Sylvia Road Living Area

When we first viewed the house, it was a mix of all sorts of things in the living area. It had a HUGE diesel heater built in on the left hand wall and a built in bookcase/phone stand as you walked in the door. It also had a very odd shape and to your right (as you walked in) was another part of the living room, all open to the rest of the lounge but without a sense of flow. It was almost like a very large alcove space.

It was here that we decided to get a wall built straight across, effectively turning the extra living area/alcove into a small third bedroom. This was on the original plans for the house under the name 'future third bedroom', but the owners only had one child so preferred to keep it as a living space.

By creating the extra bedroom, we lost a fair bit of living space. Don't be fooled by these wide angle photos, they make the space look far bigger than it actually was in reality. Because of this, we really needed to ensure that every single item in the room was functional and had clean lines. The walls were originally a dark brown textured wallpaper and there was dark brown floral carpet to match. Very forgiving with stains I would imagine!

There were pine floorboards underneath which we had sanded and polished in high gloss for durability. We also ripped out the diesel heater (the hole from the pipe going under the house is hidden under the sofa) and built in bookcase. The walls were painted in Resene Merino and I ripped down the bulky old pelmets and curtains which were full of bugs! I replaced them with a beautiful roman blind and some great neutral curtains that I found at Harvey Furnishings.

Prior to moving in we had a chocolate brown leather sofa set which we really loved, but this room really wasn't big enough to carry such an imposing suite so I found these brand new cream leather sofas on Trademe for a real bargain price. I bought them from a property developer who had them left over from an apartment project. Perfect!

The white entertainment unit was from Freedom, as was the white cabinet by the door, both picked up from Trademe. By having the white furniture and light coloured sofas it created a sense of space in this small room. Our fantastic mirror which I blogged about here also helped to reflect the light from the opposite window and add to the feeling of spaciousness. This room is completely unrecognisable from it's original form and we were very happy with what we acheived in this room.

Tomorrow I will blog about the master beroom. :-)