Our windowless utility room transformation -where it was from, how much it cost, & a shock discovery

The menopause has a lot to answer for. A discount code and the inside info on our recent utility room reno. No gatekeeping here!

Good Morning and welcome to our Sunday Meeting! Before we dive in to all things reno…As you know my Substack is not behind a paywall, and the following content is content sponsored (AD) by Hair + Me, in a twist of fate that was a sliding doors moment…

Last month we had our middle one, Sam, and his girlfriend Charlotte, here for a few days. We hadn’t seen them for a couple of months and Charlotte arrived with a different head of hair! Not really, but my goodness her hair looked A M A Z I NG.

I noticed this because I am on ‘hair radar’ at the moment as my menopausal hair has been sneakily shedding. No one warned me about this state of affairs. I noticed it primarily in two places before noticing it on my actual head. 1. My hairbrush. So much hair. 2. The drain in the shower. So much hair.

And neither of these could be anyone else’s hair because my husband 1. doesn’t use my brush, or 2. shed hair in the shower, because he has a grade 1 all over. And when I investigated my hairline, I made a shocking discovery… it was not only grey, BUT THINNER than it has ever been. DAMNIT. Grey AND thin. Marvellous.

I was chatting to Goldilocks (Charlotte) about this depressing state of affairs and that was when she said she’d been using Hair + Me after a period of shedding, also. One look at her mane and I was ALL IN.

Then, by a curious twist of fate, Hair + Me asked if I’d like to try their product, pretty much at the same time I was about to use Charlotte’s code and press checkout.

Anyway

I know from chatting to various friends that hair thinning in mid life is very common and it can REALLY sap a girl’s confidence. If your hair isn’t right, nothing is right and I know that for sure after working as a hairdresser for 35 years. Many of us wear our confidence on our heads, and the state of our hair can make us feel like we can conquer the world, or… not. I guess it shouldn’t, but it does. For me at least and I don’t think I am alone.

So, if this is resonating with you - treat me, as usual, as your search engine. I have researched for me and you.

Now for the science bit… in a nutshell

What causes hair loss? (this is like hair bingo)

Genetics

Hormonal changes

Deficiencies

Stress.

Enter Hair + Me, the brand new hair regrowth treatment. I filled in the on line consultation, and sent them photos of said hair (this is all in confidence so don’t worry, your ‘before’ photos wont be broadcast anywhere.) ‘Hair + Me is a personalised treatment that, based on your answers, creates a bespoke formula, tailored to your individual needs.’

This made me laugh - ‘For HEELS’. My capsules, 1 to be taken each night before bed.

It contains scientifically proven active ingredients that you can’t get on the high street, and promises to deliver results within 6 months. I am thinking by Christmas I should have a bit of my confidence back via my hair. That’s my goal!

If you are reading this and nodding along - let’s start together. Whether in the capsule form, or drops ( I have the capsules) Annoyingly, in this world where everything is IMMEDIATE , and we are increasingly impatient, there are still a few things that cannot be hurried and hair re-growth is one of them.

Of COURSE I have a discount code for you meaning you save £30 and receive your first month supply for £4.99 TRY IT HERE FOR £4.99 Use the code HEELS499

If I hadn’t have seen results first hand I’m not sure I’d have believed it, but Charlotte says she is obsessed with how successful it’s been for her, and that has given me all the confidence I need, to try it out. Fact that the sliding door thing happened and now I am telling you, is a rather timely twist of fate. It means as yet, I have no ‘after’ photos but here is my ‘before’ so we can refer back at Christmas time from under my mane. Positive thinking!!

So here we are. The sorry state of affairs. And yes, it called for a minty Club biscuit of which you can see the empty wrapper on my plate.

There we have it. Let me know if you give it a go. We are in good hands!

Taking Our Utility Room From Drab to Fab - all the info you need

We are really fortunate to have a utility room here. It is long and skinny and windowless. It was fitted out in the 1990s and at the time it would have been super smart. Time however, has moved on and it was looking very dated. It’s much like many kitchens and utility rooms in the UK. Perfectly OK, but a bit meh (in my opinion)

Those stippled silver tiles and the lights with the blue spears surely can’t EVER have been popular, surely

It had shed loads of storage and housed the boiler in the end cupboard on the left.

FLOOR PLAN and why we made the room SMALLER

Below is the original floor plan from when we bought the house. Underneath it is one of my trademark highly sophisticated technical drawings, showing which walls we removed, what we rebuilt, and how we squeezed a bath (depicted by the yellow oval in the technical drawing) in to the shower room. Moving the wall allowed us to put the bath in, so we lost a bit of cupboard space, for much bigger gains in the old shower room. Totally worth it. (Read about how we transformed our old and ugly, windowless bathroom and removed the bath HERE - we did it knowing we’d replace it somehow, in the shower room)

It looks nice and clean and easy when you see it as one little red line.

In reality it was utter carnage, and as you can see, there is another of my detailed technical drawings as a kind of mood board, the vision indeed.

FLOORING

We chose St Arbois tumbled limestone from Mandarin Stone . We have used this floor in other settings over the last 20 years and it is excellent. You just need to make sure it’s sealed well, then you can forget about it for the next 20+ years.

WALL TILES

We used 8 OF THESE large tiles - ceramic but they look like wood - on the left wall. I love how they look.

We also took the opportunity to have a hidden drain put in the floor here- so that all the drips from wetsuits, wet coats etc hanging on the rail above, can drain easily.

RADIATOR Bathroom Mountain Antique Gold column rad and these valves

SOCKETS ON THE CEILING = for the electric wetsuit dryer thingy. Very handy indeed.

Here is the ceiling rail in full swing, we use it daily for anything wet, and also for coats. On the rare occasion any ironing gets done, its handy for the coat hanger stuff. I can’t recommend a ceiling rail enough - no fancy drying rack needed - just attach it to the ceiling and use coat hangers. It is a brill addition to our utility room FIND IT HERE lots of sizes, finishes etc.

RUG LINKED it’s actually a door mat and in that link is a range of FANTASTIC interior stuff from Jo, female founder of Sunday & Story - check out the scalloped place mats - it is another of my favourite rabbit holes. She has a really good eye for interiors. If you haven’t discovered Sunday & Story yet - sit on your hands! Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

WORK TOP

We went along to KERNOW STONE and had a mooch round the off-cuts yard - BINGO - we found a superb slab for the sink area. We took our template with us to make sure - see pics above testing size. We paid £800 for this and for the bits we used in the bathroom and collected it all ourselves a couple of weeks later which saved delivery costs. Top tip - always check your local stone yard for offcuts. It’s a brill way to save without compromising on the finish. Just go with an open mind!

KITCHEN UNITS

We bought the units and doors from Howdens and it all came in at around £2,000.

We deliberated between blue, green and a rusty red, eventually settling on CHILCOMB in REED GREEN

To be honest any of these would have looked nice, and it was a really close contest between the blue and green, even though my earlier technical drawing showed the red. HA she be fickle

The double cupboard on the right is a fridge freezer, we found space for 10 bottles of wine (phew, can’t risk running low) and the cupboards on the left house tall things like the brooms and mops, there is a shelf or two for the steam iron and cleaning bits.

LIGHTING.

We have - as usual - layered the light, even in here. It is a windowless oblong and it’s a room that works hard, but I still wanted to be able to make it FEEL nice, lighting wise. SO we have the obvious down lights on the ceiling for when we just need light and lots of it. And then we have the layers…

I fell in love with a really pretty Laura Ashley frilly, French style cafe light and wanted it on it’s own switch. It is fair to say that the room was designed around this little light and we had to get that wire hanging down, very early on. I even chose the paint so the light would pop against it. It would be lost against a cream wall wouldn’t it.

The paint colour is Farrow & Ball GREEN SMOKE which is an almost identical match to the units.

Other walls and the ceiling is TIMELESS by FEWNICK & TILBROOK

Find similar panelling HERE

CEILING LIGHT LINKED

We also chose LEDs for under the shelving, for a subtle glow

it brings a lovely warmth to the whole room. Ask your electrician for this - this isn’t something we’d fit ourselves.

We love the look of burnished brass and have been replacing all the old light switches and sockets with WESTMINSTER from SOHO LIGHTING - a Cornish company Again - ask your sparky as they’ll get you a much better price than the price you see online.

We bought the utensil rail from ScrewFix FIND IT HERE

Our carpenter made the little shelf with the brackets

BEFORE AND AFTER

And here is the finished room. We opted not to have integrated appliances because there’d be too many doors in a small space- I feel doors need to be open or open ish when the appliances are in use, especially the tumble, to stop them getting too hot and prevent condensation and there is not the room here.

I KNOW. That is an actual drawer and it is so handy - I feel like SUCH a professional HA (it contains lost socks when it is closed - and is a brilliant packing area when open)

There are many ‘stacking kit drawer’ kits to be found on Amazon. At 55 years old, I feel I should have known about these MANY years ago, but here we are.

Similar laundry basket here I used to have an online shop and I sold HEAPS of them - this site looks good though. I do love a basket.

And there we have it! All the details - and, I hope, proof that a sad windowless room can, bring joy.

This is the last of the ‘windowless room’ posts - the utility room is directly below the shower room in the middle of the house. All other rooms, thankfully, have windows. Phew.

Hope it’s been helpful - the white jelly moulds are vintage, I have a few stars up my sleeve for sale so do ask - and the fish art is by our youngest son. I love her and her enormous fish. The ‘Everything will be just fine’ print is MARGO IN MARGATE

Have a fabulous Sunday and I’ll be back in your inbox next week for our Sunday Meeting. Thanks for reading and being here!

Don’t forget to investigate Hair + Me and use the code HEELS499 if you are also eyeing your hair brush and wondering how it has so much of your hair on it, that should be still on your head.

Wishing everyone a peaceful week ahead

Love

Sally

Our Sunday Meeting is a free read and always will be. I use affiliate links when I can, to help keep it that way. I will also include the occasional sponsored post, when the stars align. This means I can keep writing and not put it behind a paywall. Thanks as always for your support, comments, shares and subscriptions! Back next Sunday! S x