LIFE WITH LILLIAN
White wood gives my dining area a fabulous summer feeling.
Tired cabinets have been given a new lease of life with a coat of white paint!
certain amount of inconvenience, but often, just a new coat of paint, strategically applied, can bring some spectacular results. Mine did absolutely wonders.
PAINTING THE CEILING WHITE I had always wanted to do something about my panelled wood ceiling. In those days when we built the house (in the early Seventies) it was trendy to have wood paneling all over the house, on the walls and on the ceilings, usually given a natural varnish finishing. Mine was thus nearly forty years old. It was time to give my wood new life. In any case, the ceiling of my house is low compared to many of the new homes of today, and the “dark wood” look strongly accentuated this “low” feeling. With the kitchen looking so fresh and modern after the renovation, its neighbouring room simply cried out for home improvement as well… so I gave the WALLS and the CEILING of my dining and living areas three
42 FENGSHUIWORLD | JULY / AUGUST 2013
fresh coats of the whitest of white paints and you can see from the pictures that this has made my chandelier come alive. This old light fixture has been hanging in my dining room for at least thirty years, yet no one had noticed it until I changed the colour of the room. Friends who had been visiting me regularly for the past five years all asked where my sexy new chandelier came from! But it was not simply the lights that looked brighter. Te entire room just felt better, and for every one of us, the new white colour raised our energy levels to wonderful new heights. Feng shui wise, it was incredible. Everyone reported feeling happier and lighter. They wondered why I had waited this long to do this. Te walls looked and smelt so new; I also put new decorations on the wall just as I had done for the kitchen wall. Previously, the dining room walls
had Buddhist thangka paintings. Now I decided to use the opportunity to hang an exquisite flower embroidery my brother Phillip had bought for me from Vietnam. My talented niece Audrey who is married to my nephew Han Jin is an aspiring artist and had painted me a stunning white hibiscus last year that had bloomed in my garden - so I also used this opportunity to hang up this painting on my wall. It blended into the room sending out rays of love. I loved it!
Ten on my other wall I decided to
display a very special painting that had been given to me by one of my Russian students, showing me wearing the ball gown and crown of a Russian Empress. It is a great conversation piece, as well
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