We’ve been amazingly busy in our guest bedroom and have spent a huge amount of time finishing the stripping, skimming, sanding, painting and – wait for it – removing the laminate flooring!
Over the last few weeks the bedroom already progressed from this
to this almost stripped, almost plastered and almost primed room.
Okay, so it wasn’t a huge improvement, but definitely a start.
The furniture and other stuff in the room that we have been working around and moving from side to side has been slowly driving us mad, so we started the week by dismantling everything and having a good clear out.
Then we finally finished skimming the walls (you can read more about it here), priming the cornice (more on that here) and stripping the walls (all the nitty-gritty details here).
After applying the primer, the walls the walls already look much better than before. Okay, so everything is still really patchy and there is almost more paint on the floor than on the walls, but it’s still an improvement on before.
After priming everything we then gave the walls two coats of normal white emulsion.
It’s still a bit patchy, but doesn’t matter too much, as we’re just using the white as a base coat for whatever colour we finally decide to paint the room in.
By now, I’m sure you all know how desperate I am to tear up the dodgy laminate flooring – well it’s done. It only took a few hours to rip it all up, and the fact that it was so badly laid probably made things a bit easier.
Almost every bit of work that has been done in our house by the previous owners has been done cheaply and poorly, so I was really surprise to find underlay under the laminate flooring.
So, after also ripping up the underlay the bedroom floor has gone from a complete paint covered, badly laid mess to this even worse paint covered mess.
You can see that in addition to finding the original floorboards, we also found the tiled hearth in front of the chimney breast.
The original Edwardian tiles are kind of still there, even if they are covered in layers of yellowy paint. They don’t seem to be in a good condition though and it also looks like some of them have been removed.
After a bit of paint stripping (if you follow us on Instagram you will have already had a sneaky preview) this is what the tiles look like now.
It’s always surprising that people would cover up original period features, especially pretty tiles like these ones. It’s such a shame that so many of them are broken and we’ll definitely be scouring all local reclamation and fireplace stores to see if we can find some more of them. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we found the original fireplace behind the wall, too?
It’s great to start seeing results in the bedroom. Everything already feels so much cleaner and brighter. There’s still a long way to go, but it’s great to be making progress at last! I already find myself just standing in the middle of the room staring at the clean and smooth walls.
Do you share my dislike of laminate flooring? Do you think we should sand the original floorboards or go for carpet instead? We’ve still not decided on a colour for the walls – let us know your thoughts!
I have laminate flooring that I’m dying to tear off… But as I just don’t have walls anymore in the kitchen, this is a project that’s going to wait. I would love to keep the original floor, but everybody tells me it’ll be in too bad of a state… So I’ll keep an eye on what you do and if you can do it, why wouldn’t I do it? No pressure, though, but I’d love for you to keep the floor. The tiles you found are exquisite.
Now I’ve torn up the laminate in the bedroom, I’m itching to tear up the bit we have in the downstairs hallway up, too. It’s so quick and so satisfying! We love sanded original floorboards and if we can manage to restore them – anyone can!
Cx
I can relate to these pics, moving everything out halfway in the project and being halfdone with the paintstripping of the floorboards when the walls are being painted….
If you want to keep the tile, which I would, i think the floorboards stay. It does not look so chipped if there is a rustic material next to it. A coat of osmo hardwaxoil would do the trick i think.
for color, i dont know, blue or green probably, to match up with the tile pattern. I know traditional paint for some reason has not hit the uk, there is a lot of effort on the historic colors, but not the material? but i would really like to recommend making your own paint. This is not the company that i usually order from, but i thought this website might be easier to understand. http://www.avjord.se/mala/farg/vagg/ it does not really matter what pigments you choose, you really cant go wrong. For some reason the pigments catch the light better in an egg tempera emulsion, and makes everything pop. it is traditionally used for woodwork but is a great paint for walls. I am little bit hooked on this =)
Thanks for the link Louise! I’ll definitely be checking out the paint (better get practicing my Swedish!). I’d not thought about the tiles going with the floor, but it’s a really good point! We have sanded floorboards in some of the other rooms and these bedroom ones are in a great condition, so it’s sanding them is probably the way forward.
Cx