Porcelain Blue

Progress

Not that anyone is reading this blog, but I feel the need to explain my absence. I've been unpacking. And unpacking. And still more unpacking. And I'm not done yet.

Things have been coming together nicely, though. I'm very happy with the rooms that are finished, even though there are only three of them. Things that have been thrown together out of necessity have merged well, with the help of accessories that have mostly come from Ebay.

Since we have lived in this house before, it's interesting to see the ways we've made different choices based on current circumstances. Most of the "current circumstances" have to do with the fact that we're now over 60. So, for example, the once very lush tropical garden by the pool has now become a lovely, not so lush, low maintenance tropical garden. The coffee table in the living room has been replaced by a cocktail ottoman, now that we've acknowledged the fact that we really only want a coffee table so we can put our feet up.

How the palette was chosen for each room:

Dining room: I had a gorgeous hutch in storage that came from Ballard Designs back when I had more money than sense. It's black and distressed, but before it was painted black, it was painted red. So the "distressed" part shows up in red. And the drawers are painted red on the inside. I had to buy a new dining table and I didn't want an all black Florida dining room. (I had that before and got tired of it.) So I found a dining table and chairs on Wayfair that had black leggs and brown tops. It looks nice with the hutch and it's not so dark. My family gave me a gorgeous "looks like real" fake flower arrangement for the dining table, and that brightens up the room. I hung my collection of California plein aire art on the walls. (I would have sold it, but you can't give art away at present. The silver lining is that I get to enjoy my paintings without feeling guilty for not selling them.) I'm really happy with how it all turned out.

Living room: I had brown sofas and I was stuck with them because sofas are insanely expensive. I wanted to lighten up (and Florida up) the room, so I bought a turquoise cocktail ottoman (from Wayfair) and some turquoise sofa pillows. My favorite find was a throw blanket with brown and turquoise background and flamingos! (I am a shameless flamingo lover.) I now have to find the perfect rug, and I have no idea what that's going to look like.

Kitchen: Again, I was stuck with a brown table. And again, I made it look like Florida by buying turquoise chairs. (Gorgeous turquoise chairs from Wayfair. Thank God for Wayfair.)

Bedroom: I wanted to use the aforementioned porcelain blue curtains, so I went shopping on Ebay for a Pottery Barn duvet cover with porcelain blue in it. I found a great one and, while doing so, learned that gray is a really "in" color right now. So the duvet cover is porcelain blue and gray and ivory, that latter matching the really gorgeous furniture I found at Joss and Main (a Wayfair company.) The result was a very peaceful room. I relax when I walk through the door.

Guest Room: I love pink. And I love the fact that pink is a Florida color, and in a way that is not girly-girl. So I started by buying a Tommy Bahama quilt (on Ebay) that has a blue background with green palm leaves and pink flowers. Since the guest room will also double as my granddaughter's room when she stays here, I went full pink ahead. I bought a pink nightstand and a white lamp with a pink shade. The bed is white rod iron and the dresser is white. I bought some hand-painted knobs for the dresser (Ebay again) that have a lot of pink in them. I also had a red armoire that I wanted to use in there, and it looks great with the pink. Pictures coming soon. I'm still waiting for the mattress to arrive.

Teenaged Boy's Room: I chose gray furniture from Wayfair. It is masculine without being boring. I had a duvet cover from the last time we lived here that my son liked, so I used that. It's hard to describe, so you'll have to wait for pictures. The basic palette is navy and gray, but the duvet cover is colorful. He likes it all, and that's what counts.

Teenaged Boy's Man Cave Room: We won't discuss that any time soon. It's the room I try not to even look into.

I'm including a couple of pictures of the dining room and master bedroom. The black table in the master bedroom is going to be painted some shade of blue, as soon as I get around to it. Otherwise those rooms are done.

The main thing I have learned from this move: we did a wise thing by spending a ridiculous amount of money on "cabin" furniture. We bought Old Hickory and Flat Rock, simply because we could at the time. The furniture held its value to the point that I was able to buy everything I needed for the Florida house with what I made from selling the cabin furniture. So if you're going to buy furniture that can't be used just anywhere, my advise is to spend money on it, so you can sell it when you have to move.

That's it for now.

What make a house great?

Today my writing prompt asked me what was most important to me, in choosing a house. Every time we move, I make a list of what we have to have at the new place, but the list is mostly about not wanting to miss things that were at the old place. I've never really asked myself what is important to me in a home.

So that's what I'm riffing on today. 

I lived in Los Angeles for many years, and I moved constantly, trying to find a part of town that felt like home. The closest I came was the Pasadena area, but I eventually figured out that I was never going to feel at home in Los Angeles. So the first thing that is important to me in a home is that it has to be in the southeast. Anything south of Charlottesville feels like home to me. I've lived in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida and I always felt like I was "home." These are my people. They go out of their way to be nice, they drink sweet tea, and they call you honey. What's not to like? Also, they talk to strangers. I love talking to strangers, and I hate living somewhere that people think talking to strangers is insane. Like Los Angeles.

I bought several houses in Los Angeles and I got to know the drill. It's this: you have to give up something. You can't have a great kitchen, a great master bedroom, great closet space, a great view, a quiet street, a yard, and a good school system. So every time I'd move, I'd choose what to give up. (My last house was the perfect house on a busy street. But the busy street was why we could afford it.) Similarly, when you buy a house anywhere, you have to decide what the deal-breakers are. When we were in the mountains of North Carolina, the big deal-breaker was no fireplace. I've recently taken up cooking, so now I want a great kitchen. I've lived with tiny master bedrooms, and I didn't mind because I could still make them beautiful. (We had one house where the master bedroom was so small, I used to pretend we were on a ship.) 

The #1 thing I look for in a house, to be honest, is that it has to look like it would be fun to live in. Since everyone defines fun differently, I can't tell you what that means. I just want a house where I can imagine flopping on chairs in the living room, cooking big meals in the kitchen, nice rooms for the kids, and a bathroom that can be made to look like a spa.

We didn't have to give up anything when we bought our current house. We were lucky, because we never really looked at the house before we bid on it. We fell in love with the patio area. The house was originally built to be the clubhouse for our neighborhood, so there is a huge pool with a diving board AND a sliding board. There is a large bar on one side and a large seating area on the other. It was all beautifully landscaped, so lounging by the pool makes a person feel like they are staying at a great hotel.

After buying the house, we came back to look at what we'd bought. Luckily there were enough bedrooms. Other than that, the house was not something we would ever have bought if we'd really looked at it. (Did I mention that we were young and stupid at the time?) It was UGLY. It was ugly wrapped in ugly. My oldest daughter came in, looked around, and said, "Are you going to keep these light fixtures?" The next time she came over, we had stripped the house to bare concrete floors and bare walls. I said, "No."

I'm the only person I know who has completely remodeled a house who would do it again. Not only was it fun to watch the transformation, but every tile, every wall color, every floor, every light fixture was chosen by us. We've now moved back into the house after eight years of renting it to other people, and I'm still happy with every choice we made. Almost. When we did one bathroom in primary colors (including tiles and sink fixtures), we neglected to take into account how soon it was going to be before the 5 year old was a 16 year old. So stay tuned for the remodeling of that bathroom!

What's important to me in a house is that it can be made to feel like a home. And to me, "home" is fun, warmth, safety, and beauty. Next time, back to the latter. The decorating is coming along nicely.

When in Doubt, Turquoise

I bought turquoise chairs (part of my turquoise/gray/etc. pallet) as a relatively inexpensive way to make my Flat Rock kitchen table fit into the Florida scheme of things. I'm really happy with the result!

Some Assembly Required

When I ordered the dressers, I didn't pay for the "expert assembly" in the room of my choice. Big fail. See, I thought, "It's a dresser. You screw on the feet and insert the drawers." Well, no. If you order the dresser from Wayfair and can't believe the great price you got, you soon learn that most of the cost of the dresser is for paying someone to put it together. So I now have 117 pounds of unassembled dresser in the guest room. Very few pieces are bigger than a breadbox. AND I have never been gifted at reading directions.

So tip for the day is this: spring for the expert assembly. Especially when you're in the middle of moving and don't have a day to set aside for assembling 117 pounds of dresser pieces.

Gray. Who Knew?

Today I worked on my 15 year old son's room. He needed a dresser and a nightstand. His bed is a platform with no headboard, so I could get any colored furniture. Wouldn't you know it? I ended up liking a gray dresser? I guess that's good, as I will now have gray in our bedroom and in his, so it looks like I was planning for things to flow. The gray looks restful to me, and it's just different enough. And I found a lamp in turquoise (his favorite color) with gray trim. 

Wayfair is my new best friend. And their customer service is fantastic.

 

  

 

 

Today's Little Victory

I have spent many hours on many websites, trying to find something to hang over the bed. It (or they) had to be the right colors, and, I thought, something tranquil. But after looking at a zillion tranquil beach scenes, it finally occurred to me that I'm not a person who is calmed by "tranquil." Tranquil makes me feel like I'm goofing off and should be working. It's fine for a hotel, where I'm purposefully taking a break from life. (Even though I have to work hard at relaxing, even then.) But tranquil in the bedroom would bore me and I'd be sick of it and restless in about a week. Which was my main concern with the "over the bed" picture(s).

BUT. I just found a set of Winslow Homer prints on Ebay. Tropical, but the sky is a little threatening and wind is blowing the boats around. Perfect. (For me. And my husband will probably never even look at what's hanging over the bed, except when he's hanging them.)

Here are a couple of the prints. I'm going to frame them in some off-white wood that matches the furniture. The frames will cost me more than the prints, but I'm a big believer in putting very nice frames on inexpensive art. More on that when stuff comes back from the framers.

 

The Master Bedroom - Part Two

So. I sold all the Flat Rock hickory furniture. I highly recommend Flat Rock Furniture, should you ever buy a cabin in the woods. It's very pricey, but it is built to last for several generations. And it's really gorgeous. 

But it doesn't look good in Florida. So I sold it, which gave me money to buy new bedroom furniture. I had already bought a headboard for the bed, and it's a very nice brown color. Problem is, after I already had it, I decided that I wanted white furniture in the master bedroom. Imagine my delight when I found white furniture with brown tops at Joss & Main. (I really like Joss & Main and Wayfair and all the other names of that company. Nice stuff that doesn't a fortune.) 

I just ordered the nightstands and the dresser. I have to sell a few more things before I can get the media thing that the TV will sit on. I think it's all going to look great in the bedroom. Pictures coming eventually. Meanwhile, here are the nightstands and I'll add a picture of the headboard.

The last time we lived in Orlando, I went all Tommy Bahama, because I love Tommy Bahama. However, I made myself really tired of TB and its palette, so I'm doing different things this time. For the bedroom, I wanted something very peaceful looking. I love the porcelain blue color that Pottery Barn has, so I got curtains in that color and the Samantha Damask duvet cover, which has porcelain blue in it, but also shades of gray. Gray is not a color I ever would have imagined, but it's apparently a very "in" bedroom color right now. Either that, or by some coincidence, gray bedrooms kept showing up when I googled. Whatever. The white and blue and gray will be relaxing, and I spent way too many hours finding the perfect "blush" throw pillow, for a touch of warmth.

I can't wait to put it all together and post the results! You'll just have to imagine it in the meantime.

Challenge #1: The Master Bedroom

First, a little back story. I am, much to my on-going surprise, a "woman of a certain age." As most people my age will tell you, I feel like I'm about 35 or 40, but the mirror says otherwise. (However, as "women of a certain age" go, I get along with the mirror pretty well.) I have worked as a professional writer since I was 24, and I am now what I like to call "half-assed retired." Meaning I don't want to work full time, but I'm nowhere near ready to be put out to pasture, so I work when something good comes along. When I'm not working, we live on a pension that is sufficient, but doesn't allow me to shop at Gumps. (However, I still have the monkey lamp I bought at Gumps in 2004. And it will be with me in the nursing home. More on that at another time.)

My husband and I have four kids: his, mine and ours. Three of them are adults, with jobs and apartments, in Atlanta, Orlando and Los Angeles. The fourth, our mutual son, will be 16 in June and delights in reminding us that he will be gone in two years. When all four kids were at home, we bought a four bedroom house in an Orlando suburb. Our plan was to sell it when the oldest three went to college, since there was a 12 year gap between our youngest and the three oldest. However, the last of the oldest graduated from high school in 2007. That's right, the year before the housing collapse. So when it came time to downsize, we couldn't find a real estate agent who would even consider listing our house, unless we wanted to sell it for much less than we owed.

We made a decision to rent the big house out and move into our cabin in the North Carolina mountains. That's right, the getaway cabin. Four rooms, less than 1500 square feet. We've had a great time here for the last 7 years, but for a variety of reasons, it's now time to go back to civilization. And the big house. (The new plan is to live there for two years and then downsize when the youngest goes to college. But we've learned not to take plans seriously.)

In the pre-2008 days, I would have given the mountain cabin furniture to charity and bought all new furniture once back in Florida. But these are not the pre-2008 days. So my task has been to decorate the empty Florida house on a VERY small budget (basically, what I could get by selling the cabin furniture) while making use of everything we currently own.

So, first I decided to attack the master bedroom. Our (very nice) furniture was made to look good in the woods, and nowhere other than in the woods. So I had to sell all the bedroom furniture on Craigslist, for about 1/10th of what I paid for it. And nowhere near enough to replace it. Therefore, the bedroom will be a work in progress for awhile.

To be continued...

Item of the Day

I love to look at websites for ideas. It's the modern version of window shopping. (And, if you have a PC instead of a Mac, it is window shopping.) My husband becomes twitchy when he sees me browsing websites. He doesn't understand that putting it on your "wish list" or "idea board" is almost as satisfying as actually purchasing it. Almost.

I figured I could turn my window shopping into a public service if I helped someone else find a good item or two. So, Item of the Day. (Note: Item of the Day will not be a daily thing. I am way too ADD for that.)

Today's item is the Spring's Eden Candle from Anthropologie. It comes in four colors (all really pretty),  it's perfect for the early days of spring, and it's on sale. I don't know about you, but I love everything in Anthropolgie. Sadly, everything in Anthropologie has been out of my price range since around 2008. But Anthropologie puts good stuff on sale, and then you can buy yourself a little trinket and feel less deprived. 

Another tip: I love to buy gifts from Anthropogie. I can always find something great on sale, and their wrapping is gorgeous. People are impressed because the gift came from Anthropologie, and they won't know or care that it was on sale. (This works particularly well at Christmas!)

It's Like This

I'm about to decorate a house from scratch. I've done this many times. I've done it many times while living with two men (my husband and my son.) I love them, so I can tell you who is currently the points leader in both Nascar series, who is playing tonight for the college basketball title, and who the NFL free agents are at present. They love me, too. But they have absolutely no idea what it has taken for me to take furniture from a cabin in the NC mountains and make it make sense in Floridian suburbia. It's not just that they don't care. They ACTIVELY don't care. They have both informed me that the overturned boxes work fine as end tables and nightstands. They don't understand why I got rid of the plates with bears on them and bought yellow ones to replace them. They are completely mystified as to why I want to have a rug in the bedroom. 

Are you someone who loves decorating and has no one with whom to swap ideas? If so, this is a blog for you. If not, then you'll be bored, so you'll probably want to pass. I am a writer by profession, so I'll do my best to entertain. I'm prone to rants, so there might be some of those. (Like this: I was about to order placemats from Target with an old giftcard that I found while moving, until I noticed that the placemats were $22.00 and the shipping was $24.00. Which made me realize how frequently I must have been robbed, back when I had enough money that I didn't pay attention to the prices! Which is why I don't have that kind of money any more.)

I'm a big fan of Pottery Barn, hence the blog title. I'm also a big fan of Ebay. I'm happy to share everything I have learned from decorating many houses. Feel free to share your own tips. And photos. And rants. Whatever. Welcome.