My home in London {The pallet table}

I don't know if you can see how the lounge was from this photoshoot with Editions Paumes for their book London Family Style (or from there)... At the time, we had recently moved in and hadn't done anything to the house. It was far from what I wanted our home to look like for the photoshoot but when Paumes ask if you would like to be featured in their book, you just go with it! Back then, the lounge was painted in magnolia, the windows had big, heavy curtains to prevent drafts, the floorboards looked dull and the shelves across the fireplace made the room small and cluttered.
So here is what I did to life up the room once we had decided that we wouldn't spend £25K on knocking down the wall like in Paul Massey's house.

* 1st (best) decision: Paint all the walls in bright white with kitchen paint. With a child & a dog, you either do this, or you get a nervous breakdown each time there is scuff on your pristine white walls. In fact, I got our decorator to use the same paint from bottom to top floor and now each time, I clean the scuffs, I just tell myself how clever I was to do this ;-)
* 2nd (best) decision: Change the sash windows but used a local carpenter rather than all the best-known brands which saved us about £5K
* 3rd (best) decision: Ditch the heavy curtains and replace them by window stickers from Brume. I can't tell you how much I love these window stickers! They've brought some much light in the room while maintaining privacy from the street and because I like stars, I went for design B016 which is just perfect for our family home & style. I also got numbers for our front door but that will be a different post.
* 4th (best) decision: Take all the shelves off the walls and create the family moodboard below
* 5th (best) decision: Turn around the sofa to face the whole room (rather than the one that had all the shelves) which now flows nicely and wait....Wait until you realize that your pristine white walls have actually lifted up the dull floorboards and they are now looking so fab that you don't need to paint them in white!

1. Paulistano chair, 2. White Rabbit lamp 3. Decorate book by Holly Becker/Decor8

....And then find a nice pallet, spend a weekend painting it and get the kiwi to fix some heavy wheels I had bought 10 years ago because I knew one day I would need them for something like this!