Pretty Little Friday

One of my favorite simple pleasures is picking flowers & putting them around the house.  I snipped the last standing blooming delphinium from my garden this morning for our foyer and they make me so happy.  Hope you get some time this weekend to enjoy your own simple pleasure!!  

ps- go Duuuuuuuukes!  (the colors were too perfect not to mention my JMU roots ;) ;)
If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.

Loft Progress

We're knee-deep in construction again over here but we're almost there!!!  The guys from CarrMichael Construction have been moving quickly and I'm so excited about the progress they've made this week!!  Our  big final project is the loft, which is basically our family room.  Here's what it looked like before we moved in:

Before we moved in, we added wall-to-wall seagrass to the entire upstairs so we had to take down the existing built-ins and have been living with it completely torn up (see pic below) since September.  In the pic below, you can also see how pink the "beige" was compared to our ivory/cream on the right.  The entire house was freshly painted that color when we bought it.

You might remember me telling you this, but we actually lived in our upstairs for a few months.  In the pic above, you can see our "kitchen" (ie microwave on a dresser = true luxury!!! ;) ;) ... But living up there was a actually a really good opportunity for me to get to know the space.  I'd spend every morning feeding the baby in the chair (a super comfy rocker/ glider by Lee) and looking out the window:

But we could only really see out the windows when we were in the rocker or standing up actually looking out the windows.  It made me realize that I wanted that entire wall OUT so that it would feel like you were almost outside from every part of the room. (including the sofa where we watch movies from and might possibly spend waaay too much time on!!)

Searching for the right window took months, honestly.  (Which is the main reason it's taken so long to get to this part of our project.) I wanted steel but we looked into more affordable aluminum look-alikes.  We finally found what we were looking for at the Window Man where we settled on an aluminum window by Universal Window.  Getting drawings and a quote took a long time as the team from the Window Man had to persuade Universal to sell just 1 window.  But we finally got it!!  It went in Monday:

{eeeeeeek!!}

And it's completely transformed the loft!!!  It feels like you're outside up there!!

The guys are now working on creating the drywall framework for our bookshelves and window seat.  Electrical is going in today.  Here's a quick sketch of how the shelves and window seat will look:

We've modified some of the dimensions a bit to meet code (gotta love it ;) and I've sacrificed a couple inches of window seat space to make the entire thing feel a bit more seamless.

Here's a sketch I did of the back wall, where our sofa will go:

I internally debated for a while on whether I wanted a larger center set of shelves or if we should go equidistant and I finally settled in equidistant, which is different from the sketch above:

I decided to go equidistant because I felt that there was so much variation from the rest of the room with the window seat, that I wanted the rest of the walls to sort of fall in line and be consistent.

Here's the left wall, which is being worked on today:

The built-ins will actually be made out of drywall, similar to the shelves in this pic...

...except the shelves themselves will be made from reclaimed wood planks.

The window seat cushion will also sit right on a drywall ledge, similar to the one in the photo below.  When you lift up the cushions, there will be hidden storage beneath.

I'll keep you posted as more things happen.  Also, we are having our house photographed during the first week of August so it's pretty much just design mayhem in my head right now.  All of those decisions I felt like I had so much time to make are pretty much overdue. :/

And finally, my friend Jill Sorenson of Live Like You is moving and she is having a moving sale on her blog and there are some amazing deals!!!  To check out the things for sale click here.  I'll miss being near Jill but am really happy for her & her son.  She's a truly special person and has a beautiful bold sense of style:

I'm off for the day into the rain but hope you enjoyed peeking into our trashed in-progess place today!!

 
ps- For anyone worried, just wanted to let you know that we did use tempered glass and the windows do open well above where the kids can reach.  
Also, I think I got an upset comment about saying this last time (and I hope that you know me well enough to know by now to know when I'm joking BUT) it's not a very far fall if they do make it out the window because although it's an upstairs loft, the ground below the window has been raised for a large garden bed.  I'll be putting in the fluffiest of bushes ;) ;)  (joke.)

have a good one!!
If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.

My Bedroom Planning Exercise

Please bear with me while I work through my bedroom :)  Writing about the this stuff helps me arrive at decisions & though I probably could have written this whole post and not hit "publish," at the end, I figured some people might want a little glimpse into my thought process.  (As all over the place as it is ;) ;)

We moved into our house in September and immediately started construction on it so we weren't able to actually move into our bedroom until around the holidays last year.  Because we were living through the construction and there was just so much mayhem around us, I kept the bedroom really empty.  Like, weirdly empty.  No bedside lamps (We used vintage-style globe lights in the tree in our courtyard garden to light the room at night and little book lights) no art, no accessories... just a bed and a dresser and two little tables flanking the bed.  Something about the bedroom in its "blank slate" state excited me and made me feel like there was so much potential.  It made the house and the whole experience feel new and exciting.

{Our bedroom before we moved in...}

I also like to go to bed at night and feel like there's not a lot of "stuff" around me.  The typical decorator thing to say is that "I work with color all day long and need a break" so I keep my bedroom white... but I'm not sure I if like a white bedroom because I'm a decorator or because, like most people, I'm busy and feel like I'm surrounded by so much STUFF all of the time that I like to keep my bedroom simple and spare so that it's a relaxing place to retreat to at night...  So I can look around and really not see anything at all except my garden.  And exhale.

We reworked our bedroom and replaced the wall that overlooked a small courtyard between our house and garage with a large sliding door:

{During construction...  a large metal wall blocking the driveway has been added to completely enclose our little garden and we have floors and walls now too}

We've been living without much in the bedroom for a while now but the book lights are finally starting to get a little old and I'm ready to have it feel a bit more "finished."   I have my furniture already but still need to really pull the room together.

But I'm having some issues!!   I am so on the fence about how much I want going on in there!!  I have a serious love for textiles and patterns and a little bit of Boho on one hand,  but on the other, I love a quiet mix of solid textures.  I've decided that I'm doing Fern Star in Sepia on the bed mixed with some Squid flower pillows ...

{Fern Star & Squid Flower}

... And it's coming down to curtains and walls.  Up until a couple of days ago I would have said "no way" to anything going on my walls because I love the calm of my bedroom so much and really do want the focus to be on our garden, but I'm having trouble getting some of the pretty pictures I see all of the time with bedrooms completely wrapped in wallpaper out of my head.  They're so charming!!  Especially with angled ceilings:

{Gil Schafer's Guest Bedroom}

My bed is on a high wall (approx 16 feet high) and it's the perfect wall to really load up with art.  I have so many pieces I've collected over the years and the wall would hold so much, but it would completely de-Zen my room :/

{How gorgeous is this?!!!!  One of my favorite rooms ever...  by Nanette Brown}

This week, I'm pulling up the wool rug in the bedroom for the Summer because we're in and out to the garden so much that we're tracking water and little leaves in all of the time... cleaning the rug is becoming a pain. Again, this excites me because it's making my room emptier and less finished.  (What is up with this??!!!)

Anyway, it is TIME for me to buckle down and make some decisions.  (Gotta love my hubby who doesn't have an opinion on any of this btw!!)  So... final decisions for me to make are:

1.  I need to finalize my curtains, which I've always just envisioned would be simple ivory. Now, I'm reconsidering.  (I have a feeling everything will go ivory/ white as planned and that I need this little bit of last-minute second guessing before I go through with it.)  

2.  Walls... anything???  It's more in keeping with the rest of the house to leave them as painted ivory but those pictures are tempting me!!! :/  So is the idea of horizontal wood paneling painted ivory.  I just did this in  a client's home and loooooved it.

{loooooove!!! House Beautiful}

3.  Artwork... I'm leaning towards hanging some of my old black & white prints & lithographs on either side of the bed above our nightstands and leaving the rest of the wall empty.  I have a tapestry that I'd like to try to overdye and hang above our dresser on another wall if possible.  BUT the jam-packed wall of art appeals to me too!

{This has so much more going on that I feel like I want but I honestly feel like I could move right in it's so perfect!!!  I'm torn!!!  Image via House Beautiful}

In all design decisions, I find it helpful to think of the overall mood and feeling I want the space to have.  If I had to nail down what I'm after in my room I'd say:  Relaxed, calming, light, airy, natural, a little rustic, charming, modern in feeling yet made up of more traditional pieces, collected, a tad Boho, and a little cool/edgy (vs. pretty/ sweet if that makes sense.)

With that in mind... I'm leaning towards doing curtains in either an ivory or other light neutral that has some sort of a "raw" feeling texture... like a linen with a very loose weave or rough fibers.  Or maybe a natural-colored barely there sort of tribal pattern.... We'll see.

For the walls... I think I need to stick with painted for now.  I can always add more down the road.  But I am so tempted by the paneling.  My biggest reason for not doing it because I'm not sure how much more construction I can handle in my life right now.  (They're working on the upstairs family room loft right now and as much as I love the guys, I'm just feeling like I need to be done.)

And for the art...  I'm going to play with what I've got and see what I can come up with on either side of the bed.  If it feels like it's not enough, I'll add more.

I'm off for the day but I'll keep you posted!!!  Thanks for coming along with me & if you didn't (Mom!! ;) ;)  I understand.




If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.

"I'm So Excited!"

....Those words come out of my mouth a lot.  Like multiple times a day when things are good.  (Whenever I'm looking for a reaction about something from my mom or Grandmother, they'll say, "Oh I'm happy, I just don't get as excited about things as you do.") Anyway, today I'm so excited!!

We're installing a couple of rooms in a client's condo in DC and it is such a fun project!!  My client is fearless in her approach to decorating. (Well, I'd say her only fear is that her home not be bold enough or colorful enough or too traditional.)

{Hot Pink is entering the Condo.}

I'll keep you posted in instagram :)

Also, today is the debut of Elizabeth Street's Washington DC section!! Elizabeth Street is a beautiful website that showcases stylish moms around the world who give great mom advice for visiting their cities!

I'm honored to have been included and if you get the chance, check out the new DC moms!!  They're introducing a few of us each day.  www.elizabethstreet.com

Have a good one!!




If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.