My wardrobe is an IKEA bag
And other renovation confessions
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I recently rearranged the room above to try to make the TV less of a feature/eyesore, nestled as it had been under the bay window. I’m not convinced this is the right arrangement, but I like to test drive new layouts for a few days to see how they feel in action.
Where to put a television is one of those age-old interiors dilemmas. And good luck looking for inspiration in interiors books or magazines - we stylists have an annoying habit of hiding them for shoots as they just look like big black blobs in photographs. When I decided to knock out all the walls between the kitchen, living room and corridor (scroll to see before pics), I knew it would be an issue since this room is now all doors and windows with few areas to put a TV that would be visible from where the sofa would also need to be. It’s a small-ish issue that in winter hibernation/peak tv watching time becomes a big-ish issue.
By tucking the telly on a side wall and moving the sofa to face it I’ve divided the room and lost the openness that I liked about the space, but I’ve also created a cosier nook by closing down the room a bit. It’s the perfect little cocoon for cosy winter viewing, but that is really all it’s good for.
It makes me think of Joey from Friends when he meets someone who doesn’t own a TV: “What’s all your furniture pointed at?”
In this set up, the furniture really is all pointing at the TV. And for now that’s fine because, well Winter. But come Spring and Summer when I’ll entertain more, a rethink may be in order.
Projector? Hmmm. Would be ideal, but unless technology has improved I can’t do the fully blacked out room thing required for crisp projector screen viewing. A Samsung Frame TV? Absolutely, but I’m on a strict no spend regime until I take care of important, dull and very expensive things like new windows and a front door that doesn’t look like it belongs on a 1970s local council office. So unless they want to gift me one then that’s also a no.
So we make do, something I’m almost too good at.
There has been a lot of making do with this house renovation. While we’ve spent money on big things like plumbing, electrics, removing walls/ceilings, bathrooms, even building a reading nook mezzanine for goodness sake, I still don’t have a wardrobe for my clothes and shoes.
Instead, currently my clothes are stored on a wobbly clothes rail with a linen tablecloth thrown over it in the hopes of disguising it (it doesn’t). Plus a couple of IKEA bags on the floor in the corner of the bedroom for my jumpers - unsightly, irritating, studenty, and generally a bit depressing.
The thing about slower renovations like mine is that there is usually a hierarchy of importance for jobs on the to-do list, typically relating to costs. Electrics, plumbing, insulation, flooring, kitchen, bathroom - they are obviously higher priority than furniture, even if said furniture is required to store clothes that I wear every day. I can live in a house without a wardrobe, but I can’t live in a house without electricity or running water.
I’m also at a point in my life where I no longer want to buy any big items as temporary solutions. So I’m willing to make do with a clothing rail I already have until I find or can afford to build exactly the wardrobe I want, rather than buying a cheap flatpack solution that I don’t love and will inevitably become permanent.
Others will have come to this realisation earlier in their lives than me. Buy well, buy once etc. I blame my career as an interior stylist and set designer where so much of what I do for shoots is temporary, makeshift. Either built in a studio and broken down at the end or, if a shoot is in a real home, it is still adapted to look good just for the shots, not for longevity and often only from a certain angle. I’ve spent so many years designing temporary rooms that I forgot I don’t have to live that way at home.
And yet.
Sometimes I do. Many of us can’t afford to do everything at once in a home renovation or a home redecoration (Although thank goodness! The fastest way to a bunch of decisions you’ll regret is to make them in a hurry) and so makeshift or less than desirable scenarios can be the norm at home. As you’ll see in the before images at the end of this post, I’ve already achieved a lot with this renovation, but my still-to-be-done list is long. Here are a few standouts:
Rotting windows and doors throughout
Massively overgrown hedges all around the garden’s perimeter, much to the delight of one anonymous neighbour
A sad front door whose only asset is the afternoon light is allows to flood in
But we make do with a curtain to disguise it for now
And many more
None of these jobs can be tackled in half measures. Time must be bided, funds must be saved and each job must be done in its entirety or not at all.
Once in a while a temporary fix ends up being exactly what works long term. Like this cabinet seen below, bought for pennies. I added some wheels (my favourite trick) and have since removed the knobs and painted it a creamy off-white. I don’t like spending money on furniture I don’t care about and I don’t care about TV STANDS. I’ve never seen one and thought, oooh that’s lovely. So an inexpensive up-cycled piece that is neither extremely stylish nor completely hideous is fine by me.
The last thing I’ll say is this. When your home isn’t exactly how you want it to be (hello, most of the population!) it’s important to find ways to enjoy it anyway. As a stylist and designer I obviously spend more time than most thinking about the home. I’m on a constant mission to perfect my own home - perfect meaning making it the truest reflection of my vision possible - and I get frustrated when it doesn’t gel. But I also know that the process is the thing and life can be wasted trying to get things just right.
So even though this room looks pretty lovely, it is still far from how I envision it. And until I decide and save up for the type of doors and windows I want to replace the old drafty ones with, it can be chilly in here as well, even with the heating at full blast. So for much of the winter the sofa has been layered with the softest, cosiest, featheriest, squishiest washed linen single duvet. Usually stored in a vacuum sealed bag in the loft for when my kids visit, but currently the main attraction on the sofa, it gives me so much pleasure to pull it up over me when I watch a movie on the sofa in the dead of winter.
Just like televsions, you won’t see this styled in a magazine or interiors book, but that doesn’t mean it’s not allowed in real life.
I’ll leave you with how it began
Great article …I’ve “financially scheduled” upgrading my bedroom since 2015 and every year something comes up,so I’m using an old bookcase as a (too small) headboard styling it with my favorite books,trinkets and crystals and put a round piece of wood over a plastic storage container with drawers and covered that with my grandmother’s linen tablecloth! It’s not the mid-century suite I desired but it works…
Life throws you curveballs that you can’t always catch or your husband squanders your retirement/life savings!
Your books,’Life Unstyled’ and conversations on Instagram helped me to look within myself to find solutions and uncover my creativity.