Velvet Jungle Interiors | Maximalist & Bold Interior Design

A Little Peek at My Bookshelf

December 12, 2016

Hi all !

I am officially exhausted from all the work on Mathieu’s project (you can catch up here), and there’s still finishing touches to go over and a big photoshoot ahead of us. So for today, as I rest my bones a little, I thought I’d do a small post about my current living room ! I’ve been so busy with other projects that it’s taken forever to unpack and start decorating it finally. I’ve got bigger progress to show you later on but for today, let’s focus on the main attraction (at least for me) : the bookshelf !

If you need a refresher, here she is :

This beautiful, already built-in bookshelf under the window.

I’m a total bookworm, but I’m also very picky about book covers. When I’m buying a book I’ll usually look up all the other cover options and choose the one I love the most. I didn’t always care about this but along the way I stumbled upon some amazing covers that really felt like art to me. Whether it was pictures, typography, or actual art. After that, I became obsessed. Now I’m not a total nutjob, if I want a book but can’t find it with a beautiful cover, I’ll still buy it, but I try to find ones that speak to me. There are so many fantastic artists out there for book covers, you can even check out my dedicated board on Pinterest. It’s kind of like vintage movie posters to me (and even some new ones), it’s the feeling of discovering a brand new artist out of nowhere. Thankfully, decor and art books have stylish covers down, so that makes it easy for us ! I’m getting a second bookshelf built right now so it’ll all be changing soon, but for now this is what I’ve done with it :

Most of my prints here are from Society6, I’m having a huge love affair with them at the moment. This is “Smoke ’em if you got ’em”.

The banquette is obviously getting a makeover, I just haven’t decided in what fabric yet. I think it’s a children’s bench too, which would explain a lot …

Here we have one of my all-time favorites, “Qué pasa?”.

And up above, I’ve been searching high and low for this print, after I saw a picture of it years ago (probably from a different artist). My love for Calvin & Hobbes knows no bounds so I had to add this to my collection : “Le tigre rayé”. It’s in a temporary frame right now, just because I wanted to see it up, but I’ll fix that very soon.

From this angle you can also see my newly purchased desk ! It’s a gorgeous vintage little thing that weighs 3 tons and I almost lost a finger carrying it but I’m in love with it. More pictures coming soon, as well a makeover, yay !

And here you can spy some major rug action… I’ll be doing a fuller post about my living room “upgrades” so far, as soon as I have time.

So there it is, I hope you enjoyed a little peek at my living room. It’s still too white for me, but I’ve got big plans for it right after I get through all this Christmas and New Year’s craziness. If you’re like me and waaaay behind on your shopping, good luck this week !

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Project Mathieu – Progress 3 : Tokyo Drift

December 5, 2016

This is the home stretch for Mathieu’s project, folks ! Today I’m sharing almost all of the progress in one big, fat post, and next time you see this place it’ll be a full on, drool-worthy reveal (with a nice before and after) !

Over the weekend we went Ikea-mad and built cabinet-after-cabinet until we went collectively blind ! There was still a lot of paint to get through before we could install but Mathieu was on a roll so we kept on building them and all of a sudden it was waaaay past midnight ! It’s gettin’ a little cabin fever-y in here… He tired out Rémy anyway :

This is real life on a big city construction site, folks.
We put up the cabinets against the wall to check out the result but they’re not installed yet.The next day we moved the cabinets to make room for paint, but we were pretty happy to see them built already. I started painting the light grey wall, which felt very, very good. After getting everything back to white I was really looking forward to seeing the colors in action, finally ! None more so than this baby :

(Just a disgusting first layer, don’t be scared !)

Oh yeah !! You’ll notice the lines from one wall to another, as well as with the ceiling, are not clean at all. With the textured walls it was pretty much impossible to use frog tape to my satisfaction, so I went old school and painted them free-hand. Stay with me here because they’re going to be all shoddy for the rest of the pictures. I don’t know about you but just seeing it like this is giving me hives. Let’s just breathe together, and remember that it’s fixed now, and you’ll be able to see it very soon.

Here’s the opposite view, the newly darkened wall next to the windows, already painted in the same shade. Still no regrets, they look fantastic together !

Everything that’s not painted in this picture is getting covered-up so don’t worry ! I’m very happy with all the color choices coming together. The kitchen countertops are wood and will blend great with the floors. There’s multiple touches of light grey coming together in the space, – between the walls, cabinet doors, and backsplash -, that are all slightly different and the layering is adding some serious warmth. All the color choices being on the “cold” spectrum, it’s a nice surprise.

Meanwhile in the living room, it’s still hurricane season.But Mathieu is pretty happy seeing his kitchen dreams coming true ! (Doing the happy dance…)

… so obviously pretending to work here.

Behold, things move fast one cabinets are installed ! So as you can see on this side, it’s half appliances, half storage. We’ve got that gorgeous sink I love (and am coveting for myself), a brand new dishwasher, and oven. And the new fridge to the right, just waiting over on the bench. Any minute now, son !

Here’s our fabulous backsplash choice. It’s leftovers from a different site but Mathieu really took to them, and they had just enough to get from the wall to the fridge. So we adjusted our plans to fit them in.

This pic is a “try-out” for the almost-final look. I mentionned a shelf above the backsplash in the last post, and the back of that shelf has now become a chalkboard paint strip ! I had some paint left from my own kitchen wall, so we covered some very thin MDF strips very easily. It’s a nice way to add a touch of black, as well as a touch of fun to the kitchen.The cabinet doors are coming along, the cooker hood is secured, and the fridge finally made it on the team, yay !

… Aaaaand this is where I’m going to stop today ! I know, it’s such a tease …! For now, the Ikea kitchen is fully installed, so is the backsplash and shelf (left to dry overnight), and everything is fonctional. All that’s left is the kitchen island but they’re going to do it while I’m gone so I probably won’t get many pictures anyway. It’ll be a nice surprise for the full reveal!

So, the next “Project Mathieu” post will be a full-feature with lots of details, and close-up pictures for your enjoyment. I’ll be doing a follow-up post after that on the whole cost, and I think you’ll be surprised to see how little this project cost all in all.

Tell me what you think of our choices now that they’re all layed-out and coming to life ! Hope you enjoyed following this crazy whirlwind of a project and its general madness ! It’s going to take a few days to get over the lack of sleep and general joint pains but we’re pretty proud of ourselves ! Enjoy your week everyone, see you on the other side !

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Project Mathieu – Progress 2 : Electric Boogaloo

December 2, 2016

On Monday, I promised you guys another update this week, and a major decluttering of the kitchen so we can finally see the cabinets get built clearly and how the rest will come together.
Well behold … I did not lie !

Can you even recognize it ? It’s soooo empty. This is the moment I realized it was going to look amazing. With a new organization, more space, and colors…
The rest? Oh no it’s totally gone, don’t, no, don’t look over there….

.. too late. Yikes. So ok it’s no so much decluttered as it is well, re-cluttered somewhere else. Look it’s going to be fine. I’m not going to show you the bedroom because that is way too intense. It’s not … ideal, but we’ll make do. But hey, look, you can see the new fridge ! (What a sad attempt at a distraction.)

So this is the whole room and the much better view of the kitchen now coming into the room. The kitchen cabinets are going to be sleek and low so the area is going to look very spacious !

We finished spackling the main wall, and now just waiting for it to dry to start painting. You can see from this picture we actually used spackle not only to smooth over the wall but to add in texture. It’s subtle but we created a bit of a pattern, that gives the eye a little extra something to focus on. We had tried it on the previous red walls years ago and we really liked the outcome, it adds warmth and interest to the wall and the whole room.

Now this is the part we haven’t talked about yet : the projector. In earlier pictures you’ll notice it was in a temporary spot, in the kitchen. One of the motivations for bringing down the wall was the home theater. Now Mathieu can have his projector exactly in the center of the wall, proudly a part of the whole room, and having it as far away from the screen as it could be gave him the opportunity to expand his already giant screen.

So he made a box to hold the projector, and once it was up we decided it would be a perfect base to use for adding more kitchen lights.

The two “wings” are centered also and after a few tries we decided two spotlights on each side is the perfect amount of light above the kitchen.
Now as you can see, the kitchen is disappearing fast ! That means we’re getting ready to put together the new one !

Mathieu here planned for a way to bring the whole kitchen away from the wall a few inches. This was mainly a solution to install the kitchen while avoiding some annoying obstacles, like unused pipes we couldn’t remove and a very stubborn former backsplash that was the stuff of nightmares… but he turned it around, never discouraged, and created a fake wall to not only hide the problems we were having, but also create a small shelf above the whole kitchen’s length as well. Genius, I tells ya !

Well deserved Coke break for Rémy.

Making the grid for a sturdier base.

And voilà ! This is the finished product ! A few panels of MDF is basically all you need in life.
And check out the lighting all installed and working (and an unexpected nod to the Illuminati with the projector’s box…) !

Just for show, this is what it’ll look like with the shelf on, but more on that later !

Now we’re not quite done yet. You can see the “beautiful” rental kitchen floors we never bothered to cover up, but that is all about to change ! We wanted to use the same laminate flooring we had put up in the living room a few years ago to really make the space as “one” as possible. Unfortunately we couldn’t find it anywhere and nothing seemed to come close which was a real bummer. So instead of going for “somewhat similar” we decided to break up the space. We happened upon a crazy sale in one of our now daily home improvement store outings, and Mathieu really liked one of the colors they had. It was the same height and size as the living room planks and it was about 4$ a sq. meter. They had just the right amount to do the whole kitchen so we just threw the whole of it in our cart and ran to the register before someone could stop us. Best deal ever !

It’s being installed as we speak and it looks beautiful ! You can see them both side by side here. The patterns are very similar, which is great for the transition. The darker color in the kitchen is going to look great with the light grey cabinets and really make the whole space pop !
It was destiny what can I say …

Finally today I’ll leave you with this great big pile of Ikea taunting us for the weekend !

This is it folks, we’re almost done ! I can’t believe how fast it’s going for such a small budget. The guys are working like crazy and I’m amazed at what they come up with. Next up we’ve got dark paint going up, which is going to be the best and biggest change for Mathieu I think, and then the kitchen will be up and running !

Come check back in on Monday, I’ll be cranking out another big progress post for you guys !
Have a great weekend and if you can’t wait until Monday, check out my Instagram for some behind the scenes !

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