More Living and Dining Design Boards

Here are a few more design boards for my friend's living room and dining room.  Her living and dining rooms are adjacent so the overall design needs to coordinate and be cohesive.  I have such fun doing this stuff!

For this board, I replaced her tan couch with a light colored linen sofa and used a gray and blue palette.  I drew the color inspiration from the beautiful ocean painting that is on the left.

My friend mentioned that she wanted a dark wood table but I wanted to switch up the seating by an upholstered gray banquette with creamy white parsons chairs.  At the bottom of this design, I included a few other chair options just in case she didn't want a banquette.  

Here is the second dining room design scheme.  This one isn't quite as monochromatic as the first option, but it still sticks mostly with the gray hues.

New Kitchen Rugs

To several years I've had two of these rugs in my kitchen, one by the sink and one by the prep area.  But now I think they looked a little tired and the design just doesn't do it for me anymore.

While I was at Target the other day, I spied these cute little rugs for $15 and snatched two up.  What do you think?  It's smaller (2'-x-3') than the old rug.  I'm not sold yet...

And then there's always this one from Ikea...

Living Room Designs

One of my friends asked me to help with her living room, so I came up with a few inspiration boards.  So while Finley was sleeping, here's what I designed:

This board has a fun, trendy vibe with bright orange and turquoise accents.  (Of course, the couch will be facing the fireplace and TV, but I wanted you to be able to see the throw pillows.)

 This board features a more sedate palette of light blue, tan and whites.  I wanted to draw attention away from the TV so I made the entire wall more of a focal point by adding wallpaper (or a painted stencil).

This board has almost the exact same furniture as the second design board but with a different layout.  Sorry the furniture all looks so wonky but I'm still figuring out the design software.  Live and learn, right?!

Fabrics for Finley's Room

I ordered fabric samples for Finley's room!  After looking for several months, I finally found the perfect fabric for Finley's room:

Kumari Garden Teja Pink/Multi

So now I have to find the perfect fabrics to coordinate with it.  I pulled out the light blue, apple green, light pink and dark pinks especially, with a mix of large and small scale prints.  I know that I need fabrics for throw pillows (on the bed and one for her chair), to recover an ottoman, to recover her chair, curtains and for her bedskirt.   Hopefully at least a few of the fabrics I ordered will work out beautifully!

Waverly One Wish Mint Julip

 Heather Bailey Garden District French Ribbon Sateen Green

Premier Prints Houndstooth Baby Pink/White

Premier Prints Gotcha Candy Pink/White

Premier Prints Chipper White/Candy Pink

Joel Dewberry Heirloom Tile Flourish Green

Modern Meadow Herringbone Pond

Premier Prints Desoto Stripe Candy Pink/White

The fabric samples cost $1.75 each, and while that's not a lot of money, I don't want it to go to waste either.  So I have a few tricks up my sleeve to work the small samples into the room decor...

Frugal Finds

I was out running a few errands today and I spied so many cute home decor items.  I wanted to pass along some of my finds in case anyone else "needs" any of these gems!

At Target:

 {I really la-la-love this lamp!}

{cute decorative accents}

{fun chess inspired accessories}

{these picture frames remind me of Jonathan Adler designs}

{cute mirrored side tables}

At World Market:

{a great farmhouse-inspired alternative to the traditional kitchen island}

{I love anything with birds but these bath accessories are especially cute!}

{this foyer table would make a perfect desk for a girl's room}

{who knew WM even sold clothes? would be so cute with white skinny jeans!}

{love all these affordable mother of pearl/bone-esque picture frames}

{cute Valentine's Day throw pillows...with birds!}

Before and After - Dining Room

Since I never planned to start a home blog, I didn't plan on taking 'before' pictures of each room.  Unfortunately, this is the best picture I have found to show the room that is now our dining room.  It is a small room (approximately 9 1/2'-x-11') that is adjacent to, and open to, the front living room.  Originally (as shown in the picture below), we had this room as the study/office, but we couldn't really ever get much work done since it was open to the living room (and thus the TV).  

OMG, this picture!  The decor is horrendous - a stuffed duck "flying" on the wall, a TV randomly placed in between the two rooms and on a particle-board TV stand, and I think I spy a huge, overstuffed aqua leather chair in the corner...

So much better!  I wanted to make the one full wall stand out and I found this idea for an easy wall treatment on Little Green Notebook.  I love how it mimics wallpaper but without all the fuss and mess.  Plus it's easily removable without leaving any damage to the walls!  

{the view of the dining room from the kitchen}

{the view of the dining room from the living room}

We still have some design work to finish up before the dining room is completely finished:

•   I've bought a drum pendant chandelier to replace the ceiling fan, but I'm still waiting on Handy Andy (i.e. my husband Andrew) to hang it for me.  When it's hung, it will block the view of the sunburst mirror, so I think I'm going to buy another one and hang them on the wall on either side of the chandelier.
• We already owned the dark brown leather parsons chairs and they are filling in at the heads of the table until I find the right chairs.  
• I'm also on the look out for a great rug to put underneath the table to infuse a little warmth and texture into a room with lots of hard lines.  
• And lastly, I need to style the table with more than just a runner.  

Before and After - Kitchen

Seriously, when I look back at these pictures I wonder why we ever bought this house.  It was ug-ly!  Anyway, here is what our kitchen space looked like when we moved into our house in 2007:

{the view into the kitchen from the then dining room, looking at the side of the fridge}

{the awkward placement of the fridge partially hid the window that looked into the carport and it's horribly broken mini blind}

{white cabinets, white laminate countertops and backsplash, linoleum tile flooring, gold cabinet hardware}

{the one saving grace of the kitchen - stainless appliances}

Over the years, I painted the kitchen several colors, including a bold red (which I am embarrassed to even admit) and then blue (which looked a lot lighter on the paper swatch than it turned out).

I love to cook and spend a large chunk of time each day in the kitchen, so when we pulled our house off the market, I knew we had to do some updating/remodeling to make the kitchen a better space.  Our kitchen's layout is anything but ordinary due to an addition that was built at some point.  While we would have loved to have torn out the entire kitchen, office nook and laundry room to create an amazing open kitchen, we had a budget to stick to.  That plan would have forced us to move waterlines (and with a concrete slab that more expensive), buy all new cabinetry, alter/raise the roofline, even the flooring (the laundry room is slightly sunken) and could easily have cost upwards of $30,000.  So with our budget in mind, here's what we came up with:

We painted the kitchen a warm tan that coordinated well with the tile and natural stone backsplash and granite countertops.  In order to keep the costs down, we opted to keep the cabinets since we were fairly new and still in good condition.  As with the family room, we ripped up the linoleum tile floor and had engineered wood floors laid.

{a view of the prep side of the kitchen, FYI - the granite isn't as gold in real-life as it appears in pictures}

We removed the random window which looked into the carport and re-oriented the position of the fridge so that you see the front rather than the side.  Still left to do, we're going to add narrow cabinets to the right of and above the fridge to create a pantry.  This will give us more storage (sweet!) and make the fridge look like it's built-in versus randomly stuck on a wall by itself.

We also created an arched doorway (which matches the one from the living room into the hallway) so that the kitchen opens directly into the new dining room.  When we had our house on the market, a prospective buyer remarked that our house had an odd flow.  We hope that by adding this doorway, and thus creating a circular flow, we have remedied that problem.

Counter space is always at a premium in a kitchen and not having a built-in microwave ate up valuable space.  When we were planning our renovations to the kitchen, we decided it was well worth it to tear out the old vent hood and add a microwave vent hood.

The original kitchen still had the original cabinetry while the kitchen addition had new cabinets.  To make the two areas look more cohesive, we removed the upper doors of the old cabinets and painted the backs of the cabinets. At some point, I'm going to replace the old lower cabinets' doors so that they match the new cabinets.

But probably my favorite part of the entire kitchen is the new sink and faucet.  I love it!  While I would love to have a porcelain farmhouse sink (next house!), this sink was free when we bought our countertops.  The faucet is Moen and it doesn't leave fingerprints or smudges - seriously, I think I've only cleaned it like twice in the 10 months we've had it, which I realize is simultaneously gross and awesome.

Before and After - Living Room

Like the master bedroom (and most of the house, actually), the living room was a blank slate when we moved in - white walls, white molding, and whitish tile on the floor.

I know I've mentioned before that when we were newlyweds, we combined our random assortment of furniture and we did the best we could with what we had.  Here's a picture of our living room from the MLS when we put it on the market

This room has always been awkward to me because of the layout of the room - a long rectangle with windows along one wall, the open doorway leading to the hallway on the second long wall, the front door along one of the short walls and the living room opens into another room so that it's missing the fourth wall.  (Make sense or have I lost you?) Also, with the set-up above there was a lot of dead space, which is bad when you live in a tiny house! 

Anyway, after much re-arranging, we finally decided that the room needed a focal point/wall, face-to-face seating (versus the L-shaped seating arrangement seen in the picture above), and some sort of entry table to keep miscellaneous items.  

So here's what we did to break up the space and make it more functional for us:

To keep the small living room feeling as light and airy as possible, I chose a color palette that was fairly light (white, gray, yellow and pops of navy blue).   Originally we bought a blue sofa since we thought a darker color would be more practical with a toddler and a black dog...but I hated it.  So I scored a sweet deal on an Ikea slipcovered couch on Craigslist, which is a perfect compromise between style and function.  I get the white couch I really wanted and since it's slipcovered, it's easy to keep clean too.  

{the view from the front door into the living room}

I found a cheap (and ugly!) console table off of Craigslist and then made a skirted console table cover.  (I winged it, but I've since found a tutorial online that I wish I would have followed.) The console table functions as our holding station for our everyday items - keys, purse, shoes (stored under the table) and mail.  

I was perusing a used furniture store looking for side tables when I stumbled upon this electric fireplace.  It was the right scale for the room and I thought it would make the perfect focal point for this wall.  (Plus, I really wanted somewhere to hang our stockings!)  It took some convincing, but I finally got Andrew on board.  Originally it had a dark wood stain, which I didn't like in this room.  I sanded, primed and painted it the same white as the rest of the moldings.  Also, with the chairs flanking the fireplace and across from the couch, I finally got face-to-face seating in the living room.  And that makes me a happy girl!

Much like the bedroom curtain, I used white Ikea curtain panels and painted on a chevron design using some leftover wall paint I already owned.  My only expense was $6 on more painter's tape.  Score!

{view from the family room into the living room}

{for some reason, I am obsessed with tripod tables}

{this large nautical map was the inspiration for the color palette for the living room}

I still have a few projects to complete for the living room, namely styling the coffee table (which most likely won't happen anytime soon with a toddler living in the house) and installing canned lighting to finally give the room overhead lighting.  

Source Info:

White couch - Ikea (but I scored it for a steal on Craigslist)

Wicker chairs - Ikea

Dwell Studio throw pillows - Etsy 

Flower throw pillow - Etsy

Tripod table - World Market (no longer available, but this one's similar)

Fireplace - used furniture store

Coffee table - Ballard Designs

Side table - gifted from my parents

Lamp on side table - Ikea

Console table - Craigslist score

Fabric for console table - Joann's

Oriental rug - gifted from my parents

Mirror above fireplace - Pier 1 (it's on sale now!)

Sconces flanking mirror - used furniture store

Framed nautical map - already owned