Throwback Thursday #20 – Decorating Your Space

Lauren is our hostess for the first TBT of 2022.
You can join in here

This week’s prompt is: Decorating Your Space

Lauren asks us to think back to the time you were deciding on what your environment should look like. Did you get to decorate your bedroom as a kid, or did Mom and Dad make all the decisions? This week, I’d like you to think back to when you decorated your own space. It could be a bedroom at home, a dorm room, a first apartment, or possibly a first home. Can you still see the room in your head? What did you do to make it special to you? Was your goal to rebel against what your parents would have liked? Did you get to paint the walls your own color? Did you plaster posters all over the place? Were you able to get new furniture or did you have hand me downs? Did you add things until there was no more room, or were you a minimalist? Please share your decorating memories with us.
I was born in a council house and my grandfather was living with us. Grandad liked to paint and in later years painted a cat on a wall which had a little gate at the end you felt you could almost walk through. Apparently when some new occupants were decorating the bedroom after it became privately owned, they peeled off the wallpaper and Grandad’s cat was still there. My sister was working in a bank at the time and remarked on the customer’s address.

We moved from the council house in 1965, and my sister and I shared a bedroom for a few weeks until my brother got married, then I had a room of my own. Dad had built the house so everything was new. We didn’t have carpets throughout though, just lino and scatter rugs and I can remember ‘ice skating’ with dusters on my feet to polish the floor. We had net curtains up at the windows, and my creativity at that time determined if they were draped to the side, or draped top to bottom. I often changed my room around though, especially when something was on my mind.

In 1973, Mum, Dad and I moved into a house that needed a lot of TLC which had been empty for over two decades. It had gas lighting which still worked, and no electricity. It was a mess and the only doors on it were the back and front, but it was all my parents could afford at the time and they got a mortgage through the council.
We were living with my grandfather temporarily, and the first priority was to get a bathroom in what was the fourth and smallest bedroom. Next was a basic kitchen, getting the gas meter changed and electricity connected. I think Dad was eligible for grants for those.
We actually moved in on February 17th 1973, and took one room at a time. There was little furniture to worry about so as each room was finished, so it was furnished. I chose and paid for the wallpaper for my room (small forgetmeknots and pink rosebuds) and the red carpet to go with the curtains that had been in the other house. My sister’s marriage had failed so when she was about to move back into the parental home, she did the same with her room, opting for a basic colour of blue. I put posters up in my room, and when I got married in 1977, two pictures taken in my bedroom show David Carradine and Bruce Lee as I was very much into Kung Fu movies!
The last room to be done was the lounge and Mum finally had the three piece suite she wanted. It was the family home in every sense as we had all put so much into it.

Years later when my marriage failed and I moved away, I ended up painting and decorating because everything was painted in cold blues. Partner went to darts one night having a light blue hall and when he came home we had pink and white daisied wallpaper going up the stairs. I papered two of the three bedrooms, painted the kitchen cupboards white, and used about a gallon of yacht varnish on cork tiles I’d put up in the bathroom along the bath and behind the shower.

Selling the cottage gave us the chance to downsize and have a good clearout. We had no idea that it would mean EVERYTHING as we ended up on the boat, not that I would change that. Even there, Hubby revarnished and made improvements, the best of which was taking out one of the bench seats and putting in a radiator. It gave us a lot more space in the lounge area, especially should we have visitors as we weren’t banging knees when we sat down.

In all honesty, I hate decorating, the upheaval of preparation, and getting everything ‘just so’ when it comes to painting. But Hubby and I do it together, and it halves the job.
Although everything was clean and tidy when we arrived here in 2017, we’ve repainted everywhere using better quality paint, especially in the bathroom and kitchen. The last room to do was the lounge which is still magnolia walls and white paintwork, and we have put boards on the floor to stop the settees marking the walls.

Maggie’s in this picture too, curled up in the corner under the window, bless her.