All Things Nautical

So some of you may be aware that I have moved into a flat with my boyfriend.  It's a really nice flat so I've been acting like an adult about it and choosing colour schemes and suchlike to keep it that way.  I've decided not to put up any posters (which is very hard for me - in my parents house I wall-papered my room with pictures of celebrities; a habit that I continued throughout my various University flats.)  So I have to discover pretty canvases to adorn my many bare magnolia walls...

The first room I've started to decorate is the bathroom.  When I moved to University, everything I bought had a green colour scheme, but it seemed a bit much keeping it up in every room, so I reigned it back a bit to just the bedroom and kitchen.  

This meant that I got to start from scratch for the bathroom which was exciting.  I decided on a theme that's been everywhere lately and has grown on me a lot... nautical.  This meant dark blues and creamy whites, and stripes everywhere.  I started with towels; a new towel rail meant that they would be on display and therefore had to set the tone of the theme.  I lucked out in Asda and found the perfect ones to get started.  I then found some more subtle white ones with blue detailing in Matalan to balance them out on the rail.

Next, I had to find some storage to hide all the various beach towels and old green towels I had, and didn't want to get rid of because, you know, towels are always useful.  I found some nice boxes in Tesco, but they were a bit small.  Luckily I found similar ones in Asda that were bigger.  There were only two, compared to the three in Tesco, but it was enough space for me so I grabbed them pretty sharpish!

The last big thing I wanted was a way to store my toiletries without having hundreds of bottles everywhere cluttering up the room (my pet peeve).  I'd seen some nautical storage baskets with quirky rope handles in Wilkinsons that I really likeed, but I needed a way to store and display them.  After some brain-storming, I decided that I wanted a pine shelving unit because it would show them off whilst being in-keeping with the theme.  (I've put a lot of thought into this, god help me when I do the other rooms!)  I searched every square inch of the internet and kept coming up blank, which is the main reason the room was unfinished for so long.  

Eventually, I was searching the internet again out of formality, when I lucked out!  B&Q had exactly what I was looking for, and better yet - it was on sale!  However, the nearest store that had any left was the other side of Cardiff.  So I marched the boyfriend to the car and we went off in search for the unit.  When we got there we were told that it was on one of the pallets in the top of the Warehouse, which they only get down at night, so we would have to come back the next day.  I was not pleased, as you can imagine.  So the next day, we headed off again and finally returned with the shelves.

I built them according to instructions and put them, pride of place, in the bathroom.  Then headed off to buy the baskets, which I hadn't gotten yet in case I couldn't get a shelving unit to show them off.  Well just my luck, they were sold out.  They continued to be sold out for weeks after that.  Just when I was about to give up hope, my mum called me at work to say she was in Wilko, and they had just gotten fresh stock in.  As you can imagine I rushed there the next day and picked them up, and so my shelf was complete!

It doesn't look much for all of the aggro that I went through, but I love it so it was definitely worth it in the end.  All that was left to do was decorate the bare walls with some nice pictures:

I think they're really me, so I love them.  I also got a big image to sit over the bath, which is a bit lighter so it brightens up the room:

However, I've since seen some nice canvases (canvai?) that are similar in size, and have pictures of beach huts on them that I think would be perfect.  I need to find someone willing to switch to try and save my wallet!

Anyway, that's enough for this interior design session, I'm off for a bubble bath!