The Interior DIYer

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How what I watched as a child influenced my style

I’ve written many times about appreciating a wide variety of designs and styles, and I do! I love beautifully dainty pastel cottages, sleek and modern architecture, bold and wildly colourful palettes, but time after time I’m drawn to dark designs. All things strange and unusual. 

So it got me thinking, why do I like what I do? Well, to be honest, because it’s what I’ve always been drawn to.

I grew up loving getting lost in TV shows and movies. My favourite cartoon shows were Beetlejuice and The Real Ghostbusters, and their real life original movies. Both of which predominantly feature creepy topics with dead and / or almost dead people. They were funny, creepy and mysterious. And I liked them. Which may be why I have such a fascination with skulls. Not to mention black and white stripes. Hello! Beetlejuice. It’s all beginning to make sense.

There are parts of certain movies that influenced me the most. Lydia’s burgundy bedroom, Delia’s viridian hallway and asymmetrical fireplace. The Beast’s towering masion, multi-storey library and fascination with cloches. The Sanderson Sister’s house and the widow’s walk above Max’s bedroom. Edward Scissorhands, living alone on top of a hill, perfectly kept gardens, it forever snowing and him living in the attic [although, call me controversial, but I’d prefer a fully intact roof].

I’m forever pinning and daydreaming about old houseswith the same amount of character. Overly ornate exteriors, giant porches, unusual and quirky layouts, huge fireplaces, grand windows, multiple storeys, widows walks and creeky floorboards. There’s nothing more I’d love than to one day have an old house with character. One that hopefully didn’t need to be entirely gutted, rewired and replumbed. A girl can dream.

I find the idea of having an old house with a less than ordinary design really comforting for me. I can’t explain it, and at running the risk of sounding corny; I’m really drawn to it. If I bought a new house [no offense to people buying a new house], I’d feel dead inside. I can feel myself being tugged towards old and abandoned houses. Maybe it’s because I grew up watching and rooting for the underdog. There’s something creepy and romantic and bitter-sweet about it all. 

It was definitely an ‘aha’ moment when I finally made the connection between what I grew up watching and what I’m drawn to now. All I’ve ever liked are strange and unusual things. They’re not necessarily scary things, but whenever I’m not true to what I like, I find I always gravitate back to the beginning. To what I’m familiar with. #MyLifeIsOneBigDarkRoom
So what about you? Are there any TV shows or movies you feel that may have influenced your style while you were growing up? Or partially helped form the way you look at things? Or did they have no effect whatsoever? I’m forever fascinated with how things from our childhood makes us the way we are today.

Also featured – moon painting – skull can – encrypted cross stitch – himmeli

p.s. My grandmother on my father’s side had a pet crow, as I only found out recently. My great grandmother on my mother’s side wore black all day every day, so I don’t feel so bad. Unusual seems to run in the family. Goth girls unite. 
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Collections

If I told you I have only a handful of things I collect, my husband would laugh in my face. He’d immediately correct me with “you collect pillows, empty boxes, wrapping paper you never use and handbags to name a few“. Well, yeah. That’s true. I have a lot of all of those things. Although I will say I only have 7 handbags, which as I’ve tried to convince husband, ain’t a lot in lady terms. 

I’m very conscious of the fine line between having a quirky collection and being a full blown hoarder. I’m quite ruthless in recent years when it comes to cutting clutter, but there are a small few things I enjoy collecting that aren’t taking over our apartment. Yet. 

FEATHERS – oh, I can’t resist a pretty feather. If I see one that’s particularly lovely, I will go out of my way to pick it up. My two favourite found feathers are a dotted magpie feather and a swan feather I rescued last year after a lawnmower went over it. I just can’t help myself. But I have no idea how to display them. At the moment they’re just sitting on our shelves, safely out of reach from furry paws.

WHISKERS – when I say I collect whiskers, it sounds really disturbing. No, you don’t need to call animal welfare; I don’t pluck our cats faces. These are whiskers I find around our apartment when I’m tidying. When I spot one, I talk in an embarrassing cat mom voice and add it to the little jar my cousin gifted me last year from Tiger. It is literally the purrfect size. Both of our cats have white whiskers, so I never know if they came from Juniper or Toshi. 

Also, I don’t know if it’s a midlife crisis, but I’ve always adored the Sylvanian Families, but never had them when I was younger. I’ve collected two kittens recently, and I can easily see myself getting a giant collection. Yes, I took their clothes off. Our cats don’t wear clothes so neither are these guys. They are just SO SAWFT AND FLOOFY! 

CORKS – I’ve written about our cork collection before, and it’s a tradition of ours still going strong. Whenever we celebrate a special occasion and a non-screw-top bottle of wine is involved, we’ll keep the cork and write that days details on it. We have corks from our anniversaries, holidays, wedding, honeymoon, Christmas, New Years, birthdays, and silly occasions such as our landlord not increasing our rent one year.

So tell me, do you have any weird or unusual collections? Are the collections you have things you buy or things you find? And how do you display your collections?

Also featured – skull can art – bar cart
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Room tour – our kitchen, currently

Last month when I played host to two stellar bloggers, one thing that really struck me when Maria and Kimberly first walked into our apartment and saw it in real life was that they didn’t understand the layout and where some things were in relation to each other. No, I’m not accusing my guests of being slow, it’s entirely down to my lack of showing images of an entire room and where things are in relation to each other in our apartment. I tend to show just tiny snippets of what I’m blogging about at the time. I already know what our apartment looks like, but I need to remember that not everyone else does. I love seeing an entire room on other peoples blogs, so I’m going to hope you’re equally enthusiastic about seeing our kitchen today. 

I spend a lot of time in our kitchen. But I must confess, I’m a little bit embarrassed of it. I just haven’t paid enough attention to it in the past 2 years as I have the rest of the apartment. We don’t own our apartment; we’re just renters so there are things in our kitchen that our landlord added and we can’t do much about [remember, he furnished the entire place during a 6-hour visit to IKEA 10 years ago]. 

It’s also a case that the previous tenants didn’t take as good care of the apartment as they should have, so things like the grouting throughout our apartment is a hot mess. Both along on the backsplash but much more noticeably, the grouting on the kitchen floor. It’s so bad that nothing I’ve done to clean it has helped [and our bathroom too]. Nothing. Pure bleach and hot water and nothing. So, please don’t look down. 

The last and final door left in our apartment to be repainted is our kitchen door. The reason I haven’t gotten around to painting it is because there’s a set of shelves blocking the door and I need to take them down in order to paint it. We’ve never used the door [and neither did our landlord, he once mentioned] as it’s an unnecessary second door into the kitchen. Therefore, I opted to lock the door and hang shelves against it for more storage. This corner is really the only part of our kitchen that needs special attention. A new lick of paint and some styling attention should do the trick. Possibly a bit of artwork hung below too? 

Below is the other side of the kitchen door
, as seen from our living room facing the front door, to give you an idea of where the kitchen is in relation to our hallway … 

The rest of our kitchen is good, in rental terms. Everything works and we’ve learned to live with the limited amount of storage; not to mention the typical mini fridge as found in most Irish houses. They drive me insane. Way back when husband was ‘boyfriend’ and he lived with me and my family, we all shared a fridge this size. Five adult humans. That is not an acceptable size for a fridge. People take note. I can’t wait to grow up and have a grown up fridge.
While I’m ranting about appliances, I’m considering removing the microwave. It takes up a lot of counter-top real estate and I’m sure it’s much healthier to just reheat things on the stove. </rant>

So, of all the above, here is what needs to be DIYed to our kitchen to bring it up to scratch … 
– The grouting on the walls needs to be bleached [I don’t like using bleach, but it’s my only hope].
– Walls to be repainted white.
– Sand and repaint the door and skirting boards WHITE. 
– Remove the shelves in order to repaint the door, then rehang them.
– Spray paint coffee box [more details below].
– Possibly spray paint the recycling bin black [as seen in the corner under the shelves].

Aside from the DIY stuff, there are a couple of things I’ve had in mind that might make our kitchen that bit more homely. As it’s a rental, there isn’t much we necessarily need in there, but I’ve had my eye on a few things that would help spruce things up. You know, for the sake of finishing the kitchen … 

1. Helen James’ Considered line is flawless. At the very least I need a tall storage vase and the marble mortar and pestle. And some dipping bowls. And the teeny black pinch pots. And a copper pot or two.
2. My old friend, Montana winegum spray paint. I’ll repaint my thrifted coffee box [identical to my tea box above].
3. Mini shopping basket and mini shopping trolley, both of which I picked up in Tiger. Perfect quirky displays for little things like eggs.
4. A fancy dish rack [but cheaper]. Since we don’t have a dishwasher, any prospective dish racks would need to tolerate an immense level of dishes and pots at a time. Not sure these fancy ones will cut it.  
I’m hoping now that I’ve shared what’s wrong with our kitchen, I’ll be more inclined to actually paint that last door and actually style something half-decent on those shelves. I just have to actually do it. Maybe this weekend will be the one. You know, compared to the last trillion that we’ve lived here. 

Kitchen update – before – middle – after