Drey-Andra van der Merwe

Her advice to readers when designing an AirBnB rental: "Plan well before you start with your AirBnb and do a lot of research, even if it’s just on Pinterest. Look for furniture and décor items at second-hand stores. Use scrap wood, old roof trusses or thick pine beams that you can buy at hardware stores. Sand boards with electric wire brushes to achieve a rough texture or (if you have time) leave them in the sand for the ants to eat away. If you can’t afford large mirrors, replace them with a wide frame made of wood, rope, hessian, dried makalani or palm leaves. Buy or make the longest curtains you can find and raise the curtain rods. Remember: A flop can always be rescued… keep dreaming, changing and innovating!"

Drey-Andra believes that it’s safer to try painting techniques only on accent walls, because they can be repainted easily and cheaply if one gets tired of them.

"We treated the bathroom wall sections above the tiles to the ceilings with a plastering technique: Small amounts of oxide powder were mixed with tile cement, crack filler and bonding liquid and applied unevenly with a brush, sponge and trowel. (Start with the darkest shade and then lastly apply white paint lightly with a large sponge until the colour is light enough.)

Here and there accent walls were tackled with lime wash or plastering techniques for warmth and texture.

We did the limewash with small amounts of red and yellow oxide powder from Neo Paints with some diluted black PVA paint. This powder and black paint should be used sparingly and mixed with large amounts of white PVA, because oxide powder tends to dominate.

I used some of the leftover sea green wall paint for the paint techniques on the cupboards and also repeated it on the bedroom walls.

The kitchen cupboards were also done with a thinner smoother tile cement plaster technique and sea green, grey and white paint before seal-ing well.

Most of the furniture pieces were purchased from second-hand stores, donated by relatives or self-made.

A ball-and-claw coffee table was sanded down so that it matches the self-made headboard and now serves as a luggage rack at the foot of the queen bed.

The pre-loved dining room table was given a longer, rough, self-made tabletop so that the rough wood would match the other furniture pieces.

My mother deconstructed a large lounge chair and re-upholstered the front part but left the back open and drilled holes and wove coarse rope through it.

One of our farm workers welded wire light frames so that I could use them as a base to decorate with wood, rope, wool, beads and papier-mâché. The lights are either large or mounted in a large group on a wooden ladder to create statements."

Before

The second-hand ball-and-claw dining room table was
used for making two narrow tables (pictured below).

The original ball-and-claw dining tabletop was split in two,
making two narrow tables: one for the foyer and one below the TV.
Each needed 2 extra legs of which one was a cement support.
Bits of driftwood form a whimsical light fitting.

Cement balls can be made yourself or purchased from nurseries or cement pot manufacturers.

After