Not all Living Rooms Live

This holds true for the living room in this home.

I almost have some empathy for this house as it just had no life to it! So much history yet so poorly decorated to the point that the house was cold and uneasy feeling.

Tara to the rescue!

We'll start with paint because that I can quickly do. Window treatments and furniture and artwork will be a W.I.P. for budgetary reasons.

Selecting a color isn't always as simple as liking a color and buying the paint. I sit on colors for weeks before making a decision. I had, oh about, 20 color swatches and i decided to attach them all over the room. In my travels i would glance over and see if anything jumped out at me, but nothing did for a long time. Then one day some colors started catching my eye, i liked that because now i can visualize, with the color, the feeling of the room.

I decided to sit on the room (literally) with the color all day and watch as the sun moved around the room and changed the colors of the swatches. That helped me narrow down the ones that fared well with the lighting changes. My biggest challenge was night time with lamp lights and the sunrise.

I camped out on the couch that night, of course falling asleep to HGTV, and when the sun awoke i did too and the color POPPED right out at me. I took the swatch and compared it to the wood features of the room and it went with everything. The color is Desert Camel by Behr. This is it's beautfil transformation of the living room

This color warmed up the room exactly as i had hoped. It also makes it feel larger than it is.

I truly can't wait to buy the properly scaled furniture and get the flat screen for the wall and the window treatments up. This room is going to ROCK!

Up next... The Bedroom.

The Bathroom

They say that the kitchen and the bathroom are usually the selling points for a home. In this case that bathroom and the deck took center stage for the decision and I'd have to agree. The bathroom is very big for an old home like this. The previous owners did a great job of wainscoting and installing a Jacuzzi tub and slate tile in the shower and on the floors.

Somewhere though they got tripped up because the paint they chose didn’t make those beautiful assets take center stage. They used a very light almost sagey color that washed out with all of the natural light that the room has and it actually tamed the beautiful natural earthy tones of the slate tile. See for yourself!


I just HAD to remedy this situation. I did so with Deer Park by Sherwin Williams, Home Depot was kind enough to color match it with Behr for me for budgetary reasons.
This was the end result and we absolutely LOVE it!
(Please keep in mind that the little blue painting on the wall is no longer there. I have different artwork on that wall now.)


This was one of the easier tasks I have embarked on and completed.


Next stop is the living room.

Interior Design Might be My Calling

Since most of my dreams have gone unfulfilled i have managed to rekindle the passion i felt for interior design. I have Kyle to thank for that because he bought a new home. One that has seen many decades of families and changes and is/was in need of life.

Since Kyle purchased his new home about a year ago, it is transforming nicely, from a bland, cold, old style sloppy Victorian era home to a cozy, warm, updated, cohesive home that you love to come home to in the mornings or evenings and almost never want to leave!

It lacked a lot of character when he purchased it, the outside for the most part still does. I have to wonder why or how people select colors for the exterior of a home. The colors are a taupe (almost grey) color, with green and a light burgundy trim here and there. It's nice, but kind of bland and doll-house-ish (you can tell the woman had the influence in that decision) the deck is stained a light green/blue to match the trim and it's just horrible! Other than the color though the deck rules!

Here is a picture of the deck when he first moved in

(The kiddie set in the back is gone and now there is a fire pit in it's place)

The task this summer, i think, will be to re stain it a dark brown to match the fence on the property. That will also make it look less "whimsical" .

This is how we decorated it for summer 2008

His purchase of this home has allowed my creative mind to turn from rusty old gears to a well oiled machine running almost 24/7 no matter where i am or what I'm doing or what I'm watching.. I'm constantly looking for the next color, the next idea. I ask myself constantly, how would this color make the room feel? Better yet, how will it make US feel when we are in it?

Our first obstacle, and rightfully so, was what was the previous owners' kid's room. Omg it was an atrocity. What do people think when they look at paint swatches?! Just because it's a kid doesn't mean you have to burn their retinas with bright obnoxious colors and busy stickers and what-not. Just make the room look nice! This is the before picture

Kyle gets the credit for hanging the plaques and pictures and picking out the color on this one. It's Benjamin Moore (can't remember the name of the color though) and the wainscoting is by the same in Spanish White-eggshell.

This room took me a very long time to finish. The wainscoting was detaching at it's seems in some areas so i had to repair those spots, sand, prime, and paint everything. Not to mention removing the stickers and glue from the walls. This project (on weekends only) took about 3-4 months total. It was a lot of work, but the end result thus far is very nice. I am still in the process of trying to find the perfect window treatments for this room, and shelving.

(To keep the post shorter I'm sending in sections)

Up Next the bathroom.