Maybe Navy?

I have a red dining room. With orange chairs. And a sleazy velvet painting of a tiger. And a zebra rug. It might be -- maybe -- a little much. Now I love me some drama, but I don't want my house to look like a psychotic palm beach housewife took acid and decided to spruce things up a bit. So, dear readers, I am enlisting your help today. I am offering up my dining room like a wee sacrificial lamb for your entertainment. You know how it's really easy to go to a friend's house and rearrange furniture and pick paint colors and choose a new couch (all within the span of an hour), but sometimes it's nigh IMPOSSIBLE to make decisions at your own home? Well, sometimes is now. Yes, I'm asking for advice, and I know that several of you are interior designers, so come out, come out, wherever you are. Your mission -- if you choose to accept it -- is the first room I decorated in our first house. So it's feeling a bit 2007:

Now don't wuss out on me, ok? Before you start formulating strategies, let me say that I know the plant stand needs to get painted black and the pot is fugly, so just pretend I already fixed those things. That's what I usually do.

Here are main the issues at hand: Should I keep the red and get a new rug? I'm considering this relatively inexpensive hemp and white leather flat weave rug from Overstock (it's reversible! Yaaaaaay!):

Or should I paint the walls navy blue instead? Somehow, I feel like I could keep the rug if I painted the walls navy, even though zebra is officially double dead. Sadly, the rug, at $350 buckaroos, is far and away the most expensive thing in that room. What have I learned from this experience? I will never buy a patterned rug again.  Also, I will never buy an expensive white rug again, because my cat LOVES to puke on rugs. (In case you're wondering, Folex is the best carpet cleaner ever.)

The suspect in question:

Hina Hina thinks she's modeling for Cat Fancy magazine. She's so vain that I had to turn on the vacuum cleaner to get her off the table and out of my photo shoot. But I digress (surprising, right?). Other possible points of contention include the always popular orange chairs with red walls combo. Yep. And an orange tiger painting to boot (but he's such a handsome fellow).

Obviously blue and orange would look better together... but maybe I shouldn't have the tulip chairs with that table, anyway? I actually have 6 of the Danish ropecord chairs, but 3 of them need repairs. Two are currently in the living room, to be used when we pull the leaves out of the table. Also, I used to have the tulip table in the dining room, but it was too small for company, so it's now my office desk. That's pretty much the catalog of available furniture, and I'm definitely not buying any more. (Have you checked the Dow today? Wowsers).

And what do you think about the lamps? I'm kind of on the hunt for new shades at the very least, but I only buy secondhand stuff, so that has limited my options severely (that, and my $50 budget).

One last teensy consideration:

My humble kitchen, as viewed from the laundry room. (Don't worry -- it doesn't actually look like a cubist painting in real life. It's just the camera lens.) The kitchen shares a wall (along the right side) as well as a clear line of sight with the dining area, so it has to be the same color as the dining room, and I think the kitchen is really cute in red. We're planning to knock all the upper cabinets out and install shelves (can you see from the upper right hand corner that the cabinets float over our bar? It's WEIRD. There's like, 8 million of them, too. We have 75 gargantuan square feet of countertops, all with cabinets hovering overhead. They must have cut down an entire forest to make those stupid cabinets. But, alas, this tragic story is way too big to be contained within this little post). Anyway, the point is that navy would have to look good in here, too.

So, I'm not sold on the navy, but I'm definitely considering it. I have a lot of black furniture, and most people surveyed say that blue and black together looks bruised, but I'm thinking the right color of blue would be ok. Kind of like the color on this crazy rocking chair that doesn't go anywhere in my house

:

And here are some navy rooms to help you further visualize the possibilities. I spotted several of them at Alicia B Designs, where she did this fantastic post on dark rooms... Worth a look.

This one is from Todd Alexander Romano Designs, and honestly, I'm not even sure if this color is navy. Or purple. Or charcoal. But it's pretty, and my couch in the living room (visible from the kitchen and dining room) is the same color leather as those chairs.

These are from Domino, and I like the one on the right, but lefty is a little too blue for my purposes... I think?

Navy grasscloth from Drake Design Associates. That desk is Ohmigod gorgeous. Drool. Drool. Drool.

Somehow navy and zebra is a popular combination... I guess it's slightly less obvious than red and zebra. Courtesy of Kristi Lei Interiors, this is a trifle froof and poof for my taste, but the paint color is nice.

I am a little worried that navy will feel stuffy and too... federal. We don't have an eat in kitchen, so I'd like to keep my dining room fun and convivial. Not like these rooms:

It's not that I don't like these rooms from Markham Roberts and Tom Scheerer, but they're just not for me.

I think if I do navy, I will definitely have to do some punchy accents, sort of like this vignette from Domino:

Ok, friends, I'm ready. What do you think? tell me what to do. Don't be shy. Do your worst best. If I like you advice I might even take it...

Can't See the Forest For the Trees

Sorry for the late post this morning, but I'm a little tired and under the weather from some of my weekend adventures, one of which involved a first foray into the world of wallpaper. Yes, my Cole and Son Trees wallpaper finally arrived from Merry Old England, and Hunny Bunny and I wasted little time in slapping it up on the wall. Which is kind of scary, honestly, when you're dealing with a $100 roll of paper, and, uh, you don't really know what you're doing. Ok, I've assisted my domestic diva of a mother with wallpapering a time or two, but this wallpaper is abnormal.

Here's a blurry picture of Hunny Bunny wrestling with wrapping the paper around a corner in the dorrway. If you've ever hung tradtional vinyl paper before, you know that you usually paste the paper, book the paper, hang it, then paste the top again. But this paper is super duper stiff, and you paste the wall instead of the paper, which is kind of awesome, but also kind of painful. It's really hard to keep the paste from touching the top of the paper, and it's hard to get the paper into corners because it's not very flexible.

The new breed of nonwoven papers are supposedly removable in one piece, and that was definitely a deciding factor in my choice of papers. I don't think I'll be pulling it off the wall anytime soon because it was a lot of work, and also because the band aid beige wall underneath is nauseating.

Drill, baby, drill! Light fixtures, that is. I have two sconces wired into the wall, and it was kind of heartbreaking to cut into the paper and screw them in. Actually, I couldn't watch at all. It looked like some kind of creepy surgical procedure.

Sconces are implanted installed. Don't worry. I already have 800 pairs of better ones that I'm watching in Ebay. What I really want is something like this, though:

All these beauties are from Circa Lighting, and if I had $500 burning a hole in my pocket, I'd already have a pair ordered for the hall. Alas, I am agonizing about spending $50 for a pair. The real world is crappy.

Anyway, here's a bad picture of the finished hall:

(Sorry about the lighting... no natural light in the hallway, and I'm too lazy to drag out my light kit. And, no, my bathroom is not actually poo brown). All things considered, I like the paper a lot. I know, I KNOW. It's so overused. But it's nice and quiet, and in real life it feels very naturalistic, with quite a bit of depth.

So, I dragged all the stuff I used to have in the hall back into their respective places.

Hunny Bunny and Karly hate it. "It's too much stuff... it's covering up the trees... blah, blah, blah." In my weakened state, I have to admit that I'm beginning to agree. I hate it when they're right. Or maybe they are just objecting to my cheesy foo dog?

I did try restyling, though, because I have a stupid attachment to that display case. Don't ask me why.

Everyone likes mannequin arms, right? Sigh. Oh, and I forgot to duck when I took that picture...

Wish I could put my sexy Milo Baughman chair there, but it's too darn deep. Or my hallway is too darn narrow. Gosh darn it, doggone it, you betcha it sucks.

Ok, how about this?

This is just a wee art deco mirror top table. I guess I could drop the mirror down lower and paint the table...

Are you sick of looking at bad pictures of my hallway yet? Only one more to go, because I'm running out of small furniture pieces.

The mirror is a no go here. I could maybe hang some spiffy artwork? Something VERY simple and graphic?

Help, people. I don't feel well, I'm tired of moving furniture around, I'm indecisive and I can't let Karly and Hunny Bunny be the only bosses of me. You do want to get in on the action, right? Here's your chance. Tell little Erin what to do.

Do Not Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here

Hunny Bunny and I have been busting our collective arse to get a few projects going around nostra casa, and have FINALLY finished (or very nearly finished) the entry way that we've been fretting over since the day we moved in. Well, I've been fretting. HB is just my hunky hero who knocks out walls while I chew my fingernails as I imagine the imminent collapse of our roof. Happily, all went well, and my brand spankin' new digital camera just arrived so I documented this epic journey of hallway renovation for your viewing pleasure. Behold!

Remember when I posted all those wallpaper patterns for the ceiling? Well, I went all Wary Meyers on it instead. In case you don't remember what the hallway used to look like, I posted about it months and months ago, but here's the before picture:

I feel a little guilty about posting those pictures to compare because my new camera is infinitely better than the old one, but I don't feel THAT bad... at least you can see that the old hallway 1) Was very brown 2) Had a weirdo faux wall thing that separated the entry from the dining room 3) Was very brown. That picture is so ugly, I want to delete it right now, but it tells of an odyssey to separate the wheat from the chaff, good from evil, brown from not brown. So I can't

After we I decided that everything about the entry (except the door) was unsalvageable, HB went up into the attic to make sure the beams weren't load bearing, and that we could actually knock that wall disaster out.

I kind of wish I had never seen this, because now I'm more than a little afeared that a two headed aluminum Chimera lives in our house... But hark! No beams! Kids, you should always brave the monsters that live in the attic before you saw down your walls. Or at least send someone expendable up to check for you. The seventh level of hell can be daunting.

Once we HB discerned that the coast was clear, it was time to strip the mangy wood veneer off the studs.

Are you sad that we demolished this paragon of beauty? Don't you wish we had just left it like this? Hellz no. Anon, it's time to cross the River Styx, and once you leave the shores, there is no return.

Only the strength and fortitude of our hero can save us now. Meanwhile, his other half is wringing her hands in despair. Right choice? Wrong choice? Purgatory is so draining.

What's that I see up ahead??? Could it be...?

HEAVEN.

Yes, one demolished wall, two coats of gray paint, new white ceiling paint, several bursts of golden goodness, door paint, trim paint, door hardware, new roman shade, new switchplate and dimmers later, It's DONE.

Except... I need some art.

As you can see from the dining room, there's a hole there. Does this complaint sound familiar? Since this little project cost a lot more than I would have thought, I'll be hanging a piece that I already own. So far, I have three serious contenders who must battle for my undying love. I'm trying to choose something relatively simple, but interesting (of course!).

Uno:

This is Good Old Neil, a photo that my pal Eric Belland made while we were but starry eyed graduate students. Neil is a ladies' man, sure to charm whosoever may cross our threshold.

Due:

This is a surrealish etching that my friend Peter made while we were in Hawaii, before he defected to SFAI. Chump. It's a pretty good print, though, and it shows some subtly naughty bits for our visitors to behold.

Tre:

You may remember Demon Boy, Spawn of Hades, from my last post. I think he might add that certain je ne sais quois to my entry. Also, he would thrust evildoers from our home after 3am, when they are most likely to inflict damage.

Thus ends our collective pilgrimage, but the work has only begun for HB and I. He is ecstatic about this fact. Nevertheless, I hope to regale you with new tales of decorating delights ASAP.

Word.