Welcome once again, to the display of the workings of my deranged mind, to the decorating nightmares produced within the realms of my twisted creativity.
My inner self looks a bit like this right now : 
( an image of calmness and reflective serenity, I know )
After several weeks away from blogging, I can’t help but feel a bit lost for words.
My blog is not aiming to have an endless rattle of personal drama content that I’m sure none of you is interested about.( I’m sick about reading decorating blogs that keep going on about personal crap or cats and not focusing on the decorating )
My aim is for it to be a chronicle and a reflection of the restoration process we’ve doing in our house.
So I would like to apologise for not posting so often, but we’re restrained to what we can achieve while we work and live at the same time. In some instances it feels like we’re balancing 70 plates at the same time.
The last couple of weeks have been very draining personally, the house and work combo is exhausting me so much that I’m taking things with a little bit more calm and pace.
The reality is that,
I’m exhausted,
Finito,
RIP,
Drop dead gorgeous.
This obviously meaning that I couldn’t help Myself and I’ve demolished our old monstrosity of a fireplace and replaced it with the classic beauty of cast iron and slate combo.That’s exactly my idea of taking things with calm and pace.
Would it have been easier to dynamite the whole hearth and start again, 
Yes
But clearly, as no one has seen a mushroom nuclear explosion in recent days, you know that I did the sensible thing and followed the correct steps.
The whole process wasn’t difficult but rather tedious and repetitive, needless to say that we ended creating a cumulus of debris worthy of a Himalayan mountain chain.
I started by removing the hideous plaster monstrosity of a mantle we inherited when we bought the house, smashing the backplate and rebuilding the brickwork inside the fireplace nook.
After this was completed, I laid a layer of concrete and slate slabs on top to create the hearth.
The rest was simple, as the cast iron insert was made to fit by expanding the gaps on the brickwork and then the vintage slate mantle was attached using cement.
And voila, the fireplace has been replaced for something that won’t offend me every time I enter the room.
After the fireplace was completed I had to have a look on how I could improve our very neglected floorboards, I was aiming to sand and stain the but I opted for something a bit more different.
Inspired by a 90s video of Martha Stewart stencilling her porch on a checker board pattern, I decided to have a similar approach with our floors.
Why not hide the flaws of the woodwork and years of neglect by masking everything on paintwork ? 
So I painted a checker board floor to give the dining room some more depth and dimension.
and after several coats of varnish, there you have it , my very own scenciled fantasy.
The squares were created by using masking tape to position a negative space to be painted with the black paint, then some stain though the positive, a second coat of stain and polyurethane varnish .
And now, to the chronicles of the biggest challenge that we have had so far, finding the wallpaper for the dining room.
The Wallpaper hunt for this room has been a complete odyssey. I found a gorgeous toile wallpaper of trees that I adored
but the seller cancelled the online order. So in complete anger I visited our local b&q and there it was, the paper from the depth of my wildest imagination, the botanical orgy I was waiting for, designed by Holden design, this wallpaper evokes the spirit of the most complete botanical charts with the charm of a column style wallpaper.
just a tiny weeny problem. All the wallpaper was sold out in most stores on a 30 mile radious. And here’s what I imagine happened.
this zombies are not hungry for brains, this zombies all went to all of the outlets of b&q to buy all the units possible of wallpaper, so I had to drive to Nottingham to get the last 6 rolls in the whole midlands and Leicestershire.
Needless to say that all for walls are now the proud owners of this beautiful design that took blood and sweat to fetch after we had to drive for 1.5 hours.
I need to ask for a massive round of applause and praise for Daniel as he drove me all those miles so I wouldn’t have another wallpaper meltdown.
The process of hanging it was very simple, as it’s a black background wallpaper I prepped the walls by painting some black lines, where te joints of the wallpaper will meet to avoid any white lines. 
once the walls started to be completed, we had to put the furniture in place for the time being, as at some point this week, I will install the victorian skirting boards to replace te shallow 1950s ones that were not in keeping with the room . 
The dining room set has been gifted to us by my aunt, and sent all the way from Spain.
Needless to say that I’ll have to refinish it as the red tint of the wood is breaking me apart, literally. 
As an early Christmas gift, my dad decided to send me all the crap I had left at home in Spain. So after 6+ years in U.K., I have officially move all my belongings here. Nothing left in your storage units neither mum !
So this is all so far folks, we will have very exciting bathroom news on the near future so stay tuned for more restoration nightmares !
The 1903 house 