When my beautiful house went into House Beautiful

Appearing in House Beautiful and some of the designs and colours from our old house

As my blog posts so far have been about new things, I thought I'd mix it up by looking back to a very special day for me.

When I was pregnant with my second child I decided to enter a competition with House Beautiful magazine. This was way back in 2000.

The competition was for Britain's Most Beautiful Home and the first prize was £10,000 and a separate special prize for Imaginative Use Of Colour, sponsored by Crown paints.

I entered the competition for something to do really. When you're a beached whale you're limited as to what you can get up to!

I was invited down to London to be presented with an award as there were five potential winners in total. At this point we didn't know who the overall winner would be. 

House Beautiful - with me in it!

We enjoyed a lovely meal after which the winner was announced. Unfortunately  I didn't win first prize, but I was presented with the prize of the title of most Imaginative Use Of Colour.

The team from House Beautiful magazine came up from London to photograph our old house. They were shocked to discover I had a three month old baby and I had cooked lunch for them!

My love for colour has always been my passion as you can see. This was quite daring 20 years ago.

LIVING/DINING ROOM

The living room/dining room already had a royal blue carpet running through it which we inherited from the previous owner. I wouldn't have chosen this but it was immaculate and very good quality so it had to stay due to limited funds.

This was the starting point.....

Orange and pink, two lovely clashing colours would liven the whole thing up.

I bought three rectangles of MDF and painted one orange, one pink and one royal blue to give a 3D effect on a white background. 

The MDF panels in the magazine

We then purchased a lovely vivid orange velvet chaise longue. To make it stand out I painted a block shape of royal blue behind it. 

I thought a few pops of silver would look good, so I changed the all white paintwork to silver.

There was a gorgeous Victorian black cast iron fire surround in the front room with a horrible gas fire in it. I sprayed some large pebbles silver and simply arranged them over the existing coals.

The black fireplace with silver wallpaper and pebbles

The chimney breast was then set off using a plain silver wallpaper. I then painted the recesses on either side, one pink and one orange. 

Block shapes of royal blue, orange and pink were painted on the white walls in various positions of the through room.

Next on the list were window treatments. We inherited some very expensive swags and tails from the previous owners in pale pink and blue, very fashionable at the time. They were hideous and just had to go. 

I wanted to create some drama as this was a lovely big bay window and needed impact. I set to with the sewing machine and made some Roman blinds in silver fabric. The end result looked good but didn't have the wow factor. I was stuck for a finished result.

After roasting a chicken one day, I removed the foil off it and screwed it up. I looked at it as it caught my eye and gave some inspiration. I thought ' How could I reproduce this in fabric?'

I went along to our local market and bought metres of some very thin silver fabric. Armed with a staple gun at home I stapled the fabric to the wooden frame just above the blinds. Then I grabbed handfuls of fabric and just randomly screwed them up and stapled them into position.

We bought a bespoke dining table and four chairs from a furniture exhibition in Birmingham. They were used for display purposes in a room set. The chairs were made from solid metal and sprayed silver, they were very top heavy and highly impractical. I sprayed the seats and back rests to compliment the colours in the room. 

The silver dining table

A close up of one of the chair backs

I always choose form over function which isn't always the best particularly with a toddler, who pulled himself up using one of the chairs, which then toppled over and crashed through a very old glass display cabinet! 

Fortunately he didn't hurt himself, but thought it was highly amusing. 

We ended up having to tie the chairs together and couldn't use them.

THE BATHROOM

The bathroom desperately needed updating, so with a little help using some paint and imagination I created a whole different look which only cost the price of some paint.

Making the most of our tiny bathroom

This room was tiny so to create impact I painted it all over in a lovely deep turquoise and then added purple patterns over the top. 

This included the toilet seat.

OUR BEDROOM

Our bedroom was very spacious. It had peach coloured anaglypta walls, peach coloured swags and tails and white artexed ceiling, very much of it's time. Unfortunately we had to keep the artexed ceiling so I gave it a lick of white paint and then I reproduced cow hide shapes using black paint. 

Annoyingly all the black paint had to have two coats.

Rather than having a straight line of black to differentiate the ceiling from the walls, I painted a black curvy line. Underneath the line I painted the walls a lovely rich deep red, my favourite colour.

The cowhide ceiling and red walls of our bedroom

The paintwork was painted white which I changed to a very shiny gold. The swags and tails were replaced with gold Venetian blinds. 

Our dark wood furniture which belonged to my Nan looked perfect against the red walls. The overall effect was pure drama.

Our local newspaper did a double page spread of the house which I think shocked the neighbours. The outside of the house looked like a modest Victorian semi.

AND THAT WASN'T ALL

I was very honoured to be contacted by House Beautiful magazine a couple of years later inviting me down to London to do a feature on Christmas trees. 

It felt really strange doing this as it was August and blazing hot. Obviously articles have to be prepared months in advance.

We used the photographer's house as a backdrop. It was a beautiful sprawling Edwardian villa and I remember the whole house was painted white. 

I presumed this was a temporary measure and passed a comment that it was a great blank canvas. I was soon corrected and told it was meant to be minimalist! Ooops! This word doesn't enter into my vocabulary!

The whole experience with House Beautiful magazine was wonderful and I felt so proud of my achievement.

We stayed in that house for five years. A much bigger Victorian house six doors up came on the market. We simply carried our furniture up the road!

Sixteen years on and we are very happy here, this is our forever home.

Keep reading my blog each week and you can see all the changes we have made over the years.