Tag Archives: lounge room

The Next Step

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We are making progress on completing the lounge to the way we want it.

Some of you might remember this post from late February. Well there have been a few hiccups along the way but the window installation was finally completed today.

We will need to paint the frames both inside and outside and then I will see about choosing a blind. In the meantime, we will rehang the piece of fabric that has been covering the old window for the past couple of years. Bare glass is not a good idea at this time of the year.

The choice of louvres will be fully appreciated in the summer as they will provide good cross-ventilation.

Speaking of painting, we spent some time painting the pickets of our newish fence. It has been several months since it was installed but the weather has been either too hot or too cold and a few days ago we had rain to further delay us. Of course, we also seem to manage to be away or otherwise socially engaged. However, today was perfect. After a frosty start we were blessed with a glorious sunny day and no wind. Hopefully, there will be a few more days like today in the not too distant future to enable us to finish that project.

New Curtains

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Aside from the pantry and walk-in wardrobe alterations we also needed to consider some screens for the front of the house.

Last Friday a gentleman came to measure and quote for a security screen for the front door and look at options for screening the French doors in the sewing room as well as the large sliding doors which open from the lounge onto the front terrace.

While the weather is cool more than it is hot here, we still wanted to have the option of being able to open up these rooms without assorted insects entering uninvited.

We were also interested in alternative options to the plain grey roller blinds that are currently in the lounge. They are not practical for a number of reasons and also make the room look rather stark and industrial.

So, we have decided to remove the blinds and install curtains instead. Today we went to the showroom in Bendigo to choose the fabric for the curtains.

This is the room (albeit a bit dark) with the existing blinds.

This photo shows the colour of the sofa and chairs along with the wall.

Here is the fabric I have chosen for the curtains against the sofa and the wall.

I am looking forward to the difference it will make to this room.

From This……….To This

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It is just over 5 months since we moved into this house.

One of the first pictures was of our lounge. This was 6 days after the removalists placed the majority of things in this large front room.

It was the last room to be sorted out as we had no furniture for it apart from the already attached IKEA television cabinet and glass-fronted wall cabinets. We ordered furniture which had a lead time of nearly four months but it was worth the wait.

The room is very large – it was originally a double garage. Although we had some ideas about how to configure it, we were not prepared to make any firm decisions until we had the furniture for a little while to see how things worked.

After a month of using the room we decided to bite the bullet. Some of the contents of the glass-fronted cabinets has been relocated to the sideboard in the dining area. You can read about it in this post. The remaining items did not need 3 double-door cabinets so we kept two and sold the other one. We also decided to move the cabinets to another wall. This allowed the sofa to be positioned where the cabinets had been. This important as the wall where the blinds are is fully glass sliding doors and faces north. We want to keep the furniture away from that side of the room.

The single chairs are positioned facing the television which is the default position when there is just the two of us here. However, they can easily be moved so that they face the couch for a more cosy conversation space. Likewise, the cedar trunk can be repositioned between the seating as an occasional table.

Once the furniture was in place, we turned our attention to the artwork and hung them today. My final task is to source a floor lamp to go beside the glass-fronted cabinets. Back to Marketplace………… It may take time but I feel confident that I will find the statement piece that I have in mind.

Why Did We Wait?

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We have lived in this house for almost 14 years and made various changes to both the interior and exterior of the house.  The kitchen, laundry and bathroom have had major upgrades.  Windows, external cladding, verandah railings and flooring have all been replaced as well as the outdoor staircase.  The entire interior of the house has been painted, floor coverings replaced and built-in wardrobes added.

But apart from buying timber venetian blinds for 2 of the front windows we have never had any window coverings.  It has not really been a necessity from a privacy point of view since we live on a small acreage with no close neighbours.

However, the combined lounge/dining room has quite a large expanse of windows and we do find that it makes the room quite cold on winter evenings and I would love to be able to draw the curtains to cover the glass and make it feel more cosy.

We did not do anything about it initially as we knew that we would replace the old windows.  The upgraded windows are louvres and one section of them is quite close to the slow-combustion heater so I was unsure as to what sort of window treatments would work best.  Hence, winter would come and go each year and still the inertia and indecision remained.  This is a post on the same subject from 2011.

The combination of a few cold nights and some free time once I had finished work meant that I decided to check out a relatively local business, Custom Curtains and Shade at Beerwah.  It is barely a month since we first ventured to the showroom where we discussed a couple of different fabric and colour options  A few days later we had a measure and quote, decided on our choice of fabric and today the finished products were installed.

Here is the result and I really do not know why we procrastinated for so long before deciding to get the Roman blinds for this room.

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After almost 14 years the living area now looks ‘complete’ to my satisfaction.