Moving to Dhahran: BEFORE & AFTER of my Living Room

The inspiring products that I brought with me – 1. Elton Chair, 2. Henry Sofa, 3. Ivory Genie Lamp

It’s been 2 years since my husband and I moved to Dhahran. We got married just a year before we moved here while he was doing his MBA in Canada, so we didn’t have too many things to bring to Saudi. I shipped over a new couch and arm chairs, our old IKEA bed, a few lamps, and all the kitchen gadgets a girl could want!!

The rental house we had been given was… interesting… The furniture was quite dated and we had a pile of sand in what was supposed to be the yard. Now that I think back to it, it really was just an aesthetics issue, but it’s hard to think about “potential” when you’re overwhelmed by moving to a new country, and then end up in a house that feels like the 1970s.

Well, I shouldn’t be so harsh. The house had been painted, the appliances were fairly updated – if that’s what you call white appliances – and there was furniture! Luckily, my shipment arrived 3 months later, I bought a lot of new furniture, and had a fabulous dining room unit made by a custom furniture making company in Dammam, SAS (details in a later post).

It has taken me two years to get most of the basics in, and to figure out what to do with the space. I haven’t done any major structural renovations since the idea of it actually scares me…

I don’t have any other pictures of this but you can clearly see the 1970s-esque furniture in our house when we moved in. This is me (on the left) and my friends trying to do dance practice for a friends wedding. Bollywood style!

It took a fair amount of time to pull this space together mostly because I had to really dig for pieces that would fit my theme. My starting point was that I knew I wanted gray/blue walls in my house. That’s it… It’s not like I’m an interior decorator but I knew you had to start with some sort of a theme, and a color scheme was good enough for me!

I picked up a beautiful semi-gloss light blue-gray from Jotun since I was worried about going too dark. I also thought the sun could better reflect off semi-gloss as opposed to a matte wall. Any color in the room could easily be brought in through unique accessories so a neutral wall seemed to be a good starting point. I think I could still go darker, but I’ll deal with that headache another time…

Anyways, hope you enjoyed seeing the before and afters of my home as much as I did 🙂

L-shaped Couch (ordered from Jeddah) & Arm Chairs: West Elm (coming to Dhahran soon), Paint: Jotun (S2000-N), Picture Frames: IKEA, Lamps on end tables: Zara Home, Coffee Table & Blanket Basket: Pottery Barn (coming to Dhahran soon, again…), Pillow & Curtain Fabric: Al-Guthmi, Artwork: My own & Garima Singh (my wedding photographer), and Hassan Massoudy calligraphy painting bought from Arabian Collections Gallery in Al-Rashid Mall (re-opening soon).