All posts tagged: wallpaper

The Purple Brown Master Bedroom – Final Reveal

Published by Karen Knox

Good day! How are you all doing out there? It has been exactly six months since I last wrote. Hopefully it gave you enough time to read my previous post though, as that was quite a long one. Today’s instalment is the final reveal for the Master Bedroom at The Ilkley Project. Yay. Let me show you the Purple Brown room! If you’re not aware of the Ilkley project, then here is a little refresher of some of the rooms we’ve done so far: The Striped Guest Bedroom The Kitchen/Dining Room with the yellow ceiling Which you might have spotted on page 168 in last month’s Homes and Gardens magazine…. There are also two home offices i’ve not photographed, mainly because they’re in use most days. But if you’d like a more thorough look of the room’s i’ve photographed at the Ilkley project so far you can click over to the project’s portfolio page. For those of you still here, let’s see the master bedroom as it was when Mr & Mrs C moved in in …

The Old Forge York – Two Years in the Making – Final Reveal Part 2

Published by Karen Knox

Hello hello, how are you all? Thanks to everyone who read Part 1 of final reveal for The Old Forge. I’ve heard from Karen (the owner) that bookings at the newly renovated holiday cottage have been going swimmingly since its launch with Next Door @ The Old Forge now being fully booked until the end of September, so get your skates on if you’re looking to book a break in North Yorkshire over the October half term or fancy an autumn/winter break. So, where was I on the final reveal tour? I think I was about here… Corten steel cladding with a slither of hallway peeking through By their very nature of generally being long and narrow, hallways are spaces where people don’t tend to push the boat out design wise. However, a hallway is a place (much like a downstairs loo) is a place you can have plenty of fun. It’s somewhere you pass through fleetingly on the way from one place to another, not often somewhere you hang about for shits and giggles. But …

The Snug – Final Reveal – in collaboration with Rebel Walls

Published by Karen Knox

Hello again you lovely lot, I’m back again with another final reveal post of a project I began work on last July. Do you remember the snug? You can read the introduction to this project here. For those that can’t be arsed clicking back, let me remind you… The TV/Playroom is split on two levels, two thirds being down two small steps where the sofa and TV was. The top third being a walkway from the kitchen to the back door and another door into the integral garage. Originally this space was used as a playroom but as the kiddos had since outgrown the need for dedicated play space, it was time to turn the room into the family friendly but grown-up snug. And when I say grown up, I mean it has direct access to alcoholic beverages. It wasn’t a complete redesign by any means as I had to work around the items that were staying; a white, leather corner sofa, old trunk/coffee table, white UPVC French doors and the rich coloured, oak floor. Sometimes this …

When is a brick wall not a brick wall? – The Loft Bedroom at the Victorian Terrace

Published by Karen Knox

I’m back at the Victorian Terrace this week talking brick walls. And today I’m up on the top floor showing you the progress in one of the two second floor bedrooms. Before This room was to become a guest bedroom, but until then the homeowner, Mr H will be using this room until the bedroom on the first floor is complete. Which will be later this year once the bathroom has been ripped out. You might be wondering what a bathroom being done has to do with getting the master bedroom completed, a fair amount actually. In a terrace, you don’t get a spacious landing or much transient spaces at all for that matter, the first and second floor rooms come almost directly off the staircase. When ripping out a bathroom and fitting the new one, the trades need space to work and a lot of the prep work needs to be done not directly in the bathroom. Bathrooms are already too small for two grown adults as it is. So the master bedroom opposite …

Making Spaces with Rebel Walls – The Snug

Published by Karen Knox

It’s new project time today. Yay! And it’s twice as exciting as normal as it’s in collaboration with Rebel Walls. Yay yay! Let me set the scene…. Before – July 2019 I was invited to a lovely house in North Leeds a few months ago to tackle the design of the family room which links directly off their kitchen diner. It was a lovely but rather awkward space set on two levels. Before On the lower level there was a large white leather corner sofa facing a large wall mounted TV and sound bar, along with large French Doors into the garden. The top level was a play area where the kids toys and games were kept. There are also three doors in this area, one off the kitchen, one into the garage and one to the outside. So it was mainly used as a walkway, resulting in the middle of this upper tier being left unusable except for passing feet. View walking in from the kitchen As their two children had now grown and …

The Vine Bleu Room – A Remote Design Project

Published by Karen Knox

Today is a special post for me. I’m sharing some before and afters of a remote design project I worked on at the end of 2018. The homeowners had moved into a new family home, but not your average property, their new pad formed part of a Grade 2 listed Arts & Crafts mansion, designed by the architect George Morley Eaton, a follower of Sir Edwin Lutyens. As you would expect, architecturally, it’s stunning. However, one room in particular left them feeling somewhat overwhelmed; The Drawing Room. Estate Agent Photo Here’s how the room looked when it was sold. As you can see, it’s a huge at over 5m by 7m. With rooms like this, you don’t need to work too hard to make it look amazing. But what you do need to do is know how to use Scale and Proportion. You can’t put an average sized sofa, rug or ceiling light into a room like this, you’ve got to supersize everything so it matches up to that fireplace, the beams, those door frames…. …

‘Painted’ Wallpaper from Black Parrots Studio

Published by Karen Knox

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 …

The Aquamarine Guest Bedroom – Final Reveal

Published by Karen Knox

Oh how i’m going to enjoy writing this post, firstly because I love a final reveal post. And secondly, this one will mostly be a cathartic rant about my self-titled “WORST CLIENT EVER”, with some tiny pieces of info about interiors in and amongst. This was the second bedroom of a generously proportioned 1930’s house. It was being used as a guest bedroom and home office, but as i’m sure you will agree, it needed some work. I’m going to skip the whole process which you can catch up on here and here and just get on with the before and after photos, interspersed with more cathartic ranting. The brief for this room was… let’s say, “fluid”. Needs to be a guest bedroom with double bed Bed needs to have drawers underneath for storage Bed needs to have a comfortable, upholstered headboard Needs a wardrobe for guest hanging space Needs a chest of drawers for storage and a TV on top Needs an office space with lots of storage and all cables hidden away Definitely plants …

The Red Room – The Pre-Reveal

Published by Karen Knox

Just got back from a visit to The Red Room project. Big smiles here 😀 I dreamt about it last night as i’ve been itching to get there all week. I spoke to the homeowner after all the major work had been completed last week; new stove, mantel piece, door blocked up and plastered, walls wallpapered and then painted. So we’re onto the final straight peeps. The fun stuff! View this post on Instagram A post shared by Karen Knox – Making Spaces (@makingspacesnet) This is what it looked like on my last visit, which you can read all about here. So many of you loved that distressed plastered wall, but alas there was a door to board up and skim over, so it wasn’t meant to be. This time. (Let me quickly add that 3 minutes into taking photos, my camera died so most of these have been taken on my rubbish camera phone which goes little way towards doing this room justice. But! I will be back v soon for the final reveal …

The Red Room – Take 2

Published by Karen Knox

I’ve always talked about interior design being a process. So when people ask me how long a project takes, or how much it might cost… it depends on so many factors, it’s literally impossible to say. On initial consultation for The Red Room, the one thing that was staying was the red wallpaper. My job was to solve the layout issues and pull the room together. After lots of fiddling this was the overall vibe and plan for this room: BUT. As the homeowners began to remove more and more from the room, they quickly realised, the one thing we’d planned the room around, the red wallpaper, was now on top of the list of things they wanted to change. And do you know what? That’s fine. It’s completely normal. The number of times people have asked me to work around something, either to make the job simpler, quicker or more affordable, 9 times out of 10, they finally decide to bite the bullet and dismiss said item and finally go for what they wanted all …