Nearly two years (18 months, but who’s counting) since we got the keys to our home and we have a downstairs toilet again!!
Granted nothing is plumbed in yet, the shelving is still to go up, as is a mirror and the door needs to be hung; but progress is progress. That and I am too excited to show you more photos of this room; by that, I really mean the flooring and panelling.
Whilst this is the smallest room in the house (and hardest to photograph!) I think it is contending with the living room to be my favourite.
Marble Herringbone Flooring
When I start working on a room, I always start by planning the flooring. For me, I find once I decide on the flooring it helps me to choose colours and everything within that room.
I fell in love with some marble tiles from Mandarin Stone, which I had been lusting over for a while. After ordering samples, that was my decision made. I decided to go for the Carrara ‘honed’ over the ‘polished’ finish; as I prefer a matte finish. Link to the exact tiles here – Carrara Honed Marble. The dimensions I picked were150x75x10. They have so many gorgeous tiles, I was close to picking the hexagon marble mosaic.
I have mentioned before in the bathroom remodel post, how I found grout to be a bit of a mind field. When doing any project there are enough decisions as it is! The people at Mandarin stone were really helpful and recommended I go for the Alabaster grout; to bring out the colour of the marble. The grout we used is linked here, along with other shades available. I’m so happy with the floor, now I just need to work on getting buy-in from Mat, to let me change the bathroom floor tiles haha!
Paint
As I mentioned above, I often like to begin planning a room by starting with the flooring (this room has Carrara Honed Marble from Mandarin Stone). To work with this, I decided to go for dark panelling, which I felt this would make the marble flooring really stand out. I am so glad I did. Mat actually wanted to do the panelling white (I know the irony), but like most of this home ideas, they were overruled haha!
I also wanted a shade which would work with the colour I have used in the hallway, above the panelling (all paints I have used in our home are here).
- Panelling is painted in ‘Downpipe’ shade by Farrow & Ball*
- Walls are painted in Dulux ‘Ultra White’
*As it is such a small room and it would need eggshell which makes it more expensive, I had this made up at our local decorating centre in Johnstone paint. This worked out at £25 for 2.5L; which I believe would have been £60 otherwise, so this was a nice saving!
Panelling
I love panelling and if money, time etc wasn’t an object…I’d panel the whole house. Probably a good job time and money have prohibited me; otherwise, we would probably have renovated two rooms! I think it adds character and transforms a room. I once read it makes a room look bigger, and this room needed all the help it could get.
There are many options when it comes to panelling, Pinterest is great to look at the different ways panelling can be done. I decided on the traditional panelling, which I thought would work the best with the herringbone marble floor. I love tongue and groove, but personally, I feel that is a little more modern and works best with patterned floors.
Shaun the legend (a local carpenter) made all the panelling from scratch. I did receive quite a lot of questions on Instagram, on how I did the panelling; sadly I take no credit.
Steps when Panelling has been made and fitted:-
- Fill all pin holes
- Once dried gently sand these with a fine grit sandpaper
- Prime using a wood primer
- Then two layers of the final coat
For our bathroom panelling, this was done by a friend and we bought everything you would need from larger home improvement stores. There are YouTube tutorials too; if you’re feeling brave!
If you would be interested in a ‘how to’ blog, please let me know and I will see if I can get the process from my friend, detailing what he did for the main bathroom. Alan, if you’re reading this, hope you don’t mind haha!
Thank you for reading.
Jess xx
This blog post is in collaboration with Mandarin stone; but as always, all opinions are my own.