make my home

I know, I know, this second room tour has been a long time coming. But hey, it’s here so take a seat and let’s get right into it…

For every room, there is usually a starting point: whether it’s furniture you already have that you want to incorporate or some specific functional purpose that you have in mind for the room. As this was our very first ‘formal dining room,’ it meant that we had no furniture whatsoever to go into this room. In other words, it was a completely blank canvas.

My starting point was therefore the use of the room: apart from the obvious ‘formal dining’ aspect of the room, I knew that Rick would also be having a lot of his church meetings here. This meant we needed to be able to seat at least 8 or 10 people at the table. Also, as with every other room in the house, I had to bear in mind the colour of the walls and the colour of the carpet – neither of which we were going to change.

The first thing I searched for was the dining table since, in my mind at least, this would determine the rest of the room. Rick and I are very much still in love with mid-century furniture, so it was a no-brainer when we found this Danish inspired, extendable dining table on eBay that could seat between 8 to 12 people.

It took me a long time to decide on the chairs. At first I considered having a range of mismatched secondhand chairs, but decided against it because I didn’t want to risk the room feeling stale – plus I still think the ‘mismatched chairs’ look works much better on floor boards than on carpet. Once I’d chosen the replica Replica Pauchard Tolix chairs, the next consideration was colour choice. Rick liked my idea of different colours, but in the end, I decided that we would get them all in yellow to create a bright and solid contrast against the wooden table and the brown carpet. When the chairs arrived, I was so happy and relieved with my decision, because the yellow completely lifted the room and added just the right amount of cheer.

As for the end chairs, I’d originally wanted replica Philip Starck Ghost chairs, but ultimately decided on replica Verner Panton S chairs. I think these ended up being a good choice because the matt plastic contrasts well with the metal of the Tolix, while the simple ‘S’ shape provides some relief from all the table and chair legs. (Tolix chairs from Sokol, S chairs from Matt Blatt.)

For a while now, I’ve been keen to hang this Perfect Twist poster by Debbie Carlos somewhere in our home and the large dining room wall seemed to be the perfect spot. I love that down the track, I can easily swap this poster into one of the boys’ room or my own studio. Here, I’ve attached the poster with Blu Tack and added a piece of yellow washi tape at the top to give the impression that it’s hanging from the top.

I don’t know about you, but I find it incredibly hard to locate a good floor lamp: one that stands up straight, that isn’t too short, isn’t too expensive, isn’t too boring… you get my drift. After extensive Googling and even ordering this tripod lamp that ended up being too short (thank goodness for money back guarantees!), I found this Space lamp from Online Lighting that reminded me of those cool industrial studio lights but it was only about one-tenth of the price. Score! No, major score!

The sideboard was a bargain buy from eBay. If you’re after something similar, just add ‘retro sideboard’ to your saved searches and wait till a good bargain trundles along. We drove one and a half hours to pick this up, which equated to a three hour tear-our-hair-out round trip with the three boys, but it was totally worth it.

The spotty canvas artwork was one we made for our third home. Back then, it adorned the wall of our studio/nursery (yes, remember that?). In our last home, it added colour to our meals area, and now it has been ‘upgraded’ to the formal dining room. If we didn’t already have this canvas, I would probably have chosen something quite different for this wall but I quite like the playfulness it adds to the room – the perfect counterpart to the yellow chairs and a nice contrast to the monochromic ice cream poster.

The ‘CREATE’ letters were from my old studio, and the ‘Y’ letter was from Freedom (yes, there are a few of these floating around our home). The green lamp is an old IKEA one – you can still buy it in white but they no longer sell it in green.

Oh, and the empty corner on the right of the sideboard? That’s the ‘naughty corner’ for the boys when they deliberately choose to disobey mummy or daddy’s orders. Works wonders.

This is the other end of the dining room. The oil painting on the left is one which we’ve had since our third home. We bought it at the Glebe markets while we lived in Newtown. It’s by a Melbourne artist called Bob White and it’s a painting of a rainy day in Melbourne. I just love the colours in it, as well as the richness and texture it adds to any space.

The tall canvas art is one that I designed myself and had printed through The Online Framing Shop. They’re not only affordable in their pricing, but their service is amazing. The owner actually drove to our place to deliver the canvas himself at no extra cost because he didn’t trust the couriers with such a big item! I was thoroughly impressed.

The artwork itself is simply one of Rick’s favourite passages from 1 Samuel 2 in the bible. I used an unusual typeface called Parkitecture to make it more visually interesting and to make people look a bit harder to work out what the text says. I was originally inspired by Elise’s big script art but I quickly worked out that I didn’t have the calligraphy skills to create anything like Elise’s artwork and a computer script font just didn’t have the same effect. Rick and I both love our final product.

The swivel armchair was another bargain find, this time from Gumtree. I was a bit hesitant about the green clashing with the yellow Tolix chairs, but it’s all come together just fine. I’d also stuffed around trying to create a small side table for the armchair by using a stack of magazines, but in the end, keeping it simple was the best solution. The cushion was probably the last item to be added to the room and yes, it’s also from A Cushy Number!

We’re almost there – well done for staying with me. Just some more detail shots…

..and we’re done! I do hope you enjoyed the tour. Let’s hope the next one doesn’t take three weeks to prep. Have a lovely day, everyone!

It’s been such an emotional coaster ride setting up our new home: the excitement, the stress, the exhaustion, the adrenalin and – ultimately – the fun! To me, setting up a new place is all about turning an empty box into an actual home, and transforming an empty space into an actual room. Even though these two months have been crazy, I feel this is exactly what we’ve managed to do with our new home, and Rick agrees with me!

I wanted to kick off the room tours with Jamie’s room because, well, he’s a special little guy and his room is one of my favourites. You might remember, this is what his old nursery looked like (well, bits of it anyway). I wanted his new room to be a ‘big boy’ room: fun and colourful with a slight eclectic feel and with pieces of decor that could be used in other rooms of the house down the track. I also wanted to use furniture that we already had.

First up, we kept the Hensvik change table/cabinet by Ikea (shown above). This has proven to be a good little change table for us, and I can picture us keeping it for some years to come. Even though its colour is white, it does give off a somewhat girly vibe because of the curved, um, bits at the top. So I tried to make it more boyish by using an old Vittoria Coffee tin for storing the plastic nappy bags and by snapping up a deep red planter pot from Bunnings to replace the very pastel-coloured bin we were using before.

My initial idea was to stick old pages from vintage books onto the back panel to fill up the empty white space. However, for the sake of time, energy and my sanity, I decided to keep the number of DIY projects to a minimum (when you have three boys under three, opting for efficiency and sanity is a no-brainer). Instead, I picked up the ‘Bonjour’ sign from Bed, Bath & Table on a whim one day and, in my opinion, it completes the space perfectly.

The delightful bunting is from Paint Robot and was originally purchased for the other boys’ room but it works beautifully here to add interest and colour to an otherwise bare wall.

This is the view from the entrance into the room. Even though the window isn’t that big, the room still gets a good amount of light.

This room started out with just the Boori chest of drawers (on the left), the Ikea Tullsta armchair and the dark brown cot. Add to that the slight latte colour of the walls and the dark brown carpet, you can imagine how desperate I was to add some colour in order to inject some life and vibrancy to the room.

The replica Phillipe Starck Aha Prince Stools were the first things I tracked down. I really wanted them in yellow and was close to giving up when I discovered that Life Interiors did yellow ones! I ordered a pair because I didn’t think that a single one would sufficiently fill the space, plus I was confident there were at least three or four other places around the home where I could use one. That’s one of my key tips in home decorating – if you’re ever unsure about anything you’re purchasing online, always have one or two other backup uses for it!

The vintage red Planet lamp was from my old studio (purchased from Explore the Kerb when we moved into our last place), and the crochet blanket was from eBay. I have to say, you will be seeing at least a couple of other crochet pieces in the other room tours. It’s an easy and classic way of adding colour to an armchair, couch, bed or even – the floor!

Speaking of floors, I’m still patting myself on the back for finding this awesome rug from Crate & Barrel! (Yes, my fellow Aussie friends, Crate & Barrel ships to Australia and might I add that the shipping charge for this rug was only like $30.) The unconventional stripy design was exactly what I was looking for, and the colour palette was irresistible. Word of warning though – this rug is more purplish than it appears online and also the rug feels a bit rough, like hemp. I was slightly disappointed by this at first but Rick convinced me that it simply made the rug more suitable for a boy’s room. Men and their logic.

Of course, no kiddo room would be complete without some beloved soft toys! Clockwise from top left: Nino the horse (he actually neighs, which for now freaks out Pete and Jamie so sadly Nino doesn’t get ‘ridden’ a lot); Monkey, Rick’s oldest friend (he’s had it since he was 0-1!); Jamie’s teddy; and Woof Goes the dog and Flappy Ears the dog, both given to Angus when he was born and both named by Rick. The red cross cushion is from A Cushy Number, and the union jack cushion is from Table Tonic. The alphabetical artwork on the chest of drawers is the ubiquitous OLUNDA picture from Ikea, which comes already framed.

And last but not least, the ‘Keep calm, go to sleep’ canvas art was one that I designed myself and printed through Cheap Canvas Prints. Originally the words were going to be ‘Home, sweet home’ but Rick was absolutely adamant that we didn’t use that phrase (I still don’t understand why). So I thought I’d jump on the ‘Keep calm’ bandwagon and give our little man an essential piece of advice: to go to sleep (and most of the time, he does do this very well, bless his cotton socks).

Well, that wraps up our first room tour. Hope you enjoyed it – more to come!