Displaying posts from November, 2011

The weekend has once again rolled round. Time to sit in coffee shops, newspaper in hand. Pass me the real estate section please. I wonder what I can’t afford this week. Look! This one is open for inspection. We can drop round before we pick up the groceries. Darlinghurst. THAT close to the centre of Sydney. If only! I wonder if they’d leave behind their collection of art. I love that Ben Quilty skull painting and the contemporary Chinese art is rather good too. I want that little corner with the Chinese console, the grid of art and the marvelous mess of the owner’s favourite pieces. Maybe I can afford that much. Link here while it lasts.

I thought I’d end off the work week with a funky café designed by Manju Pinnell. It’s the Cardamom Pod Vegetarian located in Broadbeach, Queensland. This café is beautiful – full of colour, life, gorgeous furniture and even a “grass” covered banquette! Great job Manju!

My apologies for not having done any reader request posts lately – stupid French test took over all my free time last month (and these posts usually take me a few hours to prepare). Anyway, this request came in a while ago from Ginger: I’ll admit, I’m somewhat Colour Intimidated. Typically, I go for BM Cloud White for trim and some degree of greige on the wall. It’s starting to look and feel somewhat uninspired. I recently finished up having alllll the floors in my house refinished and am now preparing to paint out my hall/living room/future nursery. I could blame being knocked-up or just Reno Exhaustion but I seriously cannot make up my mind over what to do. So I was wondering – can you show me some spaces that use dramatic colours (like black/charcoal/anything not BM Cloud White) on trim/fireplace mantles? I have an art deco space and I want to take it Over The Top. I am more than willing to help fellow DTI readers step away from the greige. But surprisingly this request turned out to be fairly difficult. Seems NO ONE really does much with trim except good ‘ol white. I did manage to find a few photos of trim and/or fireplaces NOT painted white (mostly black) and I added some photos of cool wall colours too that I found while looking for trim photos – and for some reason they are mostly blue. Odd. I am not a huge fan of any blues but these look fab with lots of trim detail. Hope this helps you step outside of your comfort zone Ginger!

Philip Galanes

Lonny

Elle Decoration SA

The New York Times

Pierre Yovanovitch

Jessica Helgerson

Jeff Andrews

Ami McKay

Inspace Locations

Phoebe Howard

Design*Sponge

Gerard Faivre Paris

Design*Sponge

Yatzer

Domino

Lonny

Elle Decor

Lux Productions

Lonny

Markham Roberts

AT Casa

Can’t believe we have been in our new old house for almost a year and it seems like we have barely scratched the surface of what needs to be done. Not that I’m worried. I have come to know this 150 year old house intimately during that time. We are comfortable with each other. If it takes time then it takes time. I took a couple of shots in my living room this morning. The light cutting into the dark chocolate room was beautiful. There are a couple more over on my page with some explanations of (and excuses for) what you can see.

Steendyk is a Brisbane based design studio that brings a sculptural quality to their work. The practice is passionate about sustainability but also about exploring the beauty of a space. Elegant solutions to subtropical design problems. The first home is an inner city timber cottage that explores the past and contrasts it with the needs of the future. Indoor and outdoor boundaries are blurred. The second house also explores the concepts of in and out along with shadow and light, screen and privacy, penetration and passive solar orientation at the same time embracing Steendyk’s love of the sculptural.