My Place: Marcie Kobernus

Marcie Kobernus has always had a flair for creating bold interiors. “I painted my mum’s hall red once,” she recalls with a giggle in the kitchen of her three-bedroom semi in Bradley Stoke, where she lives with her family and dog, Pixie. The kitchen is a room that’s recently undergone a transformation – but then you could say that about much of the house. “I’ve never understood people who say, ‘I wallpapered last year so I won’t change it’. I’ve probably changed everything twice since then.”

Marcie’s kitchen was salvaged and installed on a shoestring

But this desire to keep everything fresh isn’t anything to do with keeping up with the Jones’ or splashing the cash. When her neighbours were having a new kitchen put in, Marcie says she pulled out their old suburban kitchen “just to see if we could redo it for free. I liked the challenge”. She twists on her stool, pointing out aspects that she scavenged, discovered or had donated to her: “those cupboards were free, that worktop was an old table that we found on the side of the road. The old cooker we sold and bought this new one for the same price, so technically it was free”.

The cooker is framed by a pair of old doors, inlaid with mirror and painted gold by Marcie

Her homely country-style kitchen, with reclaimed shelving, a black fridge decorated with gold leaf, and huge mirror behind the cooker made from an old pair of cupboard doors, cost just £80 to install in total. Only one of the original cabinets and the sink remains. “I’m just waiting for something to come along,” Marcie says.

Every item in the kitchen has been carefully restored, upcycled or enhanced

It’s partly her skill as an artist that has helped breathe life back into the things in the kitchen that had been destined for landfill. As a day job, following a string of small businesses, from personal training to making furniture from Papier Mache (“I didn’t sell a single thing, but goddammit I tried”), Marcie sells upcycled furniture at Stokes Croft’s Vintage Market. “Growing up, we didn’t have a lot of money and it really was make do and mend,” she says. “We had to vamp things up. When I moved into my first home, I literally had a TV and a sponge to sleep on. I went to Sofa Project in Old Market and started painting and stapling. Furniture doesn’t have to cost you a fortune – even if it only lasts a year, you can always repaint it or give it away.”

Marcie’s favourite piece of furniture, a chinoiserie cabinet picked up for a song in Stokes Croft’s Happytat

Leaving the kitchen and passing through the black-and-white vertically-striped hallway inspired by Ibiza’s Hard Rock Cafe, Marcie picks out her favourite find in the dramatic living room, with its emerald green ceiling, gallery walls and dark flamingo-patterned wallpaper. “I found this in the second-hand furniture shop Happytat,” she explains, gesturing to a turquoise chinoiserie cabinet with gold detailing. “It was so beautiful. I decided that if I had some money after Christmas and it was still there then I’d go back and buy it, and in the end I got it for £20. I cut some shelves and put the curtains in it, and then decorated in the style of Beauty and the Beast after I went to see the film.”

Marcie’s only extravagant purchase in this room was the wallpaper – everything else was salvaged

The whole house revels in Marcie’s busy eclectic style, from the palm frond wallpaper on the upstairs landing that covers all the internal doors as well as part of an enormous wardrobe that holds Marcie’s stock of fabric offcuts, to the old sliding doors behind her bed that create a spectacular ceiling-height headboard, picked out in gold and with leopard print panels overhung with draped fabrics. “I love patterns,” Marcie says. “Patterns make it look really busy, but actually I don’t like lots of stuff – I couldn’t have a bookshelf full of stuff. It would never stay organised. My fabrics certainly are an overload. Even I look at it sometimes and think, ‘Oh my god’.

The patterns continue in Marcie’s fabric-drenched bedroom

“People can be a bit overwhelmed when they come around for the first time – if it’s horror or delight, I don’t know. It’s Alice in Wonderland meets Jumanji!” she laughs. Back in the living room, with the patio doors out to the garden open and several pieces of painted furniture drying in the sun, ready to be taken to the market later, light pours onto the £5 sofa from Ebay piled with cushions, the mint green sideboard sporting a leopard hand-painted by Marcie, and a pile of clashing lampshades – her latest side project.

An eclectic gallery wall in the living room

“I don’t think a house is ever finished,” Marcie says, eying up the navy blue ombre walls of the living room that fade to green as they meet the ceiling. “I stop decorating one bit and start another.”

See more of Marcie’s creations at www.marciekdesigns.com

To see your home featured in a future My Place article, contact jess@bristol247.com