Design Reveal: Cali Meets Traditional Part 2

Welcome back, friends! In case you missed it or want a recap, part 1 of this 9-room reveal is here. But I’m especially excited for what’s in store with this second half of our design reveal! We’ve got wallpapered walls, bold built-ins, a refinished stone fireplace, and some serious Pearl Jam appreciation. In my opinion, today’s rooms are even more dramatic than what I shared on Monday in part 1!

But I’m going to start with the most laid back of the bunch - the family room! As I mentioned on Monday, the clients hired me to really make this home feel 100% them - vibrant, fun and echoing their California roots. This was a tall order for a heavily traditional colonial style home - complete with rounded windows and lots of dentil trim throughout. This job was all about making intentional decisions big and small - doing what we could and making the rest work.

The one major update in the family room, aside from white paint which I had them do throughout, was the fireplace. The clients were on the fence with the stone - they didn’t hate it but something wasn’t right. We decided to do a limewash treatment which made a drastic difference. After swapping the mantle for a rustic wood piece, the fireplace looked brand spankin new!

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Here was my strategy with this room: Since I couldn’t do anything about the obvious traditional style of the home itself, I could at least bring in an overall organic feel with woven pieces, camel leathers, and natural dyes. I wouldn’t say organic is a style, but rather a feel, or a tone you can incorporate just about anywhere.

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Due to the very long and narrow shape of this room, we had a custom sofa made by Interior Define, covered in an extremely family friendly fabric, (we used ‘Pepper’). Surrounding pieces had to be comfortable, durable, and interesting (without being loud). A striped rocking chair, for example, is visually interesting and balances the left side of the room, but it’s not distracting from everything else.

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TVs are just not something you see in a lot of design reveals, but I’m here asking, Why not?! They are a part of most homes and I don’t like pretending they aren’t. Why designers refuse to show the TVs in their projects is perplexing to me. When styling this room with finishing details I pondered what to do on the fireplace mantle. I like a well dressed mantle just like anyone else. But nothing felt right. Books, plants, candles - any items I added just felt like clutter. I think when the only place for your TV is over the mantle, a nice clean mantle is the way to go. Instead, I focused on the hearth which balances the visual weight of the TV above.

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I need to point out this brass and rattan sconce. The previous light fixture was a half dome that had moons and stars punched out - like a child’s nightlight. Actually, I just need to show you:

 
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It’s not the best picture but you get the idea. It had to go! This light below is one of my favorite pieces in the house (interpret as you will - I have lots of favorite elements in this home)

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Is this what people did before open floorplans became a thing? A little unusual, but we worked it out and I don’t mind it at all with a bit of soft styling.

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One more fireplace appreciation shot. I can’t get over how gorgeous this stone turned out. I mean, I imagined it and loved it in my head, but seeing it in real life is just so much fun.

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I mentioned this on Monday, but one of the best parts about designing in a colonial is getting to do whatever you want in each room! I mean, I aimed to give this home a consistent feel throughout - fun, vibrant, laid back - but how we achieved that feel from room to room is so different! The couples’ two offices are a prime example of how I created two TOTALLY different rooms to reflect them as individuals. And because they are on completely opposite sides of the home, it really doesn’t matter! Here is her office:

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The star on all her zoom meetings? Why yes, yes she is. (No really, she told me so) We had the idea to paper this wall right off the bat, and float her desk in front. The paper itself is secretly edgy - there are snakes woven into the pattern which lend to her edgy personality. The family moved with the white base under the shelves, so I added on with additional units from this CB2 line.

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Battery operated picture lights finish off these shelves for a subtle evening glow highlighting the various pretties on the shelves themselves.

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If you must work from home, you may as well add a sofa to that office! A perfect lounge place to answer emails, review files, etc. A little movement throughout the work day feels like a luxury these days, and since she had the room for it I wanted to give her a second option during the work week.

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Not once did I compare the blue velvet of the sofa to the blues in the wallpaper. I didn’t need nor want them to be a perfect match, and I love that the sofa has a very subtle green tone.

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Like I said, the two home offices are polar opposites! Where I went soft and feminine in one, I went hard and bold in the other.

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If I had to guess, I would bet his coworkers appreciate his zoom meeting background, too. Even if they aren’t outright saying it. ;)

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True story, this space was designed and complete before one evening when I got a text from the clients asking if there would be anywhere to add their collection of Pearl Jam concert posters. It was like meeting them again for the first time. A shared obsession with one band?! I was THRILLED to use these pieces and promptly had them frame their collection at Framebridge and played with an arrangement that would suit this office. I had actually picked that pole wall lamp before knowing about these pieces, so it was really fun to work the gallery wall around that piece. I am still beyond words excited with how this turned out!

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Sophisticated meets rock n’ roll? Oh yes. Please and thank you.

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Hard pivot now from Pearl Jam’s shrine to adorable childs room. Hope you’re hanging on tight, lots of twists and turns in today’s reveal! From black and bold to…butterflies!

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I need to stop us here really quick to say, I think we can all agree the wallpaper MAKES this room. Well guess what? I was utterly stuck on wallpaper. I was chasing after big bold florals, enchanted forests and everything in between. But nothing felt right. I wanted a wallpaper that would suit this 5 year old little one as she is now, and when she’s a teenager. Everything I was finding seemed either too nursery, or too sophisticated. Fast forward to one of several afternoons I got to spend with a teen from our church over the summer, when her and her brother would come over and literally just play with my kids (and the other 234 kids in our neighborhood) for a few hours. I asked if she’d help me with this room if I paid her for her time, and within an hour she sourced THIS PAPER. It knocked me right over. So, huge shout out to my friend, Meredith Jolly! Thank you!!

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The velvet teal bed felt like an unexpected pairing with this wallpaper, which made it feel just right. I really got into this groove of making brave choices with this home, and their daughters bedroom was no exception. Don’t overthink design, friends! You never know what you’ll uncover.

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The rug felt like another unusual choice - the bed doesn’t really match the wallpaper which doesn’t really match the rug - and it all totally works and is glorious.

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I wanted to finish the room off with more neutral pieces - you don’t really see the winks of black and brown in the wallpaper until you layer those colors in and it hits you.

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I think if happiness were embodied in a physical room, this is what it would look like. It’s just pure delight in here!

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I can’t believe that’s it for this reveal! Or is it? Good news, the family has just hired me to work on the master bedroom with a quirky adjoining side room, and their finished basement. Who knows what we’ll get into but I’m all in. After these rooms I am sure it’ll be very exciting, indeed!

Thank you so very much for coming by! Every hit to our website helps our little business so much, so we sincerely appreciate you taking the time to visit on our very special reveal days. It truly means a lot! Have a wonderful rest of your week!

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'Shire Green', SW

Hello, sweet friends! Well we are just barreling through the seasons here, aren’t we? Aspects of this new weird normal feel like a marathon, but I’m also getting seasonal amnesia - you know how sometimes when you’re driving and you end up back home but hardly remember how you got there? (this IS normal, ask around) That’s how the seasons are kind of feeling. The pandemic started when the weather was still cool in March, then we blew through Summer and are rounding the corner to Fall and the air is turning crisp. How’d we get here? I, for one, don’t intend to barrel through the Fall. I quite enjoy this season and we intend to take full advantage of all of its sweet gifts.

Since March work has increased, schools have closed, I released my Interior Design Starter Guide, and we finally started letting Albus upstairs to our bedroom level. Those are the highlights in a nutshell! In all seriousness, what has been hard about this season has also been met with all that is rich and precious about it at the same time. Life has been busy on an other worldly level, but at the same time there is nothing like being with my family to fill my cup. Gratitude has not escaped me and I know that is a direct gift from the Lord.

Towards the end of Summer Matt and I suddenly realized we had no established work spaces for our kids to do virtual school from this year. We thrust ourselves into creating functional desk areas in their rooms in time before the first day of school (yesterday!), and I’m relieved to share we got it done! It was a stretch, but done. Re-working Shire’s room to even make space for a desk was a challenge. But for me challenge and opportunity are synonymous and we really had a ton of fun! Since we were going to be moving things around I asked Shire if she wanted a fresh color which was an instant and surprising “YES!”

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She’s loved her pink for several years, but she shares my curiosity and joy in creativity and wanted to try out green. After many swatches and samples, she ended up mixing two colors from Sherwin Williams and got to name it!

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‘Shire Green’ is soft and minty with just a slight touch of gray. It’s perfectly dreamy; and so fun that our girl got to create it!

We went 3/4 the way up the wall, just like we did with the pink, but added vertical trim for some cozy texture and needed visual interest for such a light color. Before we added the trim it kind of just blended with the white, so I love that the trim work establishes the two colors.

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Her bedding and curtains didn’t change, but it’s fun to see how the new color plays off both. Everything else in the room is new, new to us, built or on loan!

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The light is a sweet borrow from Cate who used the pair in her master bedroom a few years ago and I love that it can bend out of the way when not in use!

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Since Shire specifically requested her bed be placed in this nook (we were originally going to put the desk in the nook), we needed a slim nightstand solution, which Matt created out of scrap wood in our garage.

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The desk is a piece we found at Target (linked here), and the chair I created from two Facebook Marketplace pieces I found, and the shelves….oh, those shelves. I really wanted corner shelves here so she could get as much up on shelves as possible, but it turns out the studs on this wall are every 24”, which didn’t work for your standard brackets. We found these horizontal brackets online (linked here), and while they ended up being the only possible way we could hang shelves where we wanted them, they felt like a visual eye-sore. Very garage-y looking. But honestly, as soon as I got her stuff up on them they grew on me!

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That gorgeous mirror we’ll call a temporary trade - we loaned all our weight lifting equipment to my brother and Cate as soon as the gyms closed, and we got their mirror for when my sister was staying with us earlier in the pandemic. Weights for a mirror - not a bad deal! The dresser I am going to hold off on sharing because Shire and I have plans in place for the piece. She and I had searched all Summer for a refinishing project we could tackle together, and that cutie showed up just last week on FB Marketplace for a steal. It’s the perfect shape for our inspiration, (see here - of course, the project will be entirely dependent on our skills, so who knows where we’ll end up!)

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Have you been cornered into updating any parts of your home during this time of COVID? Or simply taken on any refreshes in the name of creativity? Drop your project(s) in a comment below! Would love to hear what you all have been up to?

Thank you so much for stopping by!

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Matt + Chelsea's Christmas Home Part 1: Bedrooms

Hi there! It’s that time of year again, to open our doors wide and have you all in for a visit! While I’m not the most sentimental person, I do embrace tradition and this is one of my favorites when it comes to our blog. Really, in a perfect world we would all live near enough to invite each other over in person for warm drinks and holiday merriment. But, how sweet to get to reach out to you in this way; I really am grateful for this unusual and unexpected form of community which has blossomed into some RL friendships and, most surprisingly, an interesting way to earn a living!

To keep things short and sweet around here I split our Christmas tour into two days. Today I’m just sharing the bedrooms and I’ll be back on Friday with the main living spaces. We have three bedrooms in our home - the Master, Shire’s room, and Colin and Mason’s shared room. If you caught my last post you saw how we turned their room into our Guest Room for holiday visitors, but all is back to normal now. I should tell you ahead of time - I don’t do a whole lot in bedrooms for the holidays. Simplicity is ever calling my name, so instead I emphasized cozier textures for these colder months; thicker bedding, softer pillows, etc.

So welcome in, one and all! Come as you are is always my rule. We hope you enjoy!

Master Bedroom

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Confession - I usually strongly dislike extra pillows on our bed. I just really enjoy a simple bed, (and being able to pull down the blankets and crawl in without the fuss of moving extra pillows around). But, our bedroom has a TV and the kids do watch it more with us in the colder months, so I grabbed a couple velvety soft shams and faux fur throw pillows to make it a more comfortable place when the gang piles on.

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Let’s see, what else - oh! The balsam fir candle! Our christmas tree smell isn’t quite making it to our bedroom so I’m goin’ with the faux. I mean, if we’re not overstimulating all our senses this time of year what are we even doing? Hah!

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Shire’s Room

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Her room feels festive without even trying. The colors in here want for nothing! Just a couple special touches, (like the American Girl Kirsten Christmas Tree on loan from my sweet sister).

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Funny story - I found that tiny wreath in the Target $5 section early in the Fall and thought it a cute wreath. When I took the tag off it started to unravel and I realized it was a garland. Oops. But I paper-clipped it back together; not to worry! Lol!

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Colin + Mason’s Room

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This room has just sort of evolved and come together like a happy accident. The elements in here have been collected/DIY’ed over years and they somehow just perfectly represent Colin and Mason and this stage of their life. I stenciled these birch trees maybe 5 or 6 years ago and they are especially fun at Christmastime.

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Ah yes, can’t leave out the Bisou Natural air freshener satchel. That cute little ‘JOY’ bag hanging on the accordion wrack is hard at work cleaning the air. It’s filled with activated bamboo charcoal, which naturally removes odors, bacteria and excess moisture from the air. And do you know what carries around excess moisture? Prepubescent boys and older. Find out more here and shop for your own!

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That’s it for today! I hope you enjoyed a few quiet moments to yourself while you were here. I so appreciate you stopping by!

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