Mrs. CRICHTON-BROWNE

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Blue and White

While renovating our house I have spent many hours looking at designers and interiors that I would like to emulate in my home. One of the hardest parts about this is choosing a theme/colour scheme and sticking to it. I chop and change from Hamptons, New England to transitional style to plantation from greens and yellows to blue and white.

The below pictures have been my blue and white inspiration and I have tried to incorporate some of these elements into the design of my home.

Horchow

I love the all white walls with mouldings to create shadows softening the clinical nature if crisp white

T&G interiors

Ethan Allan

Morgan Harrison

Westbury Paisley Fabric

One Kings Lane

Ethan Allan

Pheobe Howard

My House

Ralph Lauren

Barclay Butera

MrsCB

Monday, June 9, 2014

Renovation Update

After a few delays and mistakes on behalf of the flooring installer we finally have new floors. The change from tiles to floorboards has been worth all the heartache, cost and time. We decided on Blackbutt wood, which is a very light blonde hardwood. I chose this wood because it is a light colour making it easy to stain. In our previous house we used blackbutt and stained in a very dark brown almost black which I thought looked amazing but this time we decided to go lighter stain and settled on a colour called Old Baltik by Feast and Watson with a polyurethane semi gloss varnish.

Instead of using the traditional floorboard width of 80mm we decided to go with a wider board at 130mm which I think looks great.

Below are a few photos of the original tiles, the boards unstained and the final product.

There is still so much to do such as the stairs, painting, new light fittings, shutters on the windows and curtains, filling in a wall and to do something nice with the pillars not to mention choosing colours and a few new pieces of furniture.... phew I'm exhausted just thinking about it!

The original tiles

Blackbutt unstained

Stained Blackbutt with Old Baltik Stain

MrsCB

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Pendant Lights

Renovation update: I have purchased two Restoration Hardware pendant lights to hang over the breakfast bar. I have chosen the Classic Clemson Pendant which I think will tie into the theme of the house. I'm quite sure there is no way you can do a reasonable renovation without set backs or something going wrong, my dilemma..... a concrete ceiling. What does that mean? Well it means that all lighting has to be determined when the house is built so that wiring can be installed when the concrete ceiling is poured, therefore adding any lighting in the future requires either chiselling into the concrete and then plastering over the top or creating a false ceiling so that the wiring is hidden.
The decision I have made is to install a small decorative false ceiling to hide the wires and still have my beloved pendant lights!

Not only do these pendant lights look fabulous but they also have purpose for us as there is currently no lighting over the breakfast bar. We often sit and have dinner at the breakfast bar or use it for entertaining so these lights will really add as a nice feature to the room.

Pendant lighting is becoming more and more popular in Australia as we gravitate towards the American New England/Hampton's look where this style of lighting is most common. I have found an Australian website which sells similar lights called Schots lighting (www.schots.com.au) which is located in Melbourne. They have a reasonable selection of pendant lights.

I'm looking forward to having these lights installed and will post a before and after.

Below is the Classic Clemson pendant light from Restoration Hardware (www.restorationhardware.com).