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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2 Quirky, Bold Hot Pink Rooms

I’ve craved quirky and bold color combos lately. I blame it on summer. Summer makes me go for crazy colors. That’s what got our home in the mess that is in 🙂 I chose the colors during the hottest month in the PNW. We ended up with overly energetic/obnoxious colors. I spent most of the winter months hating them/criticizing my design choices and now I love them. My house would be fluorescent/day-glo if I lived in a warmer and sunnier place.

Colorful room with pink floors

I have found these two rooms on-line. I love them. They are wild and unexpected but still classy. They don’t look “dormy”! This first room is bold. I can’t remember where it came from. I wish I knew because I would love to explore the entire house. You don’t get any bolder than paining your floors hot pink. And you definitely don’t get any bolder than painting your floors hot pink and your trim yellow and your walls with polka dots. I’m in love with this space. It’s so bold that even I don’t know if we have the guts to “go there”.  This is my dream interior for a New Orleans row-house or a Caribbean mansion. I love the insane-o colors mixed with the dark woods (mega-contrast). The “accessories” are so classy but unexpected with the colors. I mean wouldn’t that chair with the pink upholstery be bold in any room? In this space, it is looking very tame. And don’t you love those chintzy rose curtains? It adds a needed shabbiness.

This other room is a bedroom found at Marie Claire Maison. This is another fun, quirky space with lots of hot pink. It’s much less bold than the room featured above being that the floors aren’t Barbie pink and the walls are a neutral color. This Marie Claire room is all about the accessories. They transform the space. I think this an adorable room for little girls and big girls. My weakness is bold painted trim. It’s easier to do than what people think and it

Marie Claire Maison quirky pink bedroom

totally changes a space. I wish we did the trim crazy throughout our house. I did one room but I wish I did the entire house. I need pink trim throughout the house 🙂 This room has so many quirky accessories and textiles. This room is all about the “treasures”. These treasures add whimsy to the room. They are cute but they sure are creepy. That’s my favorite genre for home decor. I love this bedroom because it seems so livable. It isn’t a huge room. This seems like a room that regular-ole folk could get even though I know that some of those accessories are pretty darn pricey. *Note that creepy baby doll in the glass dome! But, I like this room because it can be transformed by switching textiles. You can also hide stuff under the bed and nobody would know. The shelf is a nice touch but I don’t think I can sleep like that. I’d be so paranoid that my $175 tray and all that glassware would come tumbling down on my face while I sleep. I do live in an earthquake zone, so that is a bad idea.

So, yeah, I hope that these rooms have inspired you just as much as they have me. I now know that there is no such thing as too bold. Just look at these 2 rooms!

-Victoria

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Today’s Renovation Job…

Today we are finishing removing every piece of carpet and every staple and tack strip from the stairs. Sand down the stairs, paint them black, paint all the doors in hallway/foyer and add trim around a hallway door. We are attempting to completely finish the foyer and stairway this Sunday. The exterior is being painted this upcoming week if the weather permits it. We’ve decide to really put on “the ritz” and finish up the foyer to make a nice 1st impression. The rest of our house may be total chaos but we are trying to trick. Plus, Halloween is coming up and I don’t want to actually look like a decrepit, dangerous, scary house or a local PNW heroin den.

I was wasting valuable time yesterday and was trying to find lobster mushroom recipes before we went out to forage. One thing led to another and I was looking at before and afters on Sunset magazine’s website. I found a beautiful Victorian home “transformation”. In my opinion, the home was a work of art to begin with. When you have a 155 year old Victorian in Napa Valley, don’t complain, please. It’s just rude. They painted the stairway black. This is what we plan on doing. I like the drama. The house needs that at the entryway. I was going to paint the steps black and the backs white but that is too much work. I think I’ll be happy with the solid black look. Our foyer is a neutral, boring taupe, the trim is white, there needs to be some drama there. I went with Behr floor paint in Stealth Jet (how warlike of me and yes I actually got a paint mixed, no mistint for me this time). I went with this because it appears to be a softer black, something that will distress well on a high traffic area. It will still be dark and dramatic but not “new”, not overly crisp and modern. I sure hope I like it. The ultimate plan is to get an Oriental runner in a deep red and add the brass rods down the stairway. Considering the budget and all the work to do, that is not a priority. I just work with what I have and usually that makes me happy.

I guess I should wrap up my cup of coffee and get to work.

-Victoria

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There is a Room Under All That Mess!

We think there is a room under this...

We now realize that we did make a risky purchase. When we made an offer on the house many of the rooms were cluttered, some you couldn’t walk into. This house was literally filled with junk. We had an inspector come through. He did the best he could do but he had to note that many of the rooms you couldn’t walk through. One room downstairs was overflowing with stuff. I could see a king size mattress, two couches on their side, bags and bags of kitty litter, a faux fur covered 8-track mini bar, huge moose antlers and tons of other overwhelming messes. This room could of had no floors, no windows, no walls. For all that we knew, it could of had a huge opening to hell. The realtor informed us it was a bedroom. Somehow we looked through this mess. I wanted to make this a “media” room. We have no need for 3 bedrooms and I don’t want a TV junking up my formal living room.

Well, the last time we inspected the home, it was pretty much cleaned out. Not all the way, but I could see the floors. They actually don’t look so bad. They are old growth hardwoods. Dirty, dirty, but Murphy oil soap works wonders. It has a nice reddish glow from age. I don’t think they will need refinished. And look there is base trim! I didn’t know if the room had it or not.

Cleaned out, sort of, but it's a room!

Seriously, we didn’t know if the windows were there. Ends up it is a bedroom. It has a nice size closet for an older home. The trim isn’t very wide but it will look nice painted white, for now. I hope to add some crown molding around the top to jazz it up. Maybe, one day I’ll add wider base trim. Oh, and the curtains come with the place. What a deal! I really wish he left that 8-track mini bar…

I plan on painting this room a neutral taupe and the trim white. It will house the couch that I so badly what to get rid of, which is an icy light blue. I wanted to keep it the walls this icy turquoise but that couch won’t go. It would clash. Not that I am planning my room around a couch I dislike, it’s just that all of my accessories, painted furniture, etc. is painted in this shade. I do have a love affair with this vintage color. This room will have the TV, stuff like that. This is my plan as of today. We’ll see what I want to do once I get it cleaned and primed.

-Victoria

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I Should Be Emptying The Rental House In 100 Degree Heat…

But, I’m just worn out and need a break. Even if a break means sticking to the computer chair while the vintage fan blows scorching hot air from outside into my face. Our inside thermometer reads 95. It’s misery and I get to load, pack, carry furniture and David’s Talentmaker  into a beat up U-Haul. Oh, and I get to singe my nose hairs with the vapors of bleach in hopes of getting a security deposit back. What a great day!

A perfect living room

Anyways, enough of my whining over a miserable heatwave here in the Pacific Northwest. I’m from the Southeast. I’ve seen these temps before but never without the modern marvel of a/c. So, while I sweat out pounds and pounds of liquid, I would like to share a room that makes me happy. I love this vintage modern living room. When I think of all of the hard work that I am doing now and all of the misery of the renovation ahead of me, I think about how it will all be worth it in the end. (Geez, I hope so. Talk to me in 6 months and still see if I say this stuff.) I like this simple room. I love the architectural details, the robin’s egg blue walls, the not so frou-frou chandelier, the wide planked wood floors. This room would be lovely in the nude, but it really looks great with help of the mid-century modern furniture. The lines are simple, the colors muted. And it looks like what we already have in our possession. It’s a nice way to make our 40’s-60’s furniture work with our mid-30’s house. I really can’t wait until we get to transform the place. Rumor has it we close tomorrow, but we’ve heard this before so it is hard for me to trust anyone. Until then I’ll be working hard, working on developing the ugliest heat rash ever, and working on keeping it all together. We still don’t know officially where we will be living. That being said. If you don’t hear from us in a while we are either homeless sleeping on the park benches by the ferry terminal, hiding in a remote cabin around Mt. Baker, or in our new house working hard and waiting for it to be internet ready.

-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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