All posts filed under: Design

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 …

Our Bedroom Plans – The Nude Room

Published by Karen Knox

I’ve finally decided on plans for our bedroom. If you remember, I mentioned the bedroom was the next room i’d be switching up, here in this post where I showed you before and after pictures of our whole house. Our bedroom has always gotten lovely feedback, being featured in Real Homes magazine, by Abigail Ahern on MADE.COM and Apartment Therapy. So you know, this little room has certainly earned its keep. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Karen Knox – Making Spaces (@makingspacesnet) It’s been like this for over three years now, which is a long time for me to not fiddle with a room. But the one thing i’ve always found about this space is that it was a bit of a black sheep alongside the rest of the house. Or teal sheep. Our home is “Monochrome and Materials”. It’s Scandinavian design inspired with a large helping of mid-century (because it’s a mid-century house). Whilst being neutral there is plenty of colour added with artwork, plants and accessories but for the fundamental scheme …

Coffee Table Hunt

Published by Karen Knox

I posted this on Instagram a couple of weeks ago and it seems i’m not the only one that has NEVER had a coffee table. Admittedly it might not be the most riveting of news for some of you, but for others, it struck a chord. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Karen Knox – Making Spaces (@makingspacesnet) As you may have already guessed, buying a coffee table isn’t as simple as just going to buy a coffee table. It never is is it? It’s got to be right. In many ways. The right material, shape, size, design and proportion (read more about Scale and Proportion here)… it also needs to relate to the space it’s going in. Let me explain. Here’s the floorplan of our living room. There’s me standing in the middle thinking, man, i’d really like a coffee table here. As you can see the area surrounding the rug is already taken with seating and other small bits of furniture which means the remaining space (on the rug) is …

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 …

The Victorian Cottage Kitchen – Part 2

Published by Karen Knox

I tootled over to east of York this week to check in on the Victorian Cottage Kitchen project. Work has been coming along nicely since I last shared this project with you guys (read the intro over here). This is where we were before any works began; a pretty traditional set up for a cottage kitchen. And here’s where we are now… The green, glazed tiles from Mandarin Stone with brass trim have transformed this side of the kitchen. Tiles are primarily specified for areas that get wet; bathrooms, kitchen splashbacks, floors, but they can be the perfect solution to create feature walls in alternative spaces. Tiling across the width of this wall gives the illusion of space and the rippled, gloss surface of the tiles helps to reflect the light in what’s a pretty dark part of the house. The homeowner’s love of green had been set aside for many years, fearing that green would clash with the family’s beloved blue Esse range cooker. “Do you think I can have green in here? Won’t …

‘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, …

The Grafton Arms – My room for the night

Published by Karen Knox

If you guys follow me on Instagram, then you might be aware of my trip to London last week for the Amara Blog Awards. Don’t worry!! Today’s post isn’t about the awards, **everyone breathes sigh of relief** it’s about the hotel I stayed in whilst down in the capital. It was so very lovely it deserved its own blog post. (And no, I didn’t get a free stay or paid to write this post. I was a bog standard, paying customer.) The Grafton Arms is just over a mile’s walk from Kings Cross Station, which was a big selling point for me as I didn’t want to deal with busses or tubes. A 20 minute walk west into Fitzrovia, me pulling my purple trolley dolly with Google maps as my guide, and I was stood right here. Nice and easy. The interiors have all recently been refurbed to an extremely high standard. I was genuinely impressed. They even had some familiar faces on the walls… Recognise the Marquis by Thierry Poncelet from the Red Room Project?? The Grafton …

H&M – You’re killing me right now!

Published by Karen Knox

If any of you are looking to furnish a room at the moment and are big fans of Scandinavian design, then you’d be hard pressed not to find something at H&M Home’s department that’ll make you do this: There were so many things that gave me all the feels, I had to do a little round up for you guys, as someone out there HAS to buy these. My house is officially full and i’m not allowed an extension. Booo to that! Stool in Metal & Leather I so want this! It’ll just look better with age and use. Stools are so handy to have around the house, we’ve got one in most rooms, you’d be surprised how often it gets dragged out… …footstool, reaching stuff high up, side table, actual stool, low table for Charlie to eat his cereal from whilst he watches Power Rangers sitting on the floor in his pyjamas… etc. Wool Blend Rug Just enough detail for your floor. Velvet Cushion Cover Lovely colour combos and just very cool. Linen Pendant …

Cork is for life, not just for coasters

Published by Karen Knox

Hello hello, how are you all this week? I have a couple of public announcements to make before I get stuck into this week’s blog post, so please bear with me… 1. Sorry for missing last week’s post everyone. I had the lurgi and tonsillitis so I spent most of last week moaning and watching Netflix. I’m just about back on it now, so i’ve got a lot of catching up to do! 2. THANK YOU ALL SO VERY MUCH! To those that voted for me in this year’s Amara Interior Blog Awards, you did it. You got me shortlisted for Best Interior Designer Blog, so i’m off to the awards ceremony later this month. Eeeek! I can’t tell you how happy I was. Thank you so much once again! You guys are total legends 🙂 So onto today’s post. It’s about cork. Admittedly it might not sound that exciting, but you’d be wrong. I love cork and not just because it normally comes with wine or fizz. The use of cork in interiors is …

The Use of Scale & Proportion in Interiors

Published by Karen Knox

It’s one i’ve been promising to write for AGES. And I did touch on it in last week’s post, but i’m getting more into the nitty gritty of what Scale and Proportion actually is and how we can use it in our interiors. Proportion and Scale Proportion is the relationship of sizes between different parts of a work. For example, how wide it is compared to how tall it is. Some proportions, such as the golden ratio and the rule of thirds, are thought to be more visually pleasing. Scale is the size of something compared to the world in general – an artwork might be termed miniature, small scale, full scale or life-size, large scale or larger than life, or monumental. Here’s a brilliant example of the use of Scale in design: The Original 1227 Anglepoise desk lamp in both its original size and the more recent edition the GIANT 1227, floor lamp version. The proportions are identical, as in how the components that make up the lamp relate to one another, size wise. …