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NOW CLOSED Talk to B&Q about the most unloved room in your home - £150 giftcard to be won

159 replies

AngelieMumsnet · 04/07/2013 09:31

As you may have seen already, we're working with B&Q, who so far have helped 20 MNers revamp the unloved rooms in their homes - check out the video of their fab revamps here. MNers have also been posting their before and after pics of rooms they've revamped here so do check out both of those threads for Mumsnetter room makeovers!

What B&Q would like now is to hear from as many MNers as possible...

Which is the most unloved room in your home and why? Is it a bathroom that's more shabby than chic? A garden that's more of a jungle? A living room that's past its best or a spare room that's just a dumping ground?

Everyone who shares their unloved room stories here will be entered into a prize draw to win a £150 B&Q giftcard.

Please note that any comments you post here may appear on the B&Q pages on Mumsnet and potentially elsewhere.

Thanks and good luck with the prize draw
MNHQ

OP posts:
Elainey1609 · 04/07/2013 10:00

Currently its difficult to admit bit it is actually the living room witch includes the stairs.
It hasn't been changed since we moved in 15 years ago. beige carpet and magnolia walls...which are looking a little grubby now and them colours are not great with children around
The trouble is that it is the largest room in the house, meaning we have never had the money to afford the paint or wall paper let alone a new carpet.
It is not really a nice place to relax in

would love to decorate it soon but something always pops up instead

5madthings · 04/07/2013 12:07

Its our bathroom, we can't afford to replace it all and the whole room is tiled...horrid tiles so we painted over them which was fine for a while but is now peeling off, not helped by small children who have picked at the peeling paint. Ideally we would take true tiles down andput new ones up by shower and sink but then we would need to replaster the rest...

Plus the people who owned it before us had odd day ideas as the windowsill are in fact kitchen worktop?!! Seriously! So those need taking out and replacing along with new sink, bath and toilet, we may get away with just replacing taps for a bit.

Or the dining room..when we moved it it had a fake fireplace and stone cladding on the walls!!! Hideous!! We pulled it off but now it needs replasteroing/skimming so we can then decorate, awful light fittings that have been taken off leaving bare wires, oh and the ceiling is wooden cladding, like you would get in a 70's sauna... Seriously awful, we may take it down but if not I think we will paint it.

Still we have taken the Del boy style glass bar and brass wall covering down that was in the sitting room!!

We knew there was lots of work to do when we bought it but didn't realsie how hard to would be to get to done with kids to deal with as well! Grin

Its fine to live in but as dp says when you re doing cleaning its 'like trying to polish a turd' there is only so much you can do and it will never look good until we ,manage to get some of the major jobs like replasterimg etc done.

Ho humm I will win the lottery one day and then pay someone to command do it all for us...

SisterMatic · 04/07/2013 12:09

The most unloved room in our house isn't really a room its the front garden. Its quite embarrassing, really. It has seen better days, a crumbly broken wall, weeds and just very tired looking. We would love to set it straight and make it more bright and welcoming, however money and time is in short supply at the moment. I just wish that the garden looked nice like the inside of our home because I think it gives the wrong impression.

dahville · 04/07/2013 12:10

It's the 'man cave' - a converted garage next to the lounge. It is the repository for anything that doesn't have a home elsewhere and it could do with being organised properly. We simply don't have enough storage.

CheeryCherry · 04/07/2013 12:11

Our bathroom...no matter how often we paint it, the paint peels and looks awful. The bath sealant is bodged, messy, mouldy, and the sink sealant is the same. The bath is worn out...you can see daylight from underneath Hmm. There is out dated wooden cladding round the room. It's all horrid.

SoupDragon · 04/07/2013 12:13

Probably my bedroom. Each child has had their rooms decorated, I"ve done the hall/stairs/landing (twice) and the living room and playroom. However, my bedroom remains a shambles of someone else's wallpaper with a huge missing peeled patch complete with black mould from a shower leak. Not exactly the oasis it should be. In fact, I find myself delaying going to bed at night because it's miserable in there - I'm knackered!

fanoftheinvisibleman · 04/07/2013 12:14

Bathroom in ours although it is a close run thing. The bath, sink and toilet are all a slightly different colour - cream, off white and white! The tiles are skanky and the last owner allowed the mould to take a firm hold so I can't get rid of the stained grout.

I have played my own part in the downfall too by wrecking the enamel bath by using bleach to remove directions hair dye. It is now cracked with bits missing.

To top is all off there is no colour, the whole thing is white, beige and mould, top to bottom. It's horrible.

Schumann · 04/07/2013 12:16

It's the hallway. It's a shame as it could look really pretty!
It's always overflowing with coats, shoes, buggies. When we took the stair gates down they pulled some of the plaster off the walls.
Then the shower leaked and wrecked the wall at the top of the stairs. We've finally had the bathroom replaced so the wall is now freshly plastered, but that's as far as it's gone.
So the whole lot needs painting, there's LOADS of woodwork to paint and we need some decent storage to hide all the coats & shoes & school bags!

JakeBullet · 04/07/2013 12:27

Oh gosh, there are lots of rooms I am unhappy with but at a push I would say it's the kitchen I hate most. I inherited pale green cupboards and tiles which nothing except lemon goes with.

ChocChaffinch · 04/07/2013 12:29

Our Bathroom.
we moved in 4 years ago and have never gotten around to doing anything with it. It still has an old clanky leaky suite that is a colour between cucumber and avocado; with a ratty ''cream'' carpet (bathroom carpet! yeuch) now dotted with mysterious hairdye splodges. The green wall tiles are bulging outward in places, almost like they are giving up the ghost and trying to remove themselves. The ancient shower mixer tap on the bath alternates between freezing and scalding, so it's a roll of the dice when washing your hair. The sink is a massive squared off ceramic thing, with taps set on angles so if you turn them on swiftly you can literally painfully crush your fingers betwixt tap and tile. The window sill occasionally drops pieces of tile onto your unprotected head. You have to clean your teeth leaning backwards, rolling your eyes up to ward off disaster. Now I think about it I believe the whole room is laughing at us, mocking that we will never have the funds in place to re-do it.
I envisage a gleaming white bath and toilet, with a curvy smaller sink allowing more room, oatmeal floor tiles and matching wall tiles, and thick fluffy white towels... a steel soap dispenser and matching toilet brush... a power shower strong enough to wash off suds... oh the dream, the sweet dream...

ShatnersBassoon · 04/07/2013 12:53

DS's bedroom. It's the biggest bedroom and has some lovely features, but it's decorated in a totally inappropriate way for his age. We decorated it when we moved in 8 years ago when he was 18m old, and it hasn't been touched since Blush. The poor lad does his best to hide the babyish bits with posters Grin

It's one of those jobs that really ought to be done, but it's never reached the top of the 'must do' list. Things keep jumping the queue and his bedroom get shifted further down.

CointreauVersial · 04/07/2013 13:01

Our most unloved room is probably DS's bedroom. It was used as a store-room by the previous owners, and even though we have lived there for 4 1/2 years it still hasn't been revamped. It has an old single-glazed window that doesn't open (not great for a 13yo stinky boy!), a "home-made" built-in wardrobe with doors you have to wrestle apart, some wonky MDF shelves and a paint-stained poo-brown shaggy carpet that resembles Chewbacca's pelt.

A new window is on order, the furniture catalogues have been inspected, and we are going carpet shopping at the weekend. It will be unloved no more! Might need some paint from B&Q......Wink

MyDaydream · 04/07/2013 13:04

I hate our kitchen with a passion. It's so dated and no amount of scrubbing gets away from the fact the previous tenants obviously fried everything they ate every day, everything is shiney and sticky to the touch. I can feel my arteries clogging just looking at it.
The laminate tiles are stained, ripped, cracking and splitting. If there's a word to describe wear and tear you can probably find a tile to fit the description, I hate walking on it and won't in bare feet.
The wallpaper is just very 90s and no effort was made to buy special kitchen paper so it's rank and peeling, it's not handled all that fried food air at all well. There are some weird holes on the wall where they obviously had shelves but took them down and didn't think it try hide the evidence. The titles are flaking off, old and need a good scrub, but I'm too scared to do it because of the peeling.
We have a brown sink. It's so old that I don't feel my stuff comes out clean. And there's no plumbing for my dishwasher. It's sat unloved in this cellar!
There's nothing wrong with the cupboards, they're just dated. If I can strip the decades if grease off them they'll paint up nicely. I'll also need some lovely new contact Paper inside to make them look modern rather than yellow.
Generally the shabbiness is the same across the while house but the kitchen shows it the most because it doesn't have anything going for it either. We're working on it, but as tenants we don't want to spend too much but it's depressing. I love cooking but I hate being in the kitchen so I don't cook anymore I just whip up quick meals so I can leave again.

iklboo · 04/07/2013 13:12

The bathroom. The toilet broke last year & now doesn't match the rest. We can't afford to replace the rest yet so we're 2/3 'dusky pink' (which we hated anyway). A new boiler means we can have baths again, but in such a rubbish tub I just don't have the heart.

trikken · 04/07/2013 13:33

Our bathroom is probably the most unloved. The floor is coming up in places and the bathroom suite is very old and needs replacing if we could afford it. Plus the tiles weren't done well by the previous owners and has a strange design added in as well in blue and yellow.

BornToFolk · 04/07/2013 13:39

It's hard to pick just one room...

Mine is pretty bad. The furniture is cheap Argos stuff that's coming up for 10 years old and so literally falling apart. I painted the ceiling a couple of months ago but did a very bad job of it! I have bought myself a new bed though, which is lush, and I'm saving up to replace the furniture and re-decorate.

pussinwellyboots · 04/07/2013 13:45

our most unloved room is our bedroom - nasty woodchip wallpaper, laminate floor that doesn't quite come up to the edges, and lots of stuff that shouldn't be there!!! I would love to transform it into a romantic haven of peace and tranquillity away from the DCs!

halestone · 04/07/2013 14:01

My most unloved room is my living room it has never been decorated since we moved in. Just a brown painted walls which i would love to spruce up with one feature wall and 3 repainted walls. Then i would add some nice accessories like colour co-ordinated cushions and a nice vase. £150 would make this achievable Grin

Willemdefoeismine · 04/07/2013 14:02

The space/room under the stairs.....It's only little and is currently used for storing the ironing board, hoover, assorted children's toys (a hobby horse etc...) and a lot of neglected arts and crafts stuff.

It is the only space within the house which has received absolutely no attention since we moved in over a decade ago.... I think it is just about big enough to house a downstairs loo and that is very much what we would like to do with it - you can't have a family with growing (up) children and not really have an extra loo - no house should be without one!

OodPi · 04/07/2013 14:06

It's a close one between the cosy room (still needs painting/pipes boxing in/doors fixing) & the utility/pantry (needs similar plus storage ) & the dds room (peeling paper, shabby paint work/dodgy blinds/needs more storage)

BlueSkySoftSand · 04/07/2013 14:21

Gosh, not sure I can single a room out! Bathroom is looking grim as toliet lid is missing, shower is leaking and black mouldy stuff around the bath. My bedroom just makes me sad! Blinds are falling down, badly painted walls and horrible mirrored, dated wardrobes.

Outside our conservatory looks like it should be demolished, bur with a good sand and re-paint of the wood I know I could make it look fresh again.

I"d love to create a reading nook in my lounge for me and the children to snuggle up in. I have it all planned in my h

BlueSkySoftSand · 04/07/2013 14:22

. . . In my head. Just no funds!

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EstelleGetty · 04/07/2013 14:29

The bathroom! When we moved in, it seemed fine, but we eventually found out that an uncapped pipe had been leaking raw sewage all over the shop. That's sorted now, but the re-tiling and plastering was a pretty quick job and it really does need a bit of love.

cleoowen · 04/07/2013 14:34

Our,kitchen, I hate it. It's freezing in the winter and has a white tiled floor which always looks dirty how ever many times I clean it. It has damp and mold and because of this the paint flakes,off the walls. Before we got a dehumidifier you could see streams of water running down the walls. Plus the light doesn't work so we use the oven light. The cupboards are out of date and on one side smell and,feel damp. Cannot afford to do anything with it yet.

stealthsquiggle · 04/07/2013 14:44

Close run thing as the whole house is pretty much a project, but I think the winner by a whisker would be the downstairs toilet. I started trying to obliterate the lurid orange decor when I started my mat leave with DC2. Said child is now 6.5 Blush. I stopped when I found the damp/leak in the outside wall, and was so discouraged that the tops of the walls didn't get finished either Blush Sad. It's not heated so is only really useable in summer, meets no building code known to mankind as it has a low level socket, and is generally a nightmare.

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