Art at last!

We've been looking for a new sofa sort of off and on and a few months ago I walked into the place where we bought our last sofa and talked to the same designer who sold me the one we currently have. I told her exactly what I was looking for and she walked me around the showroom pointing out everything they had that might fit our needs.

The conversation went something like this:
Furniture girl: How about this one?
Me: Nope. Too tall.
FG: Oh, here's a nice one. What about this one?
Me: No, the arms are too skinny.
FG: OK, well, we have this one over here that might work.
Me: No, I don't care for that one either.
FG: This is why I love working with you. You know what  you want.

I'm not really sure she meant the first part of that last statement and but I know she had the second part backwards. I rarely know exactly what I want, but I do know what I DON'T want. I know the right "one," whether it be a sofa, art, lamp or even a husband, when I see it but I don't know exactly what I'm looking for until I lay eyes on it.

I also don't do placeholders. Early on in my decorating-my-own-place life I bought an awful Ikea chair that filled a space in a room just because it was cheap. I hated it. It was uncomfortable and kind of ugly and I think it scarred me for life. Since then I'd rather sit there with nothing or use something I already have that I don't like rather than buy something to fill in "until I find the right one."

And that's why the huge wall behind the banquette in the kitchen has been blank for three years. It drives me nuts and every time I show a picture of it I included a little asterisk about how I knew the wall looked stupid blank but I was waiting for the right piece of art to come along.

I can't tell you how much art I looked at, but none of it spoke to me. I thought about making my own driftwood sculpture or even painting my own canvas, but those certainly would have been disasters.

Since the kitchen is one of the most light-filled rooms in the house, I liked the idea of bringing the outside in with some kind of botanical, but I didn't want anything fussy or formal. And then I (well actually my friend and design sympathizer Roisin) found these vintage German schoolhouse charts at the Etsy store Bonnie and Bell.

Of course picky old me was not satisfied with the charts that were in the store. No, I needed something special (I told you, I know it when I see it). So I started working with Bonnie and Bell owner Linda to find just the right thing. I swear the woman is a saint. She poured through piles of vintage charts (she has all sorts of contacts in the European antiques world) until we found the oak one on the right. Then it was just a matter of finding the right partner for it. I really loved the colors in the Sundew, but then I did a little research on Sundew and found out it's a carnivorous plant and as weird as this may sound, I just wasn't comfortable with a carnivorous plant hanging over my table (visions of "Feed me, Seymour, danced in my head). The same went for some of the zoological charts Linda had. I absolutely love the chickens chart, but I have a hard time thinking about raw poultry while eating much less looking at chicken innards, as pretty as they may be.

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So I did a little research on these old charts and found one that I knew would work: horse chestnut. So Linda set out to find that chart for me and sure enough, in a couple weeks she located it for me!

I was so happy when I unrolled them. They are so lovely and wonderfully but gently worn. It's completely charming that they aren't totally perfect. One was printed in 1967 and the other in 1977 so they aren't THAT old, but just perfectly aged.

I once heard a designer say that every room can use a little black. Before I hung up the beautiful botanicals, the only black in the entire kitchen was the black cords on the pendants over the table. Originally I was worried that so much black on the wall might overwhelm the room or make it unbalanced, but I think it adds just the right statement to the room and actually makes those cords fit in more.

Check out what it looked like before.

And now after. Which do you prefer?

I'm so happy I waited to find the right thing for that wall. You know it's right when it just feels like home. And that corner just became my new favorite place in the house.

And one last look from a different angle (where you can see my homemade seed packet art works great with them.

There's great news to go along with this post. Bonnie and Bell's Linda (who apparently didn't tire of me even after I sent her on a wild goose chase) has agreed to work with me on a giveaway. Stay tuned for details!

Color me impressed

I got the most lovely e-mail message the other day. Brigitte wrote me to tell me that she was so inspired by the eating area in our kitchen, that she created her own. I thought that sounded pretty cool but when I looked at the photos, I was blown away. Brigitte did this all herself (with a little help from her husband).

Here's mine:

You might recall that I cut down a table from the Restoration Hardware outlet and painted it (read about that process here), then had a local woodworker make the banquette, which I topped with cushions made by a local upholsterer and throw pillows made by my mom.

But Brigitte did it all. I mean she built the banquette and the table! (Let's all take a moment to bow Wayne's World style to Brigitte the amazing builder woman!)

Brigitte used a couple of Ana White's plans to help her build the banquette and drawers (here and here). And here's what she said about making the table:

The table base is made of two hemlock newel posts and hemlock stair railing from Home Depot and four 10 1/2" maple corbels from Lowes. The apron is pine, and the table top is birch plywood trimmed in hemlock quarter round. The base components are assembled with lag screws. I followed the tutorial from This Old House "How to Make a Trestle Table". The paint is tinted to match the existing trim, but it's from Fine Paints of Europe. I used Cabots pre-stain conditioner for everything that was stained, Rustoleum oil based stain in American Walnut, and Cabots satin oil-based polyurethane. I also tried Daly's poly and wasn't impressed. Sanded it down and put Cabots. The banquette and bookshelf is primarily birch plywood with some hardwood, some pine, and some hemlock trim. The bench top is pine with the same stain process as the table top. The pine turned out nicer. I wish I had chosen 
Dark Walnut instead. It would match the seat tops on the chairs better.


I love my thick cushion on my banquette, but Brigitte has three little kids (yes, she did all this with three kids in tow!) and she wanted to make it an easy-to-clean area for the kids to eat. I think the stained wood top is stunning. 


Thank you so much for sharing this, Brigitte!

Re-doing the kitchen: Part 1

I  t's official: I am the worst person in the world when it comes to taking "before" pictures. I get halfway through a project and think, "Oh shoot, I should have taken a picture." So about halfway through I take a photo. Or worse yet, it's too late and I have to look through all my old pictures for something that sort of resembles a before.

And wouldn't you know I'd do it with one of the biggest projects we've taken on? Our small kitchen (of course it's small ... the whole house is small!) is divided into two parts, the entry/eat-in area and the working part of the kitchen. When we bought the house as first-time homeowners we were lucky that the previous owner left quite a bit of furniture behind. (Moving day was a total fiasco ... her moving truck was late and small, and we had one day off of work to move in, so at some point we started moving our stuff in the basement while her stuff went out the front door. Her truck was filled and she just left ... leaving lots of furniture behind, which was a blessing because we had very little in the way of furnishings). Among those thing were the kitchen table and chairs. I love the table: round with a lazy susan in the middle. Unfortunately it only sat four people (and that makes it real hard to entertain when you don't have a dining room) and the round shape really wasn't right for the room. I always felt like I was walking in the back door right into the table. Couple that with the lack of a coat closet anywhere near the door and we ended up with a cramped entry area.

Anyway, the best picture I have of the before is the one I took to sell the old table, which doesn't really give you an idea of what the eating area looked like before at all ... but squint or something. We had to angle it so that the chair wouldn't be directly in the path of the door and we had to sort of squish it in the corner unless we had people over.

The banquette has been a work in progress for awhile.  Here's what it looked right after it was installed. There are sliding doors with oodles of storage underneath and a large drawer that pulls out the other end.

 

And here it is now, painted and with its new microsuede cushions I had made by a local upholsterer. (To read more about the paint I used, click here.) And already cluttered up on the shelf, but that's only because we were working on projects today ... I swear!

 

My mom is helping me out by making a number of throw pillows for the back. So stay tuned for more!