Living Room Refurbish

This was a small project where I was asked by the client to spruce up the space with as little as possible. The new seating area needed to be light and airy, casual, modern, and comfortable. It also needed to seat a big number of people. We refurbished a couple of the existing chairs and a side table as requested by the client.

Guest Bedroom Turned Kids Playroom, A Project By Me

Hi everyone

I've just completed turning this dark guest bedroom into a kids playroom for a very lovely family and I'd love to share it with you.

The clients wanted me to use some items that were already available in their home;
Toys storage units that we later added one to, a fold out sofa, IKEA's toy kitchen, and the IKEA black board. I also had to keep in mind all the storage and play areas needed for all the toys and artworks the kids were making. The room had to be playful, fun, colourful, and inviting for kids to play in, do various activities, watch TV, and paint so without further due I will leave you with some before and after shots and some various other shots from the room. Enjoy the transformation and let me know what you think in the comments below!

Purge Your Shelves

الاحتفاظ بتذكارات صغيرة كثيرة و عرضها كلها على أرفف المنزل يعد خطأ فني لأن هذه التذكارات تصبح مصايد للغبار و عرضة للسقوط في حالة محاولة تنظيفها بالإضافة الى أن كثرة هذه التذكارات الصيرة يجعل من الصعب التركيز على أحدها و تمييز جمالها و لذلك بينما أترككم مع هذا المقال سأقوم بترتيب أرفف المنزل لدي ان شاء الله و عرضها عليكم قبل و بعد الترتيب

less is more when it comes to small nick nacks and souvenirs and displaying them on your shelves. Having too many small objects on display turn them into dust traps and causes the hazard of dropping some while trying to clean them. Plus, in order to appreciate the beauty and memory of things and focus on them you need negative space (emptiness) around the objects to "frame" them in a way. I will leave you with this article to read on the matter and I will be arranging my own shelves at home to show you my before and afters

click the image to be directed to the article on BlogLovin

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.

Residential Villa Concept Design, a project by me

تصميمي لمكتب هيرتج للأثاث و الديكور لفيلا سكنية في قطر. تصميم الفيلا في غالبه كان بالطراز الكلاسيكي المطور بينما كان طراز تصميم جناح النوم مزيجا ما بين الكلاسيكي و طراز هوليوود في العشرينات

My design work for Heritage furniture and decoration office in Doha of a residential villa in Qatar. The design style was mainly neoclassical in the villa and more of a fusion of retro design and neo-classical in the master bedroom suite.

The photos are of part of the master bedroom suite and the daily living

Master bedroom suit partial plan

Master bedroom

Master bedroom

Master bedroom suit siting area

Master bedroom suit siting area

Master suit bathroom 1

Ground Floor Daily Living

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.