We just recently moved at the begining of October in our newly purchased condo, it was all so exciting since it's our first time owning and we could basically do what we wanted with it.
Hardly any furniture from the old place was coming so we moved very "light" and then began to slowly slowly buy the new things we needed once we settled in and finished the painting.
Painting was fun, and while my sisters and I had painted our grandma's home before it wasn't the same since this time we got to pick our own colours and do everything our way. The condo is newly renovated with a modern design - the open concept kitchen and all - even though it is in an "older" building, we mostly chose this building because of the hardwood floors.
Here in Toronto newer condos are very tight, expensive and have wall to wall carpet all over just like my aunts place. Pets are another problem depending on the policy of the building. Three bedroom is also harder to come by in a newer condo building.
Decorating project:We decided to do the living room in a brightesh fresh green which we noticed was used in a lot of IKEA showrooms, everyone instantly fell in love with the colour and so we went for Benjamin Moore - Wales Green - and did the whole living room and parts of the connecting kitchen in that colour.
One bathroom looked pretty coordinated so we left it as is. We chose a sky blue for the second bedroom connected to the masterbedroom, it went really nice with the white tiling as well as the "oceananic" decor we choose by hanging a framed light house and ship shadow box and some shells and candels to add to the theme.
My sisters painted their bedroom a nice purple which went super with their "barbie the magic of pegusis" theme.
With everyone's hard work and IKEA we pulled it off beautifly.
When it came to my room, at least picking the colour in the early stages I was pretty clueless. All along I wanted to do something clean and fresh which would give it more of a "cooler" appearnance, like white walls or something, however once I was at the paint shop I figured since it's so cold here in canada most of the year (at least cold to my standards) then why make the room look colder.The theme was definately going to be something from the middle east, but what exactly? I had no idea.
Fast forward : Once I chose the colour it was really easy and everything fell in place, I'm actually really pleased with it and without IKEA I would never have been able to pull it off.
The IKEA 2007 catelogue had some really great stuff in it this season!!! I know I never paid much to attention to IKEA before, it was always that place where you get that boxed furniture and it's such a pain putting it together. I'm now actually ADDICTED to it, since we were there almost every single day for two weeks browsing, choosing, shopping, ordering, picking up things here and there, accessorizing, adding the finishing touches, picking up our boxed furniture from the pickup session ... our new home is almost entirely furnished by IKEA.
Back to paints, I decided to use two paint colours along with a white, so one wall is in a dark pink and the other is in a bright coral red, opposite those two painted walls are plain white walls (the wall with the closet and the wall with the door to the room)
The room was already painted in a darker colour, so I used a primer and painted everything white then did the white walls once that was dry. The last thing I did was the colour, it was not as easy as I expected because I had to make sure the corners of the walls looked really good and neat, also it required several coats of paint to achieve the proper colour so waiting for it all to dry and then doing one of the other wall took ages. The corner where the colours (pink and red) met was a problem, I had to do it slowly slowly and make sure they would kind of merge properly while adding a certain amount of coats to make it look proper like the other parts of the wall. Finally I achieved what I was looking for and it looked great!!!
The theme was a contemporary Moroccan look and fortunately after flipping through the IKEA catelogue a few times I managed to find everything I needed from the furniture, cutains, pillow cases to the finishing touches like candels and vases.
The bed I chose was a day bed that way it can be transformed into a lovely seating area during the day. I knew I needed a dresser and after seeing the ones my sisters purchased from the MALM series, three drawer ones in white I thought it would definately go with the decor adding a contemporary look but in a stained black finish. Fortunately I managed to find it and I got the four drawer one which would double for a dressing table where I could display my lovely syrian mother of pearl jewellery chest along with the inscent, prefume and kohl bottles.
I chose all the colours I wanted to go into the room and then I worked at achieving them slowly slowly. One of the major green and dark blue pieces is the mirror above the malm dressing table, it's also from IKEA and it goes perfectly!
Just goes to show with IKEA alone you can achieve your dream Moroccan room (at least I did : )) Hope this has been inspiring.
A lovely collection of photos from several countries in the middle east, more inspiration can be drawn from here
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