Snuggier Snug

Finally after two-and-a-half years of living with the white walls in the snug, we made a decision on a colour and went for it.

The number of test patches on this wall gives you some idea of the colours we toyed with, ranging from pink to green to beige and back again.

The snug is at the front of the house which makes it north facing; it doesn't get a lot of sun although it is surprisingly light during the day. However, we tend to only use it in the evenings after DC has gone to bed and then mostly in the winter as it is the room which has an open fire. Taking all of these things into consideration we knew we wanted a colour that would be conducive to snug-ness as the white walls felt rather stark. Finally we settled on Natural Hessian by Dulux which to us feels much warmer, cosier and softer.

I started on the small wall by the door, knowing that once the whole wall was done (with two coats) it would give us a good idea of whether we were happy with the colour but also knowing that it was a small enough wall not to be too tiresome to repaint if we decided that colour wasn't right.

I must admit as the first coat started to go on I wasn't too sure of the colour since it was somewhat reminiscent of wet plaster.

But once it was dry I was converted.

And after two coats, it was definitely a winner.

Moving round the room in an anti-clockwise direction brought me to the wall with the window and curtain track and radiator and heating pipes and pretty much every awkwardness the room had. It took me an absolute A-G-E to get this wall done. Bah.

But look at the lovely contrast between done-zo wall and original stark white wall. And it was all worth it.

Then I tackled the big wall at the back of the room, the one which originally had all the tester patches on it - you can still seem them peeping through like shadows despite several coats of white being slapped on top of them.

Let's take a step back and admire the mayhem in the rest of the room...

Looking good, huh?

 Further mayhem ensued as I moved on to the final wall.

But at long last, 11 days after I started, I was able to lay my paintbrushes aside, move the furniture around a bit, step back and declare the room fully painted.

Compare to 18 months ago.

Again, compare and contrast.

And, best of all, over a year since hubby gave me (most of) my lovely ducks (the larger three were Christmas 2012 gifts, the smallest one was birthday 2013) they were finally attached to the wall in homage to our favourite TV programme (I'll leave you to guess what it could possibly be!)

The furniture isn't quite in the right place at the moment as we are looking to sell the bookcase in the far left of the photo; once that has gone the clock will move to the corner and the other bookcase will move to a more central position. Eventually we are hoping to have bookshelves built across this entire wall.

Compared to 18 months ago it actually looks like a step backwards furniture-wise, but at least the walls are a better colour! And I wonder if I've actually read any of the cosy crime books from that bookcase...

Quack quack.