the lounge room

The lounge room here at the ramshackle farmhouse is really coming along, especially now since it's winter and we have the fire going, the curtains drawn at night to keep the heat in and it's all very cosy and snug.

For those who don't remember, here is the lounge room as it was when we first came to look at the house in October last year just before we moved in. All empty and bare it seemed pretty unappealing...

The walls are covered in a plywood panelling stained an almost black very dark brown tint, making the whole room seem to be quite cave-like. We took out that old rug, pulled down the gauze curtains and ball light fitting and removed the door into the kitchen. Once we got our lighter coloured couches in and our own things around us it started to feel a bit more like home.

The built-in bookcase was once a door into the hallway (which is now the kitchen). Confused? It might make more sense if you see the floor plan here. The vintage books I am collecting from op shops and antique shops to use as props for our wedding, and the Armed With Love one featured in our engagement shoot. The pottery was a piece we picked up on our travels to Papua New Guinea at a little village just outside of Madang. I have arrange three of my milk bottles on the mantle with a white peony.

Here is the view looking into the dining room, this room was added on in the 1960's as it was once the back verandah. There was sliding doors to close off the room but one was smashed so we took them both off to make it more open plan. You can see our wood burning coonara in the corner which heats the house and our corner TV cabinet in the other corner which I try and make as unobtrusive as possible. Our coffee table was made by my uncle who is a carpenter out of a blackwood tree which fell in a gully on the original farm my grandparents purchased here, Ballina Park. 

The fireplace has an old (highly unattractive) oil heater in it, we want to hopefully re-instate an open fire here for Autumn and Spring days when the days are still warm but the nights are cool and we don't want the roaring heat from the coonara. The photo above the mantle is one I took at sunrise on a friends-of-friends station in outback western NSW. Also on the mantle is a photo of me and two girlfriends at my 21st birthday party, we lived together in Melbourne whilst at university. There is also a hand carved pig we picked up in Papua New Guinea and my niece Chloe's first masterpiece on canvas, a portrait of me. 

We added the curtains not long after we moved in, I wanted long, white, luxurious, heavy curtains to make the space seem a bit more grown up. They are doing wonders for keeping the heat in at night. The rug I bought recently for the lounge room as our old rug from the cottage had a) seen better days and b) was a neutral colour and was really making the room very bland. I found this rug on sale for half price and snapped it up to add a bit of a Hamptons/nautical theme to the room. 

Our ornate art deco style ceiling in the lounge room is one of the best features of our house, I love it. The ceilings are quite high which makes the rooms feel much bigger and gives the house a greater sense of history and nostalgia. The little window is a cute feature, we are hoping to get a stained glass window to go here as at the moment it has some fairly ugly frosted perspex (I don't even think it's glass). The beanbag my mum made for me on request for our previous home, but I am considering banishing it to another room as it is never used and clutters the space a bit. The huge horse canvas is by our friend (and wedding photographer) Ben Simpson. Isn't it great? To say we love it is an understatement, it's something we will have in our home forever. We also have a framed print of Ben's, Winter Muster, on another wall which lended itself to the long thin shape.

 

So that is our lounge room, the main room of our home really as it is where we spend the majority of our time (when we're not outside in the garden and on the farm). I am viewing this very much as a work in progress. I would love to de-clutter the bookshelves a bit more, make some new cushion covers, put in the new stained glass window. Eventually we have grand plans to totally re-plaster the walls, pull out the oil heater, paint the fireplace bricks white and polish the floors (it's a fake timber vinyl at the moment which I hate) but for now it is quite comfortable, functional and very us. Which is nice. 

Couches: Freedom

Coffee table: family piece

White cube bookshelf: Kmart

Rug: Freedom

Photograph artwork: Freedom #2 and Winter Muster by Ben Simpson and Pan Ban Sunrise by Emma Durkin

Curtains: ready-made from Spotlight

Taupe and white stripe cushions: Big W

Red ticking cushion: Blackthorn Textiles in Yea

Flour sack cushion: Cat Nap Cottage on Etsy

Blue and white cushions: Ikea

Red tartan cushions: Kmart

Images by Emma Durkin for Cinderella at Brindabella