As we open up our newly renovated rooms, here is the transformation of bedroom one and our Namaste welcome to you.
We had always called the bedrooms by numbers for our reference when we moved in to St Marks, but talking to lots of people, it became apparent that naming the rooms would have a much nicer feel to them. So here we are bringing you the first room as you go up the stairs in St Marks and we are calling it Namaste.
Namaste “I bow to the divine in you”
Used as a respectful form of greeting and welcoming a relative, guest, or stranger.
The decor for this room feels very serene and we thought a lovely nod to our time in Nepal would be to have that welcoming greeting of Namaste, that we heard so often, as the name for it. We wanted all the rooms to have a link to our memories and favourite times, so they feel more special.
Our wish for the bedrooms and their ensuites was that they would be individual in style to feel more homely. St Marks Stays is not about being a hotel style with a set of neutral rooms. This did of course mean that the decorating and renovating required more planning and selective buying, but Joanne loved sourcing and recycling items to fit.
The bathroom layout did not change, but everything has been replaced to improve the plumbing and modernisation of it. We have to give a massive shout out to our experts who took on all five bathrooms and the downstairs toilet for us, because they did a fabulous job and were great throughout the whole process. This meant a lot of tea making over several months but they were really nice fellas to have around! We can highly recommend them if you are looking for a trade in the area.
Gary Sedgwick and his team did our plumbing
Malcolm Sedgwick and his team were the builders
Chris Pickthall and his team covered all the electrics
Obviously no tiler wants to take on the herringbone layout, but they did a stunning job of it and the effect is much more bespoke. The shower has a decorative panel in as opposed to tiles and the before and after photos show the difference in this ensuite.
Second hand mirrors were sprayed, new carpets fitted, furniture painted to bring more light in to the room and personal photography and cards framed on the wall to create a feeling of happiness.
With all the rooms, we bought a lot of the furniture from the previous owner as part of the sale, with our aim being to upcycle, rather than buy new. Our mini pledge to the environment and the constant drain of just discarding items to buy new, purely because it doesn’t fit with the decor. The dressing table area was created by taking apart a piece of furniture and the chest of drawers part of this is in one of the other bedrooms.
Funnily enough, since naming our first bedroom, we have had another yoga retreat book in, so maybe it’s a sign. Namaste x
Sources
Curtains – ENA Shaw
Cushions – Wayfair, Dunhelm and Maisons Du Monde
Wall Tiles – Mandarin Stone
Floor Tiles – Homebase
Shower Panel – MultiPanel