It’s been nearly a year since I last posted about Mum’s living room redesign. In honesty, when I presented her with the mood boards last year, I didn’t think Mum would put her foot on the gas pedal any time soon, or even at all. It was only after Mum returned from a holiday in Oz to a refreshed laundry room that she decided it was time her late eighties house moved into the modern century.
What was interesting about taking on this project for Mum is when she does finally make a decision it’s all on and she wants it now. Managing her expectations and keeping her enthused that we were going to make the end of April deadline was a priceless education for me.
There were a couple of points Mum was adamant about changing, and that was the colour of the walls. She wanted a white, refreshed look and a seamless flow between the living room and kitchen. As you can see below, she has an orange complex cream on the living room walls and a violet grey on the kitchen walls.
I think this made the space look choppy, and frankly, I didn’t think the colours worked for the two rooms at all. I also fought hard to remove those big black leather sofas that consumed her living space. It took me a year, but I finally wore her down in the end! 
There was also another colour element we needed to consider in her room, and that was the carpet. For awhile, Mum has been saying her carpet is grey. Even with my colour credentials, I kept eyeballing it and buying into it. However, when doing the design plans, there was always something off about this colour. Until I bought a square of the carpet home and discovered it was actually brown!
Armed with that information, I could quickly pull a mood board together, incorporating the blues she wanted with her brown carpet.
Here is a picture of Mum’s living room after it has been freshly painted. We chose an off-white Dulux Cardrona, which is a cozy non-stark white.
I love how this off-white gently offsets the white trim.
Now for the fun part, ordering the furniture and pulling it together!
As you would expect, we had a few hiccups along the way. Two of Mum’s dining room chairs arrived broken. The occasional ivory chairs that I ordered from Tauranga were way too big in scale to fit the room. So they went into the back of our truck which ended up being a road trip for us. I remember my colour teacher saying that the scale is one of the hardest things to get right in design.
It doesn’t matter what project I’m doing; I always go through an ugly stage where I wonder how this will all come together. 
But once the rug arrived from Turkey, I breathed a sigh of relief.
I still need to find some caramel lumber cushions for the occasional chairs.
I loved every moment of this design journey. There is something so satisfying when your favourite person in the world is happy in their home. Since I completed this project, Mum has now made murmurs she would like to tweak her two bedrooms. Hopefully, there will be a few more reveals to come from this eighties house – wink, wink. 
See you all next month!
