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My Home Decorating StoryBeing a visual and creative person, I’ve always been highly attuned to the abundant smorgasbord of visual riches surrounding me in my environment. I’ve always loved the seaside, the beach, the colors, the openness, the lightness, the brightness, the expansiveness, the textures, the changeability ... Sea shells, driftwood, rocks and pebbles, the aqua-blue-green, coral-peach, sandy colors, and the accentuated sunny color contrasts ...
The light fluffy clouds towards sunset, imbued and outlined with magnificent coral-pink, and framed and encircled with yet another fine layer of meringue-like iridescent pale-yellow, joyfully foretell the perfect next day that is about to come ... As in the true fashion of the characteristics of water (H20), with its fluidity, changeability, and ebb and flow, these are reflected in the constant and magnificent contrasts and rhythms of daily weather patterns and the seasons.
The sound overlays of seagulls squawking while marauding, water crashing against the rocks, and splashing, rolling, tumbling, in advance and retreat, along the sand ...
I’ve been fortunate enough to be blessed with achieving and living in the home of my ‘wildest dreams’ for the past 9 years – an expression, a manifestation of many years of collecting home design features (including many rejected) along the way and incorporating them into my own ‘ideal’ design. Then finding and refining my own personal style and decorating my home incorporating all the things I love and that make me come alive. Many old and sentimental, many new and vibrant. All with a coastal and seaside theme woven through. My ‘Home Haven’ is bayside and positioned close by two majestic lighthouse beacons that symbolically represent a ‘guiding light’ to me, in a wonderful part of the world appropriately and quaintly called ‘Beacon Cove’, Port Melbourne. Just one short block and a two-minute walk and I'm right on the boardwalk, adjoining pier and looking across this magnificent bayside vista, with all the contrasts and activity, a wonderful feast for all the senses. The amenity of my area is truly wonderful, rejuvenating and exhilarating.
Interestingly, my home is located in an area that embodies great contrasts. It is in an historic suburb, one of the 1st settled over 200 yrs ago, with all its wonderful Victorian era buildings and landmarks. It is also located in an ideal part of this suburb, flanked on both sides by quality new inner-city housing developments, one block from a revitalized seaside boulevard and boardwalk, with cafes and restaurants galore, an enhanced sand beach, and bustling major pier entry point for visiting cruise ships - a perfect juxtaposition of the historical and the vibrancy of the new and modern and the interesting! It’s a truly wonderful place that incorporates a bayside/seaside feel, bonus quirky cosmopolitan living with many inner city amenities, yet with a genuine localized ‘village’ feel, a destination rather than a thoroughfare, and only 10 minutes from the City’s Central Business District (CBD) and 5 minutes from a vibrant newly refurbished (previously under-developed) Docklands/River precinct with restaurant/residential/retail galore. Great contrasts, the best of all worlds … As a relatively newly built dwelling (to my own individual design and completed between November 1996-March 97), my home reflects the Victorian era Italianate features of a previous beautiful exquisite era, with touches of Art Deco, and mixed with pristine new and modern influences.
Each room decorated differently, yet with a linking color or theme that blends with and carries into the next room and then builds upon it. I personally prefer to work on a neutral base canvas/walls in nougat/cream, against the simplicity, earthiness and boldness of shiny, lush, natural brush box and oak floor boards, and then build color and character with accessories, items and features. Equally, the opposite approach is really great – from a delicate pastel colored wall backdrop to contrasting or complementing colors in detail work (cornices, architraves etc) to fabulously wild, boldly colored feature walls, or entire rooms in bold paint. Whatever captures your personality and your preferences. In my case I have limited wall space, with great big picture windows all round (42 in total throughout my home, including upstairs and the attic) that take in and incorporate the vista from my garden and outdoors, and great liberating, double opening Victorian replica style doors that lead into adjoining rooms with great flexibility to manage space, feeling and flow ... My aim was to have the beautiful outside surrounding my home invited into the interiors of my home … For the informal living areas - Aqua with purple/lavender, blending into mint green with apricot-peach, to the more formal room which picks up with a dusty apricot-peach and blends with mocca and classy cream, and then spills across to the home office which mixes a musky pink-apricot with black accents. Make a statement with a great sofa and fabulous rug and then place the trimmings, the cushions, vases, candle holders, paintings, picture frames etc . So, let me help guide you to find how you can express your core individuality in your home decorating environment ... So, tell me what is your story – so let’s start by unraveling your story - Here’s to You Achieving Your Ideal Home Place! Kathy Baker
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