The Interior DIYer
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Feature this – (a second) burgundy wall

I’m forever amazed when a coat of paint changes a space so much. Within 2 hours you can change the feel of a room for under €25. Or in my case, for free as I already had the paint. Yesterday, to the dismay of Robert who wanted nothing more than to MGSV to his hearts content, I painted the wall behind our TV in the same berry colour as the wall behind our shelves. Yes, another feature wall. I quite resent that that term is used with such hate by some people, but feature wall it is. To them I ask, what did a feature wall ever do to you?

I LOVE A GOOD FEATURE WALL. 
There. I said it.

I am so, so, so, so, so in love with this end of the living room again. I don’t care how lame that makes me sound. The wall behind our TV was just too much boring and too much bland for my liking and for too long. White on white on white. I do like simple and bright design, but not in my own space as I’ve come to realise over the years. 

As I realised with the test patch I painted last week, I think this paint colour looks all kinds of amazing in candle light. Tiger are going to make an absolute fortune in candles from me this year. I know it’s a bit early to be mentioning the C word, but I cannot WAIT to decorate our mantle / shelf for Christmas [this time it’s Christmas Pat :P].

Another reason I wanted to paint this wall dark, aside from the fact that I love this colour, is because I really like the contrast of stark white pieces on dark backgrounds. I don’t know why I took so long to paint this wall because [I think] it looks amazing and really ties the room together. My abstract painting is back up [yay! o/] and I added some simple white candles to offset all the dark. It’s a quick change that made a big impact on our piddly little rental living room, which can easily be undone in an afternoon. 

p.s. Anyone else notice there’s a cat in every. Single. Photo I took? Juniper and Toshi were very needy this weekend. Sorry / not sorry 😛
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Darker bar cart and an autumny update

Autumn is beginning to creep up here in Dublin [not complaining]. The weather was awful this weekend so we were stuck indoors and I had the perfect opportunity to faff about our apartment and nest* to my hearts content. One area I’ve been stink-eyeing for a long time is our bar cart. I’m forever pinning beautiful images of effortlessly styled bar carts, and ours always just kind of looked like a toddler emptied its pockets onto it. 

I moved stuff around, added things that had been hidden in my styling stash and attempted to create a pretty vignette. It’s not completely there [yet], but I’m a lot happier with it. 

Another reason I was prompted to get my cart in order was I got a cheeky and unexpected parcel last week from a wild mane-d vixen, that made me squee. Simply entitled “to my gothic princess“; two Crystal Head Vodka skull glasses. Talk about SWOONWORTHY [they’re actually quite difficult to photograph, but trust me, they’re simply amazing. See one with black absinthe … for photo purposes. They’re amazing, thank you Kimbo xx We’ve already broken them in :P]. 

Whilst I was autumnizing our living room I took out my roller and quickly added a patch of berry paint, which I’ve been kinda dying to add more of to our apartment so I tested to see how it would look behind the TV. I love the idea of dark walls accented with white and bright accessories to balance things out. I think it might work well, but I’m concerned about how dark it will look come winter. I adore it, but I’m still on the fence especially re: possible seasonal affective disorder. At the very least, perhaps I’ll do something about that unsightly cable? As it is, it really brings a certain je ne sais quoi to the look I’m going for. Don’t you agree? 

When in doubt, #CropItLikeItsHot.

*No, I’m not pregnant. I’ve heard of this ‘nesting’ that occurs during pregnancy, and quite frankly, I’ve been nesting since the age of 17.
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Living room shelf shuffle

I have a thing for asymmetry. Perfect symmetry can be good, but 9 times out of 10 I find it to be a little boring. I just like things a little off. Maybe it’s because it’s less predictable, maybe it’s because it makes you take a second look, but I just prefer asymmetry. Case in point – have you seen my fringe? 

To give you a rough idea, here’s what the ‘burgundy end’ of our living room looked like before … 

… this picture was taken a couple of months ago before I updated our shelves to look a bit schnazzier. You may ask yourself why the shelves are placed here? And that far apart? Because a long time ago, there used to be another set of shelves in the middle [as seen here]. And the reason they stayed there is because, well, our landlord put them there. Classic amateur renter move. 

This weekend the weather was horrific and we were stuck indoors, so I decided to mix things up a bit. I took everything off the shelves [they hella heavy otherwise] and scooched the left shelf closer to the right. I didn’t place them right next to each other. That looked a little too obvious that they weren’t all one unit, so I left some sought after thigh gap between the two shelves …

It’s a small change when I look at it here on my screen, but the feel of the room is definitely one of slightly more sophistication. I’ve paired things down a bit and gotten rid of some of the extra clutter too. 

I’ve found that making little changes like this are immensely helpful, especially as a renter. We’re very limited with what we can do to our apartment, but changing things up like this has made me less stir crazy about having a rental. These are simple things that can be undone over the course of an afternoon for when we eventually move out.

I think it’s an Irish thing though – not disturbing things for fear of causing a fuss. Well, fuss that. I’ma do what I want [she says, after not doing anything the past 6 years she’s been living here]. xx

p.s. That lovely ‘scalloped’ finish along the skirting board is not down to shoddy painting skills on my behalf. That is thanks to a double wire lead from the storage heater to its socket located in the middle of the next wall. It would make too much sense to have it, you know, right next to the heater. I’d love to know what that builder was thinking.