Wallpaper Wednesday- Jill's Kitchen Part I

Hi Christine,

I just found your blogsight last night and am so impressed with your suggestions to others so I'm asking (begging) that you please help me as well. I am open to any & all suggestions. Need a fresh eye.

Could you please take a look and give me suggestions on how to improve the kitchen/dining room so it looks cohesive & beautiful? I suppose my style leans towards traditional, clean cottage. I'll let u be the judge as I have a tendency to mix & then it begins to overwhelm me. I like my dining chairs. Would like to work with existing pieces-not totally opposed to painting them again (dining room area).The wall color is the 2nd color since we added part of kitchen on in 08. Although it seems to ground the cabinets, it tends to feel dark at times. You are so good with color-looking forward to suggestions to pull it all together. I recently purchased SS appliances (fake SS for fridge) so if you can imagine that rather than the white. Please email me with any questions and I so look forward to hearing from you!

Thank you.

Jill

Dear Jill,

Let me start by saying that you have a lot going on that is great. First of all- let me compliment you on your decorating of the hutch in the second picture. Very well done. You have a good eye for scale and are a terrific "overlapper." :) You have done a good job adding greenery.

You are also right that the area lacks a cohesive "finished" feel. It is in your walls. You have a traditional home, and yet you have very little pattern, and not a lot of texture. You are perhaps "playing it safe." Your wall color is nice- although perhaps a little dark, but I do not see it duplicated anywhere. There is no repetition. I would wallpaper the walls. This will make all the difference. There are a number of different ways you can go with this. Check out the paper at the top of the post. These come in a million different color ways- find a color that goes well with your rug.

Even a very simple wallpaper- like the one above- is a great way to "marry" the white and beige in your room, as well as adding pattern and interest.

This paper would require a different rug- but I thought it was a beautiful paper- and felt like the style was consistent with your furnishings.

I love a classic toile. The paper in the background above would go right into your place perfectly.

Which direction should Jill go?

1. grasscloth
2. simple floral
3. blissful blue
4. traditional toile

The grasscloth is from grasscloth.com; the rest of today's papers are from York.

Baseball Bedroom

Hi Christine,

My 11 yr old son would like his room redone. His room is approx. 12’ x 12’. One wall has a window that is 6’ wide leaving 3’ of wall on each side, another wall is the door to his room and closet (double bifold doors). First of all- rearrange your furniture- I drew a floorplan for you above. Always try to avoid having the headboard on the window wall. Create a focal point with your headboard wall. The other two walls have nothing on them. His room has a chair rail that is 3’ from the floor. Ceilings are 8” tall. I would keep the pennants where you have them- take everything else down- you will put some of it back later. He has a twin bed and his quilt is primarily a medium gray with thin red and blue stripes and sports pictures. We were thinking we would paint below the chair rail red (Benjamin Moore – My Valentine #1330) and above the chair rail gray (Benjamin Moore – Silver Bells #1458). Currently the chair rail is white Should we paint the chair rail, we were thinking blue (Benjamin Moore – Stunning #826). We're not sure if this will chop the room up too much or make it look very small. His current room has taupe below the chair rail and white on top. No- don't cut your room up like that- it is too choppy- too dark, very annoying. Also, he picked out a gray loveseat from Ikea that folds out to a bed for guests. You don't have room for a love seat, desk, and twin bed. In my opinion, it would be too cramped. Use a trundle bed for guests and keep the chair you currently have. It is a great chair. And we were going to go with a desk and shelving from Ikea as well. I would love your feedback.

Thank you,
Jennifer

As readers of mine know, I am not a big fan of chair rails. In your case, I feel like it is limiting where you can hang wall decor. You can keep it- it is not terrible- but I would take it down if it were me.

Wallpaper the ceiling with the Candice Olson Baseball paper below. Use the shades of gray and white in your paper to paint your wall. Go with three wide subtle stripes if you remove the chair rail, just two colors if you keep it.

Red is great to include- just not on the wall- Use two of these tables form IKEA for "coffee tables" in your son's new lounging room. Add a couple of night stands- I like these wall mounted ones from IKEA. They finish off the headboard wall. Along the ceiling about 12 inches out on the headboard wall- add this track lighting- with two pendants- one over each nightstand. A little more red for punch. Make, or have made, an upholstered headboard like the one below from IKEA- it needs to be a custom size to fill your space just right, filling the length, not the width of the twin bed. This desk is 50 inches in width- also from IKEA- should fit great- but I don't know the measurements on the chair. Now fill in your wall space with the larger prints- around the chair and flanking the windows.

Can you see my vision? Happy decorating!

Christine

Easter Time Already?

Do you decorate for Easter? If you plan on getting any new Easter decorations- now is the time. I thought I'd give you a few ideas. I love the bright pink plate added to the white above- as well as the ribbons. Start with some good white basics- and then a little Easter goes a long way.

A ceramic bunny, fresh flowers, and a homemade garland. I like the use of the velum.

If you have a modern interior- use more modern looking decorations- a more provincial or traditional interior- be consistent. These top four photos have been from Family Circle.

Nothing says spring like fresh flowers.

The lace eggs above, as well as the next five photos came from Martha Stewart- so you can get instructions from her site on how to pull it off .

I don't have the patience of a "Martha Stewart" type decorator- maybe when the kids are older. Something like this would be a fun project for "girl's night."

The monochromatic look is so sophisticated. I went all green on my Christmas tree a few years ago- it was great- but my family revolted. They all wanted to see some red...

Those little bunny silhouettes are fabulous. So simple- but so great.

I really liked these votives- what a great addition to the Easter table!

Tulips are one of my favorite flowers. (along with peonies :)

The photo above, and the two below it are from Country Living.

Do you have great handwriting like this? I wish I did.

OK- so I know this one has nothing to do with decorating- I just liked that chick. :)

For those of you that don't have the time or desire to make your own decorations- I thought I'd show you a few from one of my favorite sources- K& K. I'll start with a couple of wreaths.

They have a whole line of fake chocolate decorations- lots of chocolate bunnies to choose from, and this great chocolate wreath.

Stacked boxes, wood lettering, and charming resin rabbits.

They also have great faux flowers and a lot of cute signs.

Their moss collection is wonderful. They have a couple of oversized pieces that I especially like.

Hey- Happy Easter! I know it is still February- but it really is the time to prepare. What else is there to do the second half of February anyway?

Kris' Dining/Living Room

Today's post is a continuation of yesterday's.

These were Kris' Questions:
Do you have any recommendations for a buffet/sideboard that would go with our dining room table? Go with something that doesn't match it. Mix a painted piece of furniture in. With that long solid, wall, with no windows or doors, I would use a tall piece of furniture. It is super helpful to break up that wall. The piece below is from Decorize and is 104 inches in length. If you take one thing away from the post- take that- your room will work much better with a tall piece of furniture there.

Should we center the dining room table on the short wall (the one with the windows) or move it off-center to allow more space between the table and future buffet? It looks to me like you can center it between the two windows and still have a 36 inch space between the table and buffet. With that the case- I would go ahead and center it.

Do you have any recommendations for a chandelier? With a long table like you have, get an oblong chandelier, like the one from Currey and Company, at the top of the post. I would add shades, like those in the chandelier below, also from Currey and Company.

Do you think we should use a rug under the dining room table and in the seating area or just one or the other?


For the answer to this question- the first place I look is at the size of the room. You should be able to have your chairs move in and out on the rug, and not have guests sitting with the front feet of the chair on the rug, and the back feet off. You want to be able to do this, and still not have your rug be wall to wall. You would add a minimum of four feet to the width and length of the table. In your case that would be a 7.5 x 13' rug in the dining area. Your room is big enough that I would do both rugs. The rugs I selected for you are from Sisalcarpet.com. They have a subtle pattern, and a lot of great texture. The top photo shows the pattern; the one below shows the color.

Thanks for writing in, your room is going to look amazing!

- Christine

Variety is the Spice of Decorating

Hi Christine,
I love the decorating advice that you give on your blog and am hoping that you can help me out with some ideas for redecorating/furnishing one of the rooms in our house. This room used to be our family room but after doing some remodeling we have changed around all of our first floor rooms and it will now be our dining room. It's a large room so we would also like to have a cozy conversation area at one side of the room. We only have one piece of furniture for the room at this point - our 42" x 108" dining table that we got a great deal on when a local Drexel Heritage store went out of business. How great to have such a large dining room. We are also considering buying two Kensington leather loveseats that are currently on sale at Restoration Hardware. I love that piece. I've come up with a tentative room layout that I attached to the e-mail. I also attached some pictures of the room but the dining table is the only thing that belongs in it (the other furniture is from other rooms of our house that we moved in for a recent party and the window treatments also go elsewhere). We are going for a bit of a Tuscan feel but not completely Old World traditional. I love earth tones but don't want the room to get too dark by bringing in too much dark furniture/dark colors. I was thinking about bringing in some pattern by having the two chairs in the seating area be upholstered chairs and also having upholstered end chairs at the dining table. We'd like to have leather side chairs for the table since we have young kids and actually use our dining room fairly often. I would put leather on the sitting side of the chairs and a pattern on the back side of the chairs. This is a large area of the room- and more pattern would add a lot. Here are some of the questions that I have:
Do you have any recommendations for a buffet/sideboard that would go with our dining room table?
Should we center the dining room table on the short wall (the one with the windows) or move it off-center to allow more space between the table and future buffet?
Do you have any recommendations for a chandelier?
Do you think we should use a rug under the dining room table and in the seating area or just one or the other?
Any recommendations for fabrics for the chairs or for window treatments?
Any ideas for paint color or wallpaper?
Beyond these specific questions, we would welcome any additional suggestions that you have for decorating the room.

Thanks so much!
Kris

Hi Kris,

I thought I would break up your questions over a couple of days and start just with the fabric today. Use different sized patterns as well as a variety of styles and of pattern. Notice the collection of fabrics I have for you include a small leaf pattern, a large floral crewel fabric, and a medium size paisley pattern. Notice too the variety of textures- the green is velvet, the floral is a crewel, the paisley is a cotton- and the cream is a leather.

So- for your checklist in fabric selecting for a single room:

Variety in:

1. pattern size
2. pattern motif
3. fabric texture

Uniformity in:

1. feel
2. color palletI am sure that I break these rules from time to time, but they are a good guildeline for the novice designer. And, since I made the rules, that gives me the option to break them- right? :)

Thanks,
Christine

The fabrics in today's post are from Lee Jofa.