An updated living room and dining room

I have been working on a beautiful home for the last couple of months. The project started as a simple upholstery project. The plan was to re-upholster a sofa, 2 dining chairs, a couple of ottomans, cornice boxes and replace a tired side chair and coffee table. You know as much as I do, that these kind of projects have a tendency to grow. Pillows were added. New lamps were purchased. Carpet was replaced and wood floors were put in instead. Furniture that never was planned on being replaced was. 

"After"

What I love about this project is that although many things were changed, the essence of the house did not. The client has a definite point of view; she likes things simple and uncluttered with a simple palette of primarily black and white. We added a few pops of color through pillows and artwork and it changed everything but it is still very much "her".

Like any good reveal, it is important to see where we started ... so here are a few "before" photos: 

"Before"

"Before"

"Before"

The chairs in this room were moved to the room next to it and the sofa in that room moved in here. The coffee table was replaced, new upholstery fabrics were selected, pillows were made and new lamps were purchased. The most dramatic change was bringing in the new hardwood floors. You can read more about the floors here. The best part is they are a little more dog friendly than the wall to wall carpet was. 

After all the new purchases were installed, my client and I spent a couple of hours at HomeGoods to select a few new accessories. 

The result:

The gold tray was from Target (don't you love that?) and the boxes belonged to the client's mother.

There are two living rooms in this house - and the one with the fireplace didn't need much. We added new pillows to bring in a little color and contrast and I had a new shade made for the floor lamp. 

"Before"

"After"

"After"

The Dining Room:

The original plan in the dining room was to recover the two end chairs. But when all the furniture was removed to put in the new hardwood floors, the client decided she didn't want to keep the large hutch. The room was cramped and it felt cluttered and she didn't really like the hutch anyway. We replaced the hutch with a smaller (although somewhat deeper and wider) sideboard. The chandelier was also replaced and a few accessories added. The result is a more spacious, open dining room that is much more updated.

"Before"

"After"

  

 Come back tomorrow ... I will be sharing the family room makeover. 

A French Country inspired project and an old phone

I have been working on a beautiful newly renovated house ... French Country inspired.

My inspiration board showing the plan for the formal living room and entry

The clients recently completed the construction phase of their project and are ready for furnishings. We started in the entry and living room by placing a neutral settee against the staircase and selected pillow fabrics to bring in some color. This was our jumping off point.

My client found a lovely vintage chest at a consignment store last week that will serve as an entry piece.

And a large antiqued mirror will be placed across from it. 

Chloe Chair | Room and Board

Because we need to furnish the entire house, we are concentrating on the downstairs first, with a deadline of Christmas.

circa lighting

Once we get everything (sofa, chairs, tables, lighting, mirrors, artwork, accessories, rugs, window treatments) ordered for downstairs, I will move to the rooms upstairs. It is a large project and is a good part of what has been keeping me occupied lately.  

When I am working non-stop like I have been lately and juggling several different projects at once, I am tethered to my technology - my phone, my iPad and my computer. Sometimes I am am connected hours at a time and multitasking on more than one at a time. While visiting my mom the other day and I saw this phone sitting in a box on her floor (as if getting ready to go out the door). It had been in the garage - still hooked up and working - and was moved when we did the move-the-laundry-room-project last month. She spent hours cleaning it up and it looked almost new. 

It still has the same phone number that was ours growing up. It was our number from the day I was born (well, before even) and it stayed until my father passed away and my mom changed the number. I tried to call the number and I was glad to know it is not anyone else's number. The phone works as if it was new - something I cannot claim for my phone today (and even more so since I upgraded to the new iOS 7.0). It did not take much to convince my mom that the phone had my name written all over it. 

It reminds me of a lovely article I read in the January issue of Sunset Magazine while sitting in the hair salon, about turning off your technology. Some people were experimenting with turning it off altogether and others from Friday night to Monday morning, or even just one day a week. It is an intriguing thought, but not a practical one for me; I do a bulk of my work on the weekends. (Side note: I have experimented with leaving my iPhone at home sometimes either on purpose or on accident but it is not at all convenient and feels so weird, doesn't it?) But I have found that there is something so lovely about dialing a number on a rotary phone - no voice dialing, no speed dialing ... just the index finger and the dial ... and I am enjoying the feeling of being transported to a kinder and calmer time. 

And it is a good reminder for me to slow down once in a while. 

Happy Monday everyone!

A Beautiful Life

My sweet little granddaughter turned 2 on Friday and I took the day off to spend it with her ...

Her mommy surprised her in the morning with a tea party with all of her dolls and special furry friends.

Everybody wore a birthday hat and we sang "Happy Birthday" FOUR times!

Milk was served in tiny tea cups and the cupcakes were delicious!

Afterwards we went to a local farm to get some fresh fruit and vegetables and say "hello" to the chickens and horses. We bought frozen yogurt and played for hours at the park. We swung on the swings, danced in the gazebo and slid down the highest slides. 

 

It was a magical perfect kind of a day.

After everyone else went to bed, I started a new book - Donald Miller's, "Through Painted Deserts." I didn't make it very far but already I am hooked. A few of my favorite excepts taken from the author's note (preface):

"Everybody has to change, or they expire. Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons. I want to keep my soul fertile for the changes, so things keep getting born in me, so things keep dying when it is time for things to die. I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made to figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently..." 

"... life cannot be understood flat on a page. It has to be lived; a person has to get out of his head, has to fall in love, has to memorize poems, has to jump off bridges into rivers, has to stand in an empty desert and whisper sonnets under his breath: 

   I'll tell you how the sun rose

   A ribbon at a time... 

"And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you, about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn't it?" 

"This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it."

-Psalm 118:24

Quotes

Making tags

I made a few quick tags for a couple of gifts and a package to mail ...

I have a few cute fonts on my computer (I found them here) but the ones I used on these I found on Picmonkey. I took a photo and adjusted the color | brightness until it was all white and then added text.

Picmonkey is the program that I use to collage my photos ... 

And I can also edit photos and add some fun techniques to them.

 It's something I play around with in my spare time!