Our 2 “Green Tea” Thrift Chairs

Some of our weekend thrift haul

As if we don’t have a million other projects to wrap up, my chair fetish caused me drag in three more chairs this past weekend. I couldn’t pass them up. I love chairs. I love to “fix” them up. Here’s 2 chairs that we bought for under $3 each. I call these the “green tea” chairs because their color reminds me of brewed green tea. I think this shade only happens to old green things covered in tarry cigarette smoke. It’s one of my favorite colors. I really do like the damage that cigarette smoke does to furniture and paintings, haha. It’s like tea staining everything. So, yeah, these chairs are pretty darn grotty.

Does anyone know how to clean old vinyl furniture? These chairs are filthy. In the pic above, I have washed these chairs with Murphy Oil Soap twice. You would not believe how dirty the water has been both times. The pic is doing the chairs some favors. They are much dirtier in real life. Pen ink marks are on the mid-century modern chair. And the chairs are just so dirty. Any suggestions on what to use to clean these? I keep reading that people clean up these mid-century modern vinyl chairs with soap and water. That’s not really cutting it. I need your ancient vinyl cleaning secrets 🙂

I’ll scrub them again today with Murphy Oil Soap solution again and lots of elbow grease. I’m not really fretting because I like these chairs and I don’t go for perfection, I do like some imperfections.  And the price of these chairs were cheaper than 1 large green tea latte. I’m not losing much. I still need to clean up the wood, maybe coat the wood with Howard Wax to disguise visible scratches and add a nice sheen.

-Victoria

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Liking Lichen Green Living Rooms

Maire Claire Maison great room

I love a foresty lichen green. Perhaps because I like fungi? Could be it, but these two rooms are tops. This first rooms is from Maire Claire Maison. It was a cool article that took an unbelievably beautiful space to begin with and gave it 3 makeovers. I like the lichen green one for many reasons. Like I said, this was a great room to begin with. It has dark wood floors in immaculate condition. The ceilings are tall and the natural lighting is breathtaking. And there are great features such as millwork, the fireplace, the door hardware. I love the lichen green walls with the milk chocolate brown trim color. This is unexpected and a bit “moody”. The red accents make the green color pop. I like the room because it has a  cozy feel. Open shelves make books accessible and the large ottoman acts as table. And I’m a fan or antlers/horns. You put those in a room and I’m in love. This room has a very “exotic” feel to it because of the color combination and the mix of objects and textiles.

The other room, a foyer, was featured in Coastal Living. I love this room because the color combination is unexpected and I love this earthy green with wood tones. I also like this room because it is a coastal house that isn’t all light and white. I have been totally inspired by this room. I love the salmon door. I would love to see the exterior of this home. But, it looks awesome against the lichen green. I know what that color combo dominating some portion of my house. Lichen green walls and salmon painted thrift furniture or

Coastal Living lichen green foyer

salmon walls with lichen green fabrics…But, all of the colors work in here from the green to salmon to chartreuse to sky blue to sea pebble gray. I love it. Plus, the space isn’t too shabby with the all of the hardwoods. I also like steps playing bookshelf and the cool collection of pictures and how they line the stairs. And I love ship art. Especially ship art in a seaside home.

So, yeah. I’m liking lichen green rooms.

-Victoria

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Chartreuse & Pink “Formal” Living Rooms

Ahh, spring.  Well, maybe not “officially” spring yet. The weather here in the PNW has been so nice (well, for the time being). It’s been very mild and we’ve had more sunny days than usually. The Sound has been beautiful, plum trees are covered in romantic white blossoms, and the days have been so clear that I’ve been able to see snow-covered mountains from many different parts of the house. I have spring fever and it is showing up in my “home” inspirations. Once again, I’m liking the colors we’ve chosen for the house both interior and exterior. I’m liking that we have pinks throughout the house. I’m loving these 2 chartreuse and pink rooms that I have stumbled across. It reminds me of plum blossoms and new spring growth.

"Pink" living room found in Country Living

This first room was found on Country Living’s website. I love the excessive use of petal pink mixed with gilded golds and luxe chartreuse. This room is formal and somehow it manages to be fun. It’s much more “cozier” than the usual formal living rooms/sitting rooms that I lust over. I also like the wallpaper, or at least I think it is wallpaper, covering the back of the built-in bookcases. Our bookcases in the great room look just like these sans the nice touch of wallpaper. By the time we got to the great room, we were both too tired to do anything too creative. Maybe one day…

This other room was found in House Beautiful. It is much heavier on the chartreuse but it still has the same vibe of the living room found in Country Living. The walls are vibrant and I would say I bit unexpected for such a formal space. I don’t think I’ll ever get sick of seeing pea green. That’s a good thing. Our exterior color is a pea green (by accident) and I’m just going to learn to live with until our funds get replenished…Anyways, back to the room. I like this color combo used in what seems to be a small space. I didn’t know such a small space could look so luxurious.

Green sitting room found in House Beautiful

It’s the curtains. Overly long curtains create a luxe effect.

I’m off to go plant some wheat grass for Nowruz and to tend to our little seedlings. Our dining nook has turned into a green house. We really have to work on some curb appeal. But, I’ll save that for another day.

-Victoria

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Living Rooms With A Zebra Print Touch

Living room from Real Simple

The world already knows that I love animal prints. I do love zebra print. It’s graphic and adds and nice contrast to any room. I feel that this living room found in Real Simple magazine really shows that. It’s a pretty simple room, butter cream walls and white trim with a rich wood floor (boy is that flooring nice). The colors are very neutral. There are many nice accents in the room creating some contrast: that dark kettle, wrought iron, black and putty furniture, and even the twinkling of glass is nice. It’s a nice room, not super exciting but nice. That one zebra pillow really adds some fun to the room. I feel it makes it less stuffy and a bit more fun.

This other room is more a study or a library/living room combo. (Sorry, I forgot where it came from.) This room is very sophisticated. It has walls in a herbaceous green and the built-in looks fabulous in that tea stained white. I love the masculine leather chair and that awesome crystal globe/orb. I feel that zebra rug really adds a certain something to the room. Once again, I feel it keeps the room from looking too formal and stuffy. It adds some fun and makes the space a bit more Ernest Hemingway.

Zebra rug in library

This room also makes me think of our built-ins in the great room or the soon to be formal library sitting room. I don’t know if I should paint the back the same color as he wall or the same color as the built-in? All of these choices are really getting to me.

-Victoria

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Antiquarian Studies/Offices I Adore

Country Living office

I love old things. I try not to be a collector but it is my nature. I really like this home office in Ohio that was featured in Country Living. It’s not much of an office. No cords, computer, piles of papers that need to be attacked. That’s our problem. We will never have a tidy looking office because we both have things going on, this means we actually use office space.

I love this office’s color. It is a rich zucchini skin that really pops with that white trim. It’s a deep color, a bit of mystery, but neutral enough to not dominate. I would love to use this color but I feared that it would make the rooms appear to be too small, especially in the rooms with coving. I love the furniture and lighting. I can’t say that about every space that I find. Good lighting is hard to come by.  It’s a lovely space, simple and lovely. I doubt it’s actually used for working but it would make a nice writing space or art space. An office for the things that you enjoy doing. I would say that pens and art supplies could be stored in those boxes and baskets. I’d have fancy pens in one and fun stationery in the other.

The other is a desk from Domino (RIP). I just love all the old paper goods. I collect the heck out of that stuff. There is no way that I can display it all even though I should. It gets rotated every so often. It’s hard to make it “work” without having it all in picture frames and strangely, I dislike the look of picture frames, lots and lots of picture frames, especially with plaster walls. I have decided that in the “new” house that I will have a special space filled with my treasures. I want a desk like this to house my old postcards, stereoscope cards, sketches, journals, autographs, vintage perfume ads, and even old Goldman Fristoe articulation cards. I figure if I have enough of my odds and ends mixed with my actual paper mess such as bills then it looks like my mess is purposeful. Is it possible that a mess can make you appear more organized?

Domino desk

-Victoria

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Sage Green “Library” Living Rooms I Like

Robert Smith in a library looking living room.

I have decided to do the living room a little bit “stuffy” and the rest like a library. I still need for this to be a functional room. The built-ins will hold all of our books, surprisingly we have shed ourselves of many during this move. On the back wall I hope to put our 2 large Ikea Expedit bookshelves on the back wall to house records. This will be our “library”. Our place to relax in front of the fireplace, listening to exotica records and reading Pacific Northwest mushroom guides. I want it to be a cozy/functional but still very formal and put together space. I have found 2 sage green rooms that seem to pull this off. The first room is mainly a picture of Robert Smith. You could put anything in this room and it would look good (even Robert Smith) with all of that woodwork and trim. I do like the green color and it works nicely with the warm wood floors. I suck at arranging furniture in a room. This is my weakness mainly because I haven’t lived in a place long enough to acquire all the furniture needed for a room. The needs have been so different for each space we’ve rented. I kind of like the chair in front of the books like this. You just reach over and grab one and look through it. It is a cozy reading nook.

What is there not to love about this formal green living room/library. I’ve learned many valuable lessons on my path to first time home ownership. Many things have been stupid mistakes like “this mortgage broker is a d-bag and can’t do his job” or “maybe you shouldn’t purchase a home that is packed to the brim with some guy’s crap”. I have also learned much about design as a sort through pages and pages of decorating blogs. I have learned that rooms with 15 foot ceilings look awesome no matter what. Such as this room. If could have anything in it and look awesome with all of those amazing structural details. I just really like this room. This green looks very nice with the dark accents and high contrast zebra rug. It’s a formal room but it is still really, really functional. There is a computer in there, a desk. They even have clutter out with a coffee mug and it still looks polished and elegant. It’s just a matter of having everything where you need it. Oh, and having a totally awesome house with tall ceilings and awesome trim. The house we are getting has simple, wide trim. It’s typically of the 30’s and I’m excited about it even if it isn’t as embellished as these rooms. I can make it that way. Millwork is not dead. You just don’t see it too much in modern hastily made cookie cutter homes. I know the addition of millwork isn’t a priority with a rehab home but I hope that one day we’ll at least finish one room with fancy trim like this.

-Victoria

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Two Teal & Green Rooms I Like

I find myself spending more and more time searching for “rooms” online than I do fragrances/cosmetics. Oh, how I’ve grown! Today, I’ve found two rooms that are heavy on teal and chartreuse and I like them.

The first is a room courtesy of Anthropologie. It is an elegant use of all of those thrift store decorations we have around. I am completely aware that this is a staged room and that it has never had to be functional. It only exists to sell expensive things upholstered in bold me-maw-ish fabrics. But, I do like the color combo. The walls are rich, a peacock blue, that I would of never chosen. It looks a lot like Benny Moore Jade Garden or North Sea Green. It looks great with the pops of chartreuse. Blue and green are the only colors used and I like it. This room is very cozy but doesn’t look like a bunch of tea roses threw up in your shabby chic cottage. I like the mix of prints. They are bold, really 70’s and if I saw this room when I was 16 and wearing polyester burnt orange plaid pants and thrift store tees, it would of been my dream room. I appreciate this room for its cool color scheme but I do find it a bit matchy-matchy and I won’t be trying to recreate it. But, I might “borrow” from it.

The second room is a Jonathan Adler dining room. I like this because it is bold and graphic yet still simple. This I could live with. It has a lot of color only because of the bright furniture and curtains. (I must add that I am not a curtain person. My granny is a curtain addict and I have to say that her obsession has forever made me stay away from them). This room is matchy-matchy too, the curtains match the vase. (Personally, I’d rather see an orange vase or even a black vase, but hey, I never find a room that is perfect. I mean don’t get me started on the glass top dining table) I love the black doors. The home we are getting does have doors that are painted black, but they are in the “porno” room. Who knows, maybe I’ll keep them black. Anyways, I am attracted to this room just because of the teal and green. It’s young but it still looks formal. I think I really like a bold “in yo face” contrast. I’m trying to out grow that but I can’t. I’ve got to take this one step at a time. I mean I only outgrew Claire’s with all of their pink plastic heart hair accessories  like 1.5 years ago and I should of cut that tie at least 5 years ago. These things will take time. I’m a growing gal and all. Look at me, buying a house and all but I still have to have some fun. So, now to counteract all this grown-up house stuff, I’m going to go beautyhabit.com and fall in love with all the new releases and be frivolous and stuff.

-Victoria

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Chair-ity: Loving Chartreuse Chairs

The only thing that is keeping me sane throughout this home purchasing process and the overwhelming reality of a major rehab home, is the decorating end of the deal. We’ve rented for so many years and have had many temporary placements. This means that our “touch” to the home has never really been there. That’s the bonus to owning the home, making it what you want. If I want to paint the doorways poppy orange at 1:00 on a Saturday morning; I can do that. That being said, the idea of decorating our home is what is keeping me sane but it is also very overwhelming to have a blank canvas. I’ve created a “look book” for myself to keep it all together and to keep my eye on the prize.

So, I’m back to the chairs. Through the many years of renting, I have grown to love thrift store chairs. They are cheap and that is how we’ve added color and personality to the home. I have so many dinky little chairs around. I love them. Lately, I have been revisiting my love of chartreuse chairs. They are so bold but not diva. I love the living room above. It’s dark, but still fun. (I also have many gaudy mirrors that have been spray painted as well). I wouldn’t mind this color combo for a room like David’s studio, sans the blue fuzz. We’ve seen enough blue fuzz with the future house, it’s a sick shrine to Cookie Monster.

I also love this kind of Hollywood Regency dining room. First off I love the dining room being more than just for dining. The books add a nice touch. This is another room that is dark but made fun by the chairs. I don’t plan on going this dark in the house just because it is so disgusting right now that I need it to feel “clean” with lighter shades. It’s currently a very dark and disturbing place. But, I do plan on keeping my bold chairs to add a kick here and there. I would love the pairing of dark (like eggplant, espresso, smoke gray) and chartreuse for the exterior (we still haven’t decided on that and I’m sure you’ll hear about that on a different day). This color combo is so Cynthia’s pad, Priest’s white girlfriend, in Super Fly (1972). I love her apartment but I can’t find any stills of it on the entire world wide web.

-Victoria

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