All posts tagged: living room

The Victorian Coach House - Final Reveal

The Coach House Living Room – Final Reveal

Hello! Three months it’s been since I last wrote. A whole season. A quarter of a year. 13 weeks! I thought it was about time I got back into the swing, and what better way than to offer up the final reveal of Victorian Coach House Living Room; one of my favourite rooms to work on since starting this crazy ass job six years ago. Before What once would have been the tack room next to a stable, this property was converted into a two bedroom residential property many years ago. The room was ok as it was, but it could certainly have been better. Things that needed addressing were: The really small fire opening which just looks like a mistake The terrible 80’s polystyrene coving and plastic ceiling rose The lack of period detailing The terrible radiators with awful polypipes and sideways valves The white UPVC French doors and window (which hasn’t been done yet, but will be done as part of the next phase of this project – the big build!) The brief for …

The Victorian Terrace - The Living Room

The Victorian Terrace – The Living Room

Hello 2020! How are you all? Settling nicely into the new decade? For my first post of 2020 i’m introducing you to a project i’ve been working on since April last year; A four bedroom Victorian terrace in North Leeds. House floor plan The house was previously a rental property, and so was more than a little unloved. It looked “ok” from the estate agent pics, but in reality it needed a lot of work to bring it back to life: New windows throughout Re-wiring Re-plumbing Floorboards refurbed Walls stripped and re-skimmed New joinery New kitchen New bathroom Complete redecoration Fixtures, furniture and furnishings for the whole house In fact, it was this project that prompted me to write this blog post last spring: A Guide for New Homeowners – Where to start, the dos and don’ts. This new homeowner, let’s call him Mr H, is a complete noob to home ownership. Knowing where to start and what order to work through the renovation across several rooms at once had him in a bit of a pickle. …

The Colour Blocking Project

The Colour Blocking Project – A complete house refurb in West Leeds

Hello there! Firstly, I just wanted to say thank you for all the very kind comments, emails and messages I had after my last blog post. They were very much appreciated and meant a great deal. Thank you!! It’s less about me today and back to interiors (yay!). Time to introduce you to a new project, one that’s been simmering for over a year. My role for this project has been a combination of sense checker, sounding board, design consultancy and some good old fashioned interior design. I certainly can’t take credit for all of the incredible work that’s been undertaken by this family, but I have managed to add some design details that I think have really helped pull things together. Let me walk you around the kitchen as it was back in August 2018… Estate agent photo Quickly after moving in, the new homeowners had architects plans drawn up to completely remodel the downstairs, upstairs, plus extend at the back. Budget constraints meant they had to park the first floor remodel and put …

Georgian Apartment Guest Bedroom

The Georgian Apartment – Guest Bedroom and Hallway

Hello all, another look at how the Georgian Apartment is coming on this week, with the focus being on the hallway and guest bedroom today. But before we start looking at the other spaces, a quick update on the open plan kitchen/dining/ living space: Here’s a pic from a visit a couple of weeks ago of the Quick Step Old Oak Grey flooring going down. This has now been fitted throughout the whole room leading in from the hallway. Having no thresholds or breaks in floor coverings is a great way of achieving a sense of continuity and flows between spaces. On my last visit the kitchen was very nearly fitted and the new radiators were in! I had just over a day to design the entire open plan living space so didn’t really have the luxury of  time for kitchen research. The timescales of the project are very tight due to the homeowners’ urgency to get moved in (which I think he is doing this BH weekend). For the kitchen I was given the …

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 …

Coffee Table

Coffee Table Hunt

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 …

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 …

Gallery Wall

The Red Room – Final Reveal

It’s final reveal time. At last! (previous post here). I’m super excited to be able to share the photos from the Red Room project. For those of you that have been following this one, apologies, but i’m about to recap. Here is the storyline for this one: Initial consultation – The brief was to make the room work in terms of function (family room with a TV and plenty of seating), keep the red walls (hence the project name) and pull it all together. Before My plan was to block off the doorway into what was originally a room intended to be a dining room in order to give them a long run of wall to turn allow sofa seating a view to the soon to be TV. I’d already moved the sofa at this point btw and asked them to live with it like this for a few weeks to get used to the new flow around the house. Always something worth doing when you’re about to adjust layout that requires building work. The vintage …

The Red Room – During

I went to visit the Red Room project today. You know, the living room that was red and staying red, but then it wasn’t staying red and going black instead. Remember that one? If not, you can catch up here. Well we’ve been making progress, stripping all of the walls, painting the ceiling and woodwork in preparation for the new wallpaper. All of the furniture has now arrived too, including the gorgeous Ox Blood Chesterfield from Chesterfields at the Boathouse. And this solid oak wiring bureau in near perfect condition picked up from a local vintage dealer. How pretty is that? Remember the Welsh Dresser? Yes, the one here in the left hand alcove. Well that’s now been given the Annie Sloan treatment and repurposed as a fancy home bar. The power of black. It never fails to amaze me. I picked up these cute drawer pulls from Homesense last month to add a little touch of brass Only £6 for a set of 4. Love it. The doorway behind the sofa is getting boarded up …

New Project – The Red Room

New project time everyone! Yeah yeah!! This time it’s a 1930’s house that’s recently had a lovely extension across the back. This has given them a light and airy, family friendly, open-plan kitchen-diner. And two sitting rooms. None of which they really like anymore. Including this one, which they admit they never actually use. It’s accumulated bits of furniture over the years, but now it just doesn’t work as a dining room, a living room, a study….  Let’s just say it’s lost its way. Time for a re-design, a new layout and a new purpose. Oh goodie. This room is to become the new family TV room, but in its current set up, it’s really tricky to configure the space so the seating can all get a view of a TV in one of the alcoves. After spending a good few hours playing around with potential layouts, here’s what I came up with. It’s going to be fun. The biggest change we’ve made which completely free-d up the room was to block the original entrance …