All posts filed under: Home Decor

Open Plan Living Room

The 70’s Flat – Open Plan Living Space – Final Reveal

Hello hello – how is everyone? Slowly adjusting to the new norm? No, me neither really. However, I tried my best today to do what I normally do and write up a post for the blog. Another final reveal from the 70’s apartment project to be precise, purely as an attempt to provide some kind of distraction for a few minutes. Today it’s the open plan living room. Let’s start with a before photo as taken by the estate agent: Before – February 2019 As you can see it’s a rather lovely, big room with ample space for a seating area, dining table and small home office. The small room behind the sofa is where the kitchen is, which if you’ve missed that, I recommend that you quickly catch up over here. A bit of background about this project; Mr J, the homeowner, contacted me as the decorators were already in prepping the rooms to be painted. No pressure then. I did advise Mr J that he’d jumped several guns already by choosing to decorate before …

Dowsing Reynolds Leeds Store

The Dowsing & Reynolds Store is Now Open

Hello hello! I thought some of you would like to see some pics from the recent (well not that recent, that’s how behind I am) opening of the Dowsing & Reynolds store in Leeds. I collaborated with Ally & James of Dowsing & Reynolds fame on the design concept, so it’s so lovely to be able to share the fruits of our labour with you. Professional images by Matt McCormick Come on in! Set over two floors, it was created by founders James and Ally Dowsing-Reynolds with help from interiors doyenne Karen Knox from Making Spaces and from retail psychologist Kate Nightingale from Style Psychology. Gorgeous Yorkshire I had to look up what “doyenne” actually meant. Apparently I’m “a well respected or prominent woman in a particular field.” Well that’s very kind of your Gorgeous Yorkshire, I might just pop that quote on my website, thank you very much. Before – first site recce, getting a feel for the space and taking lots of photos Let me just say from the outset, that I had no …

The Mulberry Red Room (and other rooms) – Final Reveal

Not one, but three spaces to reveal to you today, the first one being the Mulberry Red Room. Let’s go! If you remember the last time I shared the Mulberry Red Room, back in Feb, it was very nearly done. We were awaiting the arrival of the bed and some smaller, finer details to be completed. The whole concept for the room was based around the large framed Modigliani poster which the homeowner had bought especially to hang in this room. The burgundy red backdrop for this rather provocative piece was the starting point for the room with the rest of the details following suit quickly after. Let me show you the completed room: Walls, woodwork and ceiling in Abigail Ahern’s Mulberry Red Lampex Opal 3 Drum Pendant – Wayfair One thing I should tell you about this client, is that he doesn’t like faff. I wasn’t allowed to do nic nacks, no superfluous items, no unnecessary decoration or styling. I was allowed to bring a plant or two. And that was that. He likes …

The 70's flat

New Project – The 70’s Flat

Another project, another two bedroom flat and another excitable homeowner who’s desperate to finish all the works by this time last week. Let me show you around this 70’s apartment. The Floorplan The flat is a great size for this young professional. There’s a lovely long hallway with two good sized double bedrooms off to the side, at the end there’s a small but functional bathroom with large storage cupboard, and to the right the hallway leads into a large open-plan living space with small kitchen just off the dining area. In terms of any structural changes, there’s no scope due to the agreements and clauses in the leasehold (which sucks as I had some ripper ideas) but there’s certainly plenty of opportunities to turn this tired flat into a very cool new home. I’m going to share the plans for each room so you can get a feel for the place. Let’s start with the open plan living space: Estate agent pics A lovely large, light and bright, dual aspect, L-shaped room. Ample space …

Quick-Step Burned Planks

Making Spaces with Quick-Step

It’s been all go here at Making Spaces HQ with the makeover of our master bedroom. Last time I wrote about it, i’d just about finished all of the decorating. Remember? Benjamin Moore – Fox Hedge Tan In the grand scheme of things, the painting was by far the easiest bit to sort. I also kinda like that job, very therapeutic I find. Once that big job was done it was over to the hubster to crack on with taking up the oak flooring and lay our new Burned Planks flooring from Quick-Step.   The Quick-Step ‘Impressive’ range comes in 8mm or 12mm (Ultra) boards, where as the solid oak boards closer to 18mm. So, to give us a more consistent floor height over the bedroom threshold onto the landing, we opted for the 12mm boards, as well as leaving the old underlay down and using this as our sub floor. Fitting the new underlay was super easy to do (well it was for me, as I wasn’t doing it). We opted for the TransitSound underlay which …

Mulberry Red Bedroom - Pre reveal

The Mulberry Red Room – Pre-reveal

I wasn’t going to bother writing this post up, mainly because i’ve shared most of these pics over on Instagram already. But then I thought, “well tough bums” (a phrase Charlie and I use), i’m sure there are some of you that read my blog who don’t follow me on Instagram. And actually i’d quite like to share them over here so I can talk about each picture properly. So i’m doing it right now. Just watch me. Here’s a quick reminder of where we were on the last post. This pic was taken after some of the new furniture had arrived but before any of the works had been done. Standard. Here’s the difference two simple things make, the two things being: The right surface coverings (wall and floor) Plants That’s it. New Flooring + New Wall Colour + Plants = A Magical Space I genuinely get so excited when clients trust you and just go for it. Not many would simply smile, nod and order the paint the next day. There’s normally some …

Bedroom Moodboard The Nude Room

Our Bedroom Plans – The Nude Room

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 …

Ikea Gagnet - Scale in Interiors

A successful trip to Ikea… and a tiny intro to ‘Scale’ in interiors

One of the things I try and do at home is to buy furniture that’s in keeping with the period of the property. Our 3 bed, semi is 1960’s, so late mid-century. I’m in no way trying to recreate a 1960’s home, that’s not me, I prefer to mix up design styles and eras as they tend to create the most interesting spaces…. BUT I do think post war houses (generally with lower ceilings and no period features of note) look best with mid-century or Scandinavian style furniture. It’s clean, un-fussy, uses lots of natural materials and the size and scale of that furniture works with the 2.4m ceilings and smaller room sizes of that era… and those that followed. This kind of touches on a whole post i’m still in the process of writing all about ‘Scale’ in interiors. Because some people get it a bit wrong and then wonder why their room feels “off”. It’s very subtle, but a room with the wrong size and scale furniture in just doesn’t work as it …

H&M Home

H&M Home – doing more Home

Hello!! Yes, I know i’ve been away for a week and left you without so much as a word to read, but we’ve had friends stay with us this week. So i’ve taken some time out, away from the screen to bloody well enjoy myself. And as punishment for said fun, i’ve been struck down with a virus and been like this since Thursday… … just in time for the school holidays. Oh life, you’re a cruel beast! Anyway, less moaning and more writing. Today’s post is about H&M Home. I know most of you will already know about their homeware dept, i’ve written about them before and used their stuff in sooo many projects… .. but there are actually still some peeps that haven’t twigged yet. And for those that don’t pop on there weekly (like I do), then today’s post is just for you. We already know H&M sell cushions, accessories, ceramics and textiles… everything in this pic above (apart from the sofa, books and twig) is from H&M. Standard. But did you know H&M’s …

Black Parrots Studio Painted Wallpaper

‘Painted’ Wallpaper from Black Parrots Studio

About 2.5 years ago I wrote a post about how I was looking for just the right wallpaper to hang in our living room. It’s not a big space, so didn’t want a pattern on all four walls, but something to sit behind the sofa. The gallery was ok for a bit, but I knew deep down that there was way too much art in this room. It was time to downsize. Our house is late mid-century, built in the late 60’s so the proportions reflect that. We don’t have high ceilings, or period features, our rooms are pretty average, size wise. This meant finding a wallpaper was actually really difficult as it couldn’t take anything too busy, but it also needed to do “something” design wise in order to live up to the other walls in the room that are covered in some of my favourite pieces of art. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Karen Knox – Making Spaces (@makingspacesnet) What i’ve been looking for: A black wallpaper – almost …