Private Villa Refurbishing, a project by me

Hi everyone


I know it's been a long while since I last posted but I'm currently overseeing a few projects that I've designed and that is keeping me crazy busy.

You can check the updates that I post from all the work sites on my Facebook page, Instagram account, and snapchat account @nadasinteriors where I'm actively posting photos and videos from the work sites am handling.

For now I will leave you with these before and after photos of a small refurbishing job that I just finished.

Family Room Before 1

the room was repainted blue on one side and beige on all other sides, the dropped beam in the ceiling was painted to match the blue wall. (furniture was pre-selected by the client)

This wall was going to be dedicated for the TV and needed to be more interesting

Wooden arches with composite stone tiles backdrops and hidden light were added to add interest behind the wall mounted tv in the living room

The old TV unit which needed to be replaced in the living room

Custom designed and made TV media unit with brushed brass laser cut screen fronts and special fitted lights, the walls were given a new coat of special decorative paint

The Majlis/Salon & Dining needed some interest to be added to the plain walls, the light sconces were hung too high and needed to drop

moldings were added to the wall with tinted bronze mirrors within, the wall sconces were dropped in height and the room got repainted with decorative special effect antique paint in beige

Majlis Before 2

Majlis After 2

Majlis Before 3

Majlis After 3

My Structured Bohemian Bedroom, Room Tour

I finally bring to you a well over due room tour, my own bedroom's that is since I've promised a while back that I will be sharing before and after's from my own home and that I'll share the overall design of the apartment 1 room tour at a time, I've already shared Farida's nursery, my 15 months old daughter, and this is the second room tour that I share.

My husband and I started looking at the design of the bedroom before our wedding, more than two years ago, We first worked on the layout, we had a great big niche in the bedroom that we decided to close off completely as a custom closet and we got it fitted, wall to wall and floor to ceiling and that was the best thing we did as our room is small as is our apartment and we try to make use of every single inch in it. The bed is actually bigger in reality than on the plan, and we ended up putting two dressers side by side instead of one because we needed the extra storage.

Then we started looking at colors, texture, and styles. We wanted something dreamy, has a little glamour chicness to it, not too pretentious, and has something grounding. Our wedding accent color was purple but it isn't why we chose purple for this room and it wasn't my sole choice, in fact my husband asked for lavender to be our paint color and that's where we started with our color scheme 

 Then we looked online and at different stores for furniture, hardware, finishes, and furnishings and we've put it all together to achieve this dream- what I would call "structured bohemian"- bedroom that we call ours.

And here is a more detailed photo tour of our bedroom

the closet was custom made to fit into the existing niche

I ordered designer brass pulls for the closets from Lewis Dolin, they shipped them to Doha directly

The beautiful hooks shabby wooden carved plate is from Zara Home 

The wallpaper was a limited edition online only purchase that was available at Anthropologie, I purchased the last few rolls they had left and they shipped them over to Doha. The bed was custom made with no headboard or foot board at a local shop in Doha. The beautiful bed cover that adds amazing texture and color to the room is a purchase we got on our honeymoon in Morocco. We love adding pieces to our home that we've purchased on trips, they add character to our home and remind us of the beautiful time we had there.  

The glass coasters and photo frame are wedding gifts from my cousin

The night stands are also from the Ikea Malm collection, I added these brass and mother of pearl handles from Anthropologie to customize them. The table lamps are from Ikea as well.

These two Malm dressers and makeup table are from Ikea but are customized by me be adding one of the pulls I purchased for the closet to the table and hand painting the gaps between the drawers in antique gold. You can check out the tutorial here. We added this piece of tapestry to temporary cover up where the old window style AC was fixed after we've replaced it with a split unit AC. I will have to revisit this part of the room as I'm not 100% happy with the current look of the tapestry in the room. 

The curtains were custom made in synthetic silk with an antique weave texture. They have a french pleat and are hung right under the crown molding and are 15cm longer than the wall in height so that they break nicely at the floor as they do. The mirror is from Life Style and it's a cheap replica of the famous Venetian mirrors

I have a few memorabilia from our wedding setup in nice vignettes on top of the dressers

I love to mix and match not only furniture in a room but also textures and in this case bedding, don't be afraid of mixing different colors and patterns within a room, they enrich it and add depth to a room

 Your bedroom, or apartment, or home for that matter do not need to be big and/or cost a ton for them to be beautiful. All they need is to reflect your personality and what you'd like to feel in them.

I hope you liked this room tour and the before & after's. I'd love to hear what you think and answer any questions you might have in the comments below.

Family Room/ Play Room/ Laundry Room, a project by me

I'd like to bring to you the latest project I've worked on. This was a challenging project as the client had a very short period of time to execute it (It was done in 10 days), The budget was very limited, and the room needed to function as a Laundry room, Play room, and a Family room due to a baby being born into the family about 2 years earlier- now a toddler who needs her own informal space to play and thrive in.

The design needed to be functional, kids friendly, spacious looking, and colorful while serving all purposes.

The family wanted to conceal all of the laundry appliances, baskets, ironing table, and drying rack when not used and thus I designed a custom aluminum closet with perforations to allow the humidity to escape. The closets were made to match the existing wall to wall, floor to ceiling aluminum closets used for storage along the wall.

The walls needed a lot of work as it had a lot of cracks, peeling plaster, and leakage marks so we had some plaster work to be done that was then followed by primer and a beautiful sky blue paint.

The dining table and chairs were already in the house, we just moved them over from another space in the villa so that they serve a better purpose in this room.

A TV is supposed to be hung on the wall above the white side-board.

Colored Initial Plan

Custom Aluminum Closet Design

Custom Aluminum Closet

Featured on Apartment Therapy and Project Nursery!

I'm so excited to the news I just got today about my daughter's nursery being featured on Apartment Therapy, one of the best websites that deal with apartment living, interiors, and life in general and one that I read on daily bases. You can check out the feature on this link

In July, Farida's nursery was also featured on Project Nursery, a website that specialises in babies and kids rooms and parties and the prep and design of both and it's definitely worth checking every now and then. The nursery was featured as being one of the top nurseries in their project gallery for July 2015! You can check that out on this link.

Farida's Nursery Tour

Today I finally bring you a full tour in Farida's nursery. Just a back story for whoever wasn't following me long before Farida is my 1st born child and my sweet little baby girl, not so much a baby now that she is 1 year old and acts like a toddler, there is really a great difference!

Enough of the sweet baby talk, pun intended, I will let you enjoy the photos of the tour, you can always post any questions you have.

We were on a budget when we started designing Farida's nursery and we figured we wanted a nice nursery that we can all enjoy and not just Farida, I know that to make a big impact you don't need expensive furniture, you need a wow factor.
I first saw those wall decals in a nursery tour and I fell in love and just had to get them so I looked them up and they are sold by http://www.wallsbymur.com/ and they deliver to Doha- yeeaay- they have the decals in different shapes and colours and sizes so that wall was my Wow factor right there, the rest of the walls are painted a very light grey.

I knew I didn't want to do pinks but I still wanted something glamorous and girly so, whites, golds, peaches, and mint it was.
The walnut veneered false parquet was already installed in the rest of the apartment and when we found out we were expecting we decided to put the same parquet in there for continuity. It's scrubbable and cleans very easy. We had a soft sheep hide to soften up the room under the poof but no rug as of yet

The chair is called the SANDBY chair and it's from Ikea, It wasn't expensive and I thought I could always repurpose it.

The bookcase doubles as storage for toys at the bottom. It's also from IKEA and is called the HENSVIK Cabinet with shelf unit 

The cushions were bought from an Etsy shop which unfortunately isn't there anymore but you can always find similar ones on www.etsy.com

The light grey boxes and the blanket on the chair are from Zara Home

The sheep hide is from IKEA as well.

Gold metallic poof is from morocco and it was ordered from Etsy as well from this shophttps://www.etsy.com/shop/MaisonMarrakech

Goats dolls were purchased from IKEA, do you see a pattern here? we went with sheep, lambs, and goats as decorative accepts in the nursery.

This frame is from Mamas and Papas and was a gift to us from my cousin, It comes with plaster that you can use to do an imprint of your child's hand or foot, unfortunately every time we tried the plaster crumbled so I ended up using the imprint that Farida's daycare did of her hand, that still counts as me doing it right?

The books were almost all ordered from Amazon, not because they are not available here but because I was pregnant and working full time and didn't want to look around and I had already looked up the books I wanted to buy and found lists of must have baby books so it was easier to order them online.

the photos are of us with Farida on her Soboo' (an Egyptian celebration of the newborn baby once they are 1 week old- my baby is 1/2 Egyptian)

The little crown was made by me for her 1st tooth celebration party (a Palestinian tradition were the first tooth of the baby is celebrated, that's her other half!)

The owl candle and polar bear bank are both shopping finds by my husband in Bristol

the two ring jewelled boxes are our engagement party give/aways. The colours look great in her room and I figured she will end up using them one day!

A nice find by my parents in Turkey on one of their trips

Farida's bed was the most expensive item in the room, It was from Mamas and Papas and it has 3 level steps from birth to 3/4 years old, I figured I'd get a bed that would grow with her instead of getting a small bed at first (we co-slept for the first month only at my parents' house so they had a small cot)

The fitted bed sheets are from Etsy but the shop has closed.
The sleep sheep was a God Send! it serves as a white noise machine which worked wonders with Farida.

The cloud pillow was hand made and ordered from Kokoko shop on Etsy https://www.etsy.com/shop/kokokoshop

The baby mobile was hand made as well and ordered from Hingmade.by.hand

Blanket and Bunny from Mamas & Papas Middle East

The adjacent wall to the decal mural wall was kept simple. The frames are from IKEA, two of the frames have the baby nursery decor posters which I've designed and are available for sale on my Etsy shopNada's Printables 

The other two frames have a photo of Farida on her first tooth celebration party and a hand me down hand cross stitched image of a girl with lambs by my great aunt Mahdieh Bitar

The other side of the room had a full changing station as I'd like to call it.

The HENSVIK armoire from IKEA which holds Farida's dresses, shoes, and some other items that I want to keep out of sight. 

The BIRKELAND chest of drawers from IKEA as well has a changing mat and basket that collects wipes, creams, oil, and powder on top and a box shelf hung above that helps tremendously with changing because everything is at finger tips and I don't need to turn to leave Farida's side.

The box shelf isn't available at IKEA anymore and it wasn't actually white it was brown we just had our friend spray paint it to match the room's furniture

The handles on the chest of drawer were changed, those mint green handles are not the original handles I ordered them online on Etsy as well fromhttps://www.etsy.com/shop/ShopRethink

The two white big baskets are from Zara Home, the one on the right is a hamper where I throw dirty clothes while changing and the one on the left is lined with nylon bags and I use it as a trash basket.

The mirror is again a great find by my husband in Bristol

The custom cross stitched framed embroidery of Farida's name was a gift from my great aunt Mahdieh Bitar 

The changing mat was from mothercare MENA and I had 4 differently patterned covers custom made on Etsy by the same person who did her fitted sheets

The wall clock in the shape of a lamb was ordered via Etsy as well by https://www.etsy.com/shop/decoylab

This is all I have on Farida's Nursery. I hope you've enjoyed the tour, I will hopefully be sharing a home tour with you soon showing you my flat.

What did you like most about the nursery? Do you have any questions? Need help designing your own child's nursery? let me know!

XO