Make a House a Home

Welcome to a brand new blog series! For those of you that follow my personal Instagram & the hashtag #rachaeltaylorhome, you will know that I moved to Liverpool on June 4th 2015, left behind our colourful & cosy Leeds family home & my purpose-built design studio.

As you all may know, moving home is a simultaneously stressful & rewarding experience. As I take you through my home renovations, I will be honest in talking to you about the highs & lows of the journey.

It has been a rollercoaster of mixed emotions – there have been some fairly stressful situations that we’ve had to laugh about as otherwise I’d have just cried (from the same water pipe bursting 3 times & soaking my studio to an asbestos scare, a bees nest, to dodgy electrics). However, I keep having to remind myself that in the grand scheme of things they are not important really – it’s just bricks & possessions, which can always be fixed.

We are still in the thick of it with the renovations & decorating at our Liverpool pad, but we truly love where we live – as they say it’s all about location, location, location. Most of the renovations haven’t ran that smoothly but it has all been so worth it…

 I’m glad we got a ‘fixer-upper’ as opposed to some of the amazing properties we had seen; in years to come I’d like to think we will have created our dream home, which is situated in the perfect location for us. If we had purchased a very polished, finished home I doubt we would have had as much space & potential to play with & we couldn’t have afforded to tick every box as well as live in such a popular location. I’m actually sat writing this in a super cute café near my home. It’s everything we always wanted; it has six green spaces on our doorstep for Blayke, to lively restaurants & thriving bars, whilst still feeling very village like & family orientated. We looked around so many areas & when we visited this village we just knew that was where we had to live. We also live in a conservation area & the immediate area around us is quaint & full of charm. We are lucky to be close to a number of key tourist attractions such as the Strawberry Field & John Lennon’s childhood home, which is all very fitting as we named our son Blayke Lennon. It really just feels like it was meant to be.

We sold our Leeds property super fast (in less than two weeks), however there were numerous delays which were really silly at the time, as it should have been fairly easy with our buyers not being in a chain & the Liverpool house sitting empty for about six months. I won’t bore you with the details – all I’ll say is it created a lot of sleepless nights & with a baby & a business to relocate, it was truly tough at times.

During our Liverpool search we looked at a real mixed bag of properties – from period styles, to new builds, polished homes to real renovation projects. While my husband loves things to be sleek & new, I’m a contemporary & slightly retro girl at heart. This means I have quite eclectic taste & I also make most of my decisions by how I feel, but sometimes that involves being impulsive & quick & a fussy pain too. Being a designer is a blessing, but I’m also my own worst client – it’s so hard to get a house that ticked all the boxes. We wanted a forever home that we could make our own, but equally we knew we needed to live in it too (with a young child). Essentially, it couldn’t be too much of a neglected property as it just wouldn’t work, We could have rented & lived elsewhere whilst renovating, however the thought of packing & unpacking again just made me feel on edge. Now, I am so glad every penny has been invested in our home renovations as there was & still is a lot to do.

Our home is a beautiful detached property. Even though it was only built in the 90’s, its combination of sandstone & mature gardens give it some charm whilst still being fairly modern on the interior. We felt very lucky to find it – as the property had been empty for some time, we got a great deal which meant more of a renovation budget. For me it is the dream scenario; regardless of its current state, I am still so glad I can change it & add my own unique colourful stamp to it. Layout was super important too & we are so pleased to have some well-needed storage & a lot of downstairs space for a home studio. We also have the potential to extend should we ever need to. The minute we pulled up on the driveway of this home, we just knew it was the one. I don’t even think I looked at the décor properly as I was just sold on the location, the feel & the fab spacious layout.

I would love to show you a photo of the outside but I find sharing the exterior & location of your home a little unsettling as you never know where it will end up on social media. I will just stick to lots of interior posts of all the ‘before’, ‘during’ & ‘after’ to hopefully inspire some exciting renovation ideas of your own.

I’ve been wanting to write these posts for a while, however I just never felt ready as I always think I’ll wait & share the finished rooms. However, I doubt they will ever feel finished to me as my creative brain never switches off – everything is a little project that I continually add to. I like to plan a design scheme to a certain extent, but I also like to craft our home quite spontaneously. I never like to source my accessories for rooms all in one go either. As much as I much prefer things to jump out at me & shape the personality of a room in a less contrived way, I feel like every corner of my home should have some unique interest or tell a story. I’m also trying to incorporate a chunk of my own design work in each room, whether that be through my wallpapers designs, soft furnishings or bespoke furniture.

Before moving in we knew we wanted to get stuck in straight away, but also wanted to take it fairly slowly & think about / future proof each room. Therefore we started with the easier tasks, such as the couple of the rooms that needed a simple facelift. While we have saved to start at least half of the renovations, we know the rest will take years. At this stage we just want it to naturally evolve, especially if we decide to do any major structural work. The house was on the rental & sale market & had been ‘magnoliafied.’ Even though nothing was too visually offensive, we didn’t just want to cover things up. If in a given room the lining paper looked a bit messy & the ceilings were a bit bumpy with old-fashioned artex, we thought to just strip them back, rip things out, re-plaster & so on. As I knew it was a keeper, I didn’t want to do a temporary fix – I imagined doing this meant getting nice & settled & then experiencing a later onset of chaos. Moving is unsettling as it is, so we just wanted to try & get it really right from the start. Luckily,  we did makeover the studio pretty quickly & avoided re-plastering as it was already in good condition. I needed to quickly get my business up & running again so this was a a big plus.

What we have completed so far:

• Stripped, decorated & re-styled the old lounge & converted it into a home design studio.

• Re-decorated what would have been the dining room & re-purposed & styled it up into a cosy TV/snug room. This included decorating one of the walls with my own ‘Shapes & Squares’ wallpaper (from Milton & King) & collaborating with Jess & Jules for a bespoke footstool design. I finally class this room as finished!

• The existing kitchen is fairly decent & contemporary so we gave it a temporary fix by just getting rid of the old ceiling lights (that looked a bit like spaceships) & gave it a lick of new paint to rid the old horrid dated peach walls. It would seem crazy to do anything else to the kitchen yet, so we are putting that to the back of the queue – there’s only so much we can afford to do straightaway.

• Plastered, decorated, carpeted & styled Blayke’s room including a unique toy box design. I’d say the room is almost finished…

• Completely replaced the old leaky en-suite bathroom.

• Plastered, decorated, carpeted & styled the guest room teamed with some uniquely designed bespoke drawers & we also invested in high quality sliding door wardrobes.

• We are part way into replacing the main family bathroom… as I type this I’m living on a building site…

• Added white contemporary style plantation shutters to all of the rooms that we’ve decorated or renovated & removed the tint film that was on most of windows.

• Transformed the old dated conservatory with a new SupaLite roof, we also had walls knocked down, patio doors & windows ripped out & replaced with a skylight & fantastic bi-folding doors. The new space feels so family friendly now & open plan – it’s great. We are still awaiting our new sofa, blinds & furniture so there’s a fair bit to do yet but the space is finally livable & feels like a brand new extension (we couldn’t use the space for 10.5 weeks… Everything was a slow process but I’m so glad we took our time when selecting everything). I now have the floor that dreams are made of too – beautiful herringbone!

• I’ve also worked with a landscape designer to help me plan & achieve my dream rainbow garden. It’s a big job & investment so I’m glad I hired an expert, as I don’t want to kill the plants! The groundwork begins this September – I can’t wait. It’s currently in a neglected jungle state & was a complete mess when we moved in, as the house had been empty for so long. I don’t want to give too much away right now other than I have over fifty different plant species & an outdoor drawing cabin being built, EXCITING!

• We’ve also had the bulk of the spotlights replaced & swapped to LED bulbs, as a lot of the lights were actually unsafe & we’ve ended up having to have a lot of rewiring done.

 The future plans

My dressing room (yes a dressing room, pinch me…) is next on the interiors list however we are having a rest over the Summer. I’d like to think I can finally finish up styling the rooms that we’ve renovated so far. It’s really important that the rooms feel full of personality, that our accessories have meaning & that the rooms can just truly evolve with time.

The list is never ending as there is so much potential. But while I love interiors & this process really excites me, at times I’ve felt completely overwhelmed as the property is much bigger than my old home.

I still feel like we have masses to do (which we have) & at times I feel like I’m living on a constant building site so I don’t feel like we have got anywhere, but drafting this post has made me realise how much we actually have achieved within the year.

It has also made me realise how much I adore interior design & everything about it. It’s so rewarding to see the ‘before’, ‘during’ & ‘after’ & to know how much of a change you have made not just aesthetically, but how we have created & will live in a family home that functions perfectly for us. So many people have had an opinion on renovating or decorating whilst Blayke is at the toddler (ninja!) stage however I want our home to be enjoyable – yes, he has drawn on a wall in our newly decorated room already… but hey that’s what washable paint is for! Once the big renovations are done any future revamps will be simple facelifts & that’s why it’s so important for us to be future-proofing as best we can from the onset. Once it’s all said & done I don’t think I’ll want to see a builders skip ever again!

Do you have any tips? Any renovation experiences of your own? I’d love to hear your insights – how did you keep your cool?

With special thanks to…

Ken Davies Electrical for the bulk of the electrical work, John Tyrer for plastering, Steve Parnell & BMG Painting & Decorating for all the lovely wallpapering & paintwork. Lancashire Conservatory Roofs for our fab open plan living space, Kevin Hible for our amazing herringbone floor, Elegant Bedrooms for our guest room wardrobes, Jess & Jules for our bespoke furniture collaborations, Perfect Shutters for our great quality plantation style shutters, Native Landscape Design for creating the vision for my dream botanical garden design & Milton & King for my licensed wallpapers.

STAY TUNED for lots of detailed ‘before’, ‘during’ & ‘after’ blog posts coming your way very soon & a whole lot of colour & pattern!

Since drafting this post our new bathroom is on hold… As we found a bit of structural issue with one of the main supporting beams that runs through the full house. I just don’t expect anything to be a smooth ride now, it will all be worth it though!