A joyful room

The new curtains (Duralee 21029 670 Bubblegum) were installed today in the little girl's room that I have been working on for so long ...

The hardware was from Pottery Barn and I had them make the panels so they did not show any rings or grommets. They made a pocket on the back of the curtains for the rod to go through. We wanted a cleaner, more modern look for the panels, and for simplicity and lack of room, we opted to not use finials on the ends of the rods.

And the headboard is back. We had a little issue with the headboard ... my upholsterer and I so carefully measured and designed the headboard to fit the West Elm bed frame that we were going to use. We designed it so that the the headboard would come down just to the top of the mattress.  The problem arose when the bed frame that we had selected was out of stock and the new one had a slightly different dimension - it was only a 1/2" shorter but the mattress sat down lower on the frame. On top of that, the mattress the client selected was half the thickness of a regular sized mattress. We could have remedied it by changing the mattress but this bed is for a such a little girl that we all felt that the lower she was to the ground the better. So we re-designed the headboard so that it would fit any size mattress. Thankfully there was extra fabric leftover and the upholsterer was a good sport about making the change quickly. The headboard was so large that my client's mom had to deliver it in their open bed truck - and so the change meant that she had to make a couple more trips back and forth. She was a really good sport too. 

I love the way it turned out. The fabric is as soft as velvet but is 100% polyester and very kid friendly (JF Showroom 23S5591 Retreat). 

The zigzag pillow (Duralee 15149 729 Tigerlilly) and the bolster (Duralee 15096 719 Tigerlilly) were custom made as were the Euro shams (JF Showroom 43S5591 Surf).  The white pillow sham was on clearance at Pottery Barn. The green dotted pillow was one of those great finds at HomeGoods!

The chair belonged to the client's grandmother and we had it recovered with this beautiful Ikat fabric from Kravet (Bansuri 319 Peony). 

The bench was ordered from Pottery Barn and we had a custom cushion made in an indoor/outdoor tiger print (Duralee 15413 708 Carrot). 

The duvet cover was custom made by my workroom. To save money I purchased the softest white sheet and used that for the back. I love how we put the welt over the seams on top. It has a button closure and can be easily washed. The duvet fabric was from Duralee (20865 138 Rose / Green). 

The client purchased the art prints and I had them framed. Some of them were custom framed and for some I used inexpensive frames from Aaron Brothers or Ikea. I like to use inexpensive frames where I can and have custom mats cut for them. Did you notice the Michelle Armas original painting? I had purchased that a while back and this ended up being the perfect spot for it!  As was the Tracey Kafka painting at the top.

The dresser and nightstand are from The Land of Nod (the Monarch collection). If you are not familiar with The Land of Nod, it is part of the Crate and Barrel and CB2 company. The top of the dresser and the nightstand are not styled. It is missing a lamp and the little girl's personal belongings to make it her own (her toys!). 

We changed the silver knobs to gold knobs that I purchased from Lowe's. 

The new armoire has still not arrived (patience, patience I remind myself) ...

But all in all, we have come a long way ...

It is a joyful room for a beautiful, happy little girl who loves sleeping in her new bed. You can't get much better than that!

A new pillow order

Even when they are not for me ...

I love picking up new pillows from the workroom! And speaking of pillows ...

My area rep for Pindler and Pindler stopped by last week to show me their newest collections ... and at my request she brought out many outdoor fabrics. Can't you see these as fabulous pillows?

Orange is the new red

Do you remember this room? We changed the accent color from red to orange ...

It is still a couple of weeks from the final reveal but I was there the other day working on another project and had to snap a few photos of the new upholstery. Here is the Adirondack chair with the old look:

BEFORE

And here is a peek at it now:

AFTER

Just a little teaser for you ... Happy Saturday everyone!

Refreshing a family room

Remember this house?

The family room needed a little updating as well. A new seagrass rug was ordered and a custom made storage ottoman for a coffee table is almost done. An Adirondack style reading chair & ottoman was reupholstered in this:

Kravet 

And all that was needed to finish it off was some bookshelf accessorizing and styling and a few new pillows for the sofa. The styling was done weeks ago (I wrote about it here) and I picked up the pillows from the workroom last week. The sectional they will go on is dark blue (you can see a corner of it below):

We used heavy duty / outdoor fabrics for this active family that includes 3 teenagers (I find that teens are harder on fabrics then little ones!) and 2 dogs who "rule the roost" in this lovely close-to-the-beach home.

The order: 4 - 22" pillows with no welt / invisible zippers. I used to always make my pillows 20" but lately I have been making them 22" - I like the larger size.  Sometimes I self-welt and sometimes I use no welt. And even less often I use a contrasting welt - even though that is a great look! This fabric was very pricey so we saved a little by not adding any piping. 

I used 24" down inserts. Can you see the zipper on the pillow? Doesn't she do a great job?

Perennials - Geez Louise

Highland Court

We re-upolstered the sectional about 5 years ago and it is still in good shape. The client thought about changing it - either with something brand new or by re-upholstering it again. But in the end we opted to just change out the pillows. The pillows we had made back then were a light blue and red:

THE OLD

The new colors will change the room dramatically:

THE NEW

The final reveal should be in a few weeks!

A little of my week ...

Here is a little of what is going on in my neck of the woods this week...

The kitchen remodel (the one where my client has a bet going with her brother) is coming along great - it will be 95% completed by July 3rd. This is the kitchen where we 'broke ground' on June 4th. It looks like we are going to win the 8-week-bet.

The counters are in and so is the backsplash. The painters are finishing up this week and the appliances and cabinet pulls (and plumbing) are scheduled to be installed on Tuesday. If all goes as planned it will be a working kitchen for my client to have her family over for the 4th of July. 

I ordered the counter stools yesterday. I had fallen in love with a couple of fabrics. And they were absolutely perfect for the new kitchen. My client wanted a fun print that would make a statement but it also needed to be kid proof.  So my idea was to put the blue-ish green "vinyl" (which, by the way goes amazingly great with the backsplash) on the seat and front and the other fabric on the back. I pulled the third fabric to use in the adjoining room.

But the problem is that as much as I want it to work, it does not go with the rest of her house. I know what you are thinking ... well, kind of what I was thinking ... once you do a big remodel like a kitchen, all the old stuff kind of looks tired in comparison and ends up getting changed down the road anyway ... so I was hopeful. But it turns out their 'old' is not all that old and they like it. Darn. So we switched. And can I say that I love the new even more?

As disappointed as I was, I feel like I kind of 'won' because we are using white. Ahhh.  The back of the stools will still be the same fabric - just in a different colorway which goes nicely with the wall color (Dunn Edwards Inside Passage) and will show contrast well with the dark countertop (Caesarstone Raven).

These are the stools:

Nathan Anthony

The counter stools were our final decision to make on the kitchen so my work there is basically finished. Now I can sit back and watch it all come together!

I picked up these from the framer today - they are the beginning of a fun art wall for one of the little girl's rooms I am working on ...

And this was delivered - it will be made into some fabulous pillows for a beach house family room. It is an outdoor fabric which is always my first choice if there are kids or animals involved.

And lastly, (is lastly a word?) I stopped by to check on a living room upholstery job today and took a few photos. This chair (there are two of them) had been around for a really long time. It had been recovered at least once before and my client still loved the pink but the fabric was getting worn. So we changed it up ...

It sat too low to the ground before so I had it raised up a few inches and changed the old casters to a nice wooden leg.  We also added some new pillows to freshen up her sofas. (The carpet will be changed next).

Here is the room before we started:

living room before photo

And here it is with the new pillows. The new chairs sit to the right:

living room with new pillows

Hope you are having a great week!

Pillow love

I picked up a large pillow order from the workroom today ...

Half of the pillows will go inside ...

And the rest will go outside.

 The indoor pillows are going to bring new life to this sofa:

 I pulled the colors from the artwork above the sectional:

And because I won't be personally "installing" these in the home they are going to ...

I thought I would photograph them on my sofa to give my client an idea of how to place them. One of the outdoor pillows will double as an indoor pillow as well.

I noticed that the trellis pillow looked pretty good with my own pillows:

And I started thinking ...

I wonder if my client would notice if a couple were missing!