Designing Daughter...

My mother has been complaining forEVER that I just will NOT help her redo her house. Well, I don't because she won't commit. She won't pick a color and lately she's pointed out that our tastes are no longer the same. Difficult to work with no?

Well, i'm putting together a room for her on my blog. I'm making all the choices. Take it or leave it - alter where you see fit.

Let's start with bedding shall we? I like this.  Not sure about the matching curtains. I can live without matchy matchy.

What do I like about it? It's simple. It's plain, but still gives you something to look at. I like the quilting pattern and the texture that it adds. Not too masculine. Not too feminine. What's not to like? It also happens to be named "Harrison" which is my mother's father's name. Hmmmm....


I don't love the throw pillows, but they come with it. They might look good in the wing chair once it's reupholstered. I don't like everything to be too matchy matchy. Wait, didn't I just say that?


How about these pillows instead? Aqua for spring and summer, red and orange for fall and winter.

Ok, maybe not this one...it's screaming female reproductive organs at me...

I'm a big fan of ikat  - what can I say? I'm thinking about buying a few of these for my lovely "new" creamy living room sofa.


Now put in all together on this bed...which I "built" using the cool interactive "build a bed" tool on the West Elm website. It's actually a storage bed. The "thing" at the foot of the mattress is a handle to effortlessly lift the mattress platform to access the giant storage compartment.  I like the tall headboard for a couple of reasons. #1 my parents have a big bedroom and it won't look gigantic in there. #2 you can put your pile of pillows in front of it and not cover the whole thing (unlike mine, where all you see is the top edge).

 

Also from West Elm - the Madison 6 drawer dresser and a pair of nightstands. I really like the feet.

I like this piece from Ballard Designs - 

 

And this three panel piece - but I think it's a bit bland for the wall color.

So we can kick it up a notch with this piece which works year round with any of the pillow colors - the colors work back to the birds on a branch piece above.  In my book, the subject and style of artwork can be opposite ends of the spectrum so long as the colors tie in to each other.

A pair of clear lamps to add a little sparkle without being girlie - 

 

Now throw some paint on the walls - i'm thinking neutral so we can change up the accessories for the seasons and whatnot. How about Cedar Key from Ben Moore? That would be the one on the right.

 

We can reupholster the wing chair in something neutral and classic like this (which I LOVE)

It's Botanical Paisley Taupe - item # UH-428 at Fabric.com

Aside from that - add some random accessories - candle sticks, books, decorative stuff for the dresser and night tables and that folks is an outfit (or a room in this case). Color, pattern, texture, shine...I think they're all present and accounted for - don't you?

Sadly, we'll never see this room come to fruition - for my mother finally decided to stop waiting for me and put her own room together. I haven't seen it in person yet, so no photos to show how far off I am from what she wanted. I will be sure to post photos once I have the opportunity to go take some.  

Bamboo floors...

Mr. Paisley has been busy at the Cottage. In 1997 A gazillion years ago I had some lovely berber carpet put in the family room, master and guest bedrooms here at the cottage. It was old. It was tired. Mr. Paisley burned a hole in it with a light bulb. Luckily, on a day that I was not going in to work until the afternoon...the smell woke me up. He had taken the light fixture off one of the iguana cages and set it on the floor, then didn't put it back...it's on a timer. A 100 watt bulb will melt nylon fiber carpet down to the cement sub floor in nothing flat. Just sayin'...

At any rate, I love my wood floors at the cabin - even though they are in dire need of refinishing. I wanted wood. He wanted bamboo. I wanted darker, but not too dark. He bought natural. Whatever.

Ambient Bamboo had a stellar deal on Strand Woven Natural Click Lock flooring.  He ordered it. I lived with 19 boxes of flooring stacked in my living room for weeks. It came the day before we went on vacation for a week.  Because we have a concrete sub floor and it was going in a room where we will be moving a wall and adding another room off it, we had to use a floating floor. This way we can pull it up without damaging it and mix in the new flooring that may or may not be an exact match when that time comes.

Ambient will send free samples. We got the natural and the carbonized. I wanted the carbonized. DH bought natural. I covered it with giant rugs...but that's another post.

We cut the carpet and padding into 2' wide strips, rolled it up, tied it and put it out for the garbage collection. The amount of dirt UNDER the carpet...OMG. The carpet removal went quickly. Then Mr. P decided he wasn't really in the mood to work on the floors. It didn't help that I pointed out the large bright green stickers on the boxes of flooring that said "if you live in FL you need to open the side and both ends of the box to let the flooring acclimate for 72 hours before installation". It had been sitting in the living room for 3 weeks. Sealed up.  He said a lot of nasty things.

 

That's moldy looking (but not) concrete that once upon a time had sticky back vinyl tiles on it...under the nasty green carpet that was there when I bought the house.

The foil looking rolls of underlayment went down and several trips to the big box hardware store were made for seam tape. Special red seam tape. The flooring itself went down quick - not a ton of cutting. 

Just the pieces for the end of the room, the ones that fit around door jambs and the ones along one wall. 

The biggest pain was that we live in a very small house with no room to just empty out 2 rooms to do it all at once. In fact we worked around the sectional sofa. We took it apart and put it on one side of the room, did the floor, moved it on top of the new floor, did the rest of the room....

 

the bedroom was even more interesting. There was at least a 2 week break between finishing the family room and moving on to the bedroom. I had dirty concrete flooring in my bedroom that long. Yuck. 

The flooring went down just as quickly in there, a little more cutting though - turns out that room is FAR from square...no such thing as quality construction these days. Then I lived without the transition pieces in the doorways for weeks. I'm not really sure what the hold up on that was - other than Mr. Paisley just didn't do it. Typical of course...he does most of his projects to about 95%. He eventually finished them, only because we were having a party and I said no way. The closet isn't done in the bedroom. Care to place any bets on how long that will sit unfinished?

The trail of progress. You don't want to know how long theses scraps sat on the front porch.

 This is the bedroom floor - 

 

 

You can see how small the bedroom is...you can see both corners on the ends of the window wall!

 Indeed that is a darker shade of paint - it's not just a photo without the flash ;-)

And covered with a rug - because I wanted the darker floors (and well, because I don't want the light colored ones scratched up by the bed frame).

Master Suite

It's show off your cottage Monday again - Here's a peek at the Master Suite (ha ha ha) at the Paisley Cottage.

The suite was an addition that I had done prior to moving into the Cottage back in '97. It's small, but it fits with the scale of the Cottage and it's larger than either of the other bedrooms that are original. 

Keeping in mind that it's small...I don't have a fancy lens for my camera to take good photos.

This is from the doorway - the floor length bamboo curtain in the corner is the closet door. Being that the Cottage is small and has no storage, after several years it dawned on me that I should remove the regular interior door and replace it with a curtain and then make use of the wall space that was behind the door. Brilliant, but slow - that's my M.O. The furniture is espresso...it tends to photograph more black. Oh and pardon my orbs. The brown edge on the left of the photo is the side of the armoire - where Mr. Paisley keeps the majority of his clothing.  It matches my dresser.

 There you go - technically, it is a walk-in closet...if you turn sideways. After removing the regular door, Mr. Paisley mounted some scrap wood to the studs for me and I hung a canvas and mesh double pocket over-the-door shoe holder to the wall. It holds shoes (duh) in the large pockets and accessories in the smaller "double" pocket (it's actually a pocket on a pocket if that makes any sense - great use of the space since there's so LITTLE space around the Cottage). Oh and that is a re-purposed wood CD rack that is now a shoe holder. Once I ditched all the jewel cases I had to find something to do with it!

The bed is, as you can see, RIGHT in front of the door - or should I say right between two doors? The door you can see is the bathroom. The photo was taken from the other doorway. The current bedding is copper on one side and gold on the other - it photographs strange colors because it's iridescent. A better shot is coming...promise :-)

There we go...the darkest color is the true color. Again, the headboard is also espresso and not black...the bedding I ordered from ABC Distributing a long time ago. It's actually a duvet cover and shams. It was cheap maybe $40 for the set. The pillows cost more than the bedding. They came from Coldwater Creek several years ago. The copper words were on clearance for like $3.99 each from Current's website. The framed fall leaf prints were purchased unframed (but matted)  from Coldwater Creek during one of the 80% sales - back before they removed all the "good stuff" from the website prior to the kick off of the sale. They're in $5 Walmart frames.  Actually, all the framed artwork came from Coldwater Creek. Some framed, some framed after the fact. The accent wall is leftover paint from the bathroom. Toast is the name of it - Ralph Lauren paint.

I love these lamps. L.O.V.E. So shabby chic it's disgusting. Chippy cream base, peachy glass - they came with the ugliest shades on the planet - they were white drum shades with olive green and brown retro 60s flower print. Totally did NOT go with the lamps at all. Replaced with cream $12 shades from Target. Funny story about these lamps. I got them at Beall's - The Florida Store. They were 70% off. All clearance items were an additional 40% off (seriously, they practically GIVE stuff away).  were $60 each. Insane - especially with that ridiculous shade.  Anywho I love these lamps...even though they are dust magnets. I got them for $7 each - bargain (don't do the math, the whole story isn't on the blog - just take my word for it).

I picked up the baskets for the nightstand cubbies at Michael's - i'm sure they were at least 40% off (let's face it, I don't really pay full price for anything). Again since space is at a premium - I needed SMALL furniture and dual purpose at that. One drawer wasn't going to cut it. The baskets hold socks and undies mine on my side, his on his. Yes, you can see that I did not remove the basket to dust the cubbie last week. Such is life. There's my Florida dirty air dust's 15 minutes of BLOG FAME. Quick - take a screen shot. Oh and the fabulous small scale furniture...$400 for the whole set from Walmart.com. Yep - it's Southshore, assembly required. Cheap, but I like the simple lines and the small scale was a must. Goes well with my K-Mart dinette set in the kitchen (OMG - yeah the one everyone thinks came from Pottery Barn - like for real dudes and dudettes, I have good taste, I just don't like to pay for the label - gnarly I know).

Onward to the "en suite" - I think that's the current cool term for a master bathroom these days. The invisible black hole of a vanity is, once again, espresso. It was the most expensive purchase for the bathroom redo (everything was white before). It isn't anything fancy - special order Kraftmaid in a Craftsman style. Here's a lightened up photo so you can see what it looks like -

The drawer pulls are satin nickel and square. Home Depot Expo (sad that they're gone, they had super cool stuff). The sink and faucet I picked up on e-bay for $99. Pretty, but not at all functional and I hate them. Granite was from a local place about 2 miles from the house. I think it was $300 installed. The mirror came from Old Time Pottery - I think it was on sale for $19.99 or $29.99. Cheap either way...gotta love a cheap beveled glass mirror. Speaking of cheap...that light fixture. $20 at Costco - I decided I hated it after a week or so. It has a new home in my grandfather's bathroom. Here's my new, new fixture...$34 at Marshall's! Rare, but once in awhile I run across a light fixture there! This one I loved.

The metal laser cut leaf art (see a theme? yep that's me...) came from Joann ETC. 40% off of course...this photo is taken from the bathroom door. Trust me when I say this bathroom is small...and technically it's a 3/4 bath because it has a walk-in shower and no tub. 

That would be the door casing on the left (I was up against my night stand trying to take this photo a few minutes ago). The toilet is in a weird nook - backing up to my closet. Storage on the wall...gotta love it.

Here's the shower - some of the grout is wet - that's why it's darker in some places. Mr. Paisley does pretty good tile work. When I had the bathroom built in '97, it had a vinyl floor, a small white painted wood vanity with a molded single piece sink/vanity top, and plain white tile in the shower. I picked out this tile at the Braselton Tile Factory in beautiful Braselton, GA - right up the road from Mr. Paisley's parents' home. I also chose the pattern. Mr. Paisley would have just slapped it all up there square because it was less cutting. He really should know better by now...

This is over the shower door (which is clear glass). More of Mr. Paisley's famous crown molding and another bamboo curtain to cover the linen closet (it was white bi-fold doors before). Now you can open the closet without closing the bathroom door. Ahhh the good life...






Linking up to White Wednesday for my little dresser grouping of creamy chippy white goodness. It needs work, but it's white and that's what is sitting there right now.