Just a quick note to show my redesigned IKEA drawer. Unfortunately it’s no longer in their range, and I have no before-photo, but I found a pic here: It used to be black-brown and had black metal handles. I painted it ‘tie white’ and the new handles are made of the following: A vintage leather belt ($5 cost) cut into pieces and 14 new screws ($2). I used the old bolts and the pre-drilled holes.

More DIY to follow. Happy week!

The house tour continues in the kitchen! When we moved in, the kitchen was tiny and very outdated, so to create a larger and more user-friendly kitchen we knocked down a wall to combine two small rooms and opened out the chimney breast to make room for the range cooker (which I love because it’s got so much oven space!). It was an excruciatingly dusty and noisy job and I’m really glad it’s over. But it was all worth it of course because now we have a spacious and modern kitchen which makes life just a bit easier and cooking a lot more fun!

View of fridge-freezer and pull-out larders. We don’t normally have that much wine, but I won auctions on three boxes full of wine so now I’m rather unexpectedly rich on wine, if not money.. :-)
Dining room. My favourites here are the vintage empire-style chandelier, the Chinese cabinet and the cute Polish “Cyrk” poster (my birthday gift). This room turned out a lot more traditional looking than we had initially envisaged – mostly because of the period features already in the room and the antique furniture finds we laid our hands on along the way. Decorating can be quite an exciting journey – you never quite know where you’ll end up and often mistakes, path-corrections and chance discoveries can make the end result a lot more interesting than what you had in mind from the start! :-)

Finally, check out the lift below. This is brilliant – I only wish it was a real lift which I could take up to the loft! Sadly it’s just a trompe l’oeil wallpaper from style-your-door… Highly recommend this for a boring piece of wall actually – it certainly brougt some fun and colour to the disused door under our stairs :-)

| all images: trendey |

Welcome to my place! And where better to start off a housetour than in the hallway? My favourite items here are the quirky clown bust and the vintage-find mirror.

Another view. I really enjoy the colour infusion from the purple wood floor (painted in Farrow and Ball’s “Pelt”) and the roughness of the diy branch chandelier – which casts great shadows in the nighttime.  Still a lot of unfulfilled decoration potential and empty walls around, but slowly and surely I aim to fill them up!

Finally, a glimpse below of the living room… The glam flowers in the Chinese urn are from my husband on our wedding anniversary last week – regrettably not a permanent fixture in this room! :) That’s it for now, but the housetour will continue shortly. Next up, dining room and kitchen!

| photos by mia @ trendey |

trendey was born on August 20th in the year 2009. At this time both me and my big sister Henen were in the process of finding new homes; me a turn of the century apt in Stockholm, Henen a period house in London. Because of this, the interior design interest on both sides saw a huge upswing. We frequently sent each other emails with interior design ideas. Just as blog posts actually. Uploading them to this site was a mere simplification. Now 2 years of blogging have past – a milestone – and it’s been an incredibly stimulating and creatively inspiring time. Above all, I’ve appreciated being part of the blogosphere, talking to you guys! You’re the best and what makes it worthwhile. Hurray to all interior-geeks! Henen wrote her latest post in December of 2010 (from then she has been busy renovating her house) and me alone has been running the show since then. Now what could be a better b-Day gift to Trendey than a house tour at Henen’s? Stay tuned and it will soon be posted! Lovely photos are loaded and guess what: Henen is back! Good for me ’cause I need to totally focus on finish my doctoral thesis this Autumn. Now keep an eye out for Henen’s house tour – a bunch of deadly trendey pics – the one above is an appetizer; another view from her study in black. (And hey, all posts about our own homes ends up in this category) Hip hip hurrays to Trendey!

Think I need not say again how I love blue. Upper pic is a wall in our guest room/home office. Nothing special, but the simple can also be nice! And below that, also blue simplicity: a room at Hotel Stelor on the island Gotland.

A little more complex is this fresh loveliness from Anthropologie’s August news, also smokey lovely blueness. Yum:

hello dear readers! How are you these days of early summer ’11? I am busy, busy. busy…and you’ll some non-activeness here. But I will be back sporadically, I always am. In the meantime, a bedroom view – not for symbolizing what I’ll be up to ;) I won’t spend much time there, but I’ll be resting from decor buzz and biz, focusing all my energies on: WORK. A colour scheme close to heart: