One Half of Us: Love is...

I have an awesome husband (just don't tell him- I don't want his head to get too big!). Just before our anniversary I went up to Oban in Scotland to get some much overdue help with ideas for my floundering PhD- a full-on, totally worth it trip, although 15 hours travel within the UK just to get there is crazy stuff. But back to the point. While I was away on said trip, the other half of us totally transformed our bedroom as an anniversary surprise. Just shy of two weeks of hard work in the evenings (and I'm guessing into the night) as he still went to work full time, so a pretty amazing achievement.

We started mulling over ideas for our bedroom as soon as we moved in, but had made little progress. When I first moved for my PhD, we bought/ were given some pine furniture, all pretty solid, but all mismatching. For ages we talked about painting them to make them look more 'together' and as the other half of us has an aversion to pine. After we bought the paint for the wood in the WC (story here), we decided to give it a go on a chest of drawers that is beginning to get tired, to see if we liked the effect. I am loving all things grey at the moment, and the light grey tone of 'light rain' seemed perfect for our furniture. And we loved it. But that was as far as we had got on project bedroom when I went away.

before...

...and after

When I left, our bedroom had magnolia walls, with years of holes and bad patch jobs simply painted over. When I returned three walls were perfectly smooth and white, and the wall behind the bed the most beautiful shade of slate grey. All the furniture was the pale grey satin, and the radiator and windowsill gleamed with fresh paint. The room even had a white door, and at last my long mirror was attached to the wall rather than just drunkenly leant against it. What an awesome surprise!

And he even remembered to snap a few shots of work in progress so I can share the process: