Today marks officially one whole year since I completed and collected the keys to my very first home – eek!
It’s crazy to think how fast the time has gone, and how settled I now feel in a place where I once felt so lost. It’s definitely been a year of new experiences and more than anything, growing up. I moved into my flat straight from living with my parents, and asides from university I had never lived alone before.
But I’ve been quite lucky too – we’re a block of 24 flats and pretty much all of my neighbours are around my age, so not only have we meshed quite well, but we’re all just as lost as each other when it comes to setting things up. We even have a WhatsApp group where we bond over moaning about how useless our management company are.
There’s two girls in particular though that I’ve become good friends with; they completed the same day than me, so we kept crossing paths when bringing up boxes. I think it was about week two or three when we decided to exchange numbers and have a cocktail night and gossip in one of our flats. I still laugh at how dressed up we all got compared to our meet ups now, where we gather in pjs and bring over our own coffee mug. It kind of feels like a cross between Friends and Desperate Housewives, and I love it.
Something I’ve not yet mentioned is that I bought my flat through the London Help to Buy scheme, but I’m going to save these details for a future blog post as there’s so much I want to hype up about this scheme that it deserves it’s own segment.
Instead, I want to share some photos of my empty flat from the day I moved in, and a few progress pics from the last few months.
The living room/kitchen area is probably what’s changed the most; the kitchen came with barely any storage (one double cupboard and a tiny single) and no worktop space. So, my mum and I planned a design for a breakfast bar and then my very talented dad built it from scratch.
I filmed a YouTube video showing the entire process here.
Disclaimer: My living room doesn’t look quite like this anymore as I now have a kitten (his tower takes over more of the living room than I like to admit), and more recently my gamer boyfriend has moved in with his PC setup (every woman’s dream decor).
Considering I moved into a new build I seemed to have found a million ways to renovate and decorate it. My most recent project has been painting the back wall of my bedroom a deep blue.
Bargain tip: Instead of buying Farrow and Ball paint, take their colour swatch to the paint counter at B&Q and they’ll be able to match you a colour pot at a quarter of the price. The colour I copied is Stiffkey Blue.
In terms of the bathroom, I’ve not done anything here asides add a bamboo style cabinet, a door hanger and some rainforest themed towels. Don’t ask me how, but the picture still hasn’t been hung a year later…
One of the things I was told by several people when I moved in was that you’ll never think a room in your home is ever ‘finished’, and I completely agree with this. I’m constantly thinking of new things to add, what to remove and how to change up looks every season.
Saying this, I am planning on writing some blog posts showing an in-depth view of each room once I’ve finished some of the main final touches e.g. I still need to add coving and I’m planning on switching the carpet for floorboards.
What have you learnt or experienced since flying the nest? Let me know in the comments below 🙂
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