Renovation Inspiration

I know I’ve been promising for some time to reveal our renovated house with you – and we’re getting there.

I’ve already shared my master bedroom makeover, and I’m looking forward to sharing with you all the other spaces in my home.

You see, the problem is, we’ve been a bit naughty with our renovation.  Instead of renovating one room at a time (like my Dad taught me), we’ve tackled the entire house.  So, we have unfinished bits and pieces which just need to be done.

The other problem is, that we are suffering from ‘renovation burnout’. You know, you’ve heard of it, right? It’s when you are so tired that you lose the will to live!

To get me over the hump of my renovation burnout I’ve been searching for inspiration and I thought I’d share that with you today. You might like to remind yourself what our house looked like before.

So, here goes.

Kitchen

I fell in love with this kitchen, everything about it.  My kitchen is actually bigger than this one – you won’t believe that if you saw the before photos, but by removing a wall and making some tweaks, we managed to etch out a bit more space for a good-sized kitchen.

I also knew that I wanted a built in rangehood like this one.

Obviously, there were a lot more inspiration images – if you’d like to check out my kitchen Pinterest board, feel free.

Must haves:

• Light and airy
• Lots of counter space
• Built in range hood
• A ship’s bell

Dining Area

While I would love to have a beautiful dining room where I could entertain to my heart’s content, I’m afraid I just don’t have the space for it.  So instead, we moved our dining area from where it was next to the kitchen, into a useable space in the lounge.

Relocating our dining area means that it’s in a corner. I would absolutely love to make that corner look like this cozy breakfast nook.

If you want to look at the other things that have inspired this area, check out my Living and Dining Room Pinterest board.

Must haves:

• Seating with storage under window

Living Area

Once again, we don’t have a separate living area – our 90m2 house doesn’t allow for that – but I love the one we have – it has amazing views and is light and airy. What more could we ask for?

If you’ve been following along, you know that I am one of the ‘white couch brigade’, so you were expecting that, right?

I’m not going to disappoint you.

I have been inspired by this room.

Are you starting to see a theme here?  

Must haves:

• Bright and white
• Wall of bookshelves
• Hidden TV

Master Bedroom

I know you’ve already seen my Master Bedroom Reveal but I thought I’d share some of my inspiration photos anyway, and a list of my must haves.

This first image I actually just found the other day, but it epitomized everything I want to achieve – bright, fresh and clean.

You may have noticed that I already own a headboard almost exactly like the one in this picture.

I also love the serenity of this white and blue bedroom below by Sarah Richardson who just happens to be my all time favourite interior designer.

A large amount of inspiration for our master bedroom also came from this fabric, which I made the curtains and duvet cover from.

Must haves:

• Blue and white
• Calming
• Upholstered headboard

Bathroom

Did you think our master bedroom was small? You literally couldn’t swing a cat in our bathroom.  In fact, it’s so small that if you’re in there and the cat comes in, you have to leave!

Our bathroom has a weird layout.  The bath is tucked in behind the toilet, making it an L-shape.  

Eventually, we have plans to swap our bathroom, toilet and laundry area with the smallest bedroom(3).  Our toilet is one of the sunniest rooms in the house and who wants that.

Unfortunately, that’s not in the budget right now, so we are just adding some lipstick and rouge for now.

On to inspiration. To be honest, there aren’t many images on my Pinterest bathroom board which reflect anything like my bathroom.  I really don’t think anyone else has a bathroom in this weird shape (except other Lockwood owners).  So instead of sharing a photo of what I’d like, I’m sharing this photo which gives you the feel of what I’d like.

Must haves:

• Space (won't have)
• Tiles (won't have)
• Tiled floor (won't have)

In some future time, I'll get the bathroom of my dreams.

Laundry

As you can see from the plan above, our laundry is in our hallway, by our back door. I’m really happy with where our laundry is going. I’ll be sharing that soon too.

For now, here’s some inspiration photos:

I have always wanted one of these pull out laundry racks.  Whether I can find the space in our tiny laundry, I’m not sure.

So, there you have it, the ideas that have motivated us in our renovation.  I’m really looking forward to sharing it all with you soon.  

Looking at these images has helped with my renovation burnout.  I’m feeling inspired to finish some projects so I can share them with you.  

In other news, I’m really excited to say that tomorrow the builder is coming back to finish the ceilings.

It’s taken longer than expected because Andy and I (ever the optimists) decided we could do the finishing ourselves.  Unfortunately, with the new business, it just hasn’t happened so the builder has kindly agreed to take over and get the job done.  This means that I’ll be painting this weekend (again, ever the optimist!) and can reveal next week – huh! We’ll see.

Stay tuned!