The Interior DIYer
Islandbridge apartment

TFW you keep going back to the same palette

We’re settling into our new apartment nicely, and part of the excitement [for me] of making it a home is deciding on what paint colours could go in each room. However, one thing I have noticed is that I keep going back to very similar colours that we had in our last apartment. 

I’m halfway finished painting our living room burgundy [hello old living room], I keep thinking about painting Cora’s room a lovely muted grey [like her old nursery] and I can’t help but want to go really dark in our bedroom. Again. I say to myself no, you can’t do those colours again because you already did that! People don’t want to see it again! And then another part of me thinks, hang on a second, these are colours I like. I like them for a reason. I’m not going to all of a sudden paint our bedroom orange [no offence to anyone who likes orange] just because it’s something new and might interest people. So I’ve given in and I’ll stick to the colours I like instead. I’m still going to worry that I’m just copying our old apartment, but I’m going to try and get over myself. 

I haven’t decided what colours I’m thinking of painting the rest of the apartment, but I do keep coming back to certain colours and yes, you’ll probably see more of what I’ve used before. But I am hoping to add them in more creative ways on walls and on furniture, etc. 

Do you have certain colours that you can’t help but paint certain rooms? Or do you have a palette that you love and keep going back to? I didn’t realise how much I loved certain colours until I’ve pretty much decided to use the same colours in the same rooms again! And I’m beginning to think that might be okay 😉 
Baby

‘How to use Instagram’ – Sunday Independent feature

If you turned to page 5 of yesterday’s Sunday Independent Property Suppliement paper, you would have found Cora’s cheeky little face alongside a lovely piece by Nathalie about Instagram parents who went against typical design trends when it came to designing their little ones nurseries, and who found Instagram and Pinterest places of inspiration. 

It’s a really sweet piece and I’m so glad and count myself very lucky to have been included in it. Or should I say, that Cora’s been included! Because let’s face it, she steals the show these days [not complaining]. 
I really miss Cora’s room these days and I find myself saying to myself “Oh I’ll paint Cora’s room a nice muted grey … No wait, I can’t do that AGAIN“, but we’ll see. It was such a lovely combination of colours and was such a calm room for her, I might recreate it a bit in her new Ottawegan bedroom. Thank you again Nathalie, and thank you Yolene for nabbing a copy of our feature and photographing it for me 🐃😜
Blogging

Last apartment tour

I had this post scheduled for last week, but I never got around to hitting publish because last week ended up being manic ahead of us moving to Canada. So I figured I’d share it today as, better late than never? 

Though most of our apartment is packed into boxes or in a wildly non-baby-friendly disarray on the floor and looks nothing like these pictures anymore, I wanted to share some of my favourite photos of our apartment before we head off on our big adventure in Canada. And I included one last story that made me feel pretty good in the middle of a shit storm of stress this past week … 

We had an agreement with our landlord that I show the apartment to potential buyers as I had it decorated now, and in turn I didn’t have to repaint the apartment back to white or reassemble all the furniture I had disassembled over the years. It was a win-win for everyone. It surprisingly worked to our favour – our apartment sold within a week and the buyers loved the apartment so much that they asked to buy as much of our stuff as they could. It saved me a lot of time and drama as I was planning on selling each piece of furniture, artwork and electronic item online individually. I’m not very good at accepting compliments or accomplishments [I don’t feel I’m doing enough of a good job. I think that’s imposter syndrome maybe?], but when the agents told our landlord how impressed they were with how the apartment was presented and when the buyers then wanted to buy all our stuff, I felt proud … 

The only furniture we packed to ship to Canada was our bedside tables, our bar cart, my green foot stool and our curio cabinet [we’re bringing Cora’s secondhand Stokke crib with us on the plane]. Of everything, those were the things I couldn’t be without or replace. The rest of the furniture sold with the apartment. We of course packed all our small things [19 boxes worth] which will be with us around Christmas time. That’ll be our Christmas present to ourselves this year – all our own stuff again. 

I didn’t have a chance to get emotional about leaving our apartment as we were in such a hurry trying to get packed up and get to the airport on time on the day. Despite having a love / hate relationship with our apartment [there were so many things wrong with it electrically as well as bad building finishes], I know we’ll miss it. We lived there through the biggest steps in our lives, it’ll be hard not to. 

To see what our apartment looked like when we first moved in over 7 years ago, take a look here.