Little Changes

Little changes can make a big difference in the overall ambiance of a room.  Take this little stool. He has fairly dark wood and was covered in a navy petite pattern fabric. How different does he look with a new lighter fabric with a bolder pattern?  The lighter pattern brings out the golden hue of the wood and totally changes the appearance of the stool, making it feel more important.

Look around your home for easy projects to breathe new life into your interiors. It's amazing what a few changes can do!

Sneak Peeks

The remodel is almost done, another week and the owners will start moving. I will have several sneak peeks for you over the next few weeks until the full reveal. I'm so excited about the changes and have learned a host of new tricks and techniques with some really cool new products on the market.

Now for our first peek:

A dark wood mirror gets a new finish with creamy paint and some added wood flowers. The paint color is a grayish white called Southern Breeze from Porter paints. When blended with our new colors in this bathroom it looks creamy white against dark chocolate (Pumpernickel) and a sky blue. Our homeowner loves antiques and a little shabby chic, hence the mirror. There will be lots of other new fun things coming soon!

Goodbye 1980's

Do you have a space in a time warp? Maybe it's carpeting, light fixtures or in this case, old paneling installed in the 1970's. The owner actually had already covered it up with a very thick liner and heavily emobossed wall paper with a border, hence the goodbye 1980's.

There are basically two options of ridding a space of old paneling, rip it out or cover it up. Because this house was built in the early 70's we didn't want to disrupt old materials so we opted to cover it up, wallpaper intact. The new drywall went in at 1/4" instead of the usual 1/2" drywall, for three reasons, not disrupting old materials, ease of replacing trim and cost. We saved the homeowners several hundred dollars by not having the tear down and hauling cost. In fact, we used Collier and Jesse from Prescott Drywall, two very respectful and fine young men for the job! We now have beautiful walls ready to paint and three popcorn ceilings removed for $1,200.00 .

This might be an option for you...

Ideas for Headboards

Do you have a low profile headboard that gets covered up with pillows? Maybe no headboard at all? There are amazing ideas for headboards most of which attach directly to your wall. In my example, an old discarded screen comes into play and heightens the room by drawing the eye upward.

Other items to look for would be old iron gates, a new coat of paint will do wonders for them! Check out the fabulous upholstered headboards at Gifford St. Fabrics, totally custom with all kinds of possibilities in shapes, fabrics, nailheads and more. Other ideas include beadboard painted and then stenciled, or maybe a rod iron piece of decor hanging on it, maybe some shelves to make a home for loved pieces!

The ideas are endless. Check out your Home Depot or Lowes for some other functional solutions!

Working with Scale

We are back at Joyce's house this morning for a lesson in Scale. Scale is one of the most important aspects of designing a room! When I first saw this pretty mantle, the antique mirror was hanging about 6" higher and a pair of massive sconces hung on either side. In the dining room hangs a massive 3"x4" print with these little vases beside it. We simply switched the sconces and vases and dropped the mirror 6" for a pretty new mantle that really calls attention to the pretty iron clock!!

Scale is the relationship between items based on their mass. You will hear it referred to in relationship to furniture, wall art, accessories and windows. In my above sample, the antique mirror, vases and iron clock all have dainty lines, so they work well together. Where we placed the mirror coming across the middle of the iron clock draws your eye immediately to the face of it.

I'll be checking back in a few days for a super neat idea for a headboard! Have a wonderful day! 

Warm Spiced Cider for a cold Day

I met Joyce in front of the paint stand at Hoover Paint while she was trying to decide on an orange for her dining room. She'll be the 1st to admit, she doesn't have a good sense of color and I tried to hide my shock at the Tigger orange she held in her hand. After talking for a few minutes she asked me to come to her house and help her choose a color to go with her new rug.

A few nights later I met her at her house. I walked into a nice, serene sage green living room only to look into a fire engine red dining room, I mean dynamite red!!  Somehow it seemed a little off with the other elements of  the room. I don't like to choose colors too much at night because there isn't any natural light to take into consideration but I settled on a color called Warm Cider.

A few weeks have passed and I just saw our new color on the wall, and let me say, it's spectacular!! I will post more photos later as we are still working on staging and window treatments but I was completely amazed at how much larger, even with the darker color the room seemed. I had not even noticed the beautiful chandelier hanging in that room because the red was so overwhelming.  Joyce loves the new color and friends and family have been commenting on the new look of the dining room. Stay tuned for more photos of her house very soon!

Repurposing

One of my favorite decorating tips is re-purposing what you already own. My mother is the Queen of Yardsales and regularly picks me up lamps for little to nothing. This little guy started out with a yellow base and no shade. I picked up the fabric shade at Target for about $12.00, spray painted the base dark brown and decorated the shade with stencils, a spray dye, and some ribbon. He went from a cast off to the star of a nighstand!

I have added beads, bangles, ribbon, stamped, sprayed and dyed lamps to make one of a kind objects. There are a multitude of special paints, stencils and stamps to alter pieces you already own, lamps, mirrors, frames and etc.. It's decorating on a budget of the best kind!