I love decorating for friends coz it serves two purposes. One, I get to hang out with them for a full day and two, I get to scratch my creative itch. My friends are my pillars of strength, they contribute to my life in ways that I could never pay back. There should be some perks of being friends with Preethi Prabhu, so I am starting this new section on the blog called “Will Work For Food (WWFF)” where I style for my people and not charge a professional fee, instead they feed me 🙂 Sounds perfect!
This living room makeover started almost a year ago. It took me a while to convince her to paint over this large Buddha mural that she had painted in the living space. It was a gorgeous mural no doubt, but there were a few things about it that did not work for the space. Like it was not centered, not at eye level and the loud texture around it was doing nothing for it.
So with some convincing, I managed to get all the walls done in my favorite white. To let her go crazy with color, I decided to paint the doors in different bright colors on which she has painted murals of her choice. Also, painting the walls all white, means I can infuse a ton of color without overwhelming the space.
So walls ready, doors ready, using existing furniture, it was time to do some styling. Here are the before shots.
The furniture layout needed a slight fixing and the Love shelf on the wall was too close. We added one of her gorgeous paintings above the sofa. The scale of the painting with the scale of the artwork, kind of works. This is work in progress (that is why the part 1, and so much work happened after shooting these images), so we will have more things on the wall. The artist herself painted the typo on the cushions. The striped rug brings the whole look together.
Opposite to the couch is a TV mounted on the wall which looks pretty slim, we added the minimalist clock above it. The rabbit hole mural that is the magic entry to the daughters room, has a matching painting that hides the ugly electrical box. The blue wave is the drop zone of keys, all of these things Girija already had, it just found a new place.
Some of this green is going on, on the carpet in front of it, so nothing really is floating on its own. I am so completely in love with this green and the mural on the door. I think it provides the perfect pop of color and keep it chic too.
If you have been following me on Instagram, you have seen me clean up this shelf and style it a few weeks ago and put up a before and after picture on the stories. I come back here after several weeks and most of it looks the same. The bookshelf was a naked plywood one that I got painted white, it disappears in the background and the stuff in it pops. The color in the kids artwork in the shelf, ties in with the colors in the cushion. The three shelves on the wall are my favorite of all the DIY’s done here.
They were very brown and I have no idea why I did not take a before picture. I used yellow and pink to distress paint on it and it looks absolutely amazing for me.
This pink and yellow are from the other side of the living room, where the doors are painted pink and yellow and have the most gorgeous murals on them.
To the left of this door, there is a tiny informal seating area. I used canvas frames that she had lying in her studio to make frames for the masks on the wall. The abstract Buddha is one of my favorites, if I hadnt hung it here, I would have most definitely stolen it.
The artist in her zone here.
I love styling with her art and about 20 pieces of her art is in my studio (borrowed of course). The reason why this is part 1 is coz there is more. We are yet to add curtains, side tables, picture ledges, more art and furniture. I have also made some clever tweaks in her studio to manage the overflowing canvases of all sizes. I even distressed this very brown low seats and added white to make it disappear and let the colors pop. All that and more in the next post.
If you want to check Girijas art, look at here instagram handle 2flatbrush, if you want to know what I am working on next, follow me on instagram.
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