Our Library Loft Plans

In a few weeks, we're renovating the upstairs loft at our place.  (I CANNOT WAIT!!!! ... well, can't wait for it to be over, I should say ;) ;)   The loft is basically a family room where we keep all of the boys' toys, watch movies, read, etc... (Sidenote on why I love this floorplan so much: The boys don't keep any toys in their bedrooms here because the loft is right outside of their rooms, which has made our lives sooooo much easier.  Cleaning their rooms pretty much consists of making beds and dealing with clothes.  It's sort of like the old homes with the bedrooms off of the "nursery"... love it.)  Anyway, here's what the loft looked like when we bought the house:

We've removed the paneling and will removing the two existing windows and replacing them with one massive window, similar to this one in It's Complicated:

The window is actually 3 separate windows and will be around fifteen feet long.  It will completely open our loft to the back yard and I cannot wait!!!

Here's that area of the loft when we were living in it and using it as our kitchen during the renovations:

It's how it pretty much looks now with our wall-to-wall seagrass and half-painted walls.   The guys got as much done up here before we moved in.  You can really see how "pink" the beige was in the house compared to the cream we're changing it to...

And here's the view from this past Fall:

When you walk into the loft when we're finished, you'll really get to appreciate the view & almost feel as if you're outside.  We've added & enlarged windows wherever possible.  When I come home to our house (the downstairs) after travelling, I'm really struck by how open it is and I feel slightly exposed, but in a good way.  When it snows, you feel like you're almost out there with the snow.  This past week or two, everything turned technicolor green outside with the Spring, and there's a bit of a green glow in our house right now because it's so open.  (I was on facetime with my dad and he asked me what color green was on the walls!!)  I love it!! So, I think adding this massive window upstairs will really get the upstairs feeling the same way.

We're planning to add a window seat under the window:

This is going to be the biggest window seat I've ever seen at fifteen feet long...  I'm wondering how our workroom will get the cushion here.  ("Where there's a will" I guess?? ;) ;)

Here's another view of the family room "before": 

We've removed the built-ins in the pic and we are adding built-in bookshelves to all of the walls.  The new built-ins will consist of vertical drywall columns that support old wood shelves.  In the back of the room, we'll float our sofa in front of the shelves and use the inaccessible space behind the sofa for things we rarely need to access/storage:

We won't have room for floor lamps of end tables with lamps for the sofa, so I'm on the hunt for the perfect sconces to go above the sofa.
I should probably mention here -since I find that people often have questions about this- that we love to read and have a disgusting number of books.  We have ugly books, which I have ways of making look a little better, and we also have some really beautiful books, that yes, we actually read.  ( I say it like that because the last time I posted photos of a bookshelf of mine I got comments saying that the books on our shelves didn't look like they'd ever been read....  I'm amazed you can tell from a photo if a book's been read or not!) My husband (a former English teacher) and I both love to read and he loves collecting first or early editions of books.  My grandfather has also been gifting me (and now my husband & boys too) classics every Thanksgiving, so we've really gotten a fair-sized library going.  AND -I'll admit-  whenever I see a book that's really beautiful & looks interesting for a great price, I buy it, figuring it'll get read sometime.  I CANNOT WAIT to get our books out of our parking spot in our garage and into the house!!!   I've missed my books so much (it's  been since September) and can't wait to dig into them again.  
Here's a quick sketch of how the window wall will look, also surrounded by books:

The window seat will fit in with the shelves and then come out slightly farther than the shelves, which will be 24" deep on this will so the window seat looks more seamless.  Again, the drywall itself will be what shapes the buiilt-ins.  The window seat cushion will sit on a small drywall platform and the shelves above it and the vertical columns will all be made of drywall.  (House dream one day is to coat all of our drywall in a smooth plaster but for now, it's drywall.)  Because this wall of built-ins, is 24" deep, I plan to use it to really stash a lot of our books.  I have an insane collection of cheesy teen horror books from when I was a kid (books I still loooooove & read occasionally... Christopher Pike anyone??  He & L.J. Smith did Vampires best, I think!!!) and so they'll go above the window seat a few rows deep with their pages side forward instead of with their flourescent pink, green, and orange spines outward.  
Anyway, we're starting this next phase in a few weeks and are hoping to finish up this Summer...  Now that the elevations are figured out, it's time for me to start thinking about the fabrics & furnishings.  I'm planning on moving a table of ours up to the window seat so the boys can do crafts & projects, and eventually homework up there.  I'll keep you posted as I put the fabrics together... I'm envisioning a solid on the window seat mixed with a bunch of pillows in my fabrics.
Have a great day & can't wait to hear what you think!!


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

Our Patio Before & After

Today's the day our patio makeover is up on The Home Depot blog!! We started with our backyard looking like this...

...And decided to add a patio there because we wanted a sort of outdoor family room where we could hang with the kids & entertain.  Home Depot gave us a sectional that we added to in order to make a massive  hangout area.  Our good friend, Mike Carr - of CarrMichael Construction- had the stone patio built.  And now we've got this: 

 I layered the sofa with some of my own fabrics and added in some vintage chairs so it would really reflect our style:

I took a TON of photos of the space and explained each and every little thing in the Home Depot blog so if you have some time, check it out here.

I'm off for an installation but hope you enjoy the post!!  Have a great day!!



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

Sneakity Peek: Our Patio

{Our patio coffee table.. full of our Early Spring Gardening projects}

We finished our patio last month, turning it into a little outdoor family room, and we've been loving it out there!!  Thanks to the sectional we got from Home Depot, it feels like we expanded our house.  Along with a bunch of other bloggers, we participated in the Home Depot Style Challenge:

Our patio photos will be up tomorrow morning on Home Depot's blog (9 AM/ Thursday May 2nd) where the entire before & after can be viewed.  Because we took the photos about a month ago, I have been dying to share them with you, so can't wait for you to see it!!

The inspiration for how we styled the shoot came from my old French carrot gravure we have hanging in our kitchen...

It was fairly chilly out when we took our photos and so I used early Spring Veggies and took color cues from the Spring greens & oranges in the carrot chart.

I'm off for the day but hope you enjoyed the little sneakity peek...  I'll be back tomorrow with the link to share the full before & after!  In the meantime, there are so many great patio & porch redos on the Home Depot blog right now from all of the other bloggers, so go here to see them!

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

LL Textiles

Things have been busy with our fabric line, Lauren Liess Textiles.  I've been working on some new designs and I've also added some new colorways to the existing line.  I got them in on Friday and I'm so excited so I had to share with you!!!

{Squid Flower in Wine and Fern Star in Sepia}

Bringing in these most recent colorways has really gotten the line where I want it to be.  These are the colorways I've been after...  earthy, inky and vintage-feeling.  The line is where I want it to be and I can really feel the collection taking on a life of its own.  I'm becoming more confident in what it is I want to put out there and the feeling I want the collection to have.  Although drawing is difficult for me, I've learned that I like how my drawings are ending up, and that somehow, as a medium, textiles are working for me.  I might not necessarily like a drawing of mine framed on a wall, but colored the way I want it colored and put into a repeat in a textile, I'm happy with how it turns out.

I love seeing the transformation of drawing into actual textile.  (It's kind of like getting your photo airbrushed!! ;)

{Buttercup, which I drew in the car on the way to visit my dad in Illinois last summer}

{A pillow in buttercup}

Some of my favorite parts about textile designs are figuring out how I want a design to connect to itself and repeat.  It's sort of like a brain teaser. Once you decide what you're drawing, you have to draw it so it fits together like a puzzle.

{Buttercup in Black}

I know in terms or what's "right" my technique (or lack of it) is totally elementary....  but I'm not after creating    examples of great textile "designs"...  I'm after creating a fabric or wall covering or whatever that I'll (and hopefully others too!) have an emotional reaction to.  Something that I love and want to incorporate into my home or others' homes.  To me, it's not about technique, it's just about the feeling the piece has when it's done.

I'm often drawn to blockprinted fabrics with no intertwining at all, like in Squid Flower, below:

or Fern Star:

Other times, I make each repeat itself obvious because part of the interesting thing about the pattern is the shape the repeats make meeting.

The new colorways are in and I'm working on a 15 foot long window seat in our upstairs loft to layer with pillows in lots of my prints.  Wild Chicory will definitely be on there because it was my first design (and my logo!)...

I'm in the process of putting together memo books to show to select to-the-trade showrooms in hopes that they will decide to carry our full collection.  It's a time-consuming process and it's a little nerve-wracking.  I'm so crazy about the collection but am not a sales person at all so it's not coming easy to me.  I made a call a couple of weeks ago to an amazing showroom in LA and before even asking my name or looking up my patterns or website or anything, I got the "there's no room at the Inn" (showroom) door politely shut in my face.  :/   haha  ouch  

It's totally to be expected though, and I'm sure I'll get a lot more of those before I find the right fits.  I've learned that you can't just call a company up like that too...  So I might be travelling a bit to get everything off the ground properly.  But I'm excited about this new venture!!  The fabrics are so personal to me and I love working on this part of the business.  

Keep your fingers crossed for me - I need all the help I can get!!

I'm working on some new designs week and will share as soon as they're ready.  Also, some of you have asked how you can view the entire collection of order memos.  You can view it at www.purestylehome.co and just click on "LL Textiles."  I haven't updated the site with some of the newest patterns and colorways yet and am working on it so as soon as they're all up, I'll let you know!!  If you' have an account with us (or want to set one up) and need some of the new colorways or patterns before they're up, just contact meghan@thepurestyle.com

Have a great day!!



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