I’ve become a little bit addicted to Pinterest. Pinterest is for people like me who have house-porn fetishes. I’ve discovered my style is an amalgam of Hamptons, warm, cozy British library, industrial vintage, French city elegance, collector’s corner and a touch of Scandi cool for DH’s study. I love colour but love muted neutrals too. I hate hate hate slick Italian moderne, glamorous shiny, or “easy care modern living”. Give me visual delight and clutter any day, as long as the floor and surfaces are clean and furniture is not too close to move the vacuum around. I’m suspicious of fads, even when I love them, such as those tall glass cake covers/stuffed animal protectors, because I think they may fall out of fashion pretty quickly, and then what do you do with a big glass thingy? I also love Steampunk style, which is a dense visual display of 19th century rusting industrial design such as watches and cameras and old implements and clothing and a big whack of neo-gothic romance. It’s too busy to have in the house but I can see that hanging paintings via gallery walls (aka salon style) might be good for the style. And the occasional occasional table.

I’ve been browsing Pinterest to help plan my dream spaces. It’s like working with mood boards and magazines except online. Totally addictive. I’ve found lots of interiors I love, particularly kitchens and laundries and bathrooms (because none of ours are any good), but rather fewer master bedrooms. Perhaps that’s because I have such a strong design sense for this space already. Our bedroom is perilously close to being “perfect” in my eyes. The room is a reasonable 3.6 metres by 4.2 metres, and we have a large “sunroom” to the left which we use as a sitting room when the children aren’t here. We don’t have a WIR or ensuite yet. That is a sad, sad story for another day.

The walls are a peaceful sand with white ceilings and our bed linen is Florence Broadhurst Egrets in a striking blue and red pattern which both DH and I loved on first sight:

The nude drawing above the bed I bought from an artist friend, and I’ve started collecting blue and white Chinese-style pots to put on the mahogany chest of drawers because they look lovely against dark wood. I’d like to create a gallery wall but DH is a little bit overwhelmed by home clutter at times so I might have to leave the gallery wall for the powder room (aka the dunny). We have a suitable wall space next to my side of the bed, but given the amount of stuff in the room already I think DH would go crazy! Plus my side of the bed is a bit squeezy. I might have trouble getting past the hangings.

At present there are two separate sets of French doors on opposite walls, plus a big window on the third wall, plus a nursery door on the fourth and final wall. We have a queen-sized tassie-oak 1920s-style bed, 2 restored 1920s vintage bedside tables, 2 large vintage chests of drawers, a vintage wooden chest, a vintage chair in navy velvet (I’ve wanted to get this chair re-covered for 20 years, now I don’t have to because now it’s back in fashion!), and a lovely blue-covered antique corner chair my mother restored. It’s awfully busy, plus there’s a laundry basket in the corner. If we keep the room as our bedroom we’d like to remove one of the French doors (saving and restoring it for the back rooms) so that we have a better use of space and more room around the bed. We’d then put in plantation shutters on the window as it cuts noise and would remove the visual clutter of the curtains  which are currently in for privacy, because they’re sure as hell no good for anything else!

Because we are so pressed for storage we’re using the space under the bed for shoes. 2 old under-bed drawers on castors have been loaded up with shoes to try and declutter the room, given that we don’t own a wardrobe or linen closet or WIR or pantry or ANYTHING.

There are a couple of other things I’d like to get for the bedroom, including replacing the lovely but small bedside lamps with Chinoiserie blue lamps (the girls can each have one of the old ones, which are still in fashion but NQR for the space, and we’ll replace the shades with colours in their preference) and perhaps an old gilt mirror. DH says to me that for anything I buy one thing the same size has to go. I am not amused, but I can see why he would say that. I was raised by a hoarding mother who collects things. Lots of things. Lovely vintage things. Lots of lovely vintage things that need restoring. Luckily, I’ve been the recipient of some of those lovely things. Mostly restored. Some not.