The secret is out!... I've only been on the telly box.
Having been a fan of the previous series of the Great Interior Design Challenge, and sat at home thinking, "I could do that!". I had to apply when I saw the opportunity. Although the filled in application form sat on the side of my desk for a month whilst I doubted myself. In the end, I thought "Why the hell not?!" and sent it off with only a few days to spare. Before I knew it, a small film crew were at the house and I was chosen as one of the 9 designers. Out of thousands. I couldn't believe it.
7 days to design, £1000 to spend and 48 hours to complete... it's much harder than it seems.
My first brief... Global Hotel Chic... not really my style, so it was a bit concerning but after a little research I had a good idea of what I wanted to achieve.
One of the first difficulties I came across was how much "stuff" there is... seriously, there is so much "stuff" to choose from... where do you start? Well, in this case, you start with what you can actually get delivered in a few days, which does narrow your choices down a fair bit!
Anyway, after a week of work, I'm in London with mood boards in hand, ready to brief. Very nervous, but raring to go. I was pleased with how the briefing went, Dani, the homeowner, was very decisive and that was great.
One area of difficulty was the wardrobe doors... I think I may have confused the issue by making it seem like the new doors would be attached to the originals. Although not a fan of the original doors, I certainly wouldn't want to do anything to damage them and intended on keeping them as they were, but just hiding them. It's not necessarily the most practical of solutions, but with it being a guest room, I felt the compromise was worth it to have a cleaner look at that end of the room (having now seen the show, I'm not sure whether Dani would agree with that).
The headboard was a compromise to my original design that I was happy to make. I was originally torn between the idea of a decorative wooden headboard and the draped fabric anyway. In an ideal world I would have loved to put a large carved wood feature headboard in, but neither budget nor time would allow that in this case.
I was very happy with the result of this room. It had a very calming feel to it and I think I delivered on the brief... I also feel that I managed to get a bit of me into it, without it taking over the design.
What I would do differently...
I would have made my artwork a little calmer (I think the urgency of the situation came through a bit too much!), maybe darker with a little more gold and less pink.
Paint the inside of the wardrobe doors!... rookie mistake. (Although I'm sure many people would want me to not do the doors at all, they redefined that end wall and without that, it may have just been a bit of redecoration)
What I learned...
To check whether doors opening catch on rugs... although it was noticed before I finished, there wasn't enough time to change it before the end...a bit of forward planning could prevented that!
That I really enjoy doing this! (And more surprisingly, I really enjoy doing the TV bits!)
Unfortunately, project management issues were definitely evident here, but I hadn't noticed yet... hindsight is a wonderful thing!