Dark Mantel, Again

Yes, I'm still thinking about it. This is a really nice example. It is a Christopher Maya living room from the February 2009 issue of House Beautiful. The paint is Benjamin Moore Black Panther in a gloss finish. This shows how great black works with light blue and red, which of course are the colors of my sofa and rug. I also like the black echoed in the large coffee table.

It really would add a nice bit of drama and finish to our living room. Dum de dum de dum. Need some more time to think about it.

(And yes, I did switch the lamps on either side of the fireplace!)

Check out another nice example, this time from Lonny. Note the light blue chair and sofa, with a peek at a red pillow. Definitely a pattern there!

Photo 1: Julian Wass; Photo 2: Lexy Mueller

Pulling It All Together

Overall, the mini-makeover of the living room has been a great success. The blues of the slipcover and pillows have injected just enough color to balance the green of the dining room. As you can see from the image below, however, there is a lot of reddish brown in the leather chair, coffee table, the tables flanking the fireplace and the cabinet (not shown) to the left of the sofa. I really want to do something about that. My current thought is to "knock down" the finish of the coffee table by sanding off the stain and leaving it with a weathered, or perhaps a light gray-stained finish.

The main slipcover is not piped; however, the seat and back cushions are piped to give them a better hold on their shape. Note the trim on the hem. In addition to giving the unlined slipcover some heft, it also gave it a bit more presence.

The blue and white cushions work perfectly with the existing Pottery Barn embroidered cushions here ....

.... and here. The mix of different shades of blue keeps it all from fading out, which could have been an issue with light blue in a south facing room. And the green embroidery (above) picks up on the green of the dining room and the bobble trim on the curtain panels.

The barely-there floor lamp fits right in. You could use this almost anywhere.

The opposite side of the room looking into the entry hall, and the study/guest room beyond. You can see the problems I'm having with the flash on the camera. Still trying to work on that.

A view of the glass door cabinet, with Robert Marx's illustrations for "The Wretch," by Guy de Maupassant, above it. We bought the prints from the Franz Bader Gallery in D.C. in the mid-eighties and gradually framed eight of them. The "Cycles Lea" poster to the left was purchased and framed for us a couple of years ago. The bench below it is from Ballard Designs; the black and white box below the Marx prints is from Wisteria.

Another view of the entry. The round bone mirror is from Anthropologie.

Another Robert Marx print, "The Little Bishop," in the corner. Notice that the mantel is still white. I decided to hold off on painting it black until I resolve some of the other design decisions in the room. I'm still thinking about it.

It took a few tries to figure out which of our rugs would work best under the coffee table. Turns out this little runner was the best choice.

Claire made the "babies" during her first year at MICA. I just love them.

The Ikea cabinet, used to hold dishes in the dining room of our first house. It was knotty pine; I painted it as soon as we moved to this house seven years ago. It now holds books, tablecloths and knick knacks inside (where else should knick knacks go?); on top is my little collection of matte white McCoy pottery, a blue stoneware plate from my husband's bachelor days, a pretty candleholder from his family's collection of German antiques, a delft tile from our trip to Amsterdam in 2001, a pewter pitcher, and a lonely landscape that we bought from the Seaside Art Gallery in North Carolina's Outer Banks in the early1990s. It all works nicely together, don't you think? The spotlight, from Pottery Barn, is focused on the Cycles Lea poster. Some day I'd still like to install a real picture light above the poster.

A Venetian mirror from my mother. It's actually lying on its side. The top part of it is hanging upstairs in our bedroom.

A view of the stair brackets in the entry. One of the very few genuine architectural details in the house.

We added the wainscotting, seen below, four years ago. I still hope to continue it through the dining room and up the stairs to the second floor (hint, hint).

A pot from Claire's high school pottery class days, and some of my design library (plus Miss Potter).

I bring the seashells out each summer.

Another view of the finished room. With this, the first floor is now well on its way to completion. Of course, I'm never really finished. 

Living Room Redo

I opened this blog with a meditation on finding a loveseat that would be appropriate for the modest proportions of our living room. I tested an alternate furniture arrangement for a few months and kept hoping the time would be right to consider selling the existing sofa. But this moment never arrived; and besides, it turns out that the arrangement didn't work anyway.

There was a great seating arrangement around the fireplace, but the space behind the sofa was dead. The rug was only on temporary loan from our son, who had bought it for his dorm room. And we kind of had to let him have it back. (He has great taste in rugs, though, doesn't he?)

So, I moved the desk back into the dining room, placed the sofa between the windows again and thought about it some more. I concluded that the best recourse was to slipcover the sofa and make a couple of other small changes.

But how to do this on the smallest possible budget? Even 20 yards of inexpensive fabric can add up. And what color/type of fabric? 

Here is the list of changes I made to "finish" the living room:

1. Slipcover sofa

2. Purchase a decorative element to go on the wall over the sofa

3. Purchase a floor lamp to complement existing floor lamp on one side of the sofa, for reading

4. Paint the room a "better" shade of white

And here are the changes I made.

1. Use Ikea curtains for the slipcover fabric!

I decided to use blue and green as the main color theme for the first floor of our house. The living room wanted more blue in it, so blue it was. My choice was Ikea's Lenda curtains in light blue. It is a tough, fairly tightly woven chambray.

It has a subtle stripe woven in every six inches, which made cutting out the fabric and lining up seams a bit easier. I think I ended up purchasing 5 pairs of curtains at $25 per pair. And I have a bit less than two curtains' worth left, should I need to sew a replacement cushion cover or two. I started this in February, and stumbled along until I finished in May.

Next, I splurged on a decorative trim for the bottom hem. It is the popular Greek Key design, in pale blue and antique, from M&J Trimming.

Good so far. Finally, as the "pillow queen," as my husband calls me, I had to recover the current pair of throw pillows. I wanted something more current and saturated in color to punch up the dusky blue of the sofa. Calico Corner's Tala in Bluemarine from their Annie Selke collection fit the bill perfectly.

2. Use a round mirror

We've been in this house for seven years, and I still couldn't decide what I wanted to hang on the space above the sofa. It is typical to hang a piece of art designed to blend in with the color scheme; it is also dreadfully boring and predictable. Among other ideas, I considered framing a piece of wallpaper, hanging an old textile, doing a gallery-style collection of assorted smaller pieces, painting a mural, or just doing nothing. In the meantime, we tried two or three pieces we already owned. They all made me yawn. Then it struck me that we needed something round. There are already so many squares and rectangles in the room. A round object, specifically a mirror, would liven up the somewhat plain jane furnishings. This one from Ballard Designs not only meets my requirements, it was affordable:

3. Find an affordable floor lamp that complements the other four in the room, none of which match.

This was easy. I found it on the Circa Lighting website, on sale. Nuff said.

4. Find the right white

Sigh. This was the most difficult part. I ended up taking home large samples from my firm's Benjamin Moore professional catalogue of BM colors. I considered Acadia White, Navajo White, Lancaster Whitewash, and White Dove. I chose Lancaster Whitewash, which wasn't too pink or yellow, but more of a very pale warm cement. Warm cement doesn't sound very nice. But really, it makes a great wall color.

Next post:  the results!

Looking for a Loveseat

I'm looking for a loveseat.

A couple of months ago I moved my desk into the empty corner in my living room. It completed the room. There was only one problem:  I couldn't sit at the desk or open the drawers because the sofa was in the way. So I moved it.

Now it sits in the middle of the room, creating two distinct areas. One is seating in front of the fireplace. The other is an extension of my tiny entry hall, with a bench, bookcase and the above mentioned desk.

I love the change, especially the seating nook. Guests gravitate to it, and along with a couple of chairs, an ottoman and a pair of little tables under the windows on either side of the fireplace, it makes the ideal seating arrangement for a space-challenged living room.

Now, however, I've introduced another problem. The sofa is too long for its current location, leaving very little room to walk around it on either side. It's a very nice Henredon model, with a bench seat. It is probably the best napping sofa I've ever used.

But now I'm looking for a loveseat. Here are a few that inspire me. The first is from Williams Sonoma Home; the rest are from Lee.

You get the idea. I'm looking for a classic Edwardian sofa(ette), short enough to fit in my room, but cushy enough to be comfortable.

We're not ready to buy yet. But I know I'll have fun looking until then.