Rocks cement her interior design business

HAENERTSBURG – A background in interior design has led Haenertsburg-born Moya Blight (45) to turnkey projects in South Africa and Mozambique. The rock of her business, Inspired by Moya, is her passion for cement.

She has come up with an easy to apply, hard wearing, durable and aesthetically pleasing cement-based flooring and walling product for the domestic and light commercial market. The product gives a seamless finish and is popular in areas of extreme heat, although it is warmer than tiles. It is easy to clean and price competitive. The cement screed can go over tiles and can be worked on to almost any flooring, except wood as wood expands. Signature floor coat and designer wall crete have a range of earthy colours and are mixed with a co-polymer latex based add mixture designed by Blight together with her chemist for use in cement compositions.

She says cement is a volatile product to work with, but she uses the product daily and understands the substance.

Blight is training three people in Mozambique. She aims to train 20 people so that they can either start their own businesses or become applicators. She has also started training in Limpopo and will train applicators from Mpumalanga soon. Her vision is to train people throughout South Africa. Blight has a small factory in Politsi with four staffers including her personal assistane and co-designer, Amanda Dal Rymple-Hay.

The turnkey projects have involved decorating and screeding private houses, hotels, lodges and businesses. Blight has had jobs in Mozambique for the last seven years and did a turnkey project at a media company in Maputo. Architects and engineers were very sceptical about it and said it would take seven months to complete. Blight, not to be daunted, took out walls, supported the existing structure and completed the entire job within six weeks. She has since done more work for Golo Media Company when they added one of the best sound studios in the southern hemisphere.

Back in South Africa, she completed a turnkey project for clients in Lephalale. The clients only needed to bring their clothes and food for the fridges. Another turnkey project was at her husband’s game lodge, Giraffe Farm in the Hoedspruit area. She managed to bring much needed light and life into the building, but had to keep to the original architecture. Her personal taste is contemporary and colour favourites are white, as well as shades of grey and neutrals.

Blight also has an eye for revamping old or unused furniture. Sasha Drewett, a pilates instructor in Tzaneen, needed a coffee table. Blight went to their dairy, found an old door, popped on some wheels and a coffee table emerged. Blight’s office couch is made from pallets and she often fashions lights from tree branches. Blight likes to, as she terms it, “repurpose things.”