More Beautiful Living Rooms

Whenever I read design magazines or websites, I am drawn to certain rooms in the house over and over.  When I was looking to remodel my kitchen, I obsessed over kitchen design until the kitchen was completely remodeled and had morphed into my dream vision.  Once the kitchen was (my idea of) perfect, I lost nearly all interest in kitchen design.  With the exception of tweaking the colors and decorative elements every few years, I'm good to go with the kitchen.

One of my favorite rooms to peruse is the living room.  Because my house is tiny, there is no family or great room.  There is just the living room to...well, live in.  I love my living room, but I love to tweak the design and accessories and to just obsess over everyone else's too.

Here are a few I came across today that I thought were pretty sweet...

I love the pink and green.  You almost have to be single to pull this off as I don't think most men would be loving the girlie vibe, but it is sweet.

More pink and brow that is still very feminine, but not too much so.  It's super sophisticated.

I'm not a huge fan of blue, but this mirror is amazing.

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I love the cool feeling you get from the soft green walls, white sofa, chrome and lucite coffee table and mirrors.

Saving the best for last, I love everything about this soft tan and yellow room.  The unexpected lantern hanging next to the sofa, the gorgeous brocade on the sofa, the bird prints...perfection.  Definitely not casual enough for my lifestyle, but if your living room is just for entertaining, this would be heaven.

I have a redesign tomorrow.  If it's okay with the homeowner, I'll share the pics.

cc

Living Room Paint Job

Post painting, I took a few quick shots of the living room, but only one really comes close to showing the difference in color.  I guess because my before color was a softer yellow, the new ivory shade doesn't read as all that dramatic a change in pictures.  I do love it though.  And I realize now that I could have gone even lighter and still been happy, but this was a solid choice.

The BEFORE...

and the AFTER....

As you can see, I haven't done the switch to warm weather decorating (pulling up rugs, "warm" pillows and throws, etc.  Not sure it'll happen this year ... too much going on. 

Still on my to do list for this room: 
1. Paint the armoire
2. New pillow to replace the one with fraying fringe (possibly several new pillows)
3. Re-do mantle ( have some fun things in mind using my new thrift store purchases...stay tuned)
4. Bamboo (I would take matchstick too) shades to replace the linen sheers.  I haven't been able to find the size I need via my favorite source (overstock.com), but I'll keep looking.

Small changes = a little more bliss.

Buffing the Living Room

I have been knee deep in paint for a few nights now as the living room undergoes its new wall color.

When I asked for two gallons of satin Sherwin Williams Buff (I highly recommend Duration - it really covers well), the very nice girl helping me said, "You mean Believable Buff?"  "No", I assured her confidently, "Just Buff".  Hmmm.  She had to go look up the number which had me suddenly questioning my decision.  After all,  Believable Buff is one of their best sellers and Buff doesn't even make their top 25 list.

Happily I stuck to my decision and am loving the color more each day.  I was afraid it would wash the room out given my upholstered furniture is in the off white, beige family.  But, it's actually a beautiful, soft, warm ivory.

Here is a corner where you can see the difference between the old (yellow) and new colors.  I had started by painting a huge patch on one wall that gets direct sunlight and it looked so....well, white.  But I reasoned, lets try it in a corner that gets almost no direct light (yes, I have these conversations with myself all the time - usually in my head, though not always).

So I painted this corner and then rehung the artwork to live with it again and just...you know...make sure.

Here's the arch going into the dining room that is fully painted with the new color.  And yes, I even moved that ginormous armoire out of the way, squeezed behind it and painted and moved it back when I was done.  It could go back a skosh more, but I will have to enlist man muscles to finish the job as mine have had quite enough of the whole experience.

I hope to get the living room done today and if I'm feeling really energetic, the walls going upstairs and the upstairs hallway (probably won't happen today though).

Painting my walls is a somewhat painful experience.  The walls are rather elder (70 years) and plaster (read: very uneven) so you can't just sweep over them with a roller and git er done.  No, I have to go over the area in question with a brush first, then later with the roller or sometimes no roller at all ... just two layers with the brush.  Needless to say, it is a labor intensive process and often takes a bit longer than I'd like.

Wish me luck and have a beautiful DIY weekend :-)

Loving My Small House Living Room

Okay, so I said I would show you my living room (yes, two days later - life's been busy lately).  Please keep in mind that I am NOT a photographer and we've had nearly a week straight of rain here in the burbs of Cleveland so I had to hurry up and take some pics during that brief spurt of sunlight we had yesterday (or was it two days ago?).

Anyway, here is the view from the stairs. 

The wall color looks washed out in this photo.  The color is called Linguine and is a beautiful yellow with a green undertone.  It was from "The Rome Collection" by Dulux. My Dad, my brother Bill and I first painted it this color when I moved into the house.  Then a couple years ago when it needed to be refreshed, I couldn't find a color I liked better so I hired painters to repaint it the same color.  Hiring painters was a luxury of my former life in corporate America.  Now as an entrepreneur (i.e. person with vastly reduced income), I am back to painting with the (free) help of Mom.

As you can see, the curtain hardware is not hung all the way to the picture molding as we know you should do to draw the eye upward, but I had these panels made at Calico Corners prior to knowing about that tip and I like them too much to get rid of them (although I've had them for years).  If you have a similar situation and want to raise the bar (so to speak), leaving your curtains too short, you can have a coordinating fabric added to the bottom or top to extend your curtain's length.  I prefer a clean look in window treatments so I won't be doing that, but may put some festive trim on them to change the look a bit. BTW, the linen sheers are just Pottery Barn and machine washable (love that).

I do have a very beautiful wool area rug for this room, but I always put it in storage for Summer because I like bare floors in the warm weather.  I had it cleaned by Arslanian Brothers last year and when they returned it all neatly rolled and wrapped in brown paper, I decided to just put it in storage for a while.  I am still enjoying the bare floors.  I realize the floor and furniture colors are very close making for a lot of same color wood, but I'm considering painting that armoire.  Any thoughts on colors?

Here is the view a little further to the right where you can see my old curio cabinet that houses my Waterford crystal collection.  I don't love this piece of furniture, but it fits perfectly into this nook and provides great storage.

 

This photo was taken a different day than the ones above (see the green candles and almost dead plant?). I love my sofa from Arhaus; it's covered in a super soft chenille and the cover on each piece can be removed and machine washed.  I believe a sofa must have excellent "napability" and this one more than qualifies.  Whenever I lie down on this baby, I mean business...the business of napping that is

My cocktail/coffee (depends on the time of day?) table is from Pier One and I don't remember exactly what I paid for it, but I definitely got my money's worth out of it.  Still, I went on a mega search for a new one last year and only found two I really loved.  Both were antique and cost thousands of dollars.  I found a few so so newer ones, but all were just too big for my little living room.  This one is just 36" of roundness and fits perfectly into my little conversation area.  So, it too shall remain where it is for a while longer.


The mirrored star is from Z Galleries, the glass ball paper weight is from T.J. Maxx (called Home Goods in other areas) and they're sitting on three of my decorating books.  The (two) crystal and (one) glass candlesticks are the latest form of candlelight, but I'm always changing out the look to keep it fresh.   

 This is the (gas) fireplace featuring my Tarjay firescreen.  I don't remember what exactly I paid for it, but it was cheap.  I begged the guy to give it to me at a big discount as it was end of season, it was the display piece and there was a small chip in the paint.  I would love to upgrade and have found plenty of contenders, but not ready to make a committment yet.

I LOVE that starburst mirror that I found at Tuesday Morning for just $124 (saw the exact same one on the internet for double that price).  My sweet Uncle Joe patiently hung and rehung it until I was happy with the position and convinced it wouldn't come crashing down on my noggin some night as I was innocently starting the fire.  

More to come next week, but I need to get busy on paid work right now.  

The sun finally peeked through and I'm ready for my weekend. Go have yourself a fun filled weekend (seriously, what's not to love about a weekend?).

xoxo,

Christine 

Inspirational Living Rooms

The living room in my home is my absolute favorite room to relax in. I spend the most non-working (and sometimes working thanks to wireless) hours in my living room and it's the room I've put the most thought into decorating.

Because the room is just 23' by 12', I have to work hard to keep it from becoming cluttered with the magazines, books and papers I drag in there whenever I sit in my favorite upholstered rocker to watch TV or listen to music (can't seem to cure myself of the desire to constantly multi task).

So in honor of living rooms everywhere, here are some I think are beautiful and inspiring...

This room is just pure heaven to me.  The only thing in the entire space I don't absolutely love is that coffee table.  I don't hate it, I just don't love it.  What is that base?  I like the roundness, I like the glass top, I just don't get the base.  Seriously, if you know what it is tell me, please.

 

This would be too formal for me to live in the way I live in my own living room, but it's so gorgeous to entertain guests in.

I love the slightly eclectic, comfy, evolved over time feel of this living room.  And the adorable doggy is the perfect companion to cozy up to next to the fire when you're pouring over your decorating magazines (assuming your BF or hubby doesn't love looking at your decorating magazines with you :-).

This super soft blue and brown living room manages to look perfect and comfy at the same time - difficult to pull off for most rooms.  I normally don't like white walls, but the vanilla backdrop lets the beautiful blue fabrics and touches of brown really shine.

I pulled this heavenly room off of the wonderful Joni Webb's blog, Cote de Texas  http://www.cotedetexas.blogspot.com/ that's an amazing feast for the eyes and responsible for making me fall in love with the decorating blogging world.

These are the kinds of colors I could live with forever.  Everything is a neutral shade and yet it looks very colorful in the most tasteful way.   Love it.

My bedroom is painted a super soft pink like this, but I don't think I would ever have the courage to paint my living room this color.  Still, this room has that feel of a room that evolved over time that I love.

This is another living room I couldn't live comfortably in, but love looking at it for inspiration.  I love the bright splash of color the pink flowers give the otherwise neutral color palette. The gold picture frames, sconces and table and stool legs really give the room glamour.

I love the contrast of white furniture against dark stained wood floors.  I had the floors on the first floor of my home refinished prior to moving in and wanted them stained a deep rich brown, but the refinisher, Mr. Harris, advised against it saying it would make the room seem too small (of course it already is small, but I guess it could always look smaller).  Still, when I see a room like this, I wish I had gone with the dark floors.

I also love the mix of the antique chandelier, mirror, sconce and desk (in the corner with the flat screen TV on top) with the very modern furniture and animal skin rugs.

Another beautiful neutral room with splashes of pink and red in the flowers and pillows.  This room shows great restraint - check out how clean and uncluttered those shelves are on the back wall.

Maybe tomorrow I'll post pictures of my living room...but only if you promise not to judge me.