Still working on youngest one's new room! Sneak peak!

Well I have finished scraping back and painting all the woodwork in my daughter's new room...it was bad....I hate multi-paned windows.....yeah, yeah I know they look great....as long as you dont have to prep and paint them!

But moving on, with inspiration from this image on Pinterest....

Love the brightly painted iron bed, so I did this....

 Lovely turquoise! (so much better than the black)

I have now found a great doona cover set which is going to really pop with colour in this room.

The little touches of turquoise will tie in nicely with the bed.

I am also in the middle of a rather large painting for her room which is the center motif on the bed cover.

I will show you more as I do it....stay tuned

Family room reveal!

I have finally got round to finishing the family room....wellll....almost....just a few things to go!!!! But I thought it was OK to show you now. I have been searching for before photos but can't find them anywhere so you will just have to use your imagination!!

Ok, so here we go.... picture this, when I bought this house it only had one living combined dining room so I always knew I would have to add a room on somewhere but that is difficult when there is no money! So the obvious thing was to convert the cobwebbed, spider heaven with asbestos ceiling, single unlined brick walls with numerous vent holes, double car garage. After all why does the car need a home when my kids need a family room!

Well it was revolting, for the first year or so, I tried just doing a temporary makeover....hiding the garage doors and junk that we all need to store in the garage behind a wall of curtains (the only cheap ones I could find that were cheap enough to cover the whole wall were a lovely shade of poo brown).I also scraped back the muck off the bare concrete and painted it and the unlined walls. The room only had one small window on the western wall and an old door that was the only entrance into the room from the back deck (apart from the garage doors which I had now sealed off and removed the mechanism so that you couldn't enter there).

Lesson learned in removing the ancient mechanism of the old tilt-a-doors...when using angle grinder (for the first time) make sure you get son to wear tight flame proof top as he holds the mechanism for me. Instead son was wearing loose open necked T shirt as a cascade of sparks fell down the back of his neck and he couldn't let go....very crucial that he didn't ...so he just kept yelping...whilst I struggled to hold back the giggles.

I had the old rear door changed to a glass door to let in a little more natural light but still the kids weren't feeling the love in there! It was freezing in winter, still quite ugly, and that asbestos fibro ceiling just seemed foreboading.... so after saving up some more money I decided to have it fixed up properly.

Enter my ex who is a builder, to help out (thank you) he framed up the walls and with some help from me and the long suffering son (well he wanted the family room too) we gyprocked the walls. As well I had bought from Ebay a second hand window complete with plantation shutters (score!) so cheap, and a beaut pair of french doors which were top half glass from an old terrace house in the city (these doors are now in the internal entrance from the lounge into the family room - so much better than going outside to get in there!!!!)

Here are the new doors leading into the family room, they look like they have been there forever!

Open doors, please come in....

About the only picture I could find of the work in progress. I got rid of the pool table, the kids begged me for it and then never used it!!! Well with the money I bought them a large screen TV instead!!!

All newly gyprocked and painted, just waiting on new coffee table from the competion I won

This is it, cant wait, it was out of stock so I think I have at least another 2 weeks (the other one is so wobbly)

 I love my new red ottomans, they are light weight with little carry straps so the kids can move them round the room as needed for playstation or games or just TV watching.

New TV to keep everyone happy!!! The doorway on the right leads to the storeroom I had built in, it runs the length of the room and is only about a metre wide, just enough for shelving and room to walk down.the side. Most of the furniture, art and accessories in the room I already had. The leather sofa is a least 15 years old and still going strong ( I gave its pair to my older daughter when she moved out) it looks so much better when its mixed up.

 I love this print, it won the Archibold Prize in 2004, I saw the original and it was magnificent.

Craig Ruddy's portrait of indigenous acter David Gulpilil titled Two Worlds

This area gets a lot of use, it's my son's and my studio bench. The cupboards were left over from when I bought the second hand display kitchen for my laundry on Ebay, so free!!!! (well cheap anyway) and then I just bought a laminate bench top for practical studio use. I made the pinboard with some old skirting board I had hanging around and covered some soft board with a curtain panel I had.

It is a great room that gets a lot of use now... no longer the scary spider playground of before. The fibro ceiling was left in place and gyprocked over, safer than removing it. The floor had another coat of floor paint and one day when I can afford it I will have a floating timber floor put in with a moisture barrier underneath it. And when I get round to it the long wall will have some sort of gallery wall when I can make a decision on what to do!

Linking to
Savvy Southern Style
Delightful Order 
French Country Cottage 
Chic on a Shoestring Decorating
The Shabby Nest 
Funky Junk Interiors

Inspiration for a young girl's room makeover.....

So as I have mentioned a FEW times now, my eldest daughter has moved out and the youngest is going to be moving into her larger room which means I need inspiration!!! So of course I turn to Pinterest!

This is very cute! Olivia would love to have a little sister to share with..... but that is not going to happen!! And  I have been told that pink is OUT! I told her that black is OUT! She is 8 going on 16!

I love the blue and pink...but as I said pink is OUT, the tree mural is interesting though.

 The white painted timber panelling is very fresh and the high shelves are a great use of space along with the toe to toe divan beds.

 This is just fun, I love the colour, you can't help but be happy in a room like this.

How gorgeous, don't think the budget will stretch to this!

This would be every little girl's dream, wouldn't it but I think this would limit any future changes to the room and I LIKE to make changes!!!

I thought about getting her a day bed but we have inherited her sister's old iron bed.

What a great use of space in this compact room for two. A sophisticated colour pallette of beige and pink.

Another great day bed, the walls are a very pretty light aqua.

WOW! Maybe for when she is a teen ager!

LOVE THIS...I know, I know it is PINK but it also a lot of WHITE!

Well that is some food for thought at the moment.... in the meantime, I am still slugging away painting windows, skirting boards and doors.

You can find all these images my Pinterest

Dining dilema!

I was having a chat to a friend of mine the other night about their house, I have been helping them ramp up the style a bit since they moved in a few months ago. The house is stunning with breath taking views over the ocean, it was their holiday home but why not have that holiday 365 days a year.... so they made the decision to sell up their home close to the city and move to the beach!

Now as I have said, it is a stunning home with spectacular views but was furnished in a fairly bland way originally as it was not a permanent residence. A lot of the furniture from their city home wasn't the right vibe for this very modern home but some of the pieces have melded quite well.

The trick now is to give this open plan space with it's white walls and very modern kitchen, character, colour and warmth without detracting from those views. We have injected a bit of colour into the living area  by introducing some turquoise accessories and some great art but now it is time to concentrate on the dining area.

They have room for a very large dining table that will seat 10 and have 8 existing chairs in a woven seagrass. I would like my friends to choose 2 new dining chairs for either end of the table that will be real statement pieces so I have a collection of images to provoke ideas for them and getting them to think a little outside the square.

These images are quite diverse in style but they are all a little quirky using a mix of chairs. The idea is to get some reactions to these images so that they can work out what they hate and what they love but also how to look at things differently, you don't have to have matching sets..... sometimes mixing things up makes a much more interesting room.

They also need to look at lighting and maybe a rug to anchor the dining area. Large open plan rooms are great but they do have their challenges as well. It is important to have furniture that is the right proportions or they will end up looking a bit lost or as my mum says "a pimple on a pumpkin". 

My greatest pet hate when it comes to decorating is rooms that look like they have been bought as a package deal straight out of a catalog. That is why it is important to mix it up a bit....get some old and new.... mix across the ages......be brave and don't bland out!

The images are from Pinterest

Just because it's fun!

You know how it is, you are cruising around on Pinterest and you start to see a few interesting shots and then you see a few more and you think... what the!!!

Do people actually do that! 

How I would have loved it when I was a kid!

What fun!

Imagine the fun!

All these images are from here on my board on Pinterest