The Interior DIYer

Alex - The Interior DIYer June 8, 2018 Kitchen

Our Lower Town apartment kitchen – before

Over the next few months I’m hoping to update our kitchen. There won’t be much involved as it’s a really nice kitchen to begin with [vs. our old Dublin kitchen where everything made me want to scream], but I’d like to update the wall colour, paint the door and window trim white, update the countertops [in a renter-friendly way] and add a bit more personality here and there.

Our kitchen, by our standards, really big. It’s a long galley style kitchen that leads to the back porch at the rear of our apartment [you can see the porch in some of the pictures]. The porch itself faces the side of a building, so there isn’t much direct sunlight, but that doesn’t bother me at all to be honest. There’s a door and a window by the stove and I’m just waiting to bake a pie so I can let it cool in the window like in all the cartoons I used to watch when I was younger.

It doesn’t get a lot of natural light, but when the lights are on, it is bright enough. But I also wanted to show how dark the kitchen is in the middle of the day. These photos are true to life as it’s a really dark kitchen. I love dark rooms, don’t get me wrong, but not in a space where I’m wielding a sharp object and need to make sure that sharp object doesn’t accidentally come in contact with the rest of me or anyone I love. So I will be brightening this space as much as I can.

The previous tenants left a few things in our kitchen, all of which we are thankful for, but some we’ll be upgrading over the next while. Like the little shelving unit at the entrance to the kitchen. It’s a very home made piece [ie – not level and a bit haggard, but functioning], but I’d love to replace it with my curio cabinet which I’d love to fill with all different kinds of spices and herbs and unusual little jars and a mish-mash of fun things.

I’d also like to update the coffee machine that our predecessors left us. It’s a great machine and Robert adores it, but it’s loud and kind of takes up a lot of room. I’d like to pair it back to something a bit nicer with a little hand-cranked coffee grinder too; something I think Robert would love doing himself. Finding fun [and eco-friendly] gadgets to make his morning coffee a bit more special would be my olive branch for downsizing from his current behemoth coffee machine. Plus, it’s going anyways. Whether he likes it or not.

We’ll have more family coming to stay with us later this year, so this is something I’d like to have updated ahead of them arriving in September and October. It won’t be as dramatic as my One Room Challenge, but I’m excited to update our kitchen regardless! Even if it’s just a few small changes, it’s still something important to me to make me feel at home.

Alex - The Interior DIYer May 23, 2018 Geeky nerdy things

Just do it

For four days last week I traveled by plane, train and automobile to one of my BFFs wedding [Maria of Dinki Dots] in England. Kimberly, Maria and I have become really close over the past I don’t know how many years, but this is the third year we’ve made the effort to get together all three of us for a weekend.

Since Maria’s engagement, I moved to Canada so going to Maria’s wedding became a bit more complicated than just getting a quick flight from Dublin to London. After months of internal debating, one day I just sat down and booked my tickets to go. It was one of those things that I knew if I didn’t go, the regret would consume me far more than a few days of jet lag ever would.

If you follow Maria’s blog, you won’t be surprised that her wedding was amazing and full of perfectly Maria details. I took a lot of naps, drank a lot of coffee [something I’m not used to drinking at all] and ate my way through the jet lag. The point of this post is that if you’re thinking of doing a thing, just do it. Just go. Take the time off, leave enough rations for your other half to feed the animals and children and just go. Especially if you’re a stay at home parent. Do the thing. Treat yourself. Because it could turn out to be one of those things you regret not doing.

Just do the thing.

If you’re curious, you can check out the first #DrunkInteriors [in Dublin 2015], then #DrunkInteriors2 [in Manchester 2017] and the first time Maria and I met face-to-face in Blogtacular [London 2014].

Alex - The Interior DIYer May 10, 2018 #DarkRomanticLuxe

One Room Challenge Spring 2018 – Week Six!

This is it. I’m full of a strange mix of relief and excitement. The final week of the One Room Challenge is here and I am SO EXCITED to finally share our dining room! It’s finished and ready and I honestly love it.

For anyone who found me here today thanks to the One Room Challenge, hi! I’m Alex. My husband and I, our daughter and our two cats emigrated to Ottawa [Canada] from Dublin [Ireland] six months ago. Six months ago we had nothing. I mean sleeping on the floor and all sharing the same bottle of water kind of nothing. I’ve been slowly making our rented apartment a home, so when the Spring 2018 One Room Challenge came around it was the perfect ~~excuse~~ opportunity for me to make our dining room, the room we spend the most time in, a bit more homely.

I’ll be including a full source list at the end of this post in case there’s anything you see and would like to know where it’s from! I’ll either link to where I bought it or to where I blogged about it. And if you’d like to know more, feel free to ask!

I was eager to try and source as many things as I could for our dining room secondhand. Because when you’re starting from nothing, everything is hella expensive. I turned to secondhand websites like Kijiji and real life thrift stores like Value Village and The Salvation Army to fill our dining room.

I updated furniture and fittings with paint, contact paper and lazy patches of Sharpie markers when no one was looking.

Our dining room gets a lot of light during the day and as I spend most days working with a toddler close by, we spend most of our day in the dining room [as the kitchen and Cora’s bedroom are both next to it]. I wanted this space to be somewhere bright and inviting. I do love dark design and I’ll always love dark spaces, but I don’t think going dark would have worked in such a bright space. I did add some darkness with my most favourite burgundy paint, but I added it in a dark part of the room.

It took me a long time to choose the right colour for the dining room walls. It was something that needed to work with burgundy [that was non-negotiable], but it also needed to work with and compliment the kitchen cabinetry which can be seen from the dining room as well as the hardwood floors throughout. It was a tough task, but I found the perfect nearly-greige paint ‘Kitten White’ by CIL Paints. I can’t stress how perfect it is IRL.

This little vignette has turned out to be my favourite spot in our dining room. And it was one of the last places I focused on. It was one of those uggggh what will I do with this corner? corners, but with some artistic help from Cora one afternoon, I put this little group together and I love it so much.

I can’t write this post without mentioning our Victorian style mirror. We managed to successfully hang it this weekend thanks to two 200lbs hooks [overkill by about 350lbs, but they help me sleep soundly at night so long story short, do whatever makes you sleep better]. I tightened the wires at the back a few times before getting our mirror at just the right height. At 4 feet tall and 5 feet wide, there wasn’t much wiggle room with where we could hang it, so I’m thanking the construction gods that there were two studs along the main wall perfectly centered for our mirror. Anyone who sees it in real life is blown away by how big it is. I don’t know how, but it comes across as smallish in photos. This thing is huge. Like, the size of a human person. I’m just so happy we have it looming over our every meal now.

I’m not going to lie, my first One Room Challenge was tough. It didn’t help that I picked the biggest room in our apartment and that I chose to partake even though our belongings didn’t arrive from Ireland until Y E S T E R D A Y, so yeah, it was stressful. But, it worked out. Yes, I had to compromise with a lot of things [not being able to put a swag on the chandelier and center it over the table, not having enough time (or energy) to paint the rest of the hallway and you can see that in some pictures, etc], but it worked out. And the moment it was finished I was so happy with it. It felt comfortable and it felt like us. It was tough but what project isn’t? I’m a very firm believer in creating a space you love to live in for the sake of your mental health. And I for one am tore up from the floor up about our dining room.

Thank you to Linda for letting me partake in the One Room Challenge as a guest participant. The support, encouragement and community that I’ve seen and experienced from the ORC is so encouraging. Especially knowing I wasn’t the only one crying into my glass of wine at the end of Week Four when the panic really started to set in. It’s been an amazing experience and I can’t wait for the One Room Challenges to come.

You can see the full list of the One Room Challenge Spring 2018 guest participant room reveals here!

Entire source list for our dining room as it currently is …

Wall colours – ‘Classic Burgundy’ and ‘Kitten White’ by CIL
Victorian mirror – secondhand via Kijiji
Dining hutch – secondhand via Kijiji, updated with Fusion Mineral Paint in ‘Coal Black’
Malm 6-drawer dresser – via IKEA
Tobias dining chairs – originally from IKEA, but bought secondhand via Kijiji
Gold circular side table – secondhand via Kijiji
Bird portrait trays – via iBride
Dining table – secondhand, updated with marble contact paper [tutorial coming soon] French provincial style armchair – secondhand via Kijiji
All floral artwork – secondhand via Value Village
Candle sconces – both secondhand via Value Village
Burgundy curtains – discontinued IKEA
Skogsklover roller blinds – via IKEA
Black high chair – secondhand via Kijiji
90’s chandelier – secondhand via Kijiji
Black and white abstract artwork – painted by Cora!
Baby Schylling piano – from Target, but bought secondhand via Kijiji
Cloches – given to me by my excellent blogger friend Pat
Wall clocks, x2 – via EQ3
Glasses in dining hutch – either thrifted or discontinued IKEA
Gold lucky wishbone objet – via Chapters !ndigo
Tassles – via Home Focus
White posey vase – via EQ3
Brass candle holder – via Article

Shop this look!

CIL Kitten White

Lowe’s Marble Contact Paper

CIL Classic Burgundy

EQ3 Posey Vase
$12.99

IKEA Tobias Chair
$99

iBride Isild Tray
€52

Indigo Lucky Charms Wishbone
$12

EQ3 Watch Wall Clock
$29.99

iBride Rosita Tray
€52

IKEA Malm Black Dresser
$199