Gillian Cal­iste

Ni­ki Ro­drigues is at it again and this time she is tak­ing her knowl­edge and flair for home de­sign and dec­o­rat­ing to the liv­ing spaces of oth­ers. Some are even liken­ing her to the lo­cal Joan­na Gaines af­ter the Ko­re­an-Amer­i­can de­sign­er of HGTV renown.

From liv­ing rooms, bed­rooms, prayer rooms and at-home of­fice spaces in­doors to out­door pa­tios and back­yard re­treats, Ro­drigues re­cent­ly told Sun­day Guardian that she wants to share her de­sign savvy and bring some style and vibe to es­pe­cial­ly those who think they can­not af­ford to spruce up their liv­ing spaces.

Her lat­est project “RE-De­sign on a Dime” has been hav­ing glow­ing re­views from her on­line au­di­ence.

The moth­er of eight is known lo­cal­ly as a home­school­er, en­tre­pre­neur and Do-It-Your­self (DIY) crafter, hav­ing been fea­tured on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions in the me­dia, in­clud­ing in this news­pa­per.

When Ro­drigues' Daugh­ters of the King bou­tique and Made in His Im­age con­sul­tan­cy were shut down by the pan­dem­ic in 2020, in March of that year, she start­ed the Face­book page “Liv­ing Large” to show how her house­hold lives as a Chris­t­ian home­school­ing fam­i­ly of ten.

“One of the things that I've al­ways loved was a de­cent home and I would nor­mal­ly get lots of in­spi­ra­tion when I would trav­el and go to the dif­fer­ent ho­tels. Be­cause I couldn't go abroad, I thought I would fix what I had be­cause I bore eas­i­ly. I start­ed the page Liv­ing Large, and it didn't start off as a home dec­o­rat­ing page but was re­al­ly about me show­ing peo­ple how we did life as a large home­school­ing fam­i­ly. I end­ed up get­ting the nick­name 'Avid DIY­er' and my chil­dren re­named me 'Mum the Builder' be­cause I picked up wood­work­ing and more DIY,” she said.

With the trac­tion picked up by her page, Ro­drigues took her DIY projects to the pub­lic in Au­gust last year.

“Peo­ple would have seen what I was do­ing for my home, and they want­ed the same for theirs. And I just came up with the hash­tag 'RE-De­sign on a Dime' be­cause what I was do­ing was on a very tight bud­get,” she re­called.

Her clients and 10,000 fol­low­ers call her work “in­spi­ra­tional” and “beau­ti­ful”, mar­vel­ling at her abil­i­ty to com­bine items that she crafts her­self with ex­pert shop­ping skills.

As a “nat­ur­al” shop­per Ro­drigues is of­ten able to scope out the best deals.

“So for ex­am­ple, a client need­ed a so­fa ta­ble, and every­where I looked, it was re­al­ly as­tro­nom­i­cal­ly priced and of course, I had to re­design her home on a bud­get, so I de­cid­ed to build one for her. The night be­fore I was sup­posed to go on the in­stal­la­tion, I built her one,” she in­formed.

Peo­ple al­so love the fact that Ro­drigues gives peo­ple who think they can­not af­ford it, an op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­hance their space. Us­ing the hash­tag “your home is your cas­tle,” she en­cour­ages oth­ers to make their homes in­to their sanc­tu­ary or oa­sis.

“I try to dri­ve the point home that re­gard­less of where you are; whether you're rent­ing or oth­er­wise, you're work­ing every day. When you come home, you de­serve your space to be your cas­tle,” she said, adding that see­ing the awe and sat­is­fac­tion of clients gives her joy, and some­times their tears bring tears to her eyes.

Purple Passion bedroom for teen by Niki Rodrigues.

“I just left a sin­gle mum's home. She said she would have a lit­tle mon­ey from time to time but would say it could be used for some­thing else, but af­ter see­ing what I was able to trans­form her liv­ing room in­to, she cried, and she made me cry. She kept say­ing she couldn't be­lieve it, that she was so blessed by this sim­ple thing and see­ing her blessed, made me feel blessed. These are re­ac­tions that I'm hap­py to get be­cause you're bless­ing homes, you're bless­ing fam­i­lies, you're bless­ing peo­ple,” Ro­drigues said.

When con­tact­ed to do a space, Ro­drigues re­quests pho­tos or a video show­ing var­i­ous an­gles of the area, ad­min­is­ters a per­son­al­i­ty and de­sign style ques­tion­naire, in­quires about things they would like to keep, gives an es­ti­mate and goes to work re­search­ing, sourc­ing and build­ing pieces for her vi­sion for the room which she most­ly keeps a sur­prise.

She makes cof­fee and con­sole ta­bles, wall dé­cor, and planters and is not afraid to try some­thing her clients see on Amer­i­can style, craft and vin­tage items sites Pin­ter­est or Et­sy and re­quest of her.

One of her most re­cent pieces is an elab­o­rate wall planter with shad­ow box­es filled with suc­cu­lents (plants with fleshy leaves and stems) and a wood­en name­plate of the client.

Through Ro­drigues' work, some clients be­gin to see the po­ten­tial in their oth­er­wise bland or bor­ing spaces. Oth­ers are mo­ti­vat­ed to tack­le clut­tered spaces they have been avoid­ing since Ro­drigues gives them in­struc­tions on what should be cleared out, cleaned up or paint­ed be­fore she ar­rives. Most give her full reign over what changes should be made, and she en­joys the free­dom to cre­ate with­in the bud­get.

Bring­ing light, open­ing up the space and re­mov­ing the clut­ter changes the en­er­gy of a home. A lit­tle paint can go a very long way in trans­form­ing the look of a space, so can chang­ing the tex­ture, colour or length of cur­tains or drapes and re­ar­rang­ing, con­fig­ur­ing or mov­ing out pieces.

Such was the case when Ro­drigues re­designed a space she called the “Faith-filled Fam­i­ly Room”. Chang­ing the colour of the walls from a turquoise blue to shell white, re­plac­ing the short cur­tains with floor-length drapes and re­order­ing the fur­ni­ture cre­at­ed a crisp, clean look in the room which the fam­i­ly used for prayer and watch­ing TV.

She's al­so done a “Pur­ple Pas­sion” bed­room for a teenage girl com­plete with LED light strips which she said was a hit with teens these days. Con­trolled by re­mote con­trol, the eye-catch­ing strips change colour or even blink to mu­sic cre­at­ing a mi­ni light show.

LED light strips were al­so gain­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty, es­pe­cial­ly, in TV or en­ter­tain­ment rooms as peo­ple en­joyed plac­ing them on walls, ceil­ings or around the tele­vi­sion to add a lit­tle dra­ma and ex­cite­ment, she said.

Ro­drigues likes to in­fuse plants to in­to her de­signs as they bring life in­to a space. Since many clients are un­able or too busy to care for live plants, she said, ar­ti­fi­cial ones that look re­al­is­tic are her go-to.

As clients have start­ed ask­ing for de­tails they have seen her do for oth­ers in past projects, she has be­gun to stock cer­tain items, in­clud­ing the ar­ti­fi­cial plants which she said she is able to track down at prices way be­low those of typ­i­cal home goods stores.

Post­ed on her Liv­ing Large page, Ro­drigues' RE-De­sign on a Dime be­fore and af­ter videos and pho­tos doc­u­ment her projects. At times her hus­band or one of the chil­dren ac­com­pa­nies her on jobs, as­sist­ing with the cam­era work or mov­ing items. With her el­dest be­ing 22 and her youngest three, the trip is of­ten an op­por­tu­ni­ty to spend some one-on-one time with the child that goes along.

Busy sea­son for Ro­drigues

The gift­ed DIY­er has been busy dur­ing this Christ­mas sea­son, al­though most of her projects were not specif­i­cal­ly based on a Christ­mas theme but rather more gen­er­al to af­ford the clients some­thing that could last through­out the year.

Ro­drigues' theme for her own liv­ing and din­ing room is a Wood­land Christ­mas which fea­tures white, browns, tau­pes and tans. She em­braced her choco­late brown, child-friend­ly sec­tion­al (couch), light­ened the cush­ions and walls–one of which was a green ac­cent wall–and went for fur throw pil­lows, clear lights, pine cones, white Christ­mas balls, gar­lands and swags out of Christ­mas tree branch­es to give a light nat­ur­al fin­ish. Her fam­i­ly clock show­cas­es each mem­ber of her fam­i­ly where num­bers usu­al­ly re­main a fo­cal point in the room.

For those at home seek­ing to do a bit of dec­o­rat­ing for Christ­mas, she ad­vised that in the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cli­mate it need not be over the top.

“There are things that peo­ple can use from around their homes. They can do a lit­tle craft­ing project with their kids us­ing some­thing as sim­ple as palette sticks to make stars with glue and glit­ter. If you don't have enough lights to go around the tree, fo­cus on the front, and put it to­wards a wall, no one is see­ing the back.

“An­oth­er thing is do you need the large, wide trees? Slim­mer trees are in now and most of them tend to be the flocked trees with the white snowy residue on the branch­es, and they re­quire even less dec­o­ra­tions,” she shared.

She sug­gest­ed clear lights for in­te­ri­or and ex­te­ri­or dé­cor which she felt were clas­sic and time­less and added a high-end look to the Christ­mas tree, em­pha­sis­ing that peo­ple should try to be con­sis­tent in their dec­o­ra­tions and avoid mis­match­ing dif­fer­ent colour lights and gar­lands.

Her RE-De­sign on a Dime ven­ture was fea­tured on lo­cal tele­vi­sion and is some­times re-run. As part of the TV pro­gramme, she gift­ed a friend a bed­room makeover for Christ­mas. She said the friend at­tends her church, has been a part of their lives since Ro­drigues had her fourth child and has been a great source of help and sup­port, act­ing in the role of aun­ty to the chil­dren.

Ro­drigues did the room in a tra­di­tion­al style with a slight Bo­hemi­an flair pay­ing homage to her friend's per­son­al­i­ty. A wo­ven bas­ket at the foot of the bed re­flect­ed the Bo­ho style while a patch­work sheet set dis­play­ing dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ties added some fun and whim­sy. A book­shelf and palm were al­so brought in­to the space.

The high­light of the room, Ro­drigues felt, was a large art­work called God's Fin­ger­print. The huge fin­ger­print con­tain­ing Scrip­ture vers­es was pre­vi­ous­ly un­used by the friend and Ro­drigues mount­ed it on the wall to the left of the bed where her friend could read the vers­es at night and be en­cour­aged like the many peo­ple Ro­drigues as­sists. 

Before shot of Faith-filled Room by Niki Rodrigues.