Lifestyle

Our Living Room (Before and After)

You may remember our month long quest to find a new flat in London which resulted in our homelessness for nearly a month, and then finding a beautiful but unfurnished flat (many flats in London come fully furnished). This resulted in Sam and I not having a stick of furniture between us, other than one bookshelf.  Since then everything we’ve purchased has been thrifted or free. (Hello, freecycle!)

We are also severely limited on decorating because in our tenancy agreement we aren’t allowed to paint and we have a specific number of nail holes that we can put in the wall!

Take a look at what our home looked like when we moved in empty handed here. But here are some refresher pictures of our living room, which is the room that is nearly done. Our bedroom still needs some work.

rhyme & ribbons london flatrhyme & ribbons london flat

Our flat may look small to some of my American readers out there, but trust me, by London standards our one bed flat is huge! Especially considering that London is nearly 15% more expensive to live in than New York City. *Dramatic sigh*

However, I am pleased to say that this is what we are working with now! There are a few tiny adjustments that we need to make to the living room still. We’ve been on the hunt for the perfect bench unit to go under our windows, for example.

rhyme & ribbons london flat
 An improvement from when we moved in, certainly!
rhyme & ribbons london flat
 If you look closely, you can still make out our Christmas cracker crowns draped from the TV.
rhyme & ribbons london flat
 A painting of the home Sam lived in as a child on one side, one of my concert posters on the other.
rhyme & ribbons london flat
As you can see, we are both book and play hoarders!
rhyme & ribbons london flat
Those yellow pages contain a list of tasks we want to remind ourself to accomplish in 2014!
 
Another thing still left to do is to show out sofa some love. It needs some serious updating. I’ve have been lusting after some gorgeous pillows and throws so hopefully the next time there is a sale I can make that happen!
 Some patriotic candles from the Jubilee and a photo of our lock on the main “lock” bridge over the Seine in Paris. You can read about our Parisienne adventures here.
rhyme & ribbons london flat
The framed key is one to our first home a few years ago, whilst the cork ‘A’  is made of dated and marked champagne corks from whenever we have split a bottle of bubbles together for a special occasion/ celebration.  You can learn to make your own key frame from my tutorial here.

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