Ever since I got home from Haven, I’ve been itching to apply my newfound styling tips around the house. I decided that our entryway console table would be my first victim, I mean project.
Tag Archives: home decor
Royal Progress
I think I forgot to post an update on the crown moulding progress. And progress we do have.
You may have noticed this photo appear on Instagram a few weeks ago. After weeks (months?) of “acclimating” to our home, the crown we purchased was moved back into the garage to be painted. Huzzah!
Then, with the help of our awesome new pneumatic brad nailer and air compressor, we actually affixed pieces of moulding to our dining room walls.
Seriously. See, I have photo evidence!
It’s a beautiful sight, isn’t it? At this point, I will explain why it looks like we nailed a baseboard to our wall. Because we did. We’re getting all fancy up in here with our moulding project. I should clarify that for once, this wasn’t (100%) my idea. Tom & I were admiring multi-piece moulding examples at Home Depot a while back, and then I could see the wheels turning in his head: one piece would no longer fit the bill; we were going to create our own crown concoction.
The original vision included three separate pieces of wood. To be nailed to the wall by a man who has never attempted this before.
Well, reason came into a play, reality set in (because we want to do most of our first floor rooms this same way) and the final crown product will have two pieces put together, and should look something like this:
The bottom piece is the baseboard; the top is a crown piece.
There is a bit of reason behind this madness. After doing some research on crown types, room sizes, etc, I discovered that there are recommended moulding widths based on the height of your ceiling. So, a standard 8ft ceiling would take a smaller piece of moulding, where higher ceilings can take larger pieces. We have 9ft ceilings in most of our first floor; our family room has a 10ft ceiling. The same goes for your baseboards. We upgraded to 5″ baseboards throughout our first floor; and the bottom piece that we’re using for the crown matches our baseboards.
I can’t wait to see and share how the finished product looks in our dining room. And then it’s on to the rest of the house! Or maybe just a few other rooms, hahaha!
DIY Art: Black Dress Painting
I’ve been wanting to try my own hand at painting lately, i.e. without the instruction and guidance of local paint-your-own establishments.
<gulp>
I finally got up the courage a couple of weeks ago.
My intent was to create a series (if two can really constitute a series) of paintings to hang in our first floor half-bath. I already had the first completed from a Cheers to Art trip earlier this year.
Here’s how my solo attempt turned out:
Not too bad! It looks like a dress, so I’d call it a win! The only thing I’m not super-pleased with is the background. It doesn’t match the background of the shoe painting:
But I have no idea how I could have gotten them to match, seeing as they were painted months apart with different brands and shades of paint. So, I guess I’ll just go with it, right? My Laziness overcomes my OCD-like desire to re-do it until a perfect match is met. Plus, how crazy would I look if I had a bunch of discarded dress paintings hanging around my house? Answer: pretty crazy.
Does your Lazy battle your OCD? Which one usually wins?
Bit by Bit
Let me tell you a story. A beautiful little love story.
Girl meets Fabric (it just so happens that they meet on the Internet).
Girl falls head over heels for Fabric. She thinks it might be a passing fancy, since Fabric is on clearance. You know how those clearance types are.
Girl wakes up one day and realizes her undying love for Fabric. She and Fabric exchange Orders (that’s fabric for vows), and they live happily ever after in Home Decor Haven.
Did that get weird? Sorry. But, I really, really, REALLY love this fabric. It’s by Swavelle / Mill Creek. And it’s on Last Chance clearance at Fabric.com. So if you think you love it to, go get her before she’s gone!
With this swatch, I’m starting to decorate our bonus room upstairs. Now that we’ve got some furniture, we need some accessories (my favorite part!). I don’t love the fabric on the throw pillows that came with our sofa, but I lurrrrve this fabric (have I said that already?), and I know it will look amaze-balls against the charcoal grey upholstery! Is it out of style to match your pillows and your drapes? Because I would LOVE to make drapes out of this fabric, too. Come to think of it, I would love a floor-to-ceiling room made out of this fabric. Too much? Probably.
Anyway, with this color palette in mind, I’m starting to collect accessories. I’ve been assuming I’d put the Satchel & Sage feather print in my office, since everything that doesn’t have a place will probably end up in my office, but doesn’t it work great with this tealy-turquoisey glass candle holder? And the other print is a postcard that I received as a bonus for an order I placed with Mary Elizabeth Arts through Etsy a number of years ago.
So while this is just one tiny, tiny corner of our room (clearly)…
it’s a start!
How do you start decorating a room? Do you go all in at once, or bit-by-bit?
Summer Entryway
Our entryway table needed a bit of sprucing up for the summer. So I gathered up some knick-knackery and some prints I’ve been meaning to frame and got to work. I thought a loose travel theme might be nice, given that it’s “vacation season.”
The postcard is of the Grand Floridian Resort in Walt Disney World. We stayed there in January (and it was amaze-balls!); these postcards were free in our room! Score! The owl is also from our Disney trip, from a shop in Mexico at Epcot. I wish I could tell you that I purchased this set of Matryoshka dolls during my trip to Moscow a few years ago. But I can’t. I didn’t have time to shop. Or sightsee. I was there for work. My parents were traveling Alaska later that year, though, and my mom picked these up in a Russian boutique. To make up for my lack of authentic Matryoshka purchasing whilst in the real Russia.
The “Bon Voyage” postcard was in an Umbabox I received a few months ago. It seemed fitting for the theme. The wooden ball, the terrarium/cloche thing, and the thing inside the terrarium/cloche thing are from Kohls.
So, there you have it! An entryway with some summertime flair. What’s in your entryway? Do you have an authentic set of Matryoshka dolls? Have you ever been to Moscow?