*fabulissime*

Renovation porn

Alright, it’s about time I gave you an update on the atelier reno. I thought it could be interesting to first provide you with more background details about this project. Then I’ll get into the specifics over the next few weeks (with pictures of my new studio, of course).

As most of you now know, the boyfriend and I bought a disaster of a house in March 2007, and we’ve been sporadically renovating it since then. People are always surprised to hear I’m the handy one. As a teen I helped my dad and a few friends with DiY so I don’t get intimated by DiY renovation projects. My boyfriend had never worked on house-related projects before so I basically had to teach him everything I knew. You could say we’re a modern couple hehe.

Anyways, I’m very proud of us. We did almost everything ourselves, from ripping out the old carpet to building a walk-in closet. Fast forward 3 years, and we’re almost done renovating the house, the 1st floor (which includes my office) being the last living space that needed some TLC (I’m not including the basement and the garage).

So, here’s the room (aka diamond in the rough) when we bought the house:

Here’s the inspiration:

Photo: Design*Sponge

Here’s my loose interpretation:

Here’s the old layout (not to scale):

I decided to change a few things to make the space more functional. We moved a door opening, increased the size of the closet so that it could be a walk-in closet, and removed a partition wall.

And here’s the new layout:

It was a long, epic journey that put our perseverance to the test. The boyfriend and I learnt a lot in the process though so all in all it was a pretty good experience.

To be continued…