So, we’re finally back from Poland. I know, I said I’d be sharing pictures as we go along but things were changing so quickly, and we were literally working 24 hours a day… so instead, let me just share with you the video I’ve just created, I hope you’ll like it 🙂
A few details:
– I have managed to stick to my motto (design on any budget!) and have not spent a fortune on the flat!
– bedrooms are still unfurnished – we’ll see who will rent the flat and furnish according to requirements
– we had to compromise a few times – mostly due to funds, or lack of time. E.g. when we get to live there, I’ll change the window treatments, buy a proper coffee table etc. But things I cared most about are all there – my beautiful white high gloss kitchen, Indian-marble mosaic in the bathroom, and three built-in wardrobes… for all my shoes and bags!
More info and detailed photos will follow soon. All comments welcome.
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Nareszcie wrocilismy z Polski. Tak wiem, mowilam ze bede sie dzielic zdjeciami w trakcie pracy, ale wszystko tak szybko sie zmienialo, a my pracowalismy doslownie 24h na dobe… dlatego w zamian, pozwole sobie podzielic sie z wami tym filmikiem ktory wlasnie stworzylam, mam nadzieje ze sie spodoba 🙂
Kilka szczegolow:
– udalo mi sie podtrzymac moje motto (dezajn nie musi byc drogi!) i nie wydac na mieszkanie fortuny!
– sypialnie poki co nieumeblowane – zobaczymy jakie zyczenia bedzie mial wynajmujacy
– kilka razy musilismy pojsc na kompromis – glownie z powodu kosztow, lub po prostu braku czasu. Kiedy my sie tam wprowadzimy, na pewno kilka rzeczy bedzie do zmiany, kupimy porzadny stolik kawowy, dodamy troche wiecej koloru, zmienimy wystroj okien. Ale to na czym mi najbardziej zalezalo – jest 🙂 Moja piekna biala kuchnia na wysoki polysk, mozaika z indyjskiego marmuru, i trzy garderoby… na wszystkie moje buty i torebki!
Wiecej informacji i zdjec detali wkrotce. Wszystkie komentarze mile widziane.
Having seen a photo of a room with a hand-painted silk covered wall in World Of Interiors a few months ago, I have not since stopped thinking about the supremacy of hand-made designs over 53cm-wide wallpapers, which – no matter how creative – usually are restricted by the roll size.
OK, photo wallpapers are an alternative, yet the quality, exclusivity and uniqueness is uncomparable.
What I found today (courtesy of Mochi Home) is this amazing company fromental. A few words about them:
Founded in 2005, with offices and design studios in London and a team of talented artists in China, Fromental’s mission is to create the world’s most beautiful wallpapers.
Having worked in fashion and interiors, directors Tim Butcher and Lizzie Deshayes have twenty years experience in designing, producing and restoring hand-made wallpapers.
Here are some of their designs:
fromental's bedroomfromental
I would literally die for this kitchen:
fromental
Now some of you probably think – nice, but not for me. I’m all modern. Well, heres’s the response to that:
Now, how long do I need to save for one of these 🙂
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Kilka miesiecy w World of Interiors zobaczylam zdjecie pokoju ze sciana oblozona recznie malowanym jedwabiem, i od tej pory nie moge przestac myslec o przewadze recznie wykonanych projektow nad 53-centymetrowymi tapetami, ktore – jakkolwiek kreatywne – zawsze sa jednak swoim rozmiarem ograniczone. Tu – konkretna sciana jest wyznacznikiem pracy. Ma 3 metry dlugosci? Taki bedzie wzor. Ma 15 metrow? Tym wieksze wrazenie taki wzor moze zrobic.
Fakt, fototapety wracaja do lask i pozwalaja zaaranzowac wieksza przestrzen, jednak jakosc, ekskluzywnosc i wyjatkowosc sa nieprownywalne…
Dzis znalazlam (dzieki Mochi Home) wspaniala firme fromental. Prowadzona przez pare z duzym doswiadczeniem w swiecie designu i mody, ich ambitnym celem jest stworzenie najpiekniejszych tapet i tkanin na swiecie.
Czy im sie udalo? Powyzej mozna zobaczyc czesc z ich pierwszych trzech kolekcji, zarowno dla tych co lubia klasyczne jak i nowoczesne wnetrza.
Taak… ciekawe jak dlugo musze oszczedzac na takie cudo 🙂
I don’t think I should even start apologizing for not being here for ages… so let us pretend those two months never happened 🙂
That would be difficult, though, as since the last post:
we finished and rented out our Polish flat within a week of posting the ad (which is a really good time in our market!),
both me and my husband started working at different companies (still within one corporation),
we moved offices to outside of London,
we moved houses in London to be closer to new offices
… and yesterday we have become owners of yet another flat in Poland :).
So this is a very exciting time for me and there is really lots going on. I am obviously going to share with you the ideas for the new flat, and can tell you straight away this is going to be tricky, as we want to finish the flat mostly remotely, and as of today there are only bare walls and windows there.
But! First things first, let me show you what we managed to do to our first flat around Christmas; we wanted to make it livable, so that it rents out quickly, on a budget of ca. £250:
bathroom
I guess you’ve seen some of our bathroom, especially the cupboard hand-made by my husband; to our great anger and despair, the glass maker did not manage to do the doors on time so our shelves are still open, but the rest was good to go:
Bathroom - view from entranceThe old trick - big mirror visually increases the size of this bathroom
bedroom
The bedroom, with the furniture set we got for free from a friend, a super-old retro ceiling lamp, and bits and pieces of decorating from my mum, with the only new element of the baroque-inspired white wallpaper to add just a teeny bit of glamour:
White bedroom with white glamour wallpaperDetailed view of the wallpaper
To complement the wallpaper, we have used a spare piece as wall art and put it in behind glass, all placed on an old shelf which I finished in a quasi-shabby-chic look. The throw also works the same theme as the wallpaper.
living room
Now, the living room, and to be completely honest this is the most haphazardly finished room ever 🙂 One feature wall covered in beautiful black wallpaper… though since it was our first time ever wallpapering, the results are far from perfect! Good tip – when working with a dark wallpaper, it’s much easier if you dab the areas on the wall, where wallpaper pieces will meet, in paint the colour of the wallpaper; this way even if your work isn’t perfect, the gaps between stripes will not be as visible as on our wall.
Living room - feature wall with black floral wallpaperLiving room - view towards the ornamental blinds
The rest of the room is my parents’ old sofabed under a new throw, a red ceiling light which was supposed to be comlemented with red wall art though we never put it up (don’t ask), my teenage bedroom set, a good old piano, a spare single bed that can be put away depending on the needs of the tenants and an Ikea Lack table 🙂 Plus the really pretty blinds which unfortunately do not show too well in this light – basically when it’s light outside, they seem very pale and creamy grey, but when it’s dark, additional silver elements show as well.
kitchen-diner
Finally, the kitchen-diner, with the infamous kitchen units which never got properly fitted together (so that the worktop still floats independently of the units, there is no steel strip at the bottom and a millon other sins we committed with it and haven’t tried to make up for yet). Nonetheless we like the kitchen and maybe, some time, in the distant future, we will finally put it together once and for all 🙂 There is also an extra loveseat and armchair in the other part of the room.
Light and dark wood kitchen with green wallsRetro kitchen oilcloth
Hall
…and our hall, unfortunately I have a photo only from the time when this ugly carpet was there (with the dog’s bone and toys prominently on display) so try not to notice them 🙂
Open hall with spotlights
So to sum up, this is certainly not the best example of interior design, but we tried to make the place nicer for the tenants than the usual offering but on a minimal budget, and the result was that we rented it out just a few days after we advertised it!
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Chyba nawet nie ma co zaczynac przepraszac za to ze mnie tu tak dlugo nie bylo, wiec moze zapomnijmy o tych dwoch miesiacach 🙂
Z drugiej strony byloby to trudne, gdyz od ostatniego postu:
wykonczylismy i wynajelismy nasze mieszkanie w PL w ciagu tygodnia od dania ogloszenia
zaczelismy z mezem prace w nowej firmie
zmienilismy biura
przeprowadzilismy sie w Londynie by latwiej dojezdzac
…i od wczoraj jestesmy wlascicielami nowego mieszkania w PL – a raczej wygralismy przetarg i teraz staramy sie jak najszybciej mieszkanie ‘przejac’ 🙂
Takze ten czas jest bardzo ekscytujacy i na pewno bede dzielic sie tu pomyslami na wykonczenie nowego mieszkania; juz teraz wiem ze nie bedzie to proste gdyz duzo chcemy wykonac lub zlecic ‘zdalnie’ z Londynu, a w tej chwili w mieszkaniu nie ma nic – stan deweloperski.
No ale! Zaczynac wypada od poczatku 🙂 wiec kilka slow o naszym pierwszym mieszkaniu. W okolicy Swiat Bozego Narodzenia postanowilismy zrobic ile mozemy w mieszkaniu by przygotowac je na wynajecie. Niestety czasu bylo malo a budzet juz zupelnie ograniczony (troche ponad 1tys. zl) wiec spedzilismy troche czasu wymyslajac co mozna zrobic by we w miare przyzwoitym stanie mieszkanie wynajac.
Zdjecia powyzej pokazuja rezultaty naszej walki z nieterminowymi sprzedawcami (czytaj: brak szklanych drzwi do szafek w lazience) i bardzo ograniczonym budzetem (czytaj: wykorzystanie naszych starych mebli, mebli ktore dostalismy od znajomych, odmalowanie kilku rzeczy, samodzielne kladzenie tapety ze skutkiem mieszanym – hej! robilismy to po raz pierwszy ok?? – i kilkoma drobnymi nowymi zakupami). Kilka rzeczy dalej nieskonczonych, typu kuchnia (caly czas nieprzykrecony blat i brak cokolow, nieoslonieta sciana i inne takie), te nieszczesne szafki w lazience (szklo to jedyne czego moj maz sam w tej lazience zrobic nie moze, i cholera tak nawalili 😦 ), oraz totalny misz-masz stylow i kolorow w duzym pokoju.
Zdecydowanie nie jest to przyklad swietnego designu ale biorac pod uwage ograniczenia czasowe i finansowe jestem w miare zadowolona z efektu, i obecni najemcy mam nadzieje tez.
And finally, here they are – photos of what we’ve managed to do in our bathroom back home a month ago.
As you know / don’t know, we live in London in a rented flat, but our hearts – and our own flat – are still in Poland. We have never managed to finish it to the standard we wanted because we moved to the UK having just bought it and being able to do only the basics. Now every time we come back to visit our family, we try to add to it.
The next visit over Christmas will be even more important as we’re thinking about renting it out, and for that we need to finish at least the projects we’ve started, if not the whole place!
Our orange-cream-brown bathroom is actually the only room in the flat that more or less started coming together and is almost finished – it really is missing a few minor details (though my husband wouldn’t call it details…)
Below is what we’ve managed to complete last time – some embellishment around the mirror, and a tall cupboard for the much needed storage. I’m not going to show the whole bathroom yet – I’ll do that when we finally finish it off, but I can proudly say that the bathroom design and most of manual work have been done by my husband with a tiny bit of help from me.
Mosaic mirror frame
Actually, this decor has never been planned. We thought we’re going to have just an extension shelf over the mirror, on the same level as the top of the cupboard next to it. But then it turned out that we have some remnants of the panelling which we could use for the shelf. The only problem was that it was some milimeters shorter than the cupboard, which would result in the front of the shelf being a bit recessed in comparison to the cupboard, so the idea of having it at the same level for a sleek look would be lost. So we thought and thought… and then I came up with an idea of adding something decorative to the front of the shelf to disguise the difference in level, and we settled for some mosaic.
Obviously, there are many types of mosaic, and originally I thought we’d get the traditional glass mosaic. We also needed to make sure that the size of single tile (or two / three etc) is more or less the same height as the front of the shelf.
But after some strolling around the decorating shops, I saw this decor and I loved it! The original version was vertical (the size of the usual tile decor) so I broke it up into pieces, got rid of the supporting (and irritatingly difficult to remove) plastic frame beneath which normally holds the mosaics together for easy mounting on the wall, and used each separate tile as I wanted, making sure I don’t repeat the pattern much.
I mounted it onto the shelf using a standard all-purpose strong glue, and it worked very fast and was much easier to work with than the tile glue. Of course, be careful with this – you don’t want your fingers stuck together forever 🙂
…and after a moment of drying up, we were able to hang the shelf up!
DIY in bathroom - mosaic mirror frameDIY in bathroom - mosaic mirror frame close-up
Tall cupboard
This is another example of recycling what was already in the house. My parents have bought a set of furniture to my teenage bedroom ages ago; one cupboard had glass door. We thought we saw some stain on it, so we asked for replacement. The manufacturer duly resent the door, but never took the faulty one. In the meantime we decided the fault is almost unnoticeable, so haven’t even replaced the door. And so it lay for ages in the basement, which my husband noticed some time ago and had his plans for it 🙂
Even though I know how good a DIY-er he is, I was still surprised by what he managed to do in half a day (with some finishing touches the next day) – he has actually measured up, had the panels cut, finished the edges, and built a proper cupboard for our cupboard, nicely employing all colours from our bathroom’s scheme.
Even so, I can hardly survive having something so big in my house without me adding the teeniest bit to it… so I’ve decided to use the spare mosaic tiles to finish the door handles 🙂
DIY in bathroom - my hubby's cupboardDIY in bathroom - cupboard door handles
So, that’s it for now. Going back now to choosing textiles for Christmas… hmmm maybe that’s a topic for my next post 🙂
Interior Design inspirations by Indywiduum Design 