In an effort to find the motivation to re-do all that work again, we tried to turn a negative into a positive. On the downside, the tiler had completely battered the room and left the walls scratched and gouged, but on the upside, having to repaint meant this was also an opportunity to change the colour.
We felt the dark blue hadn't really worked; it looked striking and perhaps would have been suitable as a bedroom, but as a small, north-facing study it just felt too gloomy and oppressive. The walls also looked out of step with the rest of the house - not in keeping with the general theme of using 'natural' colours that reflected what was going on outside the windows (green fields, brown trees, blue skies, etc).
First we filled all the chips and gouges. By the state of the walls, it looked like the tiler had been spinning like a top, hurling chunks of porcelain at every corner.
We gave the walls a gentle sanding to remove all the light scratches.
The tiler had decided to climb out of the window at one point (don't ask...) taking several chunks out of the wall in the process, so this needed to be repaired too.
Having rubbed down and filled all the walls, it would have been a lot easier (and cheaper) to just paint it with one more coat of the 'Hick's Blue' that we'd used originally. In order to go back to a lighter colour, the dark blue needed to be obscured completely, so we gave the walls a base coat of white.
This is the first coat of Little Greene's 'Rolling Fog'. It's a stony colour that was a shade lighter than the 'Rolling Fog Dark' that had worked so well in bedroom 3 (situated directly above the study).
This paint smudge was formed accidentally when the mini-roller brushed against the ceiling. Could this spooky, tearful, clown-face be a bad omen? (No.)
Two coats completed and switches and sockets screwed back into place (yet again). The 'Rolling Fog' wasn't such a bold statement as the 'Hick's Blue', but immediately felt much calmer to live with on a day to day basis. (N.B. It's much warmer in real life than it looks in these pictures).
As before, the light from the downlights reflected off the top of wall cabinets to create a rather nice effect.
The top boxes were originally kitchen cabinets, so in order to make them look more office'y we'd bought some sleek stainless steel handles.
Because the handles will all be orientated in a line, it was important to get them perfectly lined up, so we had to be very accurate when drilling the holes.
New handles fitted.
In order to get some low-level lighting in the room, we decided to fit some LED under-cabinet lights. It would have been easier to conceal the wiring if we'd planned this in advance, but luckily the cabinets had a service void on the back which would allow us to hide the cables without having to cut channels in the wall.
It was quite fiddly to get the wiring threaded behind, but once done the lights fitted neatly under the cabinets with no visible cables.
The under-cabinet lights are dimmable, so are very effective in changing the mood. Now we just need to sort out some new funiture and tidy up all those temporary cables...
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