June 3, 2013

Room For Improvement Challenge

We have been in our house for 6 years now, the week after we moved in we went and collected Tito who at the time was 10 weeks old. At first he was crated but by the time he was one, he gradually moved from his crate to the top of the stairs. But he hadn’t finished with his destruction of the house!

He slept at the top of the stairs and he chewed at the top of the stairs, over the years we lost more and more of the top of the carpet and from the last few steps. By the age of four he seemed to stop. It was unsightly but we really couldn’t afford to recarpet the whole hallway so we dealt with it.

When Buddy arrived in October at only 14 months old he was still in the middle of his chewing phase, and he continued what Tito started. He chewed and chewed at the carpet at the top of the stairs and on the top few steps until it was actually unsafe to walk up there. There was no underlay left, and the carpet slide on the floorboards and it was actually safer to take all the carpet off the stairs. However unsightly it looked.

We did it on a wet day, more for a health and safety issue, with the plan to sort the hallway but not really sure when we were going to achieve it.

None of us have liked the hall especially the stairs since Buddy didn’t stop with just the carpet either he also attacked the wall. So we had a selection of holes up the wall and the backing paper ripped off. So it was all different colours as well.

Really off-putting and horrible to see as soon as you open the front door.

So when we were contacted by MoneySupermarket to take part in their £50 Room For Improvement Challenge we knew instantly that we could do something with the stairs.

We decided that we would paint them and make a feature of them in the hallway.

We went of to our local DIY store and brought,

14 x tester pots of paints, all in different colours

Polyfiller

Polyfiller spatula

White Spirit

A Selection of paint brushes

Two tins of white paint

Spending £45.96 in total. 

We came home and first of Mr L tackled all the holes in the wall. Filling them with polyfiller and making the holes smooth.

We then tackled the stairs and the walls, painting everything white, and painting all of the banisters. This took a long time but everything needed a base coat first before we could start with the other colours.

Once the white was all dry, I then started to transform the stairs. Painting the front of each stair a different colour. We then went over all of the white with a couple more layers of white, to give the stairs a nice thick colouring.

We then decided to give some colour on the walls by doing some funky displays of our pictures, including some of my scrapbooking pages that I have made over the years.

Each display has a selection of pictures from the last few years with Baba and we have kept the pictures the same sizes and have just a black and white photo display as well.

Our stairs get a lot of light from the front door and the white and the new colours really lighten the area up. It is lovely to see from our front room as well.

The paint and polyfiller has also managed to get rid of all the holes that Buddy has made in the wall. Making the whole place look inviting and homely.

This was an amazing fun challenge, that we all got involved in – Baba chose the selection and the order of the colours, and all of us love our unique stairs and they have already become a talking point in our house! We were all amazed at what a difference £50 has made.

After picture

Disclosure:  We were provided with £50 from MoneySupermarket to take part in this challenge and received no other compensation.  All of the opinions expressed in this post are my true own opinions and have not been influenced by the compensation I have received.

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