A love of design

After what felt like a lifetime of looking the Gibb family bought their house. While it was the second house they have bought, it was the first time they had bought something they loved and that they could express themselves and their love of design in.

The house was originally one small state house. The previous owners moved another statehouse onto the section and joined the two together under a new mono pitch roof which gave the house a contemporary look. So the now newly completed house had two lounges, five bedrooms, two bathrooms and a large kitchen with an enormous stainless steel bench, lots of wooden floors, plenty of windows and the soul of an older home. Because of the age of the house, there are no wardrobes or linen cupboards.

Their first job before moving in was to replace the worn unfitted carpet pieces with new smartstrand shagpile carpet with the best underlay you can buy. They also felt it was important to have at least one double wardrobe and a linen cupboard built in.

The next task was to tackle the kitchen!

The kitchen is in the middle of the house, with lounges on either sides. Behind the large stainless bench is a huge wall. While there is natural light in the room there is not a lot of it, so the original idea of a large blackboard painted wall fell by the wayside. They decided the room needed texture as the other surfaces in the kitchen were all hard and shiny - the wooden floors, wooden cabinets and of course the stainless steel bench.

Before applying paint, the wall was papered with anaglypta vintage style wallpaper. While the idea of a red or a vintage blue was appealing, a very bold yellow won. And after a few testpots, Resene Bright Spark became the feature wall colour. It’s a bold but not fluoro yellow that warms the room visually and makes the textured paper standout without overtaking the room.

The rest of the room was painted a soft white, Resene Half Alabaster, which helped the wood features in the room stand out and brought the whole room together.

Other walls	Feature wall
Resene Half Alabaster	Resene Bright Spark

Decorating inspiration gallery
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