Friday, January 31, 2014

A little bit of Summer DIY

I thought I would share with you a little bit of DIY that we did last year.  You might remember my happy door that I painted a while ago, well this is sort of a follow on from that.


Our little cottage was built in the late 1890's so it has some pretty odd little quirks and random spaces.  When you open the front door there is this little room, just big enough to walk a couple of steps before you open the door to our lounge.  I guess you could call it an entrance hall, but it is so tiny that feels a bit of a grand name - we have always called it the waiting room, no idea why!   It sort of became a dumping ground for shoes and coats and mostly just stuff.  We always felt it had not a very nice feeling, definitely not a welcome home type vibe.  So finally this summer we got around to doing something about it - yay!

Because it is such a little space, and you really don't spend much time in there - I wanted to go a bit crazy with some bright colours and pattern.  I have seen some different versions of triangle wallpaper and tried to find some to buy but they would either not ship to NZ or it was SUPER expensive.  So I thought I'd just paint it - easy right!  Yeah, not so much....




While Mr Odd One Out got to work with all the prepping and painting the base colour, I spent what felt an eternity trying to figure out how the design would fit - way too much maths for me!  The fun part was choosing all the colours - I went a bit crazy and picked 12 in the end but I did make it easy for myself by buying little test pots of each colour.  I ruled up all the triangles lightly in pencil and then started masking them up.  It was actually really hard to figure out the best order to paint the colours, because each one needed two coats and you couldn't paint two colours that were next to each other.  Obviously each set needed plenty of time to dry before masking over the top, so it actually took a couple of weeks to paint the wall!  To finish it off, I added a cool vintage shelf that we painted white and the vintage picnic basket and the gold Uashmama bag holds all our junk.  Finally my hanging plant has a new home and loves it as much as we do!

Now it is finished I absolutely LOVE it.  It is such a happy little space and puts a smile on my face every time I open the door.  And that's what a home should feel like I think.