Designer and singer Tanvi Shah wanted a chic office. But when the carpenters she hired weren’t helping her much, she decided to take matters into her own hand. Instead of heading out to different interior decor stores to look for what she wanted, she looked around her immediate surroundings. “There was an abandoned cycle lying around the office and I like cycling. So, I brought the cycle up to my office, painted it and placed my design board on it. Now, it serves as my drawing board,” she says. And that’s not all she’s recycled. Crate wood went into designing her other office tables. “You get them in small shops or other granite yards,” she adds, “Now I’m working on my shelves, which will be made of bathroom pipes.”
Miniature photo frames hang from a crate wood board on her walls. The frames are upturned cookie tin lids and the tins themselves hold pencils and painting brushes nearby. The lights that hang from the ceiling are bulbs fitted into old pickle jars and empty alcohol bottles are used as either planters or lampshades. A large wall on one side is made of cork. “It keeps the room cool in summer and warm in winter. The plus side is I also get to use it as a notice board,” smiles Tanvi.
The cork wall also has a black tree made of masking tape. “It took me about two months to put all this together since I was doing it on my own. The door had to be glass and to give it the Tuscan touch that my office has I painted the sides in red, purple and yellow. It’s a small workshop-cum-studio and I wanted to make it feel like home,” Tanvi adds.
