As much as I love Christmas, and as fun as it was to build a Christmas-themed home in FFXIV, I’ve never been one to let the decorations sit around all year.
Now, I’m sure somewhere, reading this, my sister is calling me out very loudly right now for the mistletoe in our living room that never gets put away. But that’s just because I’m short and don’t have a ladder, I swear!
Anyway.
Once Christmas was over last year, I decided to transform my themed design into more of an everyday style. It was really important to me to keep the overall structure, because I loved how the ceiling and everything had worked out.
So I set out to do a few minimal changes, and ended up entirely transforming my upper floor too!
A little colour inspiration
With our house in the Mist, I have the hardest time getting away from true coastal design. I don’t know what it is. I always gravitate toward clean whites, warm light browns, and cool blues to create a lovely beachy oasis.
That was the biggest change in the design from the bright reds and greens of Christmas, and actually made a massive difference, especially in the kitchen area. I experimented a little with creating blue cupboards based on inspiration from this real-life home, and though I didn’t love them at first, they grew on me.
A whole new fireplace
The other major difference on the main floor, I replaced the masonwork stove with a custom-built fireplace of my own design.
It was actually inspired by another real-life home I saw. I wanted to use the same darker blue on the walls as was on the kitchen cupboards, and with the dark grey stone, it would have been too gloomy. Instead, the light contrast is really sharp, and brings out the coziness of the living room area.
Upstairs: Building around the main floor ceiling
The vaulted ceiling in the kitchen, inspired by a loft I saw forever ago, was absolutely essential for me to keep in this build. But it sure did create some unique problems upstairs!
Previously, I’d had the upstairs set up so that the bedroom and bathroom were close together so they’d avoid the white rectangular partitions jutting up through the floor from downstairs. The bedroom’s wall used to be about where the edge of the loft is, so you can tell it was pretty cramped.
The loft was my solution to that, and gave me a way to build with the entire upstairs without worrying about inconvenient partition bits. It did create a few of its own problems (it’s not tall enough for a rug to float on, apparently), but overall, I love how it turned out.
