We don’t own our apartment, we rent it. I feel I need to write this every so often as a reminder that I don’t have complete control over the design of our place. I have to work with what came with our apartment as best as I can. Don’t get me wrong, the bones of our apartment are good, but for the most part it’s restrictive. Especially when you have a blog that’s all about design and DIY. Trust me, if we owned this place, it would be wearing a velvet cape and lasers would be shooting out of its eyes.
Anyways! In recent months, I’ve gotten a bit ballsier. We live here. I have projects I’d like to do in our apartment and stuff I want to hang up, so I’m going to go ahead and do that. Well, really uninvasive projects. I’m not ballsy enough to start knocking down walls.
One such project I had in mind was to create a repurposed bedside light for our spare bedroom. As the bedside table is so small, I wanted a light that wasn’t taking up valuable table top real estate. Maybe I could hang a light from the ceiling … of course! What’s even better, I managed to make it out of a recycled vacuum cord. Boom.
And I have to say I’m de-lighted with how it turned out [sorry / not sorry]. A streak of exposed industrial style lighting to offset as well as compliment the calming pink accents. And of course, I have a tutorial lined up next week for how you can DIY your very own recycled light!
UPDATE – see my vacuum cord pendant light tutorial here!
Regarding the rest of the room, below is a little panoramic tour as I realised I’ve never shown anything other than one corner of the room. And I do mean a little tour as it’s a small room …
I attempted to add a gallery to one of the walls. We’ve lived in our apartment for five years now and we have a scarce amount of pictures and artwork hung up, so I’m practicing in here. I hung the most calming and peaceful pieces in the spare bedroom; some of the weirder and darker stuff I’ve kept for the rest of our apartment as the last thing I’d want is a guest to be weirded out by something we have hanging on the wall.
This wall is also a work in progress – anything leftover from updating our bedroom will be hung up here and added at a later date.
The narrow white shelving unit above houses our DVD collection. It’s not very wide so it doesn’t get in the way of the bedroom door.
My first attempt at yarn art is up! Again, I kept the yarn colours calm and neutral. If this were anywhere else in our apartment it would probably have black or red yarn. But, guests. It’s not good if your guests want to hide. This is another work in progress as I might add more yarn.
Another small update I made was to the window. I added a longer curtain rod to extend the curtains all the way to the walls. It makes the room look a bit more finished as well as covers the unsightly vent. And it looks all hotel curtainy. I love hotel curtains!
I showed husband the completed room yesterday evening. He looked around for a good while and finally said, “I’m actually jealous this isn’t our room” and walked out. Seal of approval I’d say! I can’t wait to work on our bedroom and get some artwork and a bit of attitude up.
And to anyone that’s stayed in our spare bedroom up until now, I’m sorry. You are more than welcome to come back now that it’s a proper room with a bit of character! Give give me a couple hours notice to buy in some breakfast. xx
Also featured – upcycled bedside table – emergency kit for guests – Russian water colour painting – charcoal painting
Ahhh this looks SO GOOD and the room already looked good before (she says speaking from experience) – I love the light fixture and I love the string art and I love the little gallery wall you've got going on and of course I love that bedding. Right, now that the room is truly all decked out, I'm coming back.
Although I really want your apartment to be wearing a cape and shooting lasers from it's eyes because HELL YEAH.
Also, wabi sabi spotted in the flower petals. Oh yes, she's got it ALL GOIN' ON.
xxx
Eeeeek, I'm so glad you like it Kimberly! Again, I'd love to make bigger changes to the room but we're so restricted with what we can do. But I'm much happier with it now! I'm really looking forward to adding some more artwork and getting that wall a bit more chaotic – good chaos. Maybe by then it'll be properly ready for your next visit! 😛
p.s. Velvet and lasers FTW.
I think Kimbo has covered it all for me – everything she said!! It's looking amazing, and very impressed with that light, made from a recycled vacuum cord – you are so inventive! It looks bloody good.
And you've picked a great branch for your yarn art – perfect branchiness! It looks great.
I'm sorry, I'm just gushing now – but it all honestly looks wonderful!
(And of course – wabi sabi!!) xx
We spent about 2 hours walking around the Phoenix Park looking for a branch with the right amount of branchy potential. God bless Robert, he must have picked up the entire forest.
Ah yes, the wabi sabi! Hahaha, I always think of you whenever I do it! Those petals happened quite naturally, so I just went with it (actually, there were about 90 petals all over the floor and bedside table, so I pared it back a bit. I have a feeling there is such thing as too much wabi sabi!).
xx
Great little spare guest room! Also, amazing use of recycled vacuum cord, would never have guessed it. Thumbs up all round from me. 🙂
Thank you so much Claire! I'm quite smitten with it. I'll be sharing a tutorial next week on how to DIY the light too 🙂
Gorgeous room Alex! Love all your creative touches and that yarn art is cool! ����
Thank you Moya! I had a feeling you might approve of all the black, white and pink 😀
Dude. I am living for that yarn art. Living!!! Gorgeous room overall… But yarn good.
I'm so happy with how it turned out, considering I was winging it the whole time! Although I will admit, it took bloody forever. I'd say about 4 hours, and that's without doing anything fancy with it. But still, yarn art FTW! o/
4 hours!!! Yikes. Good pay off though. It really is stunning; and something zen-like about it too, with the overlapping yarn/stick…
This is nice. Thanks for sharing with us. Good to know
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