EMPTY CUPBOARDS = FULL HEARTS

Over time we have accumulated a lot of stuff because living in a large house means we physically have the room for it - work stuff and personal stuff. We love our home but these things are now making us feel overwhelmed, weighed down and unhappy. Our cupboards contain things we don't actually need or use anymore. We spend a lot of time moving stuff around just to do simple house cleaning! We constantly loose things amongst the chaos, and more recently we admitted to each other we are embarrassed to have people over.

It's time to get our home and life back before the stuff completely owns us!

THE SOLUTION

We have created a dedicated instagram account to act as a platform to sell and also gift our random belongings. I've been a collector of vintage and retro for many years, so I decided to find an easy way to sell a few things (at a good price) rather than just give it all away. We do have some valuable bits and bobs, and any money collected will help us with our current house renovation projects.

So I stay focused and on track, I wanted to keep this process as streamlined as possible - we will post items up for grabs on Instagram as we sort through each room. A few simple photos, description and the price. Simple!

The Aspiring Minimalist instagram feed will also become a record of our journey and a photographic keepsake of the sentimental items that will be a little harder for us to let go.

Thank you for helping us to reach our goal to banish overwhelm and to transform our large home into a minimalistic haven - kind of like 'tiny house' living but in a big space!

Click here for more information about how it works >

The original "Pool Room"

When we purchased our home at Auction in April 2011, after the fall of the hammer we discovered that we also suddenly owned a pool table. I initially had mixed feelings about this because where the pool table sat, I actually had other plans for that space. But I also love playing pool!

Being the vintage lover that I am, I decided to hold onto the pool table for a while, play a few games of snooker, and use it as a work bench. I wanted to see if I could make this work after all.

Challenger Deluxe

But unfortunately for the "Challenger Deluxe", there came the time where it was just not that practical to have in my design studio. It was taking up so much room and I was restricted with how I could arrange in the space.

So after much thought and about 1.5 years of leaving it sit there, we decided it was time it had to go. However this posed to be a big problem because it would not fit down the stairs - plus we couldn't lift it! The only solution was to dismantle it, but after checking this out we realised this would be a difficult thing to do without damaging it.

The only option really was to pull it apart with the risk of damaging it, but to try and salvage the slate top and use that in the garden somewhere.

The sad job of breaking the Challenger Deluxe down

So we hired a skip bin, and Denis started to carefully dismantle the table. Then to our surprise we discovered the slate top was not actually one piece of slate, rather a concrete compound of some sort which was not really worth saving for the garden after all. It crumbled and broke up into small pieces.


So in  the end we sadly had to go against our beliefs of trying to SAVE EVERYTHING and the poor Challenger Deluxe ended up in the skip.

The End. :-(

PS this 'pool room' is currently being transformed into a lounge and Pilates/meditation space. Will share renovation update once it's complete!

Yes another room of wallpaper that was tired and had to go. I took heaps of photos of the wall paper being removed, then I accidentally deleted the photos. This room was relatively simple to tackle, nothing to tricky, just remove the wall paper and paint, so not a lot of exciting "work in progress" photos to share with you. See the set of images here >

The cool thing is we manged to finish and style the room in time and a photo of the bedroom did end up in the magazine after all that! YAY!

Photo by Elle DS Photography

A few details:
+ Paint colour - Dulux Pale Tendril Half 
+ Floor Rug - IKEA
+ Teak side table / trolley - eBay
+ Pillow Cases - Orla Kiely
+ Print on Wall - Jen Ski 
+ Retro Blue Wool Fabric on Bed - Salvos
+ Polyhedra Garland - Messagemark

Toodle-pip!

Saying goodbye to this retro wallpaper, the bedroom reno has begun. 'Before and After' blog post will be added but a bit of work to do before then. We are feeling pumped! Yes!

More to follow soon...

Toodle-pip!

Home made infinity wall!

Besides our kitchen renovation, our garage conversion would have to be one of the biggest transformations we have seen at our place. It took a couple of months, working on weekends with a few late nights thrown in here and there, and now I am happy to say Denis's new photo studio is fully functional!

I am so amazed with Denis's stamina, fitting this in and around his photography work, as well as general life stuff. But this is his reward, an amazing new space to share with his customers.

The white wall you can see in the corner of the photo above is a special seamless wall. Denis cleverly constructed this area - the perfect backdrop for portrait and product photography.

All decked out with his fave collection of retro camera gear!

In the end we decided to line the garage for a clean fresh look, but also incorporated a lovely marine plywood feature wall. This adds a bit of warmth to the room, and I love love love the sweeping wood grain. Yes, I had Denis going through the whole stack of ply at Bunnings to pick out the best sheets!

I am happy with the results... The design and layout for this space has worked out well, and it has me thinking about my own studio and what I am going to do to it!

We already owned the furniture, apart from the white industrial 'Tolix' stools. A great solution for a space that must be flexible - we can stack the stools and also fold down the trestle table if we need a bigger area to work in.

Some retro delights around the studio...

The original Instagram?

Wooden shelving, an amazing score off Gumtree for $40!

Every guy needs a colour coordinated fan! The original windows are super cute! Shelves made from recycled floorboards. Vintage camera cases - could double as a stylie man bag! A giant slide rule for very complex calculations. I covered our chairs in this vintage inspired Mini Moderns fabric. Are there any more photos of this reno? Sure are, you can suss them out here > Ok, now a quick run down of the nuts and bolts... Wall painted in Dulux Pale Tendril (Half) Plywood from Bunnings White stackable (Replica) Tolix stools - eBay Wooden shelving unit - Gumtree Vintage green trestle table - eBay Retro cameras from various op shops, garage sales and vintage shops. Airest Teak armchairs - TradeMe (New Zealand) Linen fabric on chairs - Mini Moderns UK Sisal floor rugs, brushed silver light pendants, lamps, white cabinet & file drawers - Ikea Toodle-pip!

Visual Storyboard - the overall look and feel of the space!

Exciting news, we are currently half way through our garage renovation to convert it into a photographic studio. Denis and I both work from home, and we are lucky we have enough space to have our own dedicated work areas! I currently work upstairs, and this wonderful space is going to be Denis's pad. Lucky boy!

When we bought our home, it was always in the plan to convert the garage, so 2 years on it is exciting to see the transformation taking place. I have to take a moment to thank Denis. He patiently worked with me renovating our kitchen, laundry, den, bathroom and bedroom first before starting this - which made me a very happy and content lady! :)

So while Denis is doing the hard stuff, I have been starting to design the interior. Trying to incorporate touches of a 1950s beach side theme to suit the studio location, working within a strict budget and utilising our existing furniture, second-hand and hard rubbish finds!

I'm totally in love with the vintage inspired beachy fabric from Mini Moderns. I have a couple of teak chairs to cover, so better get onto that soon!

Mmmmm, the state of the garage before we started!

Our cute shed found on ebay

Being a collector of 'things', first we had to decide what to do with our 'things' being stored in the garage. I found this cute shed on ebay which was dismantled and delivered to us all for the bargain price of $500. At first I thought it would be too big, but now that we have transferred all of our 'things' over to the shed it is actually the perfect size. And yes, the french doors came with it too!

Elevation 1 - gorgeous original windows

Elevation 2 - the front of the garage

The little room on the right is actually a bathroom. While the house was being built, the garage was home to the original family who lived here!

Walls framed and ceiling going up. Mmmm the wall is not straight!

Ceiling and gib complete, planning the ply feature wall.

Denis spent heaps of time repairing the wooden frames to retain all of the original windows. He also decided to line the original block walls with Gib - a quick, easy and cheap way to prep the space for painting. And for a bit of extra character, we decided to work in a feature ply wood wall.

Ply up and undercoat complete - looking mighty fine!

The amazing seamless wall (to be used as a photo backdrop).

I'm really happy with the ply sheets we sourced from Bunnings. They have such a lovely wood grain, and mounting them in large long panels helps to give the illusion of more space and length to the room.

And check out the amazing photo backdrop Denis built. It's a seamless white wall (no sharp corners) that will be used for product and fashion shots, and also video interviews.

Come back again soon to see the finished product. Click here to check out more progress photos >

Toodle-pip!

We kept the original light fitting. The walls look so much cleaner with the wallpaper removed.

Love love love the original floor!

Even though I liked the original yellow bath and basin, this combined with the floor and wall tiles really was a bit much for me. So to break up the sea of yellow, I decided to lighten the room by having the bath and basin re-enameled in white. This also helped to make our new white toilet blend in better!

Ahhhhh, a nice new toilet that doesn't leak!

The original shower configuration simply did not work for us.

Cute original feature window etching, seagulls and waves.

Bathroom Cabinet from My Modern Nest

Denis and I learnt a lot during this renovation. It would have been far easier to just gut the room and start again... matching tiles, finding a toilet to cover the floor, delicately fitting taps to the old threads in the wall, moving the shower head, working around the original fittings were all challenges along the way. But it really is a wonderful feeling to know that we have successfully made this old bathroom like new again, bringing it back to it's former 1950's glory.

To see the renovation in progress and more photos click here >
Toodle-pip!

April Issue of Inside Out Magazine 2013

Seriously, Denis and I are over the moon. I ducked over to our corner deli early this morning and the latest hot of the press Inside Out Magazine was sitting there looking all bright and colourful saying here I am, I'm over here...

'Quick, DENIS IT IS HERE'... I waited for him to come and join me as we both sat in our lounge so excited about this moment. We have patiently waited for this very day since the whole process began in August 2012.

Mums green bottle found at the rubbish dump got a look in!

To see our lovingly renovated retro abode featured in Inside Out Magazine is a massive achievement for us! We sat there drooling over the 6 page spread, reminiscing about how much we have actually done to our place within less than 2 years. Totally chuffed that our renovation is stylie enough to grace the pages of a glossy interiors mag!

Denis and I posing for the camera!

Our little Hestor also did some modeling for us! He has lost a bit of weight since this photo was taken!

Anyhow, if you have made it to retrodelights.com.au after reading our story, welcome! We still have lots to share with you, bathroom reno, converting a garage into a photographic studio, and a new master bedroom suite and living area upstairs. Yes we have decided to re-configure our place so the renovations continue!

Click here to see a little behind the scenes post about the day the Inside Out team came to our place for the feature shoot... 

Thanks for following our reno journey,

Kyrie & Denis
xo

Knowing we had a date set for the photoshoot for our Inside Out Magazine feature certainly gave us the extra nudge to complete the hallway. It is the central part of the house, so I thought it was a must if we were to have some nice long photos in the article to help connect the rooms.

Denis said that out of the Kitchen / Laundry reno this was actually the hardest. (I wonder if that is because I didnt help him much with this one - hehe!)

The process was to remove the wallpaper and prep the walls for painting. This took ages because being an 'L-shaped' space there were more walls here than a standard room, lot's of surfaces to cover! We had a water leak that damaged the ceiling from the bathroom above so that also needed to be repaired.


The next stage was to remove the carpet from the stairs, and we assumed this would be a simple thing. Well yes, pulling up the carpet was easy, but tidying up the hardwood on the stairs became a nightmare. Denis spent 6 full days filling, removing paint and sanding each step by hand. I have to admit I really admire his stamina to complete the job. If it was me I would have given up after one step! I am not 100% sure the kind of wood but we think the steps might be Jarrah.

So now our hallway and stairwell are light and bright - lovely! See the full set of 'work in progress' photos here >

Toodle-pip!

Before

Many say when preparing a home for sale you should start with the front door because first appearances are so important. No, we are not selling our home, but we did think was time to spruce up our door after living with the not so nice mission brown and screen since moving in 18 months ago. The magazine photo shoot was also the perfect excuse to get onto this project!

Living near the beach, it was obvious to me that perhaps the cliche of a blue door wasn't such a bad idea. Kind of made sense considering our exterior walls are the colour of a sand dune! So a beachy colour with a retro twist was in order...

After

The final colour choice being Wattle's Canabria is a beautiful fresh aqua that spells out "sea breeze". It is similar to the blue hues that were rather popular during the 1950s-1960s.

We are very very happy with the results. First impressions - looking mighty fine I say!

We are gearing up for another crazy day of house reno tomorrow. This time the hallway. Time to give it a facelift by removing the wallpaper and freshening it up with a lick of paint. I'm in the process of designing a new balustrade as well, but that will come later! Also weighing up if we do a feature wall of some sort on the stairwell side. Maybe a dark colour to help hide the door to the cloak cupboard under the stairs and the doors on the linen cupboard... Any ideas?

Carrying on from "The Den" post...


Well our "Den" has finally come together in true Kyrie & Denis style. In total, it took us 2 full weekends of work, at a cost of approx $1000 including paint, shelving and cabinets.

Wallpaper removed, walls ready to paint.

Denis Loves Painting - TRUE!

Weekend 1 (May 2012)
Two solid days of removing the old tired wallpaper, prepping the walls (very time consuming) and then the fun bit painting!

A couple modifications to the IKEA 'Besta'" cabinets!

Get out the level and tape measure please!

Weekend 2 (August 2012)

Time to assemble the cupboards from IKEA. Denis did a stellar job of modifying a cabinet so we have them running the full width of the room. The room is not quite 3m wide, so he had to shear off about 40mm on one side of the cabinet to make it all work.

Hanging the shelves was actually a dream. Having solid block walls makes it so easy. No need to find wooden studs in this place! However one dead drill later and the job is complete.

Very happy with how it looks!

The Result - We are so happy with the transformation of this room and it has turned out exactly how I designed it in my head with no hiccups along the way!  (except broken drill, but Denis was thrilled to stumble across "Ryobi Day" at Bunnings when he went to get a replacement!)

I love the fact that we can now keep our books all in one tidy place... I have extra space to display my retro delights, and the room is a cosy space for us to curl up on the couch to read, crochet or watch the box. It is really refreshing to have the TV away from the main living area so it isn't the main focus.

Retro Delights in 'The Den..."

Vintage Camera from "Meet Me at Mike's" Melbourne.

The retro light pendant is an e-bay purchase for $18!

Original Lip Chair and Bus Blind purchased from TradeMe NZ.

A small collection of vintage globes from e-bay.

Of course I have many more photos documenting this reno. Check them out here > 

Toodle-pip!