The Painted Hive

As per my initial brief I want the room to be light, neutral and earthy with a slight eclectic edge.

A predominantly white, cream and taupe palette with lots of natural texture, rustic old timber, chippy paint, some greenery and a few metallic elements should do it!

It can seem a bit depressing to compile a whole heap of really cool images in a mood board knowing you’ll never actually have the exact pieces (like that awesome apothecary chest and brass lamp…in my dreams!) so it pays to remember it’s the overall feel of the board that counts. The amount of hard work you invest in creating your room through resourcefulness and good ol’ fashion elbow grease is where the true reward lies.

So, I am slowly getting there – darn that pesky day job – and promise to keep you guys in the know all along the way.

Yep, it’s true, I’m gonna attempt to put all that stuff in the same room together and (try to!) make it work – with a bit of TLC and some cute decor I think I may just be able to pull it off!

For me, one of the most fun and rewarding things about decorating is the process of hunting down a collection of bargains and then bringing them all together in an imaginative and harmonious way.

I guess it’s like a big puzzle, not one of those glossy thousand piece ones though, it’s more like a ten piece kids puzzle with dog-eared corners and even a missing nodule here and there which when put together right, although maybe not perfect, still fits snuggly and tells a story.

I’ve been meaning to tackle my master bedroom for ages and have half-heartedly been planning a scheme and searching for new goodies to furnish it, though for some reason I never had enough motivation to really get stuck in….until NOW!

NOW I seriously can’t wait to kickbox the heck outta it – don’t feel sorry for it though, it deserves it, trust me.

So, here’s the plan….

What’da ya think?

It’s a pretty small, irregular space with two doors, one large off-centre window and a built-in robe which takes up one entire wall. Rather than pretend the room’s proportionate, I’m gonna play up the asymmetry with some mis-matched furniture though will give balance to the overall scheme through consistency in colour, style and decor.

Now, I gotta apologise cause I don’t have any before ‘before’ photos of the room (as it was when we first moved in). The walls were green, the trim and doors were brown, there was a massively ugly light fixture, worn-out dirty berber carpet and completely see-through bright blue curtains – just lovely.

We got rid of all that pretty quick-smart so here are some more recent ‘before’ pics (cringe, I can’t believe I’m putting these out there – please be kind!).

The furniture is all outta my room from when I was still living at home with Mum and Dad – a bit sad, I know, though we had zero dollars just after we bought the house and never really got around to getting anything new (i.e. nice).

We painted the walls Dulux Chalk USA and all the trim and doors gloss white (as per the rest of our house) and although I would have l-u-r-v-e-d floorboards it wasn’t to be (not for now anyway) so we put down some nice plush carpet.

Hence, a new blank-ish canvas was born!

Soooo, that’s my starting point.