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Design

Design, Interiors, My Home, Shop

A Design Essential That Won’t Break The Bank

November 5, 2017

 This is a sponsored post produced in collaboration with IKEA.

 

I truly believe the concept of one’s eyes being too big for their belly can also be applied to interior design. Have you ever fallen in love with an item so immediately you find yourself standing there, all alone in the deserted aisle, clutching an inanimate object to your chest whilst your mind runs over every last inch of your home? Where can it live? Where will it fit? Where can it be stored until a place it can fit and live can be located? Perhaps you haven’t, maybe it’s just my own inability to let go… For me however, it seems to occur all too regularly.

 

 

The most recent object of my affection resides – perhaps unsurprisingly – within the YPPERLIG collection I’ve been championing for quite sometime. Arriving with a price tag of only £12, yet crafted from solid birch wood, IKEA and HAY’s wall shelf is the kind of piece I never knew I even needed in my life. That was until I saw it gazing out at me from the collection’s lookbook anyway. I knew I had to make it mine. It was going to be the shelf of dreams. Casually (yet artfully) styled with those images I tear from magazines and never know where to put and those postcards I pick up but then again never quite know what to do with. It was to be the modernist version of the pin board and a stellar edition to my home.

It could be a tad bold to say this, but I think this may actually be my favourite piece of the collection. It’s clean, modern design isn’t exactly something you tend to find in the ‘mass market’ often, especially not for such a ridiculously achievable price.

To date this shelf of dreams has found itself in three locations in my flat, moved from pillar to post as I backtrack on my decision of its rightful home. Sometimes when you love something you’ve got to try real hard.

My first thought was for it to sit beside the gallery wall in my dining room but something just wasn’t right. I already feel that wall is somewhat unbalanced as it is, so adding a rather large weight to one end was in hindsight a glaring error. I was a fool. I also feel that wall is one for a later post; ‘When Gallery Walls Go Wrong’. Watch this space.

 

 

Secondly it arrived in my living room, positioned to the side of the two large black and white photographs that flank the left hand wall. This time I came prepared with Command strips and temporarily hung it in place. Down it came. I couldn’t bring myself to photograph that incorrectly gauged experiment as evidence here, so I swiftly moved on.

Its third appearance took place in the same room, positioned directly behind the sofa on the mass blank wall that has plagued me for quite some time. There, off to one side, it all fell into place. It found its home.

Each of the shelf’s sections can play host to any manner of objects, held in place by a bungee cord threaded through. With the addition of some black bulldog clips it was also able to accomodate those odd little tags and business cards I’ve kept floating around at the bottom of drawers.

 

 

Exactly what will be going on the rest of that massive wall is, at this moment in time, still alluding me however.

If you find yourself in possession of £12 and fancy creating your own YPPERLIG conundrum, the shelf is now available to buy online and in store.

 

 

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Design, Interiors, My Home, Shop

IKEA x HAY. YPPERLIG IS HERE.

October 28, 2017

This is a sponsored post produced in collaboration with IKEA.

 

It’s funny how a brand so rooted and celebratory in its Scandinavian heritage can feel such an intrinsic part of the way we live our day-to-day lives here in Britain. I can measure my life in pieces of IKEA furniture.

At the age of twelve, the first time I was allowed to make a decision as to how my own room was going to be decorated, I was taken to IKEA. I painstakingly selected my wardrobe – the metal draws with separate compartments for my socks, the sleek white doors and the brushed steel handles. There was the EKTORP sofa I used to sit on to watch Friends. The first time around.
Then when I was eighteen and flew the family nest to start my own journey to finding a home my first flat was peppered with beech-effect Malm. Now, at the age of thirty, I sit on a Nockeby sofa I saved up for months to buy, writing this very blog. 

 

IKEA X HAY YPPERLIG Shelving Unit

 

IKEA’s offering has evolved somewhat since the days of my teenage wardrobe, but it’s still just as relevant as it ever was. October marks the release of the Swedish brand’s latest collaboration, YPPERLIG. Designed in conjunction with Danish design house HAY, the collection’s aim is simply to celebrate the beauty of the basic. That’s an idea I can get behind.

On a somewhat stormy Saturday morning in late October I drew out my allen key, carefully laid out the instructions before me and set about on the task of incorporating my favourite pieces from the collection into the millergrey household.

 

 

It would turn out not to be the six foot steel and birch wood bookcase that would prove a conundrum for the single-handed worker, but instead it was to be a bench consisting of just four simple pieces. I lost several hours to that piece. You won’t see the bench feature much here. Not because I’m not in love with it I should clarify, but more because I just need some time to not look at it, you know? Distance.

 

 

The bookcase however, you will be seeing a lot of. Made from a series of metal planks with a pale grey finish, the design is bookended (pun intended) with two solid birch ladders. My affection for the dark teal bookcase that originally stood in the alcove has been waining in recent months. It felt to imposing against the black fireplace; too dark, too dominating. YPPERLIG’s view on the bookcase couldn’t be more different. Minimal, clean, light and airy. So whilst I may have to find 93% of the original bookcase’s content a new home, I’m much happier with the lighter appearance.

 

 

Elsewhere in the collection – and for the double-take inducing price of £12 – you’ll find the metal magazine wrack you never even knew you needed. I can’t help but feel that calling it a magazine wrack does it a disservice? Use it as a bedside table, use it as a side table or even, as Instagram has shown to great effect, use it as a plant stand.

£12. This is not an error.

 

 

On the accessories front you happen to also be in for a treat. Popping #YPPERLIG into your Instagram’s search function will result in a sea of the collection’s candle holders and votives. There are three different designs in total, all of which deserve a place in your household. The most widely shared of those and now as permanent a fixture on Instagram as pristinely unread copy of Cereal being a £4.99 three-piece set that can double as candlesticks as well as tealight holders.

 

 

For the most part the colour palette remains neutral and practical, with hints of pattern and colour arriving in a series of trays, cushions and super-soft throws. Naturally I avoided all colour and instead opted for things in black, grey and white. I’m a one-trick pony and unashamed of the fact.

 

 

Next week I’ll be showcasing my favourite piece of the collection, not shown above. Or at least I will be if I could stop faffing with it enough to photograph it.

In the meantime, why not take a look at how I’ve been incorporating a few other pieces of the YPPERLIG collection into the millergrey household.

IKEA and HAY’s YPPERLIG collection is available online and in all IKEA stores now.

 

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Design, Interiors, My Home, Shop

A Living Room Update. Part One.

September 2, 2017

IKEA x HAY YPPERLIG Tray Table

If truth be told, I didn’t strictly need to do anything to my living room. I just really wanted to. I have a habit of convincing myself things are absolutely essential, if not imperative to my happiness in life. Saying that, there were very real reasons for wanting the living room update, but they definitely didn’t push it into the ‘absolutely essential’ category.

I had bought my previous sofa from DFS specifically for a rather narrow living room in flat I was living in at the time in Ealing. I definitely didn’t have the money to be buying sofas but it one was required and like much of the United Kingdom, I was drawn in by the ever-present DFS offer. You know the ones: ‘WAS £999, NOW £299 – BUT ONLY TILL TUESDAY’, which is of course swiftly followed by ‘OFFER EXTENDED!’. It’s all a con. They know it, you know, I know it, but still, when you can take the finance option and pay around £8 a month for a sofa, you do it. Picking a new sofa was the first step in the room’s overhaul. You can read my initial musings on that tricky topic here.

The sofa I eventually decided on was IKEA’s Two Seater Nockeby in Tallmyra White & Black. Surprisingly for me, I went with the chrome leg option. I visited my local store on numerous occasions to test it out prior to purchasing online, and it most definitely came out top. I even took two friends for back up opinions and thorough testing of its capacity.

IKEA Nockeby SofaIKEA x HAY YPPERLIG Tray Table

It’s comfy, it’s satisfyingly grey in appearance (yet is actually a two-tone black and white weave) and it is precisely the dose of modernity I wanted to inject into my living room.

IKEA Nockeby Sofa

Naivety took a hold of me when it came to the sofa’s delivery however. I had the incredibly bold idea I would simply be attaching the sofa’s legs and putting on the covers. An hour’s work at most. Well, I was wrong. As I was presented with three very large boxes, it all started to dawn on me. I had to build the sofa. It was a flatpack, of course it was. This is IKEA after all.

IKEA Nockeby Sofa Flat Pack Two SeaterIKEA Nockeby Sofa Flat Pack Two Seater No Covers

Several hours later and with some rather tricksy straddling, foot balancing and awkward bending, it was complete. Angels sang and golden beams of light descending from the heavens. Ish.

Now the sofa is safely installed, I can start to think about the rest of the room. I originally painted the room’s bookcase in Little Greene‘s Basalt Blue and still love it even now, but after much deliberation have decided it shall be going a pale shade of grey. I’d like it to blend in a little better. The side of the room it lives on has the large black fireplace and a black TV cabinet, so three large pieces of dark furniture in a row like that has always bothered me. It feels weighty in comparison to the lightness of the other half of the room.

IKEA Bookcase Painted In Little Greene Basalt

The next thing I’m going to be doing is making myself a desk area, complete with the freshly purchased HAY x IKEA YPPERLIG wall frame. I knew as soon I saw this piece in the lookbook that it would look fantastic hung directly above a shelf.  It’ll be a small desk area but I’m confident I’ll still be able to plan for world domination at it. Currently the corner of the room it will occupy is filled with what could possibly be several tonnes of magazines, so where these will be relocated is at the moment a little bit of a mystery. For now the frame is propped nonchalantly against the wall, awaiting some carefully selected images and magazines to be filed within it.

The YPPERLIG collection makes another appearance in the room in the form a new side table, replacing the set of nesting oak tables that I used to move around the room on a weekly basis. I’ve always loved the tables for their mid-century curved shape, but I can’t help but feel the tray table sits a little better with the sofa’s sharp lines.

IKEA x HAY YPPERLIG Tray TableIKEA Nockeby Grey Sofa

I’ve set aside September to get everything completed, all set and ready for the autumn’s arrival. I find myself spending so much more time in the room over the autumn and winter months, so what better time for it? The large wall behind the sofa has been irritatingly blank since I moved in due to my issues with artwork commitment, so that’s first on my list of things to sort after the desk. I’ve now decided I’m going to put my sewing machine to good use and make a wall hanging – something graphic and colourblocked. Maybe a greyscale Mondrian effect, but perhaps don’t quote me on that.

I’m also planning to make some new cushions, along with stepping up my search for a simple oak bench and the perfect footstool. If you find yourself interested, feel free to head over to Pinterest to check out my board.

 

 

IKEA x HAY YPPERLIG Collection

|1.| IKEA x HAY YPPERLIG Tray Table £35 |2.| IKEA x HAY YPPERLIG Candle Holders £4.95 |3.| IKEA x HAY YPPERLIG Wall Frame £12

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Design, Interiors, My Home

Flight Of Fancy.

August 6, 2017

 

I moved into this flat just shy of eighteen months ago now. The first place I was ever going to live on my own. Still a rental, but on my own for the first time none the less. I knew as soon as I walked into the empty living and saw the fireplace that I wanted it. I was prepared to look past the sea of vomit-inducing magnolia and picture what it could be.

 

 

There may be some people who love the colour magnolia and of course, you’re more than allowed to! We’re all very different and should be allowed to be so. It’s just that I am not that person. I am so far from that person that it makes me twitch slightly at the thought of it. There are varying shades of offence. Sorry, magnolia. This flat happened to be in the peachiest, yellowest, most awful tone imaginable. This could potentially be due to having been last painted in 1995, it was unclear. I begged my new landlord to let me paint it and to my delight, she said yes! Of course I now realise she was mostly just happy that I decided to redecorate the entire flat for her, costing her absolutely nothing. Even so, it felt like a win for me.

 

 

The living and bedroom were the first to get the white treatment, swiftly followed by the dining room and spare bedroom. The double height hallway however… well, that was a daunting prospect to say the least. If I’m perfectly honest with you, I mostly just tried to pretend it didn’t exist. It wasn’t a thing. You opened the front door and walked into the white living room, that was it. In reality, you opened the door, walked up a flight of dingy magnolia stairs with a drab brown carpet, saw a muddy lampshade hanging askew and a yellowing radiator. For too long I let that be the sight for visitors. It was an embarrassment. An eyesore so at odds with my own taste. I swiftly ushered any visitors into the living room and made them sit down on the much more Instagram appropriate sofa, hoping they hadn’t noticed the past minute had even occurred.

 

 

Well people, I am here to you tell it has all been changed. My staircase and hallway are no longer the source of extreme guilt and involuntary twitching. This isn’t a makeover post or a ‘how to’ on how to design a hallway, I’m going to make that quite clear. There’s been no great feat of interior design brilliance here. The greige carpet sadly remains and no insane transformations have been made.  What it is now, is lighter, brighter, fresher and ultimately much more me. It did however come with an awful lot of work. To paint a double height stair case and hallway on your own, with skirting boards, dado rails, door mouldings and four doors, was certainly no small undertaking. My arms ached, my back groaned and I used absolutely litres of paint. That horrid shade of magnolia I mentioned? Three coats it took to cover it. Three whole coats.

 

It turns out making a gallery wall go up a flight of stairs and onto a landing is in fact even more terrifying than making one on a simple rectangular wall. Perhaps it’s just me who’s incredibly daunted by the prospect of committing to so many nails in a freshly painted wall, or maybe there’s some logic in the terror I feel when faced with a blank wall and a filled frame. The exact level of my OCD has been questioned repeatedly I assure you, the cutting out of every single frame shape in brown paper to stick temporarily to the wall to decide on the positioning of corresponding frame, potentially took it up a notch in many people’s eyes. But it helped immensely and I recommend it if you too feel the fear. It is very much still a work in progress, however it is getting there. I haven’t yet resolved the far right hand side of the wall. Does it just stopped to abruptly after the eyes? I can’t decide. Many cut out frames have been taped here. Many cut out frames have been untaped from here.

 

There will also (in the very near future, when IKEA delivers it) be a large white peg rail, just inside the front door. I’ll be artfully hanging a Swedish raincoat and a dandy umbrella here at some point. No doubt you’ll see that exact image on Instagram in the coming months and roll your eyes. I give you full permission to do so.

 

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Design, My Home, Shop

Pastel hues & lazy days.

February 12, 2017

There was an incredibly pleasing correlation between a belated birthday present and the Cereal magazine perched on my coffee table. It warranted an image I felt. Taking this image, along with a rather half-hearted attempt at some exercise, punctuated a rather lazy Sunday. For too long my coffee table has been straining under the weight of a pile of unread magazines. I should probably point out that in my flat this isn’t really an unusual occurrence. Whether it’s the dining table, a dining chair, or even the floor itself, piles of magazines are never far away.  I set aside today – the day before I return to work after a full week off – as the day to tackle the most recent pile.

Copious amounts of peppermint tea and a slice of banana loaf later, the pile is no more. Now the magazines find themselves filed away in their appropriate places. My mind? Well, that’s a wealth of all things Kinfolk. Exactly as I like it to be.

A Sunday well and truly well spent if you ask me. I’m aware you didn’t, but you’re on my blog, so it’s essentially the same thing I feel.

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Design, Saw, Travel

Richard Serra at the Gagosian.

February 6, 2017

I am a little funny when it comes to art. Or perhaps that should be when it comes to ‘art’. In the larger sense. If you’ve read my previous post about my own inability to select artworks and imagery for my walls you will know, I struggle with my own tastes. What do I like? What do I appreciate? Mostly it’s all just a mystery to me.

The name Richard Serra has been appearing quite a lot recently. His work seems to have served as the inspiration for everything from fashion editorials to full blown runway collections and I will admit, it wasn’t a name I was all that familiar with. Whilst in London last week I took a detour from my heavily planned day to visit the Gagosian Gallery to see a series of three installations by him. And I am very glad I did.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to have some profound moment where I explain an artistic revolution I’ve found myself in the midst of. It was however, an experience I recommend fully. The piece above (NJ-2 if we’re going to be precise) is rather colossal. Colossal and beautiful. I feel ultimately images won’t really explain its effect and command of the huge space. The metal undulates and twists, bends and folds, with you winding your way through it all. Almost as if it was a piece of ribbon stood on its edge, twisting around.

If you find yourself in London – perhaps whilst waiting for a train from nearby King’s Cross – head to the Gagosian on Britannia Street. The exhibit’s run has just been extended until March 10th, it’s absolutely free and photography isn’t just allowed, it’s encouraged. My kind of place.

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Design, Interiors, My Home

Blank Space.

January 3, 2017

For the most part I am aware of what I like and what I want, in an interiors sense at least. However I constantly struggle with deciding on what to hang on my walls. It seems such an important decision, even though I am fully aware that prints can be changed and frames can be switched in next to no time should I have a case of midnight regret.

When I think about how much time will ultimately be spent with it in my eye line, it makes it all the more important to get it right. The space behind my sofa in the living room has always troubled me. What exactly was I going to do with it? It is the largest blank space in my entire flat if you discount the extensive double-height walls of the staircase. (I do chose to discount this presently painfully magnolia space, as until it is reworked into a beautiful sea of white, it absolutely does not exist.)

In a spirited moment of potential creativity I purchased a large canvas to fill the space. Quite what I planned on doing to said canvas was as unclear then as it is now to be perfectly honest. It has stood propped against the place that may perhaps be its home one day for several months now. Blank. Very big and very blank.

As I now find myself the owner of the canvas I feel I really do need to see it through produce something for the space myself, although the fear of producing something altogether a little amateur is very present. Nothing is quite so upsetting as being made to admire someone’s bad artwork.

I think the ultimate problem – and the reason the canvas has found itself so unadorned for quite such a long time – is that I’m not actually too sure what art it is I do like? Let alone what kind of ‘art’ I’m capable of producing myself. So this week’s task is to try and pin down exactly what I want through the medium of a moodboard. Oh yes, I plan to moodboard.

Watch this (blank) space.

 

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