The next time I decorate by a colour of the year will be the first time. Don't hold your breath. I have nothing against this particular colour but it doesn't work with all the things I've collected over the years, and I am not about to discard carpets bought after hard bargaining with dubious merchants in Istanbul or Islamabad because they don't "go" with a paint colour that someone voted "colour of the year." In its place, I think the colour would be quite nice (better than this years choices, certainly). It's just that my place isn't the right place for it.

Hi sc42355 - that is great info, thank you. We bought a Queen Anne in Eaglemont that had plenty of room but the house needed TLC, updating, and repurposing of rooms (so for example there was a very large formal dining, separate sitting, and then another separate large billiards room - but a back-of-the-house not-very-functional kitchen...). What started as a small reno has become pretty significant - our own money pit! - but not an extension. We are replacing the heating, going back to floorboards, redoing all the paint and paper, shifting the kitchen and doing a full new kitchen, new bathroom, two ensuites and powder room, creating a pantry and a linen room, and redoing the upstairs into a master suite. We also have an original French tile roof which isn't yet on the agenda but that tip for tradies there will definitely be useful. We wanted to update the house also - so the style is more transitional than restoration, so we are removing the heavy curtains which should give us better access to the beautiful windows. I will dig out some photos. 1 - In terms of the coordination of building work, we are using Dale from Genjusho Building Design, who has been great, particularly as we have been pretty organic in terms of having a locked down plan on the work required (it evolves...). 2 - The heating that has gone in is hydronic (we had to go all the way down into the floors to sort the floorboards, so were able to take advantage of that process to get the piping in for the heating). 3 - Lighting as you know is the current challenge but early on we identified a pendant manufacturer called WEP who we wanted to get one (possibly two - Lora and Renata styles) from - http://www.weplight.com/ although these are more modern lights they sit well in the space. Lighting continues and with the high ceilings we are also putting in LEDs just about everywhere and relying on pendants more for the aesthetics. Generally BrightGreen have been the uniformly recommended LED to provide the truest light quality. 4 - depending on the age of your property you might eventually find like us that the gas line (ie the one that links out to the mains on the street) needs to be upgraded. Not a big deal but as always extra cost and good to integrate with any significant garden redesign work if you are digging up a fair bit (or jackhammering up concrete as we are) to get the new pipe in. 5 - We didn't have enough of the original baltic floorboards throughout the downstairs to use - they'd been cut through over the years unfortunately - so we ended up getting replacement wide boards for the floor. We ended up going for a hardwood rather than the soft baltic, and are using spotted gum which means we won't need to stain it, just seal it. We found Urban Salvage in Spotswood good for the wood searching, also had Shiver Me Timbers recommended. 6 - The kitchen and cabinetry we are using Peter Gill who has been very good and spans the traditional-transitional spectrum well. http://www.kitchensbypetergill.com.au/ 7 - The paint and paper work has been a challenge for us also - the walls are fragile and a lot (A LOT) of prep work required to get either paint or paper (or both) to come out looking high quality given the age of the building, and the tendency of the walls to keep shifting. We are using JN painting & decorating. We also had to put in a picture rail to avoid banging hooks into these walls - both because patching isn't easy and because the walls wouldn't necessarily hold a hook in the same way modern plaster does. The labour on this takes a while. The rails are from classicarchitraves.com.au. 8 - We are putting back in fireplace mantles to match the era, sourcing these from Agnews. 9 - We had to source a lot of tiles given the refit of bathrooms/kitchen/laundry and these comes from a variety of sources - Lifestile in Camberwell, Tierno Tiles in Prahran, Urban Edge Ceramics in Richmond (where we found a particularly great pale green handmade subway tile), Artedomus in Richmond and Schots in Clifton Hill. We are also getting a garden plan done - this will be a much longer exercise than this reno but the plot is 1500 sqm so we wanted to have an overall plan to guide us. cheers C

The biggest thing to remember is to have a plan before you set out and make any changes. A WIR is the way most people seem to go these days when redoing up an old space, or if you are building a new home, but a WIR is becoming much more glamorous these days, and they are quiet a destination. If you going to have a WIR, one of the biggest considerations is to decide if you are going to have doors, or if its all going to be open. Now if you are quiet a tidy person, then a full open WIR will be fine for you, but if you are someone that is not so tidy or good at putting things away, then I suggest that you finish of the WIR with some doors to hide any mess. Then the next major step is to make sure that if you are designing or getting it designed, that you have the right amount of areas for the right amount of each category of hanging to folding ratio, and also shoes and accessory storage too. There is obviously many more things to consider, but these are two major ones that people get wrong or don't consider. At the end of the day, each style of wardrobe has its pros and cons, but to date the WIR robe style dressing room is still the most popular, and I myself love this style because there is so much you can do to cater for individual needs. check out some of the WIR ideas we have on www.inthecloset.com.au

They look great in that photo, Northstar! Works beautifully. Will be fine over your bench. Didn't realise how large your p really space will be. Wow! No, if you replace pendants that have staggered drops, the fittings are completely removed and new pendant fittings are installed in their place. The electrician just shortens the drops without cutting them & the extra lenth is hidden away in ceiling.