You can see how much dedicated I am the first year. I've changed the look 4 times in the span of a year or so. Maybe I just have a lot of free time then? And reading back, I realized I used to be funny. Haha.. But no seriously, my casual relaxed tone became sort of generic and I hated it. I don't know why. Maybe because I've been posting half-heartedly just to get it over with. Don't get me wrong, I still love this little piece of the worldwideweb I got, but with so much going on, it's the last thing on my mind. I've had quite a handful of finished project that I haven't even shared yet, shameful. 

I've made quite a few statements such as "I'll post more often", "I'll share the reveal soon" and so on. Guess what? Never happened. So I won't make any promises now. I'm just hoping that when we get started on our own place, things will start rolling in naturally for this blog. You know, my own diary of how the heck we're actually building a house. Exciting times. But of course, I'll still do my usual post of my projects, take photos of finished projects and share them here, and someday soon, lots of DIYs to share here again. That's all adhered to the word "hopefully." I'll try my best. This blog is my baby. I've neglected my baby. Bad bad parenting. So maybe it's high time we started reconnecting again and cradle it and give it my much needed attention?

Speaking of house, I want it. If you've been reading this blog for a while now, you know my life long obsession of owning my very own house. Well who doesn't want one anyway. But with this line of work, I see and completed lots of home for other people, and to say I'm jealous is an understatement. I want to be my own client, to design a space for me. I want the challenge to create a nice creative space within our budget, something that I'll be proud of. I know I told you that we're building an industrial house, cement and all, to keep the cost down. But for some unforeseen circumstances, we needed to keep the cost down even more. You see, we're originally planning on taking a small loan to build one, but that's not an option right now so we're doing this with all the money we've saved up. ALL. Which isn't a lot by the way. So every cent counts. With that in mind, we came up with a loose plan. Hint: shipping container. :) :) It's not unheard of but not widely used as a residence here in the Philippines. But it can be done. It was done a lot of times internationally (I did my research) and I'm sure we can do it as well. Fingers crossed. Can't wait to share it once we've smoothen out the plan and if the budget permits the plan. Here's hoping. Haha

That's my peg. White walls since it will not have the high ceiling I'm dreaming of. Lots of natural wood, vintage leathers, accent brick walls, subway tiles, big industrial windows, and colors thrown here and there. Hay.....

Anyway, Duodeco follows house, as we're planning to dedicate one whole floor as the showroom. I'm excited on what's to come for that. We have lots on our mind that we needed to create and share. So once we've got the house, we've got the showroom. That would make me super happy, and probably broke. Haha.. But it's fine. We can save up again, at least we don't have a loan to pay with ridiculous interest!

So that's me looking back and looking forward to 2014. How about you? What's your plan? Let's all stay positive and attract all the blessings we can get. With much hard work of course, but it can be done. I know it. I'm claiming it. You should too!

These days, most condos and townhouses have these generic closet covered in the cheapest laminate they can find. You inherit those once you buy or rent your space. If you're looking for a more personalized look, there's a very easy solution. Wallpaper. Sticker wallpaper that is.

On one of the units I'm working on, there's this pass through closet going from the bedroom to the bathroom. They wanted to have a sliding door to separate the closet from the bedroom so we can go all-out in the closet since it won't be visible from any other space.

The thing is, they are renting. We can't reconfigure anything permanently. They had some doors removed for a more open concept but it still lacks the wow factor they're looking for. 

Enter wallpaper sticker. I'm thinking of ways on how to update the remaining doors, and while walking the aisle of Wilcon, I saw these rolls of wallpaper sticker. I knew this would work. The size is perfect and it's fairly cheap at around P200 / roll. 

It's so easy to install. Remove the doors and lay it on the floor. Remove the handle. Wipe them down. Lay down the wallpaper, and once it's in perfect position, start peeling from the top. Stick, smooth, and peel again. Repeat process until you reach the bottom. Easy! Just a remainder, do not peel the entire thing at once. You need to peel little by little while sticking in position at the same time.

Here's the "new" cabinet door. Love the pattern. So sweet and pretty.

They wanted to open the closets where they'll put hanging clothes and keep the shelves closed, hence the remaining door.

Also painted the room a deep rose shade. Unfortunately, we can't paint the insides of the open closet since it's all laminate. But this will do for a personalized rented space. :)

Oh a bonus DIY. I needed a runner rug for the space but it's quite difficult to find the perfect size in a nice pattern, so I just had 3 bath mats sewn together.  

Side by side comparison on what an afternoon can do. 

By the way, I'll try to share where I purchased most of the items found in my posts from now on, so here goes. :) 

PRODUCT SOURCE: Wallpaper roll and pink hangers from Wilcon. Bathmats and storage box from Crossings Home.

This is not the biggest room but wowza. My very first time to use wowza but it is SO appropriate. Jaw-dropping prettiness this room is. A sun-lit office space with lots of texture, character, and artsiness. Those illustrations on the walls is so unexpected but totally completes this room. Nothing matches but everything matches somehow. Confusing I know. But this is how you do a room. Bring in things you love with just a palette and vibe in mind, then it will just flow.

mixandchic

I'm currently doing an office with two separate areas-- a private space for the owners (2 office, meeting room, lounge area, bedroom) and the staff area (big communal working space, meeting area, and receiving space). I'll share them once I've got some photos. Hopefully next week!

One of the offices is for the lady owner who loves loves french chic, purple, and pink. Gotta love those combination! Actually did her condo unit which I've yet to introduce. Anyway, one of her requests is a fun wing chair to be her primary seating. It's quite difficult to find a wing chair for standard desk height. But lo and behold, we found one...

It was french, yes, but it's neither pink, purple, nor fun. But that's an easy fix. There's a huge potential for everything people. When I see some old crappy piece of furniture, I can totally envision what it can become..

Which is sometimes, this....

Combined everything she loves. I wanted it to be very playful and interesting so had them upholstered in two different fabrics. I think it gives it that much depth and contrast.

Had a matching pillow made for better back support. Pretty and comfy is perfection. (Just much like a gum. "Gum is perfection". If you know what I'm talking about, I love you. Haha..)

I super love the velvety deep purple fabric. It looks luxurious and makes this piece looks more expensive. 

Sanded all the wood and left it in it's natural wood color.

She's so pretty. Oh and this office will have a hot pink settee! Watch out for it. Haha...

Aside from the fact that it's incredibly creative and cute, it literally is a candy store. All the whites allowed the merchandise to shine and the way they "furnish" and decorated the space is inspiring. I'd surely take note.

Design Milk

Real Living Magazine asked me if I wanted to participate for their Real Living Space event. Without even knowing all the details, I, of course, jumped right in. Basically, they would get 8 designers/decorators to do different spaces in Trion Towers and it will be open for public viewing for two days with various exciting events going on. All items used are up for sale with discounts from the sponsors. See all details here.

I was assigned the bedroom in one unit, with a client profile in mind. The "client" is a 25-30 year old single gal, who earns 70-150k monthly, loves to entertain, loves reading books and magazines, and calls her style "feminine yet quirky".

This is the bedroom before the makeover.

It's fine but lacks personality and color. Since my "client" is femme and quirky, I wanted to inject tons of personality to the space. After sourcing items from the sponsors, here's the mood board I came up with.

It's a very small bedroom but I don't want it to be small in style so I filled the walls. If I can't decorate horizontally, I'll do it vertically. :) Every space counts!

Here's a sneak peek of the staging process.

Punch of yellow and patterns.

Hang the curtain using command hooks. Haha.. we can't drill so we need to improvise!

Started hanging the gallery wall...

But edited them to lighten the space a bit and this is the final wall.

Oh for orders for the deerhead wall decor, you can email me. :) We can do it in any color you want, it's solid carved wood. P5500. 

This is the other side of the room. This is not yet styled, no books nor magazine yet. I just placed all the decors in there and took this very grainy night photo. Haha.. 

I'll post the final reveal next week. But you can see the room personally, and all the other designer's spaces on the Real Living Space even on Sept 14-15. Details below.

See you there!

Well reason number one would be we are just plain crazy. Haha... But let's tackle a more acceptable answer shall we? Sales cover the overhead and a little more, but we felt somewhat held back by the fact that a lot of the shop's income goes to rent. Both of us have work outside of this, so this is just some experimental sideline venture, which means we can't commit one hundred percent of our time to it, which means less new stuff and less marketing, which means less potential sales. Napakadaming which means! haha

(See how we did the floors here)

We discussed what we wanted to do once the lease is up considering all of the above points, and came to the decision that we wanted our very own house / showroom. We'd rather put the shop's income into mortgage payments rather than rent. It would give us more drive to create, and know that those hard work will go directly to our house.

We actually looked into potential homes but realized that we can't find what we want out there. We wanted a showroom on a lower floor, and a house on the upper floors.-a full working house. Let's be honest here, no one's getting any younger and we need to move on and build a life for ourselves sooner rather than later.

So the dream to build our own home came to life. Hence this posts about my dream industrial home.

zeospot

So here's the deal, if all plans and dreams pushed through, we're building one! We already have a potential location but I'll share them once it's for sure. I even had a full floor plan sketched and moodboards for some of the spaces. This house is far down the line, we need to consider cost, how the heck we're going to loan, and all the not so fun stuff. So for now, showroom will be on hiatus, while some decor accessories will still be up on our online shop. Details on where you can view our items will be posted on the website once everything's set.

I'm so excited for what the future will bring us and I can't wait to make all our plans and dreams a reality. Here's to moving on and moving up! :)

Can we please discuss all things that makes this office so quirky cool? I hate using the word "cool" but there's no other word for this! I love the drama that all the dark colors bring in, but adding all the other elements gave this space a rather fun vibe. The ornate teal table, the vintage chair, the modern lamps, all the books, and that sitting dwarf-looking thing (!), WOW. It's a combination of different eras and style, but it all comes together so greatly. A perfect example of mixing things and just going with what you love.

abigail ahern

the selby

I was browsing my previous "shelf-styling" post so I can link it here and noticed it was written exactly two years ago today, Aug 3, 2011. Where did the time go? Seriously. I feel like I'm still exactly where I was two years ago, doing design projects, and writing shelf-styling post. Haha.. 

Anyway, I went to the site yesterday to do some shelf-styling and frame hanging to prep for the blessing on Monday. These shelves were on the home office area to display some books and other collectible she have. They piled things they want displayed in here...

It was a simple redo. Maybe not that noticeable to some. But I just made it a little more streamlined, balanced, and layered. It's a little trickier to style full shelves like this if you do not have lots of books. Unlike the massive shelves I styled before, it was a bigger job but simpler to do because of all the nooks. You just style one cube at time. But this one doesn't have any dividers which could easily look cluttered.

What I did was arrange the items with an imaginary divider. You always need a blank space to rest your eyes on. 

Here's what I did...

1) Grouped the books and placed them randomly. Some horizontal, some vertical. Just spaced them out especially if you do not have lots of them.

2) Put random items to act as bookends for those vertically placed books. Then placed some of her camera collection around on blank spaces.

3) Layered in pieces around. Leaned a frame and her diy Fornasetti plates at some negative space.

4) Edit until it feels right.

As you can see, there's not much difference really. So I'm not sure what the point of this post. Haha.. But seriously, a little rearranging can do so much. It seemed a little less cluttered and a little more styled. I even added more items in here but it looks cleaner. Also included her dumbbells in there. It's orange and purple and looks cute so why the heck. 

I'm not sure if any of these make sense or if anyone even learned anything from this. But the point is, fix your effin shelves! Experiment, arrange, rearrange, edit, until you love how it looks. What you got to lose right? :)

Upper shelves are currently empty but I'd love to put storage boxes in there. Would look totally cute.

I love people who are not afraid to put colors in their home, and this office did it for me. Not only did she used colors, she went with deep saturated ones! Navy and red. Perfect combination. I saw a lot who use this pair as accents, but in this space, it was in big key pieces -- the bookshelves and desk! Love the contrast, love the energy. 

house to your home

These are all in Real Living's Anniversary issue. New look with a lot of goodies inside. I've read it from cover to cover.. so much inspiration! Grab a free digital copy NOW since it only runs from July 26-28. Go!! :) CLICK HERE

Real Living asked me if I wanted to participate in their Mini-Makeover series for their anniversary issue, and of course I said Oh yes yes yes. I love makeovers, I do it just for fun, and now they wanted me to do it for fun and for a feature, ummm... I'm so in.

The deal was, they'll asked 7 designers/decorators, to re-do a piece of furniture or home accessory, with just the guideline of: walnut, blues, reds, yellows. Not all together of course, unless you wanted to.

What I got was this vintage side table. (sorry for the blurry photo, shot this with a phone, at night, and minimal lighting. haha)

I fell in love with its shape- simple rounded corners, with tapered legs. So much potential. The bf and I brainstormed on what to do with it. He mentioned that it looked like a vintage suitcase and that's where the inspiration came from. Originally, we we're looking for suitcase-ish looking hardware, but we found none of those.

Instead, we found these...

Super nice but dirty hardware from old storage dresser. It's perfect.

Buffing goes a long way! Here's before (above) and after (below) buffing.

We don't want to make it like brand new. Just the right amount of patina and shininess. 

As for the piece itself, while stripping everything to raw wood, we noticed that the borders were solid narra while the inside were just ordinary plywood. Which is why we left the borders in stained wood, and painted the side and front drawer blue. Reminiscent of vintage suitcases with their contrasting trim.

The hardware went into the drawer front.  (which the bf installed, thank you!) The corner piece and the statement handle really made the table. Without them, it's just too simple. What I love most about vintage furniture: shape, structure, and hardware.

Here's the table together with the pieces the other designers redid. Really cute set-up!

And here's the table in all it's professionally photographed glory!

If only I could keep it! Haha... This was fun and thank you again to Real Living team for making us part of this series. Grab your copy of Real Living July issue. Full of great stuff, pinky-promise.