1.16.2013

Wednesday Decor // Making a Happy Home

Guess what? We've finally gotten the downstairs nearly done! Drywall is up, primed, and the first coat of paint is going to go on here shortly.  Hooray! Flooring is on its way (carpet, laminate, & some vinyl for the entry ways).  It's so close I can almost feel it!

If you haven't heard, the downstairs of our little house is going to be our office/living space divided by a bookcase since the room is so long.  (You can get a better idea of the downstairs here.)  We enclosed one bay of the two bay garage under our house and then worked on turning a spare room into a spare bedroom with attached bath & closet.  It's all going to look real nice down there when we're through!

Today I wanted to share with you our color choices & the key parts that make our house a happy one:
FLOORING
In about 3 minutes flat Zach & I decided on the flooring, which is surprising because usually it takes a lot of convincing & compromise to agree on decor.  We decided that to break up the room beyond just having a large ass bookshelf, we'd have laminate flooring in the office & carpet in the living area.  

When we decided on that, I mentioned I'd really like to have wider planks in the laminate flooring.  I liked more of a reclaimed look rather than the traditional hardwood look that I knew growing up at my parents' house.  When we went preliminary looking (meaning we were already in the hardware store so we said 'hey let's look') we couldn't find anything we agreed on.  A lot of the wider planked laminate had a distressed look to the finish, something that Zach doesn't like.  So I though we were doomed to have boring looking laminate.  As for carpet, all we knew was that we didn't want something in a bright/bold color or any color at all.  We wanted something neutral & speckled.

One Saturday afternoon, Zach came home with a bunch of flooring samples from an independent flooring place.  He said immediately "I like this Walnut one & this carpet named Rice Paper."  I said, "Yeah, I like those too." Since it was too good to be true that we agreed on something, we talked about it for a while, said what we liked & didn't like about each flooring option, then came back to the first combination.  I think it was a miracle.  We found an awesome compromise on the wider plank-no distressed marks problem & found an awesome, fully, neutral, speckled carpet.

As for paint, I don't have time to play around with color combinations, then put paint on the wall, turn around & hate it.  So, just like the upstairs of our house, we're going with some type of white.  I don't really like the white upstairs, it's got too much yellow....so we're gonna do more white white.  I hope that makes sense.

COZY ACCENTS
As for the cozy accents, I am very firm on the use of my bright red pillows I purchased with like the first 40 dollars I made at my crappy second job at a home decor store (you think I would have loved working there right? No, no I didn't).  I think they are awesome, they are squishy, & they are soft.  Of course there will be plenty of crocheted throws, once we get it all set up I'll decide on a color.  Perhaps a nice beige or if we do pale teal/blue accents, maybe something along those lines.

Of course, since we have this giant bookcase we're both excited about, Zach's book collection will be on display.  He has so many books on so many topics, a great start to a library.  While my book collection consists of the Harry Potter series, assorted craft & business books (my faves there in the side bar from Amazon!), sketchbooks, art history books, & a few french books...it's nothing compared to his.  

Other accents on side tables will be timed flameless candles.  I love them because you don't have to light any candles or go around & turn any flameless candles on.  Timed ones come on at a certain time then stay on for anywhere from 4 to 6 hours.  Meijer has a set of 3 or so that are only $16!  They were rather expensive at Bed, Bath, & Beyond.  Under the coffee table will be baskets to hold various things: remotes, controllers, magazines, etc.

So there you have it, just a long winded peek into what's been happening on the design side of things now that the drywall is up.  If you want to see the rough design idea for our living room, check out this post where you'll see the first mock up drawing we did when we were miles a part.

Have you done any redecorating?  Looking to install any new home elements in the new year? I'd love to know!

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2 comments:

  1. I'm so excited for you! Can't wait to see how it turns out. I haven't done any decorating in a while and probably won't. Mike & I do not plan on renewing our lease so we'll be moving later this year. I'll have fun decorating the next place. :)

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  2. Your blog and content are looking lovely, as always! :) I will be doing lots of restyling and decorating this year, I'm excited to document it all.

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