I have never seen the point of a diary-style blog that only tells half the story. Ergo, as we travelled around Europe in our massive RV, I detailed the numerous mistakes we made and pitfalls we encountered, as well as the many lovely things that happened. And when, after my beloved passed away, I was left trying to rebuild my life, it felt appropriate to share that part of the story too. But although there’s obviously a lot more to catch up on still, and things yet to tell, I’d like to just put that aside for a while and focus on something more positive. So here’s how I turned an empty flat into a fully furnished home, by decorating and upcycling until I’d created my happy place. Because I really need a change of tone, and I expect you do too.

The project

So, back in 2016, we moved from a rented five-bedroom house to a ten metre motorhome and genuinely thought we’d never live in something made of bricks again. Consequently, we gave away all our furniture to people who needed things, stored some of our favourite pictures and ornaments in my brother’s loft, and donated everything else to charity.

Which is why I now find myself in an extremely beige, one-bedroomed flat, with some not-too-worn carpets in two of the rooms, and a couple of retro glass lampshades that I’ve managed to save from the skip. And that’s it. All I’ve brought with me are two camping chairs, two camping tables, a small bamboo side table, a tiny rug and a mattress. Plus, obviously, more spanners and sockets sets than anyone should have to deal with, and a lot of camper van cleaning fluids that I’ll never use again.

My brother and his family quickly donate as much as they can to me, including a bucket chair in need of recovering, a couple of chests of drawers, and a large, ornate footstool. At night, I duct tape the silver, padded, heat-deflectors from Georgie’s windscreen to my own windows, to block out the safety light and afford me some privacy. Then I go to bed and think.

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The problem is I haven’t lived on my own for thirty-five years, which means it has been forever since my design choices didn’t have to incorporate everyone else’s needs and taste. And I really need to create a place that supports me by, well, being all about me. So how, I wonder, do I start working out what I like? Especially after so long?

Phase 1. Research

I lay out all the pictures and ornaments that we kept in storage on my sitting-room floor. Most of these are special presents, have great sentimental value, or I just plain love them and couldn’t bear to part with them. There are three boxes, and I’m actually surprised at what I’ve saved. I start arranging them into groups, with pictures I’ve been tearing from magazines.

I’m very lucky in that I have my 60th birthday in my first few weeks at the flat. My family organise a lovely picnic for me, and then surprise me with incredibly thoughtful gifts, namely booze and John Lewis vouchers. They know I need stuff, but they also know I need the distraction of going and choosing it myself, bless ’em. So I drink the booze and then bugger off to Reading to do some serious window-shopping.

I take photos of everything that catches my eye, knowing that I’ll filter it out into favourites when I get home. I don’t make any judgements at this stage – I just look for anything that makes me feel happy or excited. While we lived in Georgie I liked everything to be plain and simple, with seaside blues and greys, and lots of light. This came as a shock to everyone, me included, as my previous motto in life had been ‘why use five colours when fifty will do’. But now I’m in a flat with orange tiles in the kitchen, and I can feel myself going a bit bonkers with the colour charts again.

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And then it happens: I find these scented candles in beautiful patterned pots, and that’s it. I give up the fight to be tasteful, and realise that a life raising sons has left the pink-and-gold part of me laying a bit fallow. And these candles, in their jungle-mad and flamingo’d gorgeousness, have well and truly woken the beast.

Phase 2. Planning

I’m now starting to organise things in groups according to the room they’re going to be in. I include paint and wallpaper samples, and things I’m starting to glean from the local charity shops. I’m basing my choices on which of my favourite things I want in each room, and designing to incorporate those. I know, for instance, that I want the totally mad vintage peacock lamp (a gift from some lovely friends) as my bedside lamp (cos who wouldn’t?). I’m delighted to find that I was having a bit of an orange moment just before we went away, and have packed a few items (that I’d completely forgotten about) in that very colour: perfect for that orange-tiled kitchen.

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Now that I have the ideas I need to work out the basics. I can get a grant from the trustees, who run the almshouses I live in, to buy a fridge and a cooker. And Asda have provided me with a nice cheap kettle, toaster and microwave. Someone has offered me a TV and my brother has a freeview box he no longer needs. A couple of bits of furniture that I gave to my niece don’t really fit in her new house, so they are coming home to mama too. And one of the trustees knows someone who is chucking out an almost new corner sofa if I want it. To which, yes please. Everything else needs to come from eBay, Freecycle or second-hand shops. So off I go on the hunt.

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I decide that I want a really outrageous print in the bedroom, either as paper on a feature wall, or in the curtains and bedhead. I can’t find anything I like in the shops, so I go online and browse until I’m cross-eyed. I know that most of the things in my house are going to be, of necessity, on the cheap side, but I’ve found that a few more expensive items balance that out. For me, on a budget, this is best done with accessories, rather than the main furniture. For instance, an expensive sofa will cost A LOT, and be downgraded by cheap lighting and crappy curtains. But a good, second-hand settee can be made to look very smart indeed with designer lighting and quality cushions, at a fraction of the price of a new sofa. And I have that birthday dosh to spend, so these are the areas in which I intend to splurge.

Then the promised sofa arrives and proves to be entirely the wrong shape for my flat. So I donate it to a charity warehouse and choose another sofa and chair from them to replace it, at a cost of only £150 for both.

Phase 3. The work

I make the curtains from scratch, adding blackout lining, and use a kit to make a roman blind for the lounge. I paint every single sodding wall in the flat, and am stupendously grateful that they did all the doors, window frames and skirting boards before I moved in. I cover the fancy footstool to match the bedroom curtains, and make a shed-load of cushion covers. I order ones for the bedroom online and then tea-dye them to match. I spend an inordinate amount of time on eBay bidding for lampshades and laundry baskets, and then have a very happy afternoon in John Lewis, parting company with all those birthday vouchers. I also upcycle pretty much everything I can find or have been given.

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Phase 4. The results

The bathroom

Because it is a small room, and fifty per cent of it is shower unit, there are limited choices in here. As all my towels and accessories are blue and white, and the shower is fitted with white panels covered in glittery spots, I decide to do a deep marine blue paint – with glitter in it. There are some fairly outdated tiles though, and these are a problem. I can’t use proper tile paint, because this is just a rented flat, and I need to leave it in the same state as I found it. After much trial and error, I find a broken pack of adhesive floor tiles, at Wickes, which they let me have for £3.99 because some are missing. I cut them into strips and use double-sided carpet tape to stick them on.

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After I’ve lived with the new, flashy bathroom for a bit, I realise that you can, in fact, have too much blue with glitter in it: who knew! So I repaint it pale greyish green, because I have a new picture, and it needs somewhere to go.

The mottled bathroom cupboard is one I fished out of the skip, once they’d finished refurbishing my flat prior to me moving in. The decorator had thoughtfully thrown it away for me because the glass doors were scratched and fogged and a bit crap really. So I set to with paint stripper and bleach and black paint, and made it satisfyingly worse.

The kitchen

Brown laminate floor, white cupboards with silver knobs, vivid ‘wood’ worktops and orange tiles. Hmmm. Gonna have to play up the colour here, to make some of these things recede.

First, I paint all the walls white and stick up a set of shelves I’d bought on eBay, years ago, for a fiver. Sam has been using them, but now he doesn’t want them anymore. Good for him, great for me. I get a roller blind from John Lewis with the last of my vouchers, pick up a table from Freecycle, and then source a cheap, knock-off eiffel chair and some plastic tablecloth online. Finally, I paint the inside of the window recess in a summery blue, to tie it all together a wee bit.

My best buys are the new handles for the cupboards: those silver knobs were never going to look right. I find a pack of brightly coloured ones, and then realise the shanks are quite short and my fat fingers are gonna get caught behind them. But a large, coloured, bead threaded onto each shank does the job nicely, for about £4 the lot.

The lounge

I own a large picture in very pale washed-out creams, greys, and yellows which I knew will look ace on a charcoal background. And I have that retro coffee table I’ve found. So I want everything I do to fit around these things. I choose a good dark grey for one wall, and a pale dove grey for the rest. To brighten the light coming in from the window, I paint the recess in yellow. But by using a fairly neutral palate, I get whicker and wood (old and new) to blend pretty seamlessly together.

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An old bookshelf with sliding glass doors, that cost me £15 on eBay, is used to display all the treasures (mostly shells and rocks, to be honest) that Steve and I collected on our travels. It doubles as my TV cabinet so it really earns it’s keep.

I make sure I put personal things in each of the rooms. In the kitchen I have my favourite photo of Steve, blown up almost life-size, over the sink, so I can chat to him while I do what used to be his job. In the bedroom I have all the letters he wrote me, in a beautiful box near the bed, so I can read them when I can’t sleep and am feeling tearful.

But my most precious item in this room is the Buddha cushion. After Steve had his stroke he took up needlepoint to strengthen his weaker hand. He finished a parrot cushion when we were in Slovakia, so we found a shop selling new kits and he bought this one. He’d got halfway through it when he died, having completed only the head of the Buddha but not the background. So I finish it off when I move here, and then back it with a piece cut from the shirt he married me in. In terms of having things around me that support me, by connecting me to all the love we once shared, it doesn’t get much better than this.

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The bedroom

This room needs to be my sanctuary. I loved sleeping in Georgie’s tiny bedroom, which always felt incredibly cosy and like sleeping in a four-poster bed. As it’s quite dark in the bedroom (due to the off-centre placement of the window), I go with the flow and paint it a dark, grey-tinted blue. This has the effect of shifting the focus onto all the rich, bright objects that are in the room, and makes the walls become a frame for them.

Consistent and regular browsing of the local junk shops finally produces a solid oak bed for £80, which I cover with a £27 Indian bedspread and some bargain cushions. The rest of the bedroom furniture is given to me by my brother: it was given to him at first, but was just too baroque and flouncy for his taste, so has been languishing in his loft. Guess whose taste it isn’t too fancy for? So now I just need a laundry basket and eBay comes up trumps with a vintage tin trunk, emblazoned with the legend Mrs Miller. Which, apparently, was Diana Dors’ travelling name (and I live near where she did), so that’s probably £18’s worth of pure history, right there.

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The total

In the end, I spent less than £1,500 on EVERYTHING, and that’s for a whole flat, from scratch. If I’d had the time (or desire) to live without anything to sit on, or sleep in, for instance, I could have spent a lot less by waiting for things to come up on Freecycle or Gumtree. I hope I’ve given you a few ideas, inspired you to look a bit further for bargains, and to just trust your own taste – if it’s personal to you, and you love it, then don’t worry what anyone else thinks. Make your own happy place, and then send me the pics.

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