In which the living room gets a facelift

This morning I checked one item off my house to-do list that had really been nagging at me...and it feels AMAZING.  For probably at least a couple of years, I've been keeping my eyes peeled for a rug to replace the one that I've had in my living room since I moved back to the Twin Cities...which makes it, oh, about 8 years old? 

This maroon and burnt orange number from Target has stood me in good stead, but for a long time I've felt more and more bothered by the fact that it was the same color as my couch and chair.  It just seemed so flat and kind of fuddy duddy.  And then when I painted my walls this darker brown, it really started to feel dark.

So it was time for a refresh, but I couldn't settle on anything I really liked.  I knew that I wanted to find a rug that was a lighter color, or at least had a design that incorporated some lighter colors, and had a more updated look.  There are a lot of super-cute fresh and modern-looking designs out there, but what I kept finding was that the rugs that I really liked would have a white design against a bright, popped color.  Problem was, that with the bright green walls I have, and the deep color of the couches, I was afraid that anything that brightly colored would end up looking like fiesta time at Casa de Berg.

Earlier this week I saw a Target ad that appeared to have some cute stuff in it, so I investigated a bit further and found a rug that appeared to be exactly what I was looking for - modern-looking, with fun colors that picked up things in the rest of the room, but a light background color so as not to darken it up.  And then, by some weird coincidence, I saw a mini-version of the rug I was interested in at my friend's house.  I took a picture to ponder some more, and after consulting with some more friends, I decided to pull the trigger.  I picked it up first thing this morning, and hooray! I love it.

It does exactly what I was hoping for it to do.  The room looks and feels more fun, fresh, and cozy.  The rug is even cushier than the old one so it's fun to lounge on too - bonus!  I can't stop staring at it, I'm so infatuated.  The room has come a long way from where we started this magical decorating journey.  Remember this?

And now we're here:

Progress!

Goodbye Engelbert Humperdinck

This week I've been trying to make quantifiable progress on one of my goals for 2013: to organize all of my media - meaning books, CDs, music, VHS/DVDs, etc.  This is kind of a daunting project, so I'm breaking it down into smaller ones.  This week's goal: to purge enough of my old CDs to be able to eliminate one of my CD shelving units.

 I got these little guys when the SPCO did some remodeling in our offices a few years ago and all of our old furniture was up for grabs.  These used to belong to our former Director of Artistic Planning (along with a third one), who had approximately a million CDs in his office for listening to various artists, orchestras, commissions, composers, and whatnot.  Anyway, one of my shelves was almost totally full, and the other one not even close to full.  So it seemed like with not that much effort, I should be able to get all of the CDs onto one shelf and thereby free up some space in the corner.

Welllllllll, I did it.

I got rid of about 55 CDs.  That might sound like a lot, but it wasn't really such a huge sacrifice when you consider the quality of the stuff that went into the "discard" pile.  Yes, it's sad, but gems such as these are now officially up for grabs for any reader that wants them. 

So the end result of this was pretty satisfying. 

I mean, it's not going to change my life, but I feel pretty good anytime I'm able to get rid of something and free up space.  And the best part of this is I can make some money off my purging too!  I've never ventured into the world of Craigslist before, but I think this is a good excuse to start and see what I can get for the shelves.

So: check one thing off the media organization list.  Huzzah! 

Media madness

Well, hello everyone.  It's been a while!  I've gotten some guff from some folks recently (ahem, Nina and Monica) about not having posted in a long time.  I know, I know - I've been lazy.  Things got kind of insane last summer, so I had to take a break from the home improvement for a bit, but I'm hoping to get back to it this year.

I don't have anything major to share with you today, but I thought it would be good to get back on the horse.  One of my resolutions for 2013 is to get my media in order.  By "media" I mean my books, music, CDs, and movies.  I've got a LOT of 'em.  Let me give you a little tour of the piles of crap I mean to address over the next several months.

First, I've got four cabinets in my big bookcase, two of which I've been using to store cassette tapes, VHS tapes, and DVDs.  Only one of these formats is currently used in the 21st century...so I should get rid of the other ones and free up some space.

Here you can see the cassette tapes on the top shelf.  There's a lot of them, right?  Old mix tapes, favorite Led Zeppelin bootlegs, dubs of CDs from when I was in college, and then some random gems like Janet Jackson's "Rhythm Nation."  What???  Anyway, the time has come to either get rid of them, convert them to a digital format, or replace them. 

Then, we've got the VHS tapes.  There's favorite movies, musicals, and operas that I would hate to lose.  There's also some home movies of my sister and I engaged in some spectacularly embarrassing dance recitals.  The world would hate for me to lose those.  So the same set of decisions apply here as with the cassette tapes: I need to decide which of these are important enough to me to replace them or convert them; if they aren't that important, I need to purge them.

Finally, there's my CDs.  I really LIKE the physicalness of having a CD, with the album art and everything.  So I'm not quite ready to give all of that up...but I could still purge a lot of the weird music I've collected over the years.  Or at least put it on my computer and then toss the CDs themselves to free up some space. 

So here's a picture of my current CD storage.  I've got these two mini shelves that I got from work when we were purging a bunch of old furniture.  They're fine as far as how they look, but I just think I should try to get rid of at least one of them.  I don't need all those CDs, it's not like I'm going to be buying a bunch of them in the future, and I could free up that space in the corner for some other exciting thing.

 

 So I haven't done much so far, but one of my beginning projects is to start choosing which VHS tapes I'm going to replace and slowly start doing that.  Last month, I decided to replace all of my Jane Austen VHS tapes.  That may not sound like a big deal, but you're talking to the world's foremost expert on the cinematic representation of Jane Austen on film.  So all in all I replaced about 6 or 7 movies, including the 6-volume BBC Pride & Prejudice.  With the DVDs now in their place, this is the amount of space that has already been freed up.  (Incidentally, what you may not have been able to tell from the pictures above is that there are even more tapes behind each of the front rows of tapes.  So what looks like maybe not that big a job from these pictures is actually quite the undertaking!)

Like I said, it's not a huge impact so far, but it's a step in the right direction.  I'm hoping to get some more work in on the CDs this week, and also replace another handful of DVDs.

For those of you wondering about the never-finished hallway project, I will also try to start working on that!  Monica, thank you for prodding me.

Stencil status update

Since I got the hallway painted, I've kind of stalled on my painting project.  I guess I forgot that in order to actually paint the stencil, first I'd have to have the stencil in my possession.  And in order to have it in my possession, I'd have to order it.  So - I'm still probably at least a week away from having any actual results to show you, so in the meantime I thought I'd post the stencil I just ordered.

The actual pattern is just one of these flowers, like this:

The pattern is about 3 feet high and 7 inches wide.  I picked it because I like the look of it - clean and spare, with minimal fussiness - and also because the long thin shape of it will best fit into the odd layout of the wall area in the hallway.  If I had chosen a thicker one I'd have been able to use it less in the hallway because it wouldn't have fit in the narrow spaces between doors.

So there you have it.  The color palette is still undecided, but hopefully the pattern will arrive in the mail soon so I'll have something real to show you!

Getting things done

It was a productive weekend.  I finished painting the hallway in Boothill Brown, so am now officially ready for Stencilmania!  Let's kick this off with a quick before and after, shall we?

A slightly different angle - I think these two pics really show the nice contrast between the brown and the white trim, and also the white floor.   

I think going with the brown was a good decision.  As my pal Amanda pointed out the other day, it's probably a little much to have more than two colors going on in one connected space.  That much contrast would probably do more to make the room feel small and distracting than just continuing the brown.

So, next steps:

• Order the stencil
• Decide on a color scheme for the stencils on the hallway walls

Someday I'd also like to replace the ugly overhead light in the hallway, but with multiple vacations planned this year, and with still paying off the fridge for a while, I think the budget will not allow for that quite yet.

New Directions

[Thank you for indulging me in that Glee reference.]

Readers, I am fickle.  When last I wrote, I was headed down a stencil path in the hallway.  That hasn't changed.  But the whole color scheme I was considering for the hallway has taken an unexpected turn.  I showed you some of the options I was considering, which included white, a lightly tinted neutral, and orange.  Here's what those might have looked like:

My first thought was that white with a bright orange stencil would be the way to go, something like this:

But, one thing these pictures don't accurately show is the whiteness of the floor, combined with the whiteness of the doors.  Adding intense crisp whiteness to the walls as well - even if broken up with a stencil - seemed a little too close to mental hospital chic to me.  So I then reverted back to the idea of a very light neutral, like this:

I was all set on that idea for the past couple of weeks.  I had gone to the store, picked up several paint chips to compare and select an actual color, and had even gotten in the car to drive to the paint store to buy it when I had a brainwave that gave me a lot of second thoughts.  (Didn't this happen before with the green wall in the kitchen?  Yes it did.)  In fact, I think I had never been completely comfortable with this color scheme, but had convinced myself that it would be fine when I got it up on the walls.  And maybe it would have been!  Who can say?  I think it just never sat quite right with me because it meant introducing this whole other color into the scheme that just wasn't part of it - the other colors are such visceral colors, that this one just never fit in.  (Sorry, Durango Dust - nothing personal.)

My last-minute brainwave in the car was: Why not just paint the hallway the same brown that I had used everywhere else and loved?  The brainwave actually started from a money-saving impulse.  As I was driving to the store, I just really didn't want to spend $30 on another gallon of paint.  And I had all this brown sitting at home, so I thought, why not try it?  I went home, and quickly mocked up a few pics to see what I thought.  Here's what I came up with:

I like it!  Not only does it keep that whole wall fairly seamless, but it even more emphasizes the green of the kitchen and dining area because everything else is brown.  The white trim and white floor looks great against the brown, and as I happily discovered on the other walls, this beautiful brown is not really dark at all - it just feels very warm.

Plus, I can still have my stencil cake and eat it too.  The brown will provide a great backdrop for some colorful flowers.  I could either go with a warm color scheme like this:

Or a cooler one like this:

Please pardon my ill-executed flower drawings - I promise the actual stencils will look better than that.  But the idea is there, and I like it.  I think I'm leaning towards the cooler green and white flower option.

Painting of the brown will be happening this weekend, and then I can post some pictures with the actual results! 

Watching flowers on the wall (that don't bother me at all)

As I mentioned at the end of my last post, I've been spending some time mulling over what to do about my bland hallway, which is trapped between two fairly vibrant colors.

I came up with a few different ideas for what to do with it, ranging between adding a third vibrant color, using a very light neutral, or something in between.  I have this little toy from the Benjamin Moore website that I downloaded to play with prospective paint colors, so I thought this would be a good use for it.  One caveat: this is a pretty crude tool, so one thing I've learned in using it is that the actual colors that show up in the edited photos are not a good representation of the true color that you would see on a paint swatch.  So you'll just have to trust me that I won't pick some horribly ugly color :)

First I started with a couple of neutrals.  One of my ideas was to make it a crisp white to go with the trim that's throughout the rest of the floor.

Pretty good - but maybe too much white?  What if it was a really light version of one of my color scheme colors, either the orange or red?  This color is a super-light orange and is called Gerbera Daisy.

I'm not sure I'm a huge fan of this.  It might be all right as a color, but the off-white doesn't make it quite as crisp and modern as maybe I'd like.   So what if it was a nice burnt orange?

This pic above is a good example of my color caveat from above.  You can see the little swatch in the lower left corner is closer to the color I'm really interested in, but the way it shows up on the walls with this tool looks a little too neon.  Setting that aside and assuming it showed up as the color I really wanted, I still feel like maybe it's a bit much.  Combined with the green and the brown, it feels a little claustrophobic.

So then I took a different approach.  If you remember from my previous post, I had been toying with the idea of a stencil on the wall...  Sounds a little crazy, but I had seen something really awesome using a stencil on my favorite blog, so I thought it was worth considering.  The only issue is that doing a stencil would require me to take down the Asian scrolls that I had hanging up on the walls in the hallway in order to open up some visual space.  (BTW, I wish I could be more specific than "Asian" - I got them at a Japanese fundraising dinner, but they look more like Chinese art that I'm familiar with.  Racial.)  But change is good, right?  So I played with that a little bit.  Here's the walls as a blank slate with all decor removed.

In thinking about the stencil idea, I had the colors of burnt orange and white in mind, but was kind of undecided as to which one should be the background, until I did that little experiment above with the orange on the walls.  Even with a stencil to break up the intensity of the orange, I think it still might be too much.  So I decided to use white as my test background color for this idea.

Now where to get stencils?  Well, based on this blog post from Young House Love, I found this website that sells such things (www.cuttingedgestencils.com) and perused the options.  So many!  You could get stencils that were allover graphic prints (kind of like wallpaper), stencils that were like branches coming down from the ceiling, giant standalone flowers, all kinds of cool stuff.  I found that the ones I gravitated to were stencils that evoked flowers kind of growing up out of the trim on the bottom of the wall.

So using my really *awesome* Paint skills, I mocked up a little picture of what one of these things might look like.

I think there's other exciting possibilities for this too, with variations on the orange color - could be lighter, darker could be an accent color, whatever - and variations in the height of the flowers.  Soooooo, based on this little experiment, I think I'm definitely interested in pursuing this stencil idea.  Exciting!  It'll be kind of an artsy challenge, and will add some interest to an otherwise really boring area of the house.  There's still a lot more thinking to be done and decisions to make on this before I can get started, but at least now I've got a general direction to move in.