Home Craft: Charity Shop cast off and Guest Loo make-over

The thing about a new house is that- generally speaking- you move out of a house that is exactly how you want it to be and into a house that isn’t. Meaning you spend the days and weeks after the boxes are all unpacked itching to get something, anything, to be exactly as you want it to be. Any small corner, will do. It’s just to give you something to hold up in the months ahead of wallpaper-stripping and furniture-revamping as a beacon of hope for you: a symbol of what the house will be when it is finished: namely your home.

For me, it’s usually the front door: a welcome to the outside world and a sign that I have claimed the house as my own. In this house, however, it’s the downstairs loo. I wouldn’t ordinarily invite the Ninternet into my downstairs loo ordinarily, but ours perfectly illustrates the ‘Beacon Effect’ to which I refer.

I should point out that our downstairs loo is, in fact, not downstairs. We live in a one-level house (the Estate Agent avoided the word bungalow with dedication) so technically it could be called the Guest Loo, but the phrase has followed us from the last house and now I view it as ironic! When we moved in, it was red. Very, very red. There was no light into the room, despite the window, because it had a large hedge outside it. The hedge has now gone and in place there is actual daylight.

To maximise the daylight, the red red walls (do sing that in the style of UB40 if you are old enough.) DH chose a fabulous wallpaper which is light and bright and entirely suited to our new country location. The large mirror over the sink I bought in a Charity Shop when I did the Guest Room in the last house, which has been re-purposed: it in turn reflects light and is a great size for people of any height. I bought new fittings- the towel rail, loo roll holder, light pull- in a sale at our local Homebase. The soap dispenser- necessary because the sink edges are too small for anything other than guest soap- I bought online. I have a square lidded basket to hide all the cleaning products in next to the loo. That’s all the practical stuff taken care of I think.

The question became how to put a little more character in the room. There’s a big ledge up behind the loo- the wall behind it hasn’t been papered because it was too tricky to match the patterns on both sides. Because it has been painted, it is a plain background for objects such as the woodland painting- a housewarming gift from family. The old postcard- a reproduction of a poster when the rail network was more animal-friendly- came form the last house. I added a fake orchid, a scented candle- you always need to be rid of smells in a loo.

Lastly there is the issue of spare loo rolls- which was rather neatly solved with a Charity Shop find, some paper off-cuts, Mod Podge and a few episodes of Vampire Diaries. I gave the former flower box a coat or two of white spray paint to cover the dodgy 1980’s floral decor on it. Once dried, I cut out the red wrapping paper and stuck on with Mod Podge. As it got wet the thin wrapping paper wrinkled but I decided I liked the effect: it adds to the ‘woodgrain’ feel, which goes with the wallpaper and various other elements in the loo, so I decided to keep it wrinkly! I added a decoupage Stag’s head- cut from the wallpaper- then covered the whole thing in a few layers of Mod Podge and left it to try. I stashed the spare loo rolls in it et voila: tidy and complete downstairs loo.