I'm dreaming of a zen bedroom

This has to be the most drawn out room pimp ever – and the changes weren't even that dramatic. But it's done, and our sleep space now feels calmer, zenner and softer underfoot.

Here's how it looked before:

Kind of busy, right? It was always a temporary arrangement; the bridge between the long period when the room – the biggest in the house, and an ensuite – was rented out, and the period when it would be transformed into something new when my boyfriend moved in, the lodgers moved out and everything got switched around.

Christmas lights – should they stay or should they go?

Every year we seem to accumulate more fairy lights – this year we acquired some gloriously garish multi-coloured ones from an ancient box of Christmas decorations that belonged to my gran.

And, every year, as the decorations come down, I find it hard to part with the joyful sparkle of a string of festive bulbs. Well... should these ones stay or go back in the box until December 2016?

Guest post: cunning bunting

Today, a guest post from sometime contributor Abi, who has been missed! 

(I will be back very soon as well, in case you were missing me, too.)

I know it's been a while. But what better way to return to YHIL than with this... 

A few months ago it was my birthday. Yes, I turned 35 for the nth time. But that's not important. What is important is the spectacular gift I received from my friend Holly. Handmade and lovingly crafted this is quite possibly the best bunting I have ever seen in my life. As she unfurled it for me word by word (so I could get the full effect) I nearly popped. "Fuck the Patriarchy" it read. She knows me so well, and as a gift from one feminist to another it made me very happy indeed.

I think much of the joy comes from the fact that bunting is quite possibly one of the most benign forms of decoration ever. It's safe. It's nice. It's Mary Berry Bake Off safe and nice. So stitching up this art form with a subversive slogan gives it a lovely kick.

I hung it in our kitchen. Where I should probably get back to...

And you can see the same Holly show you how to make a romantic bedroom light out of sweet wrappers in this previous post.

DIY: Sofa pimping with DFS

It's only a small pimp, but a significant one I hope you'll agree. And one not unlike switching the buttons on a high street coat to give it a posher edge.

So this is how my sofa looked before I got into the DIY lite zone during a holiday at home, last week.

My sofa, before

Ever since I bought my DFS green sofa, quite a few years ago now, I'd wanted to customise it. Had I had the upfront money, rather than around a tenner a month for the handy interest-free credit that DFS offer, I'd have gone for a swanky Habitat or Heal's number, or the wonderous emerald velvet design that Ikea was recently selling.

Most importantly, I'd have liked the legs. That was the only real downer on my DFS: it looked ropey downstairs. The shape of the legs is a little naff, in my opinion, but I could live with that. It was the pale, uninteresting wood and the fact that some of the legs hadn't even bothered to match that bothered me (look closely and you'll see the horrible black plastic feet in the corners).

My plan was always to paint the legs. Several years later – so much time has passed I've even paid off the sofa in full – and I've got around to it.

Initially, I was inspired by Pretty Pegs, an innovative Scandinavian company of which I'm a big fan. They make replacement legs for exactly the predicament I was in. I nearly went with one of their designs (above), in fact, but in the end thought that a couple of coats of paint would do the trick instead. (I have upcoming and exciting PP news though, concerning my new bed, which did involve a set of their designs.)

So here is the sofa after possibly the easiest DIY revamp ever.

Black's a pretty safe colour and goes with quite a few bits around the living room too. Plus – *bonus* – it disguises the plastic feet that were once so prominent.

I should mention that I've checked, and the sofas at DFS have improved in the leg department since I shopped there, so if you're in the market for some credit it's still worth a look.

But let me know what you think of the leg update. I think it makes a surprisingly big difference. Do you?

Homes: Porn for modernist architecture geeks

A while back I posted some photos of my kitchen, in which you could just see a little of my worktop...

And it inspired Adam Jacobs-Dean to post a comment and a link to some photos of his own kitchen on Pinterest. He was too polite to say so, but his worktops are how mine should have looked. 

My own kitchen work surface is a slightly bodged-together affair, constructed from a super cheap and ugly worktop (installed backwards; curved edge hidden by the wall and silicone) hidden with a covering of separately bought Formica – one of the company's reissued 1950s designs. 

Adam's, as you can see, are only similar in their pastel Formica-ness and square edges. But the worktops are just one detail of this beautiful kitchen, which Adam designed himself.

"The kitchen is my pride and joy," he explains. "I designed the units and then found a local carpenter to build the kitchen for me in beech furniture ply, laminated with Formica in three different colours." The walls are covered with hexagonal mosaic tiles.

Adam is lucky enough to live in a Span House, in Blackheath, southeast London. Again, Adam's done it properly (I live in my local authority's 1970s copycat version of a Span house). Span homes were built throughout the 1950s and 60s in London and the southeast, by Span Developments, a company co-founded by the British architect and designer, Eric Lyons to create affordable, well-designed housing. The houses are many a modernist architecture fan's fantasy dwelling, and some of the Span estates now have Conservation Area status. Light, open-plan and set within generous communal green space, they're a design classic.

But back to the kitchen: Adam explains that the houses originally had a partition wall with a serving opening between the kitchen and dining space. You can see how this looks, mid-refurb, in another Span House. In Adam's home, a T2 Span design, built in 1957, this had already been replaced with a stud wall when they moved in. "We pulled it down to open up the kitchen space, stealing some space from the dining area to have a larger kitchen," he explains.

This is how it looked before...

Have a nose around some more of the house. Below, the conservatory.

"We're also putting in a new garden," Adam says. "I want to replace the existing decking with exposed aggregate concrete pavers, to match the front paths and road finish. But they're not easy to source."

"We've furnished the house largely with eBay buys – Avalon and Tomado Ladderax shelving, an Ercol Plank dining table and repro Eames chairs – things we've picked up at the Dulwich Mid-century Modern Fair – dark green Cado modular chairs and Kandya bar stools – and new furniture – the light green corner sofa is from SCP and the orange and white wall unit in the conservatory is from Ikea."

"We have lived in Southest London since we graduated," Adam adds, "and were desperate to own a Span house – it took us three properties to get there, but we plan to stay put for the foreseeable future!"

Wouldn't you?

Adam's kitchen was designed by London firm, Christopher Davies Associates, in case you are in the area and after something similar.

Before & After: the dark grey hallway takeover continues

I've been banging on about my hall sporadically over the past couple of months. The entryway part of it got quite a major overhaul to boost light and declutter it. 

But leftover was this little understairs nook. Which I sort of liked as it was...

But since we'd painted a wall in the top part of the hall dark grey, there was an argument that the new wall needed a same-coloured buddy to balance things out (you can check out the other wall here, where I also asked your advice about whether or not to repaint the stairs nook dark grey too).

Apart from the untidy lighting wire I need to find a solution to, the area looked OK. But because there's no natural light, the white never really looked especially white...

Though it still was a vast improvement from what it had been previously...

...somewhat cluttered. It was my workspace for a while when I had lodgers, and I'm not sure now what those charts were stuck up on that shelf, but seeing them every time I came in and out of the neighbouring kitchen can't have been relaxing.

Even tidy it looked pretty busy.

But then this scary giant clear-out happened, and I moved my workspace upstairs and out of sight from day-to-day living.

But in the end, I was seduced by dark paint. And things went from this...

...to this...

...and this...

I'm kind of over dark grey, but – like its wall partner up the stairs – the understairs area had to blend with the floor to visually create more space rather than being chopped up with colour changes (and the floor isn't due for a change for a good while yet). And the other point was to make it dark so it was cosy rather than grubby looking. I think it's better. Do you?