HOUSE TOUR | A Colorful London Townhouse with Renter-Friendly DIYs

hi homeworthy I'm Katherine and we're here in West London welcome into my [Music] home you're watching homeworthy where we believe every home has a story before today's episode click the join button below to support all of the storytelling we do on this channel our growing community of members help to directly fund more videos so we can capture these extraordinary homes from around the world so join today to receive early and exclusive access to new homeworthy videos I'm Katherine omad and I'm a writer and we're here in my home in West London my route to this home was quite longwinded we were basically kicked out of our last rental that we were living in as a family the rent was hiked by over 65% and you have that sinking feeling when the email comes in and you're like oh my gosh we're not going to be able to make this work okay we got to go and find another spot for ourselves the kind of difficult part is my eldest kid is now in school so you have to keep obviously within some kind of catchment area to um you know within close walking distance ideally to the school so this was actually the 11th property that I put a rental offer on and all of the others I was out bid that lots of them were going to sealed bids last and final offers for rentals because that's kind of what the culture has been increasingly like here in the rental market here in London and um when we finally got the yes for this property it was such a relief it really was and you know it wasn't perfect it wasn't the ideal property but that to me is always the opportunity so I was really excited to see what I could do with this [Music] one first up when you walk into my home you are in the hallway here um and this was a little bit of a labor of love um I replaced all of the wallpaper this is my first actual like proper wallpaper job I've ever done and I've been told that it's quite ambitious to do one up the stairs but it was actually quite manageable because you're obviously going from the skirt ball to the Dayo so it wasn't too bad would absolutely suggest someone does it the paper here is the 2.55 Chanel handbag of wallpaper it is Willow Bells by William Morris and one of the reasons I chose it is actually William Morris was very active in the area he set up the Hammersmith socialist Charter just down the road and um there's a home in walking distance from me Emory Walker house which has been kept entirely in in situ and it's of top to bottom William Morris wallpaper and they actually have willow boughs in their entryway as well and as this home was built at the same time it felt like a really nice way of bringing some local Heritage into the space and then this color it's called T's Reed it's also by Morris and Co um it's really nice it's a lovely lovely map I would say that it's not entirely kid friendly but you know I'm always there retouching here and there and then and the final thing I did here is I put this little coat hanger and we've got a bench and the kids can just like kick all of their shoes into the buckets if I lived on my own it would probably be slightly more elevated but you know I live with two boys so that's that that's everything there so let's move on into my sitting [Music] room so this is my sitting room I started off by totally repainting it um before it was kind of like a magnolia color I think you get that in a lot of rentals and I just wanted something a little more soothing um here there were lots and lots of very oldfashioned um shelving uh in Brackets with like uh you know like metal brackets with the shelving so I took those down I popped these floating ones up um some annoying things as a renter so I got here the curtains were that much too short but I added this really cute cute ticking border and I really like the way it looks I kind of feel that it brings the green into the rest of the room um and then really this room was about artwork this piece here is by artist called alib baset and my eldest son actually his first name is Hector we call him gray but his first name is Hector so when I bought it I was like this is going to be an amazing family heirloom and this piece which I love by a Brazilian artist called alien Gad is actually a rental so I don't know if you've heard about this but basically you pay a certain amount per month and then every 10 weeks it gets changed so I'm renting this piece here quite tricky cuz it looks absolutely perfect so I obviously now really want it maybe that's how they do it you know try before you buy type thing um and then really like with all the rooms this is a space for my collections I love things object days and I pick them up everywhere so I spend my weekends thrifting going to Antiques Market um we have lots and lots of Charity shops on The High Road close to here and I go like most days okay so this piece is was sourced by uh a journalist friend of mine from about 15 years ago and she now lives out in the cot worlds and has this amazing service where she goes and rummages around all these brants in France and you know in Europe and she comes back with the most amazing bits and Bobs and then she sells them on Instagram you know it goes up and people bid and I got this one I absolutely love it it's the perfect color and it's such a a good example of you know you could go into West Helm and get some kind of approximation of this and then you and 6,000 other people would have that on your shelf only I've got this one that's why I love it so that's that's generally My Vibe so when it comes to objects I I look everywhere and this I mean it's amazing it's a little Matchbox um it was put together by one of my friends Alexandra stepman and she worked with an artist who um Francis Costello I have another piece of her work in the home and I know it's obviously meant to be functional and practical but I use it as like a little OBET on my uh shelves because I just love it I love the color I love the little pattern and I you know one day maybe I'll frame it in like a small little frame but for now it just sits there this fireplace when we arrived underneath these Towes are like smash tiles and like day two I found my like at the time 18-month-old child with pieces of tile in his mouth I like oh my God what am I going to do you know child proofing to the end degree um and I did try and remove them myself but it didn't go so well so instead I've just laid these beautiful tiles on top I mean it isn't my best hack I will be honest about it but at least my kids can't cause some kind of like poison danger to themselves and I do like the way it looks and you know in the winter I fill it with candles it actually is a working fireplace but these days it's somewhat frowned upon to use them so we're not using it but I fill it with candles and you know it creates such a warm and gorgeous glow I love it it's lovely so this is like one of those you must not do that things and I've done it um layering rugs on top of carpet so we have a particular type of carpet in the UK in rentals and this one's actually okay because it's like a beige color but normally they're this kind of like gray silver and the reason we have it it isn't aesthetic it's like one of the best ways to combat moths so it's firstly cheap and secondly it really helps landlords stop you know Vermin or whatever pests in the house so you you get a lot of carpets in rentals in the UK like sometimes carpeted bathrooms you know it is everywhere it's much easier for landlords to keep carpets going than wooden floorboards for example which require a lot more effort but that's a big difference between London and Paris in Paris nowhere is carpeted it's all like original wood floors and you put your rug down and it looks so so Chic here we're like oh my God got the silver carpet to deal with but anyway that's why I always do large scale rugs I don't really care what anyone says if it's like wrong for you know interior rules or something I think it looks good this rug is honestly about 8 years old but I'm not going to recommend it because for about four of them it created so many dust bunnies in the corner this is a real one you know it's like made of wool I've ended up buying a totally synthetic one for the bedroom which is you know similar look and I much prefer it I would always recommend the synthetic one which you know it doesn't feel quite right but it doesn't completely send you into working for a Hoover life picking up dust bunnies from every single corner I really love this table I think it's so beautiful it's by one of most prominent designers called Tom Dixon um and I really really love it I love around table in general um again because if you have loads of people in this room which I often do if it's me it's like girlfriends if it's my partner it's like a we golf session but it means that everyone can have a pizza in the middle and you all just sit on cushions around you know these spaces it's not necessarily about everything being being formal or perfect and as much as I love a tablescape and I mean I really love a tablescape I love the idea that you have this like more relaxed space where everyone just comes together and if it's in front of the TV to watch a game that's fine too let's go through the breakfast room so these are original doors to the house but who no glass obviously somewhere down the line the glass is shattered and it hasn't been replaced and it's one of the things that I dream of I think this is one of the things right you're a renter you look at a space and you think oh my God what would I do and part of it is finding that acceptance that there are some things which probably you should not do and I think replacing and restoring these doors unfortunately falls under that remit but anyway come on in really struggled with this room I kind of had a couple of iterations already but I feel like we're just about here this is a really really beautiful 1950s reclaimed French table with like matching chairs that have the you know very similar design here what I love about vintage for a rental and vintage when you've got kids is it's already pre-worn in you know it isn't pristine if one of my kids like knocks it or takes a chip out of it like it's just adding to the history and charm of it it's survived so much it's 70 years old and now here it is in you know a West London family home so you know it's it's tough when you've got furniture and you're going to be putting it into the back of a van and it might be moving here and it might be going to a storage facility or whatever I always feel with vintage like you don't have much anxiety about that because you know anything that happens to it is really just part of the story so that's the table and chairs here this is an Ikea number and I have painted the scallop onto it I always think with things like this if it's not in constant use you don't have to worry too much about scrapes this is actually just a tester pot of Emulsion like it's not even fancy special paint um but yeah I think it really adds something to the room and then it reflects I don't know if you can see here but I've got these scallop shelves so I loved this hatchway when I first saw the home it was like the number one thing I loved and I could immediately see what I was going to do with it and it's split into two colors so this side is the green and the other side is the blue I added this is like one of my favorite things that I do is adding these trims so upstairs in my kids room there are zigzags here we've got scallops you know this wavy one I've got actual proper scallops as well um and it just adds that you know Personal Touch to something which is quite functional and I am again a big collector of Ceramics some of them I've bought some of them I've made myself these are some of my bows so I like throwing um doing my own ceramic so that's really great uh what else have I made in here nothing else I've made but this is an Ikea cabinet and it is definitely 10 years old now and it has come everywhere with me and honestly lots of times I thought maybe I should upgrade my cocktail cabinet but there is no cabinet in this world that would be able to take the amount of glasswar and booze that this one does it's like the Tardis honestly it's got about 50 bottles in it probably 150 glasses or something and it continues to do its job I do have like anxious nightmares sometimes though that maybe the first shelf will go and it will all just end up broken but you know 10 years it's not too bad so yeah that's a that's a favorite and then this piece here is a gorgeous piece by Alexandria Co my boyfriend actually bought it fiance oh I mean what do I call him we're getting married at some point but um he bought this for me for my birthday during lockdown um and I was really heavily pregnant um and I just love I particularly love the color it's quite unusual for Alexandria Co most of hers are in blues or different colors but this green green I feel like it's the green of my palette it's really funny you know as if I have my own personal palette but there are colors that just speak to me and I feel like I will reproduce them in every home that I live in and that that is my green so this green on the walls is exactly the same in the entryway and I love that conceptually that idea that you walk through a home and even though the rooms are different there's some kind of red thread that PS it together so in the room that we're we're about to go into my kitchen I'm just telling you that but in that room there's quite a lot of terracotta so I brought the Terracotta in here but this green is reflected in that room so as you walk through there are Shades that you're picking up that kind of tell a story even though the rooms themselves have totally different palettes and different feels these are very cheap woven um storage baskets and inside you'll find all sorts of kids rubbish I mean storage when you have children is the number one thing lots and lots of people ask me how my house is so tidy and there's only one answer it's all stashed in boxes and hidden I it all still exists obviously but this is where we keep like all the coloring things um and then they have chests in their own room for toys and so on and so forth and it's that idea that they go to bed you scoop it all up like this throw it in close it never existed you know adult time now all right so let's do it let's go to the kitchen this is one of my favorites now it's sometimes a little dark so we might have to turn a light [Music] on Welcome to my kitchen it obviously suffers from a limited light Supply it's bright for about 45 minutes a day we just have this little one window um so I was like what are we going to do we got to lean into that haven't we so I decided that I was going to make these cabinets dark and Moody the before and the after of this room are quite profound let's say so underneath all of this is a very old Ikea I think maybe Ikea kitchen but it was laminate um it was veneered it was really really tired and then when you open it the Marcus is an entirely other even older kitchen so to say it was like on its last legs is probably you know a a a good estimation and they were completely flat and what I like generally everywhere I am is to have texture the way I started was cutting all of these strips and firstly creating like a shaker style to each of them and they're all just glued on with laminate glue and then on top of it I use rustolium I think it's called evening blue or midnight blue but it's a particular kitchen cabinet paint and you don't need to Prime you don't need to do anything special it's completely made to just go straight on to laminate and it has done so well this is just two coats and it hasn't chipped nothing bad has happened to it I then added all of the hardware by A really lovely independent British brand called plank um and yeah that I mean it took me some time I am not going to lie I then built in the Ikea Island here so that's the same thing I just slightly sanded it down because it had quite a shine to it but then used the kitchen cabinet um paint again and it did really well this is a well-known Ikea little store the rug is from ruggable so washable as well which is wonderful and required and then obviously the biggest story in this kitchen is vinyl so I have wrapped in vinyl the work surfaces I've wrapped the white goods I've wrapped the fridge and then these are tile stickers so they've got this kind of like Portuguese feeling and I really love it I love this room so much and then finally at the other end of the room I've added a radiator cover which is something you'll see in lots of the rooms that I have in this home they're the same radiator cover I would have made these but honestly I couldn't have made them as cheap as I could buy them and then they paint your own and it's another really great way of bringing color into a rental because obviously that is actually quite a large scale piece in the room but you can pull it away immediately it's entirely entirely temporary um but yeah it's another great way if you're not going to paint furniture you can paint things like that to bring in color um and then of course with everything it's then layering in for me some uh textiles so I made these cute little gingham curtains and then these matching ging and ruffled cushions these sweet little things I love that I actually probably would have done like skirts all along here but the um the white could stick out too much so I couldn't uh what else have I done oh I hung the shelves now these shelves again they're a really nice selection of you know lots of my bits and Bobs these are all charity shop finds I love them it's so nice to put collections like that together to create an additional layer to your palette and then these are really fun artwork so again when people ask me how to buy art one of my personal ways of doing it is grouping pieces so this is my bathers selection ction my son calls it the bums selection cuz there are a few bums in there yeah there's a piece by the artist I mentioned before Francis Costello a couple of pieces of hotney this is a jurant tell um photograph of Sophia cppa and then there's a gray Marlin piece here and whenever I come in here I'm always like oh it feels like a holiday or something um and then the final really really cool thing that I did here is when we arrived this beam was like painted like Pub black Pub black brown and instead of I I absolutely hated it but instead of removing all the color what I actually did is I painted it like a French cream color and then I used a Polish on top to bring out the grain so now what you get as an effect is a completely lighter wood but actually it's just being painted white with some furniture polish on probably if you like rubbed your hand to vigorously across it you might end up with a bit of a brown Palm but you know we don't do that it's it's out it's out of my reach fortunately so for anyone that was interested in what those other glass freed doors look like this is what it should look like um this is really um you know typical of all of the homes in this kind of area so they all have these original doors with these original glass some of them are blue and red red but we've got the green and red in this house so this piece of art this is like a classic Millennial on the internet Story one of my girlfriends went to an Airbnb in Portugal and took a picture of herself and a child in front of a piece of art and I was like I need that piece of art so I hunted it down and I found it in a gallery in Stockholm and I got it delivered to me and it means a big Love Is Enough a grand love is enough and I think do you know what Love Is All We need I remember like my nan having plates on the wall and thinking that it was super super twe round circle obviously now here we are I'm doing the same thing so these two plates are by ceramus called Harley Brown she does these amazing squiggle cups and jugs that I really really love um and I love the way they look they're really fun and this is a piece by the conran store um which I just felt color-wise was so perfect for the space but these are the kinds of things that I would change up quite a lot they've got a really cool plate sticker on the back I don't know if you've ever heard of these but you make them gummy just with some water and you put them on the back leave them overnight and they completely stick to the back of the plate and then you just um immerse them in warm water and then it comes off so it means 100% you're not going to ruin your plate or smash your plate or anything like that um but that one's got got that on these ones have got like claw ones it's amazing how many different ways there are to hang a plate on your wall so the pesta resistance in this room we started off when we first moved here with a very strange bathroom off the side of our kitchen now this is because the the owner our landlord is an elderly gentleman and when his Mobility became compromised he had a downstairs wet room put on so obvious he wouldn't have to go up the stairs um but obviously it's quite a strange place to have a bathroom right here so we weren't really sure what to do with like a shower and Probably for about a year it was just used as like a store of rubbish boxes scooters my bike maybe sometimes then one day I was like this is ridiculous like I've got young kids it would be so useful to have a downstairs bathroom so I thought what am I going to do and my plan was that I was going to bring the same sticker tile and put it in there I hadn't really factored in was there were 420 tiles so wait a second you're going to see what it looks like taada I like to think of this as my Lisbon bathroom each and every single one of these is a sticker it took me a really really long time to do it and of course it's quite an unusual shape so each of the tile stickers has been cut to to size as well um I feel like this as being like a Little Love Letter to myself this room because it was actually quite expensive to buy this many stickers but I love it and it has proven so invaluable there's a tiny little sink here which my kids can use to wash their hands they don't have to run upstairs with their muddy shoes they can you know it's just very practical and very useful and I love the fact that there was already this terracotta shade in here on both the floor and in the The Border there um so yeah it kind of linked so well into the kitchen and then I made this quite silly little cafe curtain here it's out of fabric and actually I made a couple of them they're like so I can twist it up per season um but yeah I just think it again adds that kind of charm that quaintness to what could have otherwise being quite a municipal space okay next up we're going to the dining room come with [Music] me so this is our I guess more formal dining room which kind of seems like we've got two dining rooms but actually I use it for entertaining and it is my office this is where I work I take all my calls here um I like my zoom background um and it's a really lovely calm place to be you can see out to the road but again in the evening you kind of pull the curtains you put the record player on and it turns into a you know a a perfect little evening spot now we can fit eight people around the table and sometimes we pull up a couple of stalls and shove in another two and there are 10 of us and it's such a gorgeous gorgeous space I love being in here again this was painted Magnolia so I repainted the whole thing and then the majority of these pictures are all held up with command strips I'm sure you guys have heard of command strips but they're basically like sticky velcro um and yeah aside from that one which is actually glass and really heavy and I have made a small hole which I will be refilling and doing all of my duty around that um yeah these are all stuck with stickers basically um what can I tell you so in here this piece of furniture we received third hand it was once in the Thomas pink store in Mayfair it went to someone else it is now in our home these lampshades are so gorgeous they are made in a collaboration with my friend Elena and her Instagram handle is a considered space and it was made in collaboration with a maker called mro K and these wavy colors I absolutely love them and what I did was then color matched the some paint to paint the B base these bases are from Pooky and they're DIY paint yourself ones but then obviously you can get the exact perfect match so these chairs I collected over the space of about 2 and a half years so they're classic H chairs nothing to write home about I love that they're black on black with a black maple legs but actually what special is I couldn't afford them so each of them was bought one by one in different circumstances so they don't match there are a couple that are Herman Millers so they came from the states because that's who has the franchise in America the others are vitra um a couple are slightly lower so I always avoid those at dinner parties I'm short enough as it is um and I got a couple from a auction house in Darlington in the north of England the two end ones I got on an end of season sale at the Rand store this one is like a 1970s and it actually isn't as black as I thought it was when it arrived I was like oh no but actually what I love about this story is that it's not perfect there is no other family in the world with this configuration of eight chairs it tells the story of our family it tells the story of someone II who was not going to give up even though she couldn't afford what she wanted she made it happen um and I just love love the idea that there can be Beauty Beyond you know I want these eight chairs I'm going to go and buy them on the Internet and they all arrive at once instead it's a whole story of us making it as you know a young couple in London and yeah I love them I really do this is the only thing that I've paid someone to help me with because he was so high up and I just wasn't confident in doing the electrics with this piece it is an iconic piece Again by the designer Tom Dixon it's called The Melt lamp and I got it in this bronzy color and when you see it on it's like a volcano it's got flames and you sat there at a dinner party at the table and it's got this amazing creates such amazing Ambiance so I absolutely adore that and then this table is a Soho home piece but I got it from eBay for 40% of its cost RRP and it's still in store now that's a winner you know I feel pretty good about that that was a really good purchase then what you'll see kind of dominating this room are these two really large scale tapestries so when you rent large scale artworks are so tricky obviously um because you know it's heavy and expensive and all of those things so what I did was I made two really large scale frames which cost me like 20 to make and then I stretched blankets across them so this one's from slowdown studio and this one is a blanket by a artist called Lucy Tiffany but most people would have them like I guess on the side of their sofa or something like that but actually when you stretch them and mount them like this it's something like 180x 2 m and they're so light they're so easily transportable you just obviously cover them you know with something another blanket um and then you can just put them in the back of a van and off you go um I've just notice this story of my house is always a tool somewhere but yeah haven't quite tied it up well enough there but we'll hide it again probably not IDE deal with young children again be moving that this evening um but yeah I love these large scale tapestries and I've actually made them for a couple of friends now um but yeah that's is a really great way to go as a renter and then finally I guess it's this little area I don't know if you can see but I haven't quite planted my geraniums yet they're in the window box waiting there's always a job to do but anyway I made this um window seat cushion I ordered the foam online and then I got this um really lovely B clay and for whatever reason I was like this needs some kind of piping to pull in so I added this terracotta piping into the story and then I just made these really cute little cafe curtain style curtains out of some French linen but again this is a really lovely spot like if I'm sitting and I want to read or I'm just taking a little moment I'll set up here I'll light a candle and it feels so gorgeous to have the light right there yeah it's one of my favorite spots so for all the viewers across the world here the rental situation in the UK is quite unusual we are a home-owning country and especially when you have your family it's very much seen as a badge of adulthood but obviously the tectonic plates of Social and financial situations for all of us in our generation have been shifting at break neck speed and you know so many of us so many of my generational cohort no longer are able to buy a home there's a wild speci I istic that it's something like 350% more 35 to 45 year olds are now in rental accommodation than they were in 1993 so you can see how quickly the the situation has changed and one of the strange quirks of the I guess the culture here is that it's very much seen that you wouldn't touch a rental like you wouldn't do anything to it you move in and it is your landlord's responsibility to do everything and I guess the relationship is quite AB adversarial between landlords and tenants in general um is always someone trying to get something up on there's a lot of distrust let's just say and I however was born in Munich in Germany and that is a very very different rental culture and my dad lived in a rental property for over 25 years and he put parket flooring in and his own kitchen and he had an amazing relationship with his land lady so I really wanted to try and bring a little bit of that attitude to our situation here so when I look for rentals and when I was recently looking for rentals for this property I put together a whole proposal for prospective landlords of what I would like to do for their property so what I look for in rental properties is not the ones that are perfect and have just been done up and a pristine and Polished and top of the market I look at the ones that have been overlooked by everybody else basically because I see that as an opportunity to create this mutually beneficial situation for the landlord who will get the opportunity to have their house refreshed and for me to put a bit more of a personal stamp on it now I started showing everyone on my social media what I was doing and the messages were wild like people said that I was a mug that I was lining my landlord's Pockets I'm already paying his mortgage why am I making the value of his property go up like there's a lot of negativity I feel to making these kind of changes but ultimately my retort is always the same like my life is now like I am not waiting to live until I can afford a deposit like my eldest child is six this is his childhood bedroom you know it's not going to be in 10 or 15 years time if that's how long it takes for me to get on the property market so I'm going to make this the very best I possibly can I'm not saying it's perfect or it's the ideal scenario but I'm going to make the lemonade so in order to do that obviously you don't want to be spending a lot of money on labor when it isn't your property you have got to balance out the two competing issues that it's an investment that maybe in 3 years time will no longer be reaping you any dividends but equally those three years is a good section of your life so in order to kind of square that Circle I decided that I was going to do all the work like literally all the work myself so I've painted every single room in this house I've done light Plumbing wallpapering you know made a lot every curtains for every single window I've made them myself um I've decorated everything everything you see in this house I've either handmade or hacked there's a lot of mixture of different things I would say and I guess a lot of that comes from my background in fashion I've been a fashion journalist you know for years and years back I still work freelance as a fashion journalist and I was on magazines for nearly 10 years and that really instilled in me this understanding of the high low [Music] approach welcome in this is our guest room this was the room that I fought so hard to find a property with a space and it's wild like we were looking at two to three bedroom flats that cost the same as this um but we slightly shifted the location and got this extra space but this for me is so fundamental both my parents live abroad my mom's and France and my dad's in Germany um and my brother lives out of town and my partner his mother is also a long way away over in Northfolk so if we want to have the family together it's so nice to be able to have this space this is my favorite I guess my favorite asset of this property that we have this extra bedroom so what did I do we've got another radiator cover here in the same blue that we've got downstairs with those wavy lamp shades so again you see where I'm coming from it's the mimicking of the colors now this is a Ikea Stockholm mirror I'm sure you've seen many of them around it was originally in the Walnut color and then I made it stripy so that's super cute this is an Ikea packs you may have heard of it but I jigo out the the size and then um staple behind with all of this ratan to create something with a little bit more texture this room has got a lot of texture to it there's lots of baskets and dry flowers and that's kind of like the feeling that I wanted to evoke then this bed it's a High Street bed I think it like cost maybe £300 but I then reupholstered it so I reol the headboards and the sides in this ticking fabric now ticking is as you guys probably know generally used for mattresses it's a cheap fabric but it's super super durable and great for upholstery and I am a big fan of you know Stripes anyway so what I ended up then doing is making curtains to match so we've got the ticking curtains and I think that again it was about £5 a meter it was really really affordable these are some Ikea shelves mosander I believe its name is and then again it's the arangement of special bits these two pieces are by one of my favorite artists Lucy Mahone and this is by wil and bwell um and I love her work too uh what else we got all this gorgeous piece by Leticia my main passion in life is pasta I mean it's not a lie I love making these little padded hangers for people so when you have guests to stay they've got a little place to hang their things we have this little hanger here so even if you're overnight and you've got a lovely dress to wear for a night out you've got your padded hanger put it there it's all those little things it's like you know the water glass and jug and the all of the little special things that make it feel like a home from home an empty I try and keep it empty an empty um chest here so people can put their stuff in what else these are another three lovely pieces of artwork this piece is by my friend James who is um The Godfather to my eldest son James Parkinson um this is another piece by Lucy Mahone and this is a a poster by a lady called Carolina I can't remember her surname but yeah this that's the great thing about art you can frame anything you know and I love that you can have a selection of pieces some of which are higher value and some are literally just a postcard but what I particularly love about this room is I haven't painted it as you can see it's Optic White and it was probably it was the only room in the house that wasn't Magnolia when we got here so I was like I'm not going to repaint a well painted room and I do think there's something when you come to stay somewhere about it looking very bright and clean so that's why I wanted to do that I generally keep white bed Linen on the bed as well and it gives it that kind of hotell feel um the other thing I love about this room is that it's mostly High Street lowend stores so there's a lot of Ikea this is the bed is any day by John Lewis the side little trays are by habitat the lamp bases I think were like20 from dun Elm I love sometimes putting a really tight budget on things I mean I don't love it that's a lie I just lied to you I don't love it I want to spend all the money on all the nice things all the time but what I actually find is quite often when you have a budget constraint the result can end up being better um and I think that's because it makes you more ingenious and Innovative in the way that you use your cash so you know that's that's the upholstery I would never have thought that I could upholster a bed before this room but apparently I can and it looks great it's held up for 3 years so you know this is done okay it kind of pushes you to use skills and find new ways to do things this is the space that we have probably the most family time in we do a lot of playing and a lot of you know just making things building things crafts and bricks and you know I've got two boys it's a lot of construction construction vehicles so yeah this I love this room so obviously this is quite a bold color choice for a rental and I was really thrilled that my landlord signed it off the one pro is that when I'm repainting it if I have to repaint it and they decide they want me to it's only like half of the wall to paint over um but yeah what you know I love this room again we've got another um radiator cover in here that brings a lot of color in um and above the cover we've got these fun papia masche faces that I made um with my kids mostly I made them but they're really really cute again we've got some ticking curtains in this room I made a bit of mistake with these curtains they're not quite long enough it does really annoy me but I at some point I will deal with it you know that's that's the other thing I always say to people like if you're going to be making things and Building Things like mistakes they happen they happen to professionals you can't get too upset about it or be like well I did this one time and I made a hole in my wall or whatever like mistakes happen it's annoying that it's costly but it is also the cost of gaining experience and learning a skill and that you just have to take it on the head have a little scream into a corner and then go back and come up with a solution so the solution for this will obviously be well I'm going to make another border um you know another trim like I have downstairs but I'll get to it at some point point so here again I did built-in shelves a couple of the trims that I've attached are slightly wonky but H what are you going to do it stands up and it's safe that's enough I think when you've got kids one of the best things you can possibly do is use storage vertically because it then clears like a floor as a play Space so you can have lots of these kind of like chests and things around but one of the best things you can do is like go up so that's what I done here and then he's got these bunk beds and these bunk beds oh my God he slept on the floor for three months nearly to persuade me to get them for him he was like I need a big boy bed I need this bed and now he does his best to sleep in my bed to sleep in the spare bed all of that but ultimately he has this space and hopefully at some point his younger brother will join him in here and we'll think of another another use for the the smaller bedroom if we're still living here but for now this to me is like a vital piece of the story for us because if we were to have to move into a three-bedroom home we would still be able to have the spare bedroom for guests to stay so you know I love this piece of furniture a lot um I also wanted to make it kind of feel like a art gallery here so there are some really lovely pictures and paintings here right I always think with kids as much as like the cutesy kind of like Kid Art is fun and all there's also so much like actual art that is kid-friendly we spend a lot of time at galleries here it's one of the things that we like to do together so you know bringing Classics in the Rothco that we've got here all of these different pieces and then this piece here is really special and it's we've had this in a couple of our rental properties and there's a screen print done by a collaborative effort between a father and son called woodis and Woody himself has actually signed it and wood is autistic and he comes out with some of the most profound statements this one says I love you all the way to the end of counting which is such a a lovely statement and then his dad creates these really nice graphic pieces and some of the you know the sales go towards autism recognition and research so um yeah it's a really lovely piece and I always love having that here um and then yeah it's just as with everything these pieces that come from all over the world these two little like baskets animal baskets they came from Waka I think um one of the one of the boys Godfathers brought them back from a trip there are you know things that we've picked up this I actually it's a postcard that I picked up in Cape Town on a trip years and years ago um you know these I I believe these originate in Japan we do a lot of these kind of like paper art things and the best ones get to go up and then probably my favorite thing to play with in here is this little mouse castle um I don't know if you guys have them in the states it's by a brand called Mig and it's yeah it's super cute and I love how both my boys love it so much even though I guess like doll's Housey things are seen as quite feminine I guess but yeah we we love playing all different kind of role play with it and I I love the idea that they're getting some kind of like Decor aesthetic education and we talk about oh look at the tiles in there and look at the stripes and then we make things together to go in it and it's such a cute little thing to have together I guess the overall feeling and the general feeling that I want to put out there for all renters is like perfection isn't everything you know better than what it was is still better than what it was it's great and I personally like uh imperfect aesthetic I think it feels more homely more gut as we would say in Germany um and welcoming no one's going to be stressed about sitting on any of my chairs in this home you know it's a very welcoming and um convivial place to be and I host and do a lot of entertaining here I have people stay over a lot sometimes for multiple weeks at a time and okay the wall quality is not good some of the new paint workk that I've done is peeling away there are random wires around door frames some strange electrical quirks all of the things that you would expect in a rental it's all here but I hope by the way that I've decorated it it makes it all feel holistic and not like oh my gosh that's so ran down and miserable and sad I've kind of like bedded it into the aesthetic of the whole thing final room for us to go and have a look at it's the main bedroom it's where I lay my head at [Music] night welcome in we are in an Island hotel room something somewhat Caribbean about it that was the intention anyway I had an amazing trip with a girlfriend we wanted to see each other she lives in Los Angeles I'm here in London and we were like where could we possibly meet and um it ended up being Barbados and it was you know a trip of my life it was wonderful and I'd never been anywhere like it and when I came home I was like that feeling that I had there as what I want to recreate here so we've got the Palm Fabrics here this is fabric by a British textile designer and interior designer called Penny Morrison and I made these curtains to go in this space I upholstered the headboard and made these bolster cushions out of some fabric from the cloth shop which is on PTO Bell Road here they have fabulous Fabrics which I work with a lot the linen is by a company called piglet in bed and I love changing the linen up like I have some white linens and pink scallops and all ginghams and I love doing a print Clash on a bed as long as you keep it all in the same kind of green I remember one time an art teacher told me that every color of green goes with each other just look at a tree I'm like I mean he's not wrong is he so I brought that principal with me into this home and then behind us we have good old staple it's a hemnes IKEA chest of drawers and I've painted it in FOH and ball card room green again it wasn't primed it's done very well um I love this color it's the kind of color that I would definitely paint on walls if I owned my home um so yeah it's nice to be able to bring one of the shades that you would like into a house through furniture with paint then here I made this mirror well I didn't make it from scratch it's an Ikea mirror behind and then I made the mited corners and created the frame out of some wavy trim there so so that was another really great this green it's called bansa um it's another far and ball color um the Ws are a color called flocks p h l x by a British company called House of Hackney they've got an amazing paint collection it's new um I was really impressed with it then we have got another radiator cover here and then this 3x4 selection of art prints this was from a project I work with a brand they have amazing it's called wall of art they have an insane insane selection of pieces I think I probably trolled through something like 18,000 artworks and came up with this combination I really really love them all of them speak to me I think this one's my favorite is called Flur Flur um but I love how they feel in combination and I love the idea of you know creating one statement through multiple pieces of art then behind us we have got this piece this rat hand piece which really speaks to that kind of Caribbean feel this is a vintage piece that I got from vinia I love that these lamps I love these lamps these squiggle lamps by maker here called bias editions which I really love gorgeous some more ratan around the mirror this is a piece I always say this is my pandemic bouquet cuz it's July 2020 I remember buying it and just like desperately wanting to be cheered up but in the end it's kind of I guess like grounded the the palette in here and I've used I've color matched the exact blue to paint this metal lamp here so you've got the exact color there again to bring that in and then I guess my final thing in this room is this piece it's by tester Finch and this is probably my favorite artwork in the whole house I think it's super selfish that I have it in here because obviously unless you're doing a room tour like this people don't really come into your bedroom um unless they're like Ultra nosy so it's something that mostly just my partner and I see um but that feels like it almost makes it even more special um I look at it every day I love the way that it works with the colors in this room um yeah and it means a lot to me I really really love it I think home to me has always been about a sense of peace that moment that you walk through the door and you're safe it's a sanctuary and part of that for me is also sharing it with other people the idea that you can open the door and you have curated this place that feels tranquil and welcoming and it can be a home from home for lots of other people not just me that's really what I aim to achieve in every home that I decorate and you know it's my dream I for some people they don't care about their environment I absolutely understand that like it's a would be a waste of their time and energy to be doing all this stuff that I do but for people like me to not feel comfortable in your home it's really deadly from you know a mental health perspective from a feeling of your own success your own esteem I need to feel that I've expressed myself in my space to feel at peace thanks for watching go to homeworthy tocom for exclusive content and shopping guides

Channel: Homeworthy

Views: 72,902

Keywords: homeworthy, architectural digest, veranda, house beautiful, quintessence, interior designer, interior decor, home tour, house tour, london aesthetic, british design, english design, renter friendly design, colorful decor, diy design, bright rooms, renovation, peel and stick, vinyl, kids bedrooms, art

Id: uqvWIyp9PRU

Length: 56min 8sec (3368 seconds)

Published: Fri May 24 2024