Leila's Room

Leila is one of my grand-daughters. She works as a paralegal at a law firm in the city…….she couldn't wait for me to move into town so that she could become my housemate. This meant that the first room we had to make habitable and presentable was her bedroom. When I took possession, this bedroom (the biggest) had deep fuchsia walls with a flowery frieze below the cornice. It had several layers of rotting net curtains and some heavy floral drapes with swags and tie-backs. Half the old carpet had been ripped up and what was left stank of dog pee……..charming! The lovely large windows had never been cleaned and moisture had been allowed to ruin the paintwork on them. The general look was what I would describe as "tired bordello"!
The positives were:
*Good size
*No major structural problems
*Morning sun
*Huge built-in wardrobe with floor to ceiling mirror doors

It looked like this, but the picture is flattering and all that stuff in there is hiding a multitude of sins:

So we set to and ripped up the remains of the carpet, tore down the curtains, cleaned the black crap off the window-frames, removed the floral frieze and scrubbed, scrubbed, scrubbed. We then had a blank canvas to work with. All the choices in this room are Leila's - I am grateful that she has a classic and restrained sense of design and her preference is for the calm and uncluttered. 

The room didn't require any major repairs, just a lot of cleaning and a bit of patching and I removed a zillion tacks and staples from the floor.

Grey carpet and drapes

What a difference! When she first moved in, the room looked like this, now it looks like this with a bit more furniture and a touch more colour:

It's now a lovely calm space for a busy young woman to retreat to after a busy day.

The carpet was professionally laid, which was an expense, but all up, this room was about $1100 to transform.