The Jakarta House
For those of you have been following my adventures, you will know that I am originally from Australia but moved with my husband and sons to Jakarta, Indonesia at the beginning of January.
What was set to be a really exciting change quickly turned a little sour with the onset of Covid. Just a week after finally finding and moving into our new home, we were evacuated by my husband’s company back to Australia. Not that I am complaining - there are plenty of people doing it much worse than me at the moment!
The plan before moving to Jakarta had been to find a ‘blank canvas’ house so that I could unleash my design enthusiasm, going room by room, refurbishing and making the house into a home - our home. With that in mind, I very happily settled on a large house across the road from our sons’ school in South Jakarta (Expat central!).
With five large bedrooms, two large living spaces (sort of 3 really), three bathrooms and a play room, the house offered the perfect starting point. The first thing I did when signing the lease was to have the inside of the house repainted - a simple, classic white. Hard to go wrong when you start with a white wall.
Lots of opportunity here. Note the house was partially staged when these photos were taken. Not our furniture.
In anticipation of the ‘new start’ we had also sold or donated much of our old furniture before leaving Australia.
So now I find myself stuck in Australia (again, not complaining!) and just desperate to get started on the house. We are hoping to be back in mid-August but I have decided to get cracking on thinking about layouts, colour themes etc, even if I can’t do anything to the house physically just yet.
So, without further ado, please meet the house. As you can see from the pictures below, there is a lot of space to fill and much work to be done. We hadn’t even completely unpacked when we left!
There is still so much to do obviously - not just in terms of finding new furniture but also developing a colour palette that will flow throughout the house. There at least I have some early ideas.
Because of my love of sage, I already have had sage curtains made and installed in the house (zoom in on some photos to see them) and I will always love classical grey and cream colours. Not to mention the many brown Javanese bookcases we own!
Make sure to check back in over the coming weeks and months as I do more work on developing colour boards, sourcing beautiful bespoke items and drawing up room layouts.
In recent weeks I have started working with colour palette generators found on the web (who knew such things existed!) and I plan to write a separate blog reviewing the different programs I have come across. In the mean time, here is a tease of some early colour palettes I have been playing around with for the Jakarta House.
Let me know what you think, either in the comments section below or on my socials.
A :-)