All posts filed under: Building

Meanwhile… back in Harrogate – The Kitchen Diner Project

Published by Karen Knox

I’m sure you’ve all seen the Edwardian house in Harrogate i’ve been working on for about two years already. We have been slowly working our way around all the different floors, creating some knockout spaces for this family of three. The Drawing Room Upper Brook St Bedroom Family Bathroom and Hallway The Trumpet Bedroom The Copper Bedroom Well for the past year or so, we’ve been planning the biggest job of all. Knocking through the back of the house on the ground and first floor. Today it’s all about the ground floor and here are some before photos from the sales listing so you can acquaint yourself with the spaces we’re currently working on. The Dining Room A long (blue) narrow space with lots of odd boxing in. A bit of a let down compared to the rest of the house’s loft proportions, don’t cha think? Just, no to these blinds And here was the equally depressing kitchen: Another long, skinny room that felt dark and cramped, sitting two at the very end right next …

How to incorporate a cat loo into your home – The Hidden Cat Litter Tray

Published by Karen Knox

I’m sure you all know i’ve got a cat, she features quite a lot in my images. She makes an excellent alternative to a sheepskin and is most of the time, a more than willing styling prop. Her colouring also fits right in with our monochrome home. All in all she’s fabulous. One thing that never fitted in our home was the cat litter box. We don’t have a cat-flap, so madam needs access to an indoor loo. When we had the loft converted back back at the end of 2016/17, I designed a space for her litter box to sit, accessible to the furry one, but out of sight from the rest of the house. I was looking forward to not seeing it as I went about my daily meanderings around the house. Alas, as our son is a very light sleeper, just like his mum, Chooch’s midnight races up and down the stairs woke Charlie up. Not actual footage So we had to move Chooch’s overnight quarters to the confines of the kitchen/diner to …

Foresso – The Timber Terrazzo

Published by Karen Knox

I’m not the only fan of sheet materials, they’re used a lot in “the biz” to create unique and made to measure pieces of furniture, built ins, flooring, cladding, worktops etc. So far, i’ve dabbled in OSB, Birch and Poplar Plywood, MDF and have written about my love of Valchromat a couple of years ago. It was actually some research on terrazzo tiles and flooring that took me down an internet rabbit hole last week… where it led me to the most beautiful material i’ve (possibly) ever seen. Developed by young designer Conor Taylor, Conor used to be a materials librarian (I had to look up what that was too) and now he’s the creator and maker behind Foresso, the beautifully simple yet cleverly made, ‘Wood Terrazzo.’ Foresso is a new composite sheet material composed of timber, wood waste from sawmills, cement, waste lime plaster, resin, and pigment cast by hand onto an 18mm birch plywood substrate. Finished by hand and sealed with hardwax oil it is a practical sheet material that requires no specialist equipment to alter …

Thinking of converting your integral garage?

Published by Karen Knox

Happy New Year everyone! Did you have a lovely festive break? I hope so. Have you taken your decorations down yet? Are you looking around the place desperately wishing you had more room? I know I am. But as buying and selling is becoming more and more costly, not to mention slightly impossible given the current climate (**coughs – Brexit**) more of us than ever are extending, expanding and increasing the square footage of our existing homes. A lot of us already have the space we need, we just don’t use it too wisely. Cue the introduction of a recent remote project i’ve been working on: A familiar sight if ever I saw one. The integral garage. The garage with the car parked outside on the drive. Who actually parks their car in garages anymore? Nobody. Apart from my father in law who swears his car will rust and explode if it’s left outside in the mizzle. Anyway – i’m sure the next picture is what a lot of you are more used to seeing in …

‘Fake it until you can make it’ – What do you do when your budget won’t stretch?

Published by Karen Knox

You may (or may not) remember I started working on a rather big and exciting project earlier this year. The Old Forge The plans for this cottage renovation and soon to be holiday let are all pretty much sorted and despite a slight glitch with planning (which was super annoying and dished out but a week before the build was due to start) it’s looking positive we can get started within the next few weeks **crosses fingers**. During the wait for all the faffy paperwork to be shuffled, signed and filed, we’ve been chugging away with the family home instead. They sure do love a project! The floorplan below gives you an idea of their home, how the nooks and crannies of the cottage fit together and how they’re used. The sections marked in red were the bits to be demolished ready for Phase 2 of the big build. You can see how small and quite fiddly the kitchen/dining space is, there are seven doors in and around the heart of the home, along with beams, …

Time for the BIG garden overhaul – The landscaping has finally begun!

Published by Karen Knox

It’s time. Finally! After 6 years of being in our normal, average sized, 1960’s semi-detached, family home, we’ve done all of the big building jobs inside. Which can only mean one thing; it’s time to tackle the outside! And it couldn’t have come at a better time as our driveway was falling apart. Let me walk you through some of the garden projects we’ve done to tart up the space whilst eagerly awaiting the big overhaul. Back in 2015 You can see what a bad state the driveway was in then, another three years on and it was becoming, well, embarrassing. Summer 2015, The Chalkboard Wall The outdoor blackboard worked a treat to disguise that ugly concrete brick wall for a few years, but after the loft extension in December 2016… … our outdoor space took a hammering and was completely neglected during the epic 17 week build. I gave it a little budget revamp as part of the #UKHomeBlogHop in Summer 2017. It got us through Summer 2017, but 2018 was the year we …

Why consultations are REALLY important – New project time!

Published by Karen Knox

Earlier this year, I wrote a post about when to get an interior designer on board which went into some detail about what we do and why we really should be involved from the beginning of a project. If I had a pound for every person emailing me to say they’ve just completed a build and now want some help with the interior design, well i’d have at least £100 by now. Not a lot of money admittedly, but that’s a lot of people thinking I just do sofas and paint colours. Incorrect. This brings me onto a consultation I did at the beginning of July at a beautiful, five bedroom, double fronted, 1930’s house. Original ground floor-plan The homeowners had been there for about four years already and had made a brilliant start at putting their stamp on the place. With most of the messy, building works already done, I was asked to go over for a consultation for the hallway, stairs and landing. Always the last place you should decorate peeps, because they …

Planning a build? When do I get an interior designer on board?

Published by Karen Knox

I’ve always hated the job title, interior designer, most people still don’t really know what we actually do, but as i’ve mentioned before, paint colours and cushions really are about 0.6%. Cushions in the Upper Brook Street Project I’ve noticed more interior designers referring to themselves as ‘interior architects’. I can’t class myself as that by any means, i’m certainly no architect, but I do make decisions around spatial planning, flow, lighting plans, first fix wiring and plumbing… Here’s what Google has to say about Interior Architecture V’s Interior Design: Interior architecture is the balancing of the art and science of designing an interior space taking into account all elements of the build. Interior design is a broad ranging profession taking into account all aspects of planning and designing interior spaces in the built environment. I kind of see myself as being somewhere in between the two. One of the things I get BIG kicks from is solving layout problems. It might be as simple repositioning a dining table so it runs lengthways instead of horizontally, …

New Project – Next Door@TheOldForge

Published by Karen Knox

Sometimes a project lands, and it’s almost too good to be true. This is one. When someone contacts you to design the interiors for what will become a unique, interiors focused, two bedroom holiday let in North Yorkshire AND gives you carte blanche to push yourself with the overall design, you know you’re going to have fun. This won’t be just any old holiday let, it’s being converted and remodelled from a Victorian cottage and outbuildings, attached to what once was a forge. The Old Forge, which is next door is now the homeowners’s family home. They bought these most wonderful buildings set in a large plot and enormous gardens five years ago and it’s literally dripping in history and period features. Their 10 year plan is to renovate the main family home, which they have nearly finished (bar a large extension for a kitchen/diner family room) and to convert the rest of the attached buildings to a holiday rental. So here are the bare bones of the cottage and remaining outbuildings, soon to become: …

Aluminium Door Making Spaces Home Update

Out with the old – In with a new aluminium sliding door

Published by Karen Knox

I do love sharing projects with you guys, especially the ones at our place, as you get to see just how normal our house is and how the smallest of changes can make the biggest of differences. This is certainly one of those projects! Photo from last summer’s #UKHomeBlogHop We’ve finally got rid of the horrendous French doors that lead out onto the garden. I’ve always hated them, but when we moved in, it was at the bottom of a very long list of priorities to sort. They don’t look too bad in this pic above, that’s mainly because I’ve styled the crap out of the space, but the reality was they didn’t close properly, they were too small for the opening and they let a whole heap of cold inside. Before Updating the back of the house is something we’ve been putting off for ages. It was a faffy job, needing the old walls knocking down before the window co could fit the new, much improved door. Our first choice? An aluminium sliding door, …