Progress on the Yellow Door

I had an extra hour yesterday (which never seems to happen!), so I started work on the yellow door.

I really wanted to add some architectural detail to that cheapest of cheap hollow-core door. This image from Patrice Cowan Bevins was my inspiration.

I picked up three lengths of inexpensive shoe moulding from Home Depot,

and six of these shorter mouldings from Michaels (the same bin I got my studded trim from).

This little hand saw has been my best friend today.

I absolutely zipped through the cutting of the moulding using the saw and my miter box (both are about $5 at Home Depot).

The bigger outer square is 20.5" wide and the inner square is 16.5".

I used some Liquid Nails to glue the squares on the door (I very roughly marked out the lines on the door first as a guide), but I think tomorrow I'm going to nail some wire brads in too before I caulk the whole thing and give it a paint job. I'm excited about the yellow! I think it will be a really fun and unexpected.

DIY Sputnik Chandelier

I've always dreamed of having a gorgeous sputnik chandelier, but they are usually on the smaller side and in the many thousands of dollars. I had planned on investing a little bit more of the house budget on the dining area's light fixture because it would be basically the first thing you'd see when walking into our apartment. I wanted big and beautiful.

After deciding to buy the Gossip Girl sconces, I had sort of eaten up my lighting budget and needed to figure out something very inexpensive for the dining room. I thought the ubiquitous IKEA Maskros (which means dandelion in Swedish) might be a good base for a DIY sputnik.

I had some help from my Mom and Dad, who were in town visiting at the time. We busted out the entire project in a night and had the thing hung in the morning. I love projects like that!! (THANKS Mom and Dad! xo)

It's a pretty simple project, with not a lot of tools required. I went with the 32" diameter fixture because we have a big open space, but I would recommend the 22" fixture (which is only $49!) for more traditional rooms.

Like almost all IKEA products, the Maskros comes disassembled. There are, I think, 124 white flowers to attach to long metal rods.

image via HERE

The white, plasticy paper flowers are about 5" wide. This is totally personal preference, but the thing I don't love the most about the Maskros in it's original state is all the shadows the flowers create and I needed this fixture to be a functional light source first and foremost. So I played around a bit with the proportions to shorten the petals and decided I like a 2.5" diameter best.

I used a clear (making it easy to find the center) plastic cup with a 2.5" base to trace a circle on each of the flowers. A little tip: I find that projects with many steps of many multiples are done best and fastest by focusing on one step at a time. I traced all the flowers first. Then I cut all the flowers, etc. Don't get ahead of yourself in the steps for the sake of accuracy and efficiency.

Once the tracing was all finished, I cut down the flowers. Then I pulled out my trusty old quart of Ralph Lauren Regency Metallics in 'Parlor Gold' to paint out the florettes.

If the weather had been better and if I didn't live in NYC, I totally would have spray painted the whole thing using Rustoleum's metallic line in the Brass finish. But, I am actually really happy with the look of the hand painting. It didn't take that long, and I think the end look is a little less flat than spray paint - more mottled, like real gilded metal.

While one side of the florettes was drying, we painted the rest of the fixture, including the arms (below), the cord and the ceiling mount.

Once both sides of the florettes had been painted and the fixture frame had two good coats of paint, we started gluing these adorable little amuse bouche plates on the florettes. I used two boxes for the larger size Maskros.

Fabritac is hands down my favorite adhesive and it worked really well for this project. Super tight hold and a fast drying time. I needed only a small dollop on the bottom of each plate to attach the flower.

We let the glue set up for an hour or so and then we attached the florettes to the stems as they were designed to be attached. There are little prongs (the button looking pieces in the center) that snap the flowers in place on the arms. Grace was in charge of most of the snapping.

We used a fabric roll on two chairs for holding the arms, which worked really well for letting the paint and glue dry.

My super handy dad took care of the electrical aspects and then we all worked together to attach the huge arms to the frame. It was fun to step down from the ladder and take it all in at once!

The large size was just what my dining space needed. And it's so great to have an additional light source above the table. I was surprised at how much it brightened the space - even with just the one bulb.

I love that the plastic plates have that hint of green! I think they really look like glass and the painted paper/plastic actually kind of passes for brass.

It has that Sputnik vibe, but it's definitely doing it's own thing. Not bad, for about $100 in supplies!

I'm so glad we cut down the flowers. It doesn't scream IKEA Maskros this way and the little shadows are actually quite pretty. Sort of like polka dots (I keep thinking of the Kate Spade Twirl bottle!)

Sneak Peek: Living Room Bookshelves

I thought you might enjoy some 'during shots' of the bookshelf project. As a reminder, here's the before:

Then I added stud-shaped moulding from Michaels. Subtle, but a cool discovery if you're looking close. (And isn't that what home decor is all about? I love little surprises.)

So when it came to choosing a paint color for this piece, I went back and forth a lot. I almost did a soft blue gray color so it would be less of a presence in the space. But I decided to try the crazy color combo first and save the blue gray idea as a back up plan. I'm really glad I didn't do the blue gray because I ended up painting the fretwork cabinets pale blue (they were white at the time) and I'm really happy with that color there.

So what crazy colors did I go with? My mom was in town visiting at the time and she suggested coral pink for the inside (genius that she is).

I picked up a quart of Benjamin Moore's Mixed Fruit (2011-50) in semi-gloss and my sweet mom did all the painting for me. Here's the first coat:

And then the second coat. We're thinking, okay, looking pretty good, but we'll see...

You can see in this real estate listing photo that our kitchen is all black, which I actually really like. When your kitchen is front and center, it's best for the appliances and cabinets to sort of fade away. I wanted to carry some of that black over to the living room. We thought it would be nice to frame out the shelves in black and then do the coral on the inside.

In case you're confused by this picture, we added temporary walls to split up the space into bedrooms. This is how the loft looked when we moved in. The door to the girls' room and the bookshelf is directly to the left of the stove area, only set back a couple feet.

We put that first coat of hi gloss black paint on the shelves and we knew we had made a good choice.

I love the contrast.

The orangey coral feels so Dorothy Draper/Greenbrier to me. You'll die when you see how great it looks with the black kitchen (and my new persian rug!!). I'm wrapping up the kitchen island project and then I'll share photos.

P.S. If you look close here you can see I added some little white and black mini-floral trim to the shades. Such an easy fix that made me like the shades 1000x more. Still moving them to make way for my GG sconces though! :)

Layering: Floral Pillows

**Wow, this turned out to be a wordy post. Apologies in advance.**

When I posted last week about how I like to work in layers on decorating projects, I got some comments and email feedback asking for elaboration. I've been wanting to share my new pillows anyway, so I thought maybe I'd share a little bit more about my overall approach to decorating a space. It's not fool-proof, but this has been pretty tried and true over the years for me.

Here's how I get to the first foundation layer with a client. If I can have these three questions flushed out at our first meeting, we are in good shape.

1) How do you live in the space?

So, the first point is obvious, but so important. What is the primary function for the space? And be honest with yourself. It's okay if you mostly watch tv in your living room. It's easy to convince yourself that a pair of lovely little antique chairs would be perfect for your space because they are so amazing to look at. But if the chairs are uncomfortable - no one will ever sit there. Waste of space. Waste of money. Function comes first.

{BUT! If you have the room in your budget, get those chairs you love and put them where the function of the seats would be different, like in a bedroom or in an entry.}

2) What has to stay?

Deciding what has to stay and what can go is a really great way to overcome decorator's block. People will sit and stare at their old furniture and accessories and work and rework configurations and feel like nothing fits right. Or, and this is a really tricky one, people will fall in love with a handful of fabrics and run themselves in circles trying to figure out how to use them all together. Don't let that happen to you. It's okay to love a piece of furniture or a fabric and decide to not incorporate it into your home.

Be a ruthless editor. Do you love it? Do you use it? Does it work well with what you DO love and use? If not, can it go elsewhere? Or can you sell it and then maybe buy something better for the room? Try to only keep things that have both form and function perfectly suited to your space and to your budget. (which is a whole other post for another time - decorating for your budget)

3) What's your inspiration piece going to be?

Once you've put on your Editor's hat and made an inventory of the items you're keeping, the exciting part starts! When I decorate rooms in my own house, I like to pick one serious statement item for each space. A piece of furniture, a fabric pattern or a colorful work of art.

This is key: Don't get caught up in matching everything in the room to that inspiration piece. Just use it as the first piece of the puzzle and build from there. A room where everything matches perfectly can feel lifeless and flat, so try to mix it up. Throw in a random color that's nowhere to be found in your inspiration. Use an accent color that's four shades darker than the color found in your inspiration fabric.

Rather than mastering the matching of fabrics and furniture, focus on nailing the mix.

Here's some applied theory. I am probably on the second layer of decorating my living room and it's starting to come together. But, this is how I figured out the first layer.

1) For us, our living room is used for one part tv-watching (just keeping it real here, folks), one part hosting (we like to have friends over), and one part kids play room (though toys are usually corralled in the girls room, just a few feet away). This all means we need kid-friendly and comfortable seating and lots of floor space. I bought a new slip-covered sofa and had our green linen LEE roll arm reupholstered in an outdoor velvet and I bought a pair of arm chairs (posts coming soon about the specifics). We opted out of a coffee table so we could have more room for the kids to run around. And we got rid of the old ottoman because I'm not planning on having another baby for a while (ba dum dum).

We do have lots of side tables and the big red credenza as flat surfaces for books and drinks, etc. And we have a pair of extra benches that sit in front of the tv for extra seating (and to keep Evie out of the DVDs). Also, despite my huge sale last summer, I still have ridiculous amounts of stuff, so the two armoires act as great storage for china collections, picture frames and other accessories not currently in rotation.

I tried to buy and place things in our living room with purpose. I sold stuff that I still liked, but knew wouldn't work for us here in a loft apartment. And I kept things that fit the space and our needs and that were investment pieces, like the LEE sofa. I'm pretty sure we'll have this thing for decades to come. It is as sturdy as can be and I love the pretty shape. But best of all, it is so dang comfortable. We call it the nappin' couch.

Since the LEE is the last thing your eye stops at when you walk into our apartment, I knew the inspiration item needed to be some killer pillows. I searched high and low for just the right pattern. I wanted something colorful, floral and modern. I thought a lot about this Designer's Guild pattern, called Rugosa, but the scale is really better suited for drapery.

But right next to it was the heart-stopping Orangerie. For some reason, I had never seen this pattern before (though I've recently seen it used as wallpaper).

The colors are amazing. The pattern is big and bold, with a crisp white background and there's lots of black, which I like in florals. And I love that the flowers have this really lovely hand-painted quality.

It's a pricey fabric, but I only needed a little more than a yard to make two 12x36 lumbar pillows. To help justify the cost of the fabric, I sewed the pillows myself and I'm so proud of the black piping and the invisible zipper. Each side has a different scene (the repeat on this fabric is huge), so I can flip and switch these up to see different flowers and colors. Also, they're fully lined and the inside edges are serged to help them stand up to washings.

We've had a chance to live with these pillows for a bit now, and I have to say that I'm a big fan of the long lumbar style, especially for a deep couch like ours. The pillows provide nice back support, but don't get in the way at all like big square throw pillows sometimes do.

PHEW. 10 points for you if you're still reading this.

I'm beat, so here's the conclusion in a nutshell: Once we had figured out the function of the space, the main pieces we needed and then the inspiration fabric, I have been able to sort of build a master plan. After deciding on the floral pattern, I knew I wanted a striped rug. From that, I knew it made the most sense to do a solid color on the curtains. The next step is reupholstering the arm chairs in a small scale print and making a skirt for the tv console with a more organic/flowy pattern, like an ikat. The next layer will be the smaller stuff: reupholstering and painting the rope benches, pillows for the chairs and the gray sofa, lamp shade changes, throws, accessories, etc. I'm not really even thinking about what I'll do for that layer until I get there and can see what colors and pattern scale I'm lacking in the room.

I've learned the rooms I like the best aren't usually designed with moodboards in one day or even a week. I think you'll be most happy with your space if you move a little slower and try to decorate in layers.

Aaannd, I just want to point out lastly that it's 75 degrees here in NYC today! Awesome. I'm looking forward to lots more one on one time with Evie's belly, which has been absolutely neglected all winter long and needs lots of tickling and squeezing.

New Blue Outfit

The silver-leafed cabinets are going to get some new clothes this week. Like I mentioned, the idea was for the cabinets to be an icy blue, (they are currently painted Benjamin Moore's White Ice), but the sunlight in our apartment is so funny. It changes dramatically all day long and most of the time the cabinets look pretty white actually. It's nice, but there is a lot of white in our loft (walls AND floors), so I was hoping the color would have read as a little more blue than it does most of the time. I wanted a pale blue, but not as icy and with a *hint* of green.

Then I did what I should have just done in the first place. I picked up a $3 sample pot from Home Depot. I probably should have picked up a few colors while I was there for comparison's sake, but as soon as I saw the color chip for Martha's Sparkling Brook, I knew that's what I wanted for the cabinets.

I tried a sample patch on the top left corner of the cabinet on the right. I love it. It's similar to the old color, but different enough that it will be worth painting the cabinets again. It's definitely more of what I envisioned in the first place.

Then I ran across this image of Ashley Whittaker's living room today, and I think this is the inspiration my subconscious had all along. Decision confirmed.

Domino

Oh! And how could I possibly forget:

Elle Decor

(Speaking of Mr. Hadley - I'm dying to go to his Sotheby's auction today and bid on that amazing Serge Roche mirror.)