden Swing Seat. I would love this in my garden so I could spend the summer sitting in the garden overlooking the meadows.

Picture from www.homelifedirect.co.uk

Homelife Direct is a website well worth visiting. They offer free delivery too!

The Summerhouse

I am not actually sure what to call this little room that joins onto our home. It was built with the property in the 1960's and I guess you could say it was an early type of conservatory made from wood. It reminds me of the summer houses you can get for the garden so that's what I'm calling it!

Words can not describe it!!

Basically it has 3 sides and a roof and was built over the kitchen window and back door. When we first moved in, the walls were damp, roof leaking and the carpet was filthy, thread bare and musty. 

Whilst my husband carried out other jobs, this room became my project and I decided to paint the walls white to make it lighter. I spent ages painting it, ripped up the carpet and put a tile effect floor down. The finished result? Hmmm. It looked nice for about a day! The damp was causing mould to grow. I was horrified. The glass windows were soaking wet every day. I was using my karcher window vac every half an hour! 

The damp was horrifying!

So, I spent many hours on the internet trying to find a solution. I read that vents could be installed to help with condensation and that the walls could be insulated and then covered with plaster board. 

So after much research, my husband re felted the roof and I sprayed dettol onto the wooden walls. Once it had dried out and the mould had disappeared before my eyes I began to paint it cream. I used Cuprinol garden shades in Country Cream. I used this paint on the wooden garden benches last year in the shade Willow and it's fantastic. Lovely to paint with and looks like it was painted yesterday. It's weatherproof for 4 years. I painted the outside of the building in Willow.

Already starting to look much better!

Once the walls were painted cream, I bought voiles in Ivory for the windows and made a window seat using two wooden blanket boxes. I thought that they would be useful for storing wellies in. I added seat pads and cushions to complete the look.

The voiles help to create a softened look and the wooden boxes that make the window seat are useful for storage

Finally, I found an off cut of a wooden effect floor which has finished it off lovely. I solved the wet window problem by using a dehumidifier! It's amazing how much water it collects over night. I love this little room now. It's so bright and clean and such a transformation!

Cushions, baskets and vases help to create a country feel

New wooden effect floor to complete the look

 
 Storage boxes make an ideal window seat 

I really can not get over the transformation! I love sitting on the window seat with a cup of tea looking out into the garden. When the weather is nice and warm I can have the doors wide open but it is also lovely to hear the sound of the rain beating down on the roof. Especially now as since the roof has been refelted it is actually waterproof! 

A Morning in the Kitchen

I do love cooking and baking in my little kitchen! I have an allergy to dairy products so I like to plan my meals in advance and cook in batches so I have some left over for the freezer.

I love this cute egg house my sister gave me. I do think plug sockets are ugly!

There are so many options these days for dairy free products and Pinterest has been a great source for information and inspiration. I do love cheese and always on the look out for dairy free alternatives. Please let me know if you can recommend any!

Here are a few pictures of meals and snacks I've made from the book Deliciously Ella.

Thinking ahead. Meal and snack planning in advance

I love having my equipment close to hand so I keep my food processor, juicer, blender and slow cooker on the kitchen work tops. My food processor is the Magimix mini plus and has been worth every penny. I use it nearly every day and it's fantastic for chopping veg and salad.

Preparing my morning smoothie

My blender was from Next and I make delicious smoothies and soups. I love the range of homeware in Next.

 My slow cooker was Next too and is perfect for meals for 1-2 people. If I'm batch cooking I use my large slow cooker. Ideal for filling the freezer! 

Dreaming of a Garden

I love a pretty garden so I was quite disappointed to discover that we only had slabs. Not one flower bed to plant flowers, no lawn for my dog, no trees, plants or shrubs, nothing! As soon as the weather began to warm up I set about creating a garden.

The garden was such a mess!

My husband, at my insistence started by lifting up slabs where I wanted a lawn to be. I debated whether to sow grass seed or buy turf and in the end I went with the latter. I knew it would be impossible to keep my dog off the patch whilst waiting for the seed to grow and didn't much fancy muddy paw prints in the house. Instead I ordered rolls of turfs and before I knew it the day arrived to lay our lawn! 

Once the lawn had been created we started work on the flower beds. We had to lift up chippings and then a black liner before digging over the soil. Lots of weeds too! Along the garage wall, mounds of soil had been placed against it. Well above the damp course. It took ages to remove it all before we used left over slabs to cover it up. 

The rubbish by the garage wall!

I'm so pleased with the transformation and the garden is well on its way to becoming established. Dog loves the lawn and spends ages lying on it. Trouble is, he also likes to dig parts of it up! Oops. Nothing that a bit of grass seed can't fix.

A Smashing Time!

I never liked the frosted window that was between the lounge and the kitchen. I suppose the point was to bring more light into the kitchen but as soon as I saw it, I knew it had to come out!

The frosted window and hardboard door in the lounge

I visualised French windows so I could open both doors in the summer and close them during the colder months. I knew I wanted wooden doors that I could wax or varnish, with obscured glass. 

I spent ages looking at different doors, waiting for offers and finally I ordered 2 lovely wooden ones, just like I pictured. Before my husband could hang them, he needed to take out the frosted window and wooden panel underneath it so we could work on the frame. The frame was painted with white gloss and I wanted to strip it back to the natural pine to match the doors. 

Dog and I were confined to outside whilst my husband put masking tape on the window before literally smashing it to pieces. I was watching through the kitchen window in great satisfaction. Once the glass had been cleared up, we could start stripping the frame back to natural wood. We used a heat gun to peel the many layers of gloss before sanding it. It looked really nice but we had a problem.

After the door and window was taken out

Trouble was, the frame was not built for French windows and we were left with a gaping big hole in the frame work. My husband threw some ideas around before realising that we needed to replace the door lining.

The door lining and frame was too bad to repair

After many visits to DIY stores, we realised we couldn't find a lining wide enough. A neighbour mentioned a local wood yard so we paid them a visit. The man in charge was so helpful and made us a custom lining to fit in the gap. Two days later it was ready for collection. 

My husband had never hung doors before and found videos on the Internet to be very helpful. After much measuring, sawing, plaining he finally hung the doors and fitted the hardware! I lightly sanded any rough edges and coated them with a clear varnish. 

The doors!

Of course, it didn't stop there! I wanted all the doors replaced. I chose another glass panelled door to go inbetween the hall and the lounge and then wooden panelled ones for the rest of the rooms. We're so happy with the result and proud of my husband for hanging them all and replacing all the linings and architrave.

It is so nice to have these doors 

Filling the House with Flowers

Don't you just love flowers?! I do enjoy filling my home full of them in pretty jugs, jars and vases.

I enjoy picking little posies from the garden too!

Flowers can brighten up any space, especially during those winter months when it's so cold outside and all you want to do is sit in front of the fire and light lots of candles!

A Kitchen at Last!

Gosh, the kitchen! Where do I begin? when we first saw the kitchen my heart sank. I love cooking and spending time in the kitchen. I dreamt of having pretty cupboards in cream, with wooden work tops, a Belfast sink, wooden floors and most importantly a dishwasher!

Well, the kitchen was anything but my dream one! The property was built in the 1960's and still had the original laminated wooden effect paneling on the walls. Not in very good condition either I'm afraid. The cupboards were hanging off the wall so I was too afraid to put anything in them! The sink was tiny and in a separate unit with sliding doors underneath and a leek meant the bottom of the cupboard was rotten and smelt musty and mouldy. Still the room had potential and we were on a mission to find my dream kitchen.

The before picture, taken the day my new mini range oven arrived

We met with the designer at our home and I told him in great detail exactly what I wanted. I learnt that the existing units were not modern day standard measurements so everything needed ripping out and starting from scratch. I was more than happy to hear this! 

We chose cream units and cupboards with wooden effect worktops and reluctantly I decided against my Belfast sink. Due to a medical condition I have a tendency to drop things and the last thing I wanted was to put a huge crack or chip in a ceramic sink! My dishwasher had to be sacrificed too as there just wasn't room and I had to agree that a washing machine was more practical. One day I will have the washing machine in the garage and a dishwasher installed in the kitchen! 

Work was carried out 4 weeks later and took 3 days. My husband did the tiling himself to save money and despite never doing this before he did an amazing job. I went for cream tiles to match the kitchen. I chose a mini range oven in cream and I love using it. I wanted an aga but there wasn't room.

The kitchen afterwards, Looks much brighter!

I was ecstatic with the finished result and I still love it now much to the relief of my husband! 

Home Sweet Home

My first blog post! Hi, thanks for dropping by. I'm Nikki and I can be found nestled amongst the meadows in my little home. My husband and I moved into our home 16 months ago and have been renovating ever since!

Our home over looks meadows so I feel very lucky to live here. It's very peaceful and the views are breath taking. Our dog loves living right by fields and enjoys lots of walks through the long grasses and wild flowers.

The view from my garden

The property was very run down when we first moved here so many improvements needed making. So far we have replaced the kitchen, bathroom, hung new doors, decorated the hallway and created a lawned garden from scratch. 

By writing this blog I hope to create a record of our journey into making our house a home and gain inspiration from other blogs out there too. Please drop by and say hello! I would love to visit your blog. 

Have a lovely day! 

Nikki x