my brain is like a funfair lucky-dip
i had this cool bedroom when i was a kid.
i think it kinda was the first time in my life that i went shopping for what I WANTED in terms of interior design. let's face it, children never know what they want for their bedroom walls when they're little - maybe they do now with the speed kids grow up - but at least in the eighties, and at least for me i didn't really so i was happy to pick out the unusual stuff when my mom and dad suggested it and went along with that.
My first bedroom i can remember was a cabin bed in the box room of the family home. i think this was more out of necessity than style, though at the time (mid eighties) such things were just coming in as a new and "alternative" way for children to have their rooms.
the desk was UNDER the actual bed. this was new and so we went with that.
When i finally moved into the room i'd spend my teenage years in it was, from what i can remember, an amalgamation of my grandma's old room and a few bits for me. a black desk, black stack-unit, loaned hi-fi and of course a bed.
this was done with these grey vertical striped walls, that in hindsight looked at lot like vertical wires, not prison bars but just pattern-less designs. i also had stickers all over my built-in wardrobe, which really wasn't as grand as it sounds as it housed the house boiler and took out a chunk of floor space. in summer months i was happy about neither fact, and the un-lagged pipes that ran under the floor impressed me even less.
anyway, in 1994 my mom and i decided to overhaul my room. keep the same furniture - minus the boxing-glove bean bag (hey, it WAS the nineties!) - and redo the walls and the carpet.
result was black carpet, grey ceiling and the wallpaper was.. well.. i had to fight my family tooth and nail on this one.
border-splitting, that is using a horizontal border to split a wallpaper design had just come into vogue. the idea that you have two different but complimenting styles of wallpaper separated by a complimenting border design was apparently good style.
my family thought so to, but not when they say what i chose when we went to B&Q to buy it.
I chose, in all essence an inverted design. that is, i chose a lower design of bright beige/yellow with dark blue star accoutrements and shading, a border that was a darker brown with more symbols and an upper style of paper of dark, midnight blue paper with golden stars at intervals and a lines and patterns clearly favouring something close to astrology.
in essence my father reckoned i had my idea upside-down. that is, the dark blue at the bottom, the light beige above and the border splitting the two.
No. I was adamant that this is what i wanted!
so all my parents could do was shrug, mutter something along the lines of "hey, you're gonna be sleeping in it for the next 10 years" and agree.
my mom is the master wallpaperer and after two weeks of wallpapering the job was completed. we'd not only done the walls but also the doors of the walk-in wardrobe.
another thing i wanted was the single bed to be hard against the back of the bedroom door.
the room configured to only allow the bed to be at two possible positions, and one of those (along the far wall) impeded access to the wardrobe. instead i moved the bed flush against the nearside wall, right behind the door. yep the door can't swing all the way open but who cares? the only time it'll be open is if i'm not in there so what's the problem? and i have a nightlight in the room anyway (scared of the dark as a child) so closing the door all the way to sleep isn't an issue either.
so picture if you will:
black carpet, the majority of the walls a deep midnight blue with accents, moons, suns, stars and golden accents and the lower part of the wall a rich beige/yellow.
it shouldn't have worked on paper.
but i was in that room for 10 years.
and when i heard that, in 2004 that my parents were dismantling the room, stripping it all back in yet another renovation i admit i was really sorry to see that room go. v
as with all things it was the memories, and the photographs - i was in that room when i got my first real interest in photography so I have a few pics of the place in different lights as i messed around with speeds of film and aperture settings.
i know things will always change and i wouldn't sleep in that room now. but if i ever paint the walls of this apartment, i might take some ideas of that bedroom to redesign my current one. dark colours, celestial designs and a heavy leaning towards the abstract are all trademarks in my creativity regardless of the medium.
and that's it - sorry for the memory lane but it's just something that popped into my skull.
Xx
i think it kinda was the first time in my life that i went shopping for what I WANTED in terms of interior design. let's face it, children never know what they want for their bedroom walls when they're little - maybe they do now with the speed kids grow up - but at least in the eighties, and at least for me i didn't really so i was happy to pick out the unusual stuff when my mom and dad suggested it and went along with that.
My first bedroom i can remember was a cabin bed in the box room of the family home. i think this was more out of necessity than style, though at the time (mid eighties) such things were just coming in as a new and "alternative" way for children to have their rooms.
the desk was UNDER the actual bed. this was new and so we went with that.
When i finally moved into the room i'd spend my teenage years in it was, from what i can remember, an amalgamation of my grandma's old room and a few bits for me. a black desk, black stack-unit, loaned hi-fi and of course a bed.
this was done with these grey vertical striped walls, that in hindsight looked at lot like vertical wires, not prison bars but just pattern-less designs. i also had stickers all over my built-in wardrobe, which really wasn't as grand as it sounds as it housed the house boiler and took out a chunk of floor space. in summer months i was happy about neither fact, and the un-lagged pipes that ran under the floor impressed me even less.
anyway, in 1994 my mom and i decided to overhaul my room. keep the same furniture - minus the boxing-glove bean bag (hey, it WAS the nineties!) - and redo the walls and the carpet.
result was black carpet, grey ceiling and the wallpaper was.. well.. i had to fight my family tooth and nail on this one.
border-splitting, that is using a horizontal border to split a wallpaper design had just come into vogue. the idea that you have two different but complimenting styles of wallpaper separated by a complimenting border design was apparently good style.
my family thought so to, but not when they say what i chose when we went to B&Q to buy it.
I chose, in all essence an inverted design. that is, i chose a lower design of bright beige/yellow with dark blue star accoutrements and shading, a border that was a darker brown with more symbols and an upper style of paper of dark, midnight blue paper with golden stars at intervals and a lines and patterns clearly favouring something close to astrology.
in essence my father reckoned i had my idea upside-down. that is, the dark blue at the bottom, the light beige above and the border splitting the two.
No. I was adamant that this is what i wanted!
so all my parents could do was shrug, mutter something along the lines of "hey, you're gonna be sleeping in it for the next 10 years" and agree.
my mom is the master wallpaperer and after two weeks of wallpapering the job was completed. we'd not only done the walls but also the doors of the walk-in wardrobe.
another thing i wanted was the single bed to be hard against the back of the bedroom door.
the room configured to only allow the bed to be at two possible positions, and one of those (along the far wall) impeded access to the wardrobe. instead i moved the bed flush against the nearside wall, right behind the door. yep the door can't swing all the way open but who cares? the only time it'll be open is if i'm not in there so what's the problem? and i have a nightlight in the room anyway (scared of the dark as a child) so closing the door all the way to sleep isn't an issue either.
so picture if you will:
black carpet, the majority of the walls a deep midnight blue with accents, moons, suns, stars and golden accents and the lower part of the wall a rich beige/yellow.
it shouldn't have worked on paper.
but i was in that room for 10 years.
and when i heard that, in 2004 that my parents were dismantling the room, stripping it all back in yet another renovation i admit i was really sorry to see that room go. v
as with all things it was the memories, and the photographs - i was in that room when i got my first real interest in photography so I have a few pics of the place in different lights as i messed around with speeds of film and aperture settings.
i know things will always change and i wouldn't sleep in that room now. but if i ever paint the walls of this apartment, i might take some ideas of that bedroom to redesign my current one. dark colours, celestial designs and a heavy leaning towards the abstract are all trademarks in my creativity regardless of the medium.
and that's it - sorry for the memory lane but it's just something that popped into my skull.
Xx