Wallpaper is up in the Living Room/Flooring Decisions
Another good weekend of progress here at Sampson HQ. On Saturday morning we had a man come round and stick the wall paper to the wall while we went out looking for floor samples. We also took the opportunity to get some blinds and lamp shades.
Here is the wallpaper we went for ...
It was a difficult decision in the end, especially when we got down to the final few contenders. We ended up choosing the one we liked the least in order to eliminate them as it was too difficult choosing the one we like most. All in all, we are really happy with our choice! The green/yellow and blue in the wallpaper should link in well with the sofas, in terms of matching and contrasting colours.
The only little annoyance is that the left hand edge of the ceiling isn't quite flush with the rest of the wall, so the pattern extends a little further than the rest of the wall. Its the price you pay for putting geometric patterns on a wall that isn't straight!
You may have also noticed the new lampshade and blind additions! Here are a few posh snaps of them ....
The blinds took a good couple of hours to get up. The window measures 360cm. As luck would have it Dunhelm does sets of 180cm width blinds. As it turned out, you still needed a couple of mm either side to take account for the width of the brackets and the angle in which you have to put the blinds in at. So I took the dremel to the metal frame and shortened the second blind (right) to make it fit. The brackets are a little flimsy, so place your bets on how long they will last.
So now we are just waiting for the flooring. We have a few decisions to make:
Here is the wallpaper we went for ...
It was a difficult decision in the end, especially when we got down to the final few contenders. We ended up choosing the one we liked the least in order to eliminate them as it was too difficult choosing the one we like most. All in all, we are really happy with our choice! The green/yellow and blue in the wallpaper should link in well with the sofas, in terms of matching and contrasting colours.
The only little annoyance is that the left hand edge of the ceiling isn't quite flush with the rest of the wall, so the pattern extends a little further than the rest of the wall. Its the price you pay for putting geometric patterns on a wall that isn't straight!
You may have also noticed the new lampshade and blind additions! Here are a few posh snaps of them ....
The blinds took a good couple of hours to get up. The window measures 360cm. As luck would have it Dunhelm does sets of 180cm width blinds. As it turned out, you still needed a couple of mm either side to take account for the width of the brackets and the angle in which you have to put the blinds in at. So I took the dremel to the metal frame and shortened the second blind (right) to make it fit. The brackets are a little flimsy, so place your bets on how long they will last.
So now we are just waiting for the flooring. We have a few decisions to make:
- Laminate or Engineered Wood?
- Colour
- Get someone to install it or DIY it?
We only made it to one flooring shop this weekend. The one that happens to be 2 minutes away. They went for the hard sell on laminate straight away. There is obviously much better margins in laminate for them. We got some engineered wood samples from the tinternet so its quite interesting to compare.
The first thing you notice is obviously the thickness of the engineered wood vs the laminate. The construction of the engineered wood looks and feels a lot sturdier than the laminate and indeed a quick Google also suggests that the life span of the engineered wood will be at least 3 times longer than the laminate. The wear layer of the wood is 3mm compared to the laminate which can me no thicker than one of my arm pit hairs.
Credit where credit is due for the laminate, it does look and feel a lot more genuine than I would have imagined having them side by side. The most expensive laminate we can find is still cheaper than the cheapest engineered wood. But when at the extreme ends of the price range, there isn't much in it.
We are leaning towards the wood. The longevity of it compared to the laminate makes the extra cost negligible. It looks nicer and we can sand it down and re-oil/varnish it in the future.
Colour wise we are thinking darker rather than lighter, here are two of the laminate samples we have ...
What we have learned so far, is that its very difficult to get a true grip on the colour with digital images. Whatever we go for, we will have to see it in the flesh first.
And final decision is whether to have it installed or DIY it. I am leaning towards DIYing it, I think Louise would prefer to have it fitted. We will tackle that on when we get to the quoting stage. We have a man who wants to sell us laminate coming on Tuesday to measure up and estimate.
