I love seeing how a design project develops. A before and after is great, but how about the middle bit? The real life stuff? Like mess, design changes and sometimes even mistakes. As ever, lots to do still. Joinery, sofa, floorboards and skirting boards painted, but we’ve started getting things back in the room to make it feel more like a family home over Christmas. Then we’re right back on it in the new year. Before and after of the fireplace: It took some work to get the fireplace looking like this. You can see it being ripped out here. Warts and all. Everything went, apart from the original concrete fire insert. I wanted to give the impression of a fireplace without actually having one, so I created a fire surround with a special mix of paint (eg. I wanged a load of different paints together to try and produce a darker version of Valspar’s Sherwood Forest). I chose a gloss finish to  add a textural contrast. The concrete fire was painted in Valspar’s Storybook Sundown. …