Before photos

We got the keys last night to our new place!

It was a little dim out but I still managed to take some photos to get a sense of the space.

Obviously there is a ton of exiting work to do!



The dining 'nook,' clearly not big enough for a table. But
we are thinking that a kitchen work surface here
would be great.



living area looking from the dining nook.



dining nook, kitchen wall and living space.




kitchen wall and living space and hallway (which leads to bedroom
and front door)



living space from the entry



kitchen



bedroom.



A rough floor plan of the space. I'm so excited about the huge
(south facing) balcony!

(I used the panorama feature on my phone which is why the walls are all a little curved.) But I was able to get so much more of each room into the photo that way.

Try anything once

I am a huge fan of designers who aren't afraid to experiment with design, and I love trying new design ideas myself.

The important thing is to not be too tied to the results. If your a DIY'er you know what I'm talking about. Not all of your projects are going to turn out great. Some of them will turn out better than you expected, and some much worse.

Some of the projects I've done have been a complete (and often comical) disaster, but I would like to think that I've learned something in each one.

I've taken a few photos of some of the successful and not-so-successful DIY projects I've done in the past as I get ready to move/ pack up my room.

a basket made from newspaper

I added trim and doors to a boring white dresser
and painted it a dark grey (still needs handles). I also
painted the pattern on the carpet
 

I added cool legs and new back pillows to this ikea
sofa. Although the pillows are great, the legs
provided to be less then stable if you sat on the
front edge. . . . rocking sofa anyone? I had to
put the old ones back on.

I can't wait to get started on some new DIY's once we get the keys to our new place!

picking paint

Picking paint has got to be one of the hardest tasks of any design project; it generally happens at the beginning -when everything is in flux- and when you go to the hardware store -with a specific colour in mind- you'll almost always come out with a hundred shades of everything ( not at all what you had planned). Because lets face the facts, once you walk up to that huge wall of paint chips your mind just pretty much turns to mush.

So if your anything like me you've found yourself here: sitting in your room, on the floor, eyes glazed over a huge pile of colour chips that you've hopelessly arranged into ridiculous groups that in your mind are somehow going to help you work through this impossible challenge. . . picking the perfect paint colour.

Here are some quick pictures of the mess I got myself into:


I'm not sure how long this has been a thing, I only recently discovered it  -probably in great part to pinterest- but people have started to post pictures of their rooms with their paint colours online! So now to confuse matters even more, once you have managed to whittle down your colour selection to a reasonable number, you can search said paint names online and see if what it looks like on the wall is actually what you thought it would be. And yes, "to confuse matters more." Because this is also about the time that you come to realize that the same colour can look completely different in varying situations(depending on which way the room faces, how many windows it has, how the other items in the room interact with it. . . the list is endless).


Our apartment faces east and south, windows on both sides, so nice and bright and the floors are typical 60 year old apartment parquet, aka very yellow. I found this photo on apartment therapy that would be an accurate representation of my situation.



So with all that in mind I have selected 6 paint colours for the living space to test on the walls which are:

• Behr wheat bread 
• Behr Dolphin fin
• Farrow and Ball french gray
• Farrow and Ball Blue gray
• CIL Designer grey
• Farrow and Ball Hardwick White
  

And 3 paint colours for the bedroom:

• Para State of the Art (blue)
• Martha Stewart Living Seal
• Martha Stewart Feather Duster
  

The biggest piece of advice I would give anyone when picking a paint colour: get the tester pots. Its $4 for a pot, so get a few. Paint chips are too small to be any real indication of the final colour. Paint at least a 2'x2' square.

Updates to come once we get to the painting stage.

Getting started - Inspriational Photos

Hello and welcome to my blog!

 I (a wanna-be designer/decorator and avid DIY'er) am about to  embark on a mad journey to transform my partner and I's new apartment into a livable, lovable space.


AND, I will be doing it on a shoe-string budget.

Before photo's are coming soon, but until then I wanted to share some inspirational photos with you! Photos that show the type of mood/feeling we are trying to create. I was only 5 minutes into my Pinterest boards when I realized it was going to be way harder to nail down a design direction than I thought. None the less, so far we are thinking of a dark bedroom, and a cozy but bright living space.

First for the dark inspirational photos:






And the cozy but light photos:




I realize that there are competing design elements in these photos but what I love about each of them is the atmosphere they create in the space!