Mango and Passion Fruit: Making Ikea furniture work for you (part 1)

Sometimes I wish I could click a finger and magically turn every bit of my living room into one of those amazing looking ones we see in a home decor magazine... The ceilings are high, there is always so much light and space and even the cats & dogs in the pictures seem to go with the style of the whole thing!

Well, when you're talking about a 2.5 x 5 metres space with a x amount of restrictions imposed by your estate agent, the picture in my head becomes even more foggy and seems that only magic really could do the job. But if there is something I love more than cute puppies and ice-cream it's a challenge!

At the end of last year I decided to change my living room. I spend way too much time in this space to just "get on with it" until we move to the next place (hopefully, a place 100% ours). But often, when you have enough time on your hands, it's usually because money is short... And obviously I could not afford designer furniture or anything of the sort... So Ikea was the only option I could think of.

But before a trip to the land of "make believe" (I once read in a blog that the minds behind Ikea must spend a lot of time working out the perfect lighting of the showrooms, because everything looks 10x better over there...), this time, I did my homework.

Below are some of my inspirations...

Credit / Photos Sources: 1. Homedit.com 2. Ikea Spotting 3. Draumesider 4. Erin Ever After
5. Ikea Spotting 6. La Maison d'Anna G.

As you can see, I started with my desk space... You probably noticed they all have these trestle legs. When I came across the first one, I fell in love with it and thought they would work really with my rolls of paper.

I was convinced I wanted to go with white as a colour because, annoyingly, our walls here are magnolia and we cannot change that. So natural wood colour would make it all too yellow... I was considering, however, a black worktop, thinking of adding contrast and making it a bit bold. It would also be a great surface for pictures of my craft projects.

So I had decided on changing the desk. Next step would be, within my budget, to do something about our (very) old TV rack and sort out the lack of storage space... But I will leave this for the next post.

*** To be continued ***