You need light and bright. Being rented is tough. First change out the drapes with to the floor length. Cream with a horizontal stripe of brown to match or furniture. This will 1. get rid of the horrid things hanging there 2. pull the initial visual to that wall instead of the floor. Tall and high colors ( mango, aqua, yellow) decorations on your mantel with shorter cream and brown items. Then a large square table in the middle, painted distressed cream, with high color items setting on it. DIY project or Ikea. Green is the number one calming color, just don't let it put you to sleep. :)

@thinkforothers, Ha-ha that's so funny about your American trip but yes I use the duvet as a top sheet. As for getting the dooda back into the cover, I have a pretty simple method and it doesn't take allot of effort nor does it include being swallowed up by the duvet in the process as you said ha-ha..... but there is a bit of back and forth around the bed. I flick the duvet open onto the bed, I grab the one corner of the doona head up towards the respective corner and pull the duvet back towards my hand a little too and place it down, repeat on the other side, then I grab each top corner seperately holding the doona firmly in the corner and pull it up to the headboard, whilst walking back to the end of the bed I lift the cover slightly, allowing the doona to get further swallowed up by the cover, then I'm left with slipping either corner of the doona into the duvet. I do up the buttons then holding the bottom of the duvet, I flick the cover, towards the headboard, so that the doona edges forward in the cover and even flick the doona on both sides of the bed left to right and vice versa and it's usually perfect. Its very easy doing a single doona by again spreading the duvet over the bed, grab the doona corners, one in each hand, walk them up to the corners, lay it down then pick up the dooda by the top corners and shake a few times just straight down, even stand on a safe stool or on the bed and you will usually find the duvet with eaze it's way down with just the bottom corners to slip in and again voila!!! Unfortunately, when I bought two of my duvet sets from Ezibuy, I bought NZ king which is a bit wider that an Australian king size and I didn't know that at the time and I have a bit of slack on the sides but it doesn't cause any problems and what I mean by this is, that the doona doesn't slip all the way to the left or right, it does stay in place. Hope that explanation was clear, I should do a video ha-ha Cheers, Barbara

Also take a look at Room and Board....they have several tables with different wood finishes or wood/steel/metal bases and a good selection of various tabletop materials. Also if you prefer a wood table, an area rug underneath the table could also help to break up all of the wood too.

These houses were designed to look good from the street, regardless of what the orientation was for the Sun. Everything depends on your budget and how far your prepared to go. A friend's house in Queenstown faced the street, the toilet and bathroom had the best view of the lake and the Sun. They got a house removal Coy in, jacked it up put it on the truck drove out and turned it around and reconnected all the services. It then faced the North and West great views and warmth, doubled its value in 3 days!. I replaced my storage water cylinder with a outside gas one, picked up enormous space in our laundry. Another tip is to draw up your "dream" plan, then overlay it over the existing and see what you can really do, your then not influenced by what is already there, and often get a much better insight and removed from the existing. Good luck, its very rewarding and make it fun!