interior design

The WIR is go!

| Jessica

This week we moved our clothes into the WIR. Tada!

I finally finished the topcoat in the WIR and now I just have to do the architraves and door. I’m leaving these for a bit because I’ve moved on and we have to wait for the final building fixup.

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Yes, I know the window is not yet in, and there will be yet more painting and sanding and nail banging before the final finish. But the sad truth is all our clothes are a bit dusty anyway, from the building dust getting into all parts of the house. I’m loving the distressed concrete look of the tiles I chose. So cool.

The great thing about our WIR is that compared to other WIRs we’ve seen recently (did I mention we like looking at houses for sale on their open house days?), ours seems really large. It’s not, but it has a wide walkway of 1.1metres, 2.6m of hanging space on one side and a metre on the other. This makes it feel really spacious. I must admit however that my shoes are STILL fighting for space, and I’ll be using the large pullout drawer under the bed for all my rare spares. I’m one of those sad puppies who keeps her shoes in their cardboard shoe boxes where possible because of dust and humidity. This takes up room but protects the shoes.

I must say, looking at my clothes it appears as if I wear all black, white, red, and tan. I don’t, of course. I keep lots of my clothes in clothing bags which happen to be black. Again, this protects the clothes from fading, dust and pests. Eventually we’ll put plantation shutters on our bedroom and WIR window but for now it’s storage bags.

I’m now painting what is intended to be our front porch entrance (but without actually doing it because funds), and I’m painting it a fresh Dulux Vivid White acrylic with Natural White architraves in oil. It’s hiding the colour I originally painted these outside rooms when we bought the house, which was a cool grey that ended up looking rather purple in a certain light. I’ve now changed my interior design look over the last few years and going with whites, for cleanliness and brightness and sanity. The grey was great but it was designed to cover flaws in the old walls. I’m putting off what I really should do right away – gap filling – because it’s a boring boring boring job and I have to do this and then wait for it to dry before giving the room its penultimate topcoat. There’s lots of gap filling as we have installed VJs:

And the dust. Oh, boy. Yes, well, ok. I’m off to do it then.

 

 

Procrastination 

| Jessica

So close and yet so far. I’m putting off the inevitable by lying here writing a blog post about putting off the inevitable. Sad, I know. I need to finish our WIR and ensuite. I need to finish painting them. When this is done we can put our clothes in the WIR and turn the Oh Jesus Room back into a proper working space. 

I know this. But I can’t bring myself to get up yet and do it. Probably because painting is boring boring boring and I’ve discovered my work with gap filler in the WIR leaves a lot to be desired! I need to sand back some of my bodgy work and do a topcoat. Then I can paint the woodwork. There’s really very little to do!

Oh, ok. Here I go. In the meantime here’s a picture of the guest room I dressed yesterday. 

  
I’m hating the pine furniture. My mum made it and if I paint it it might look crappy. I’m tempted though; the white oil paint I bought is a perfect colour and I could change the pine handles to something else more on trend. The sofa bed is hardly on trend and it has faded badly in the West Wing in the 2 years we’ve owned it. But it’s useful, so it stays. I need to wash the cushion covers and hang some art work and get some curtains/ blinds on the windows. Then we’re done! (Well, ok, I need to finish off oil painting the windows and French doors but there’s a whole lotta prep stuff I need to do before I can, so it’s on the “to do in a million years” list.)

DH and I already love this room so much it’s becoming a multi-purpose space. My stepson is quite neat and tidy and he is unlikely to create much personality in the room, so when he’s not here it may well become a sitting room for us. And it will definitely do double duty as a guest room. It’s so bright and friendly. My old teaching studio. Vale, teaching studio. You were useful once! 

Finishing off the interiors

| Jessica

It’s still a little way off before we can declare the renovations fully finished but there are signs that it’s close. John the builder wasn’t here on Monday, which gave me the opportunity to do some filling, sanding, undercoating and topcoats. The East Wing is now a pristine white, and it only needs some window painting for it to be complete. Even the woodwork and architraves are mostly done! I’m a little worried about the gorgeous but messy French doors. They need a proper strip-back and clean, and they’ve already been hung, so it’s unlikely this will be done properly. I’ll be scraping back paint off windows and sanding them back for months yet.

The WIR needs its louvre windows (we’re having half clear, half etched and the etched ones aren’t finished yet – or maybe the factory lost them), and then a couple of patching jobs and some architrave. The ensuite just got its window frame finished on the outside, and the vanity finished off. There are some repairs needing doing to some broken tiles (apparently it’s normal for tiles to be broken when fitting ceiling beading – the staccato pounding of the nail gun breaks them), and then some finishing off with silicon. I need to sand back and paint the beading, then the whole ceiling gets a topcoat or 2 (even though it already has one) and then I get to tackle the wood trim, the door and the windows. UGH.

The lads have taken off while we wait for the shower glass to be ready, so it’s painting time for me.

Dulux Vivid White on the walls is great for the outside rooms because it is so bright and clean, and considered a “pure” colour. However, I’m choosing a warmer colour in the interior rooms, as they don’t get all that much natural light, maybe Antique White or Lexicon. I’ve chosen Dulux Natural White in oil for all the woodwork. It covers amazingly well, once the woodwork is undercoated with Dulux 3-in-1 Primer, Sealer and Undercoat in Vivid White. Mostly it just needs one coat on the new wood.

I’m feeling a little trepidation regarding the front windows. We have a small problem. Some of them are old and crusty, and need a lot of preparation before painting. They are also rather delicate, so I can’t use too much force on them. One even has a cracked window pane that I can’t really replace because the glass is so old and delicate it’s not readily available. Therefore ALL the panes will then need replacing. On ALL the windows in that room. Laminated. Not cheap.

In truth, I’m dreading the precision work. I have a lovely little brush for the woodwork but it’s really hard to get a clean line without brush strokes mucking up the vertical and horizontal joins, and getting paint on the glass (which I think is pretty awful, unlike the former occupants of the house, because there is so much crusted paint on ALL of the window panes that it will take until hell freezes over for me to do them all. Even DH has offered to help). So I’m kinda putting it off until I gather up the nerve!

So, for now, it’s back to Bunnings for more Dulux paint. But while you wait, here’s a little picture of the near-finished vanity. All it needs now is the mirror and some bath utensils. We even have the towels! For soft furnishings: Freedom Furniture for the patterned towels and baskets. Adairs for the white and charcoal towels. They are so new I haven’t even removed the store labels.

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I’m off to Pillow Talk for the bathroom accessories. We decided that the gorgeous amber/brown bottles of Aesop work perfectly on the vanity but I can’t bear the cost of replacing Aesop products (SO expensive), so we found these instead:

muse bathroom accessories

So lovely! And of course I found my white orchid is, of course, alive and well. It goes in too. Finally, we need to choose a toilet brush holder (tried my cream and black Victoriana one, doesn’t work at all, too busy) and a bin. For the bin I’m thinking a natural woven grass with white base. For the toilet brush: ugh. Probably a charcoal or dark one for contrast. Not yet decided. Too much white will kill the look.

So why finish off this room? Because I want just ONE room in the house completely renovated and finished. Once the accessories are in, I don’t want to touch this room for a VERY LONG TIME. Also, it means DH and I have a great bedroom retreat (not that the bathroom is somewhere to retreat to, but you get my drift). I have to finish the painting in the bedroom (a whole ‘nother story), but once that’s done, hey presto. Only some plantation shutters to install and we’re done.

Also, it means that the East Wing is completely done as well. Then, only 6 rooms to go. SIGH.

 

 

 

I’m thinking vivid white.

| Jessica

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Seeing this warm grey wall, I’m happy to go Dulux “Vivid White” on the walls. Beige, Dulux “Sand Dune” or “Hog Bristle” bring out too much brown, shown by the unpainted VJs at the top. I want to emphasize the grey. We’re going chrome fittings for everything, and warmth will be provided by the Blackbutt topped vanity unit. The grey tiles will have white grout, the white tiles will have a pale grey and the floor tiles dark grey. (Poor tiler – he had seen a bit of The Block on the TV and the floor tiles were the same – except they used it on the wall and used dark grout. He thought this was good somehow, and instead of listening to me saying repeatedly “pale grey grout for the white tiles, white grout for the grey tiles, dark grout for the floor tiles”, decided he wanted to add his own sartorial choices to the plan. I had to put him straight. Dear fellow.)

I’m a fond user of Dulux products. I use their 3-in-1 primer, sealer and undercoat, which has great coverage. One coat on already primed walls is usually enough, two coats on untreated wood. I’ve done a check on what I need and there’s plenty! I’ve just bought 4 litres of Dulux bathroom and kitchen semi gloss in Vivid White. This paint apparently resists mould and humidity, which will be important in this bathroom, as the view will be to the West and quite hot in the afternoon.

* (later this afternoon)

Having a look at the wall below, I’m particularly thrilled with the white grout. The grey really pops. It’s stronger and darker than I expected. I think the pale grey grout will look great with the white tile and it won’t be long until the whole room is basically done and I can get started on the painting. Best to do it before the fittings go in!

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Pinterest addiction (affliction?!) and the perfect master bedroom

| Jessica

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:

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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.

 

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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!

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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.