A new start with interior design

It has been almost a year since the last post, so it's a miracle if anyone has the tenacity to actually follow me, but I will again try to continue with my photoblog.

My biggest challenge has definitely not been the lack of photos to post, but rather the relentless passing of time, which has forced me to prioritize my time on other "more important" things than posting pictures.

I had a marvelous idea of telling stories of all of the places I have photographed, but in the end the tedium of coming up with long narratives, has stopped me from posting short pieces altogether.

Well now I'm trying a compromise. I make no promises on continuity from post to post: rather I just try to show what projects I have going on and what I've worked with in the past. That's good enough for me.

So after a rather long foreword here are some pictures of the interior design project called "our home". The majority of the actual design elements are the handwork (or at least the mindwork) of my wife, Milka.

The picture above is an apt example of our design principles. We take old, quality, items and either re-purpose them or just put them into a new context. What you see are pieces of old flower crates sawn into smaller pieces and connected to form a large shoe rack.

Above you see a part of our hanging crates project: we took the same flower crates and screwed them into a paneled wall.

These two crates will follow the one already attached to the wall.

These are just assorted items placed on top of the crates for aesthetic purposes.

We chose old fashioned chandelier lamps to emphasize the three dimensionality of the rooms. Modern flat lamps are a bit too inconspicuous for our look.

The small upstairs hall had an ugly white closet for cleaning utensils, with the surrounding walls painted an uninviting white. We painted the walls beige and replaced the large closet with a more pleasing cupboard. The most important thing is that the closet was full height and blocked the whole upstairs hall. The much smaller cupboard rather bring more space to the hall than takes anything away.

 IKEA is allowed in our house, just as long as it doesn't steal the whole show. A zigzag of Ribba picture ledges allows for plenty of pictures on the walls with a minimum of holes.

A contrast of floral wallpaper and mustard-coloured paint was chosen for our bedroom.

And of course you can never have too many cushions.

 Old doors are a major decorating motif for our interior design.

As are old windows. 

Old vinyl records can be easily re-purposed.

 A bit of tuning can even make a Billy shelf a bit more pleasing.

  Old wooden candlesticks bring a bit of extra patina to an already rustic living room.

 A boring lamp can be revamped by encasing the lamps by a metal basket. As the basket holds the lamps, one has to use energy saving lamps to avoid overheating.

Small elements perfect the desired look.