Tag: interior design

Finding your Sense of Design

Today it hit me right in the face. Pinterest is great for collecting cute pictures, funny sayings, etc. but I was revisiting some older pins on my boards and I noticed a few things. By looking at things I pinned a few months ago up through today, it’s fun and easy to get a grasp on an over-arching personal style.

For example, a theme I see running through my “personal environment” board is yellow, yellow, yellow. Even though I am tempted to jump on the shades-of-gray interior (paint) bandwagon, I seem to keep coming back to yellow, especially tones like my current living room. I don’t know how else to describe it other than that it’s calming and exciting at the same time. I’m also crazy about the pops of blue like you can glimpse in some pins below.

Below you can see some of my newer pins, in which yellow is clearly a recurring theme–my goal is for the next place we live in to have a cohesive color plan to be carried throughout the whole house/apartment. These two boards working together should give me a jumping-off place, and allow me to organize my thoughts on the subject before diving in, roller in hand.

Clearly, whenever we move I’m not going to buy all new stuff. But I feel like curating my style in this way helps me identify what I like so I don’t set out shopping without a plan, new possibilities to try out with my existing stuff, inspirations to DIY, and some statement-makers to save my pennies for (who knew curtains were so expensive?!).

  • Do you decorate with a plan or allow your room to evolve over time? I think I fell into the latter, but I’m trying to plan more these days. 
  • Requesting an invite from pinterest takes time, but if you want an account, comment here with your e-mail and I will send you one!! 

 

Courage

Today’s post about being courageous in your own home is inspired by this post from Under the Sycamore about the floors in her bedroom. I can’t post the picture, but you can see it on my pinterest here, and remember to check out her original post for more eye candy and a how-to!!

Okay, you looked at it? Great. Now we can get to the point.

Get this: she ripped out all the carpet, evened out the plywood that lay underneath, added a few coats of paint, stenciled a design, and sealed the whole thing. I think it looks absolutely incredible, and all the project took was a few days and less than $100. I’d love to do this as an alternative to carpet. I mean, hardwood floors are what I’m totally digging right now (and probably always will–they are timeless, durable, and go with everything) but they can cost a pretty penny. So, in the meantime–Ashley had the right idea–take a risk and the payoff can be huge! I’d love to recreate the look of sealed concrete in this way.

A “risky” thing that has really paid off around here is the yellow paint in the living room that stops a couple feet short from the ceiling. My genius mom came up with the grand idea in order to save our backs (ceilings are approximately 12 feet high?) and to save almost a whole can of paint (taking into account the strip goes all the way around and would require two coats.

I haven’t seen another house with it so I know that I stand out. In fact, painting this way lets the true color of the green show up better, and it’s one of the first things people notice and comment on when they come over. It wasn’t as easy as painting the whole wall–we had to meticulously measure and level our painter’s tape, and I wouldn’t have been able to consider it without my rockstar mom (can you tell I love her?). I definitely think it paid off  and hope the next renters to move in love it as much as I do and decide to keep it this way.

Basically, what all this rambling is trying to say is, even if something seems risky, if you stay true to your design sense, more often than not it will become the think you love the most.

Have you tried anything risky in your home? Did it pay off, or not so much?

Pondering Beige

Well, I’ve gotten antsy. After living here for almost a year and a half I feel like I want to move to a bigger city. The natural choice for me is San Diego, but I’ve been job hunting all over the country (lots of rejections, lots of no replies). It would even be exciting to move to a different place in town and work my magic there… This has gotten me to thinking about my habit… nay, addiction… of redoing rooms.

If I move into an apartment that won’t let me paint the walls, I may have to get more crafty. And by that I don’t mean sneaky (totally didn’t intend the double meaning of crafty but glad I went with it), I mean actually crafting things. This is not really my thing, you see, because I’m into the dramatic change, and only somewhat concerned about the details. Making an “apartment beige” place look interesting, fresh, and sophisticated is actually quite challenging.  Painting a room a whole new color–easy dramatic change. DIYing a nifty vase? Detail. And while some thrive on that, it’s less exciting for me.

However, I may be able to get some inspiration from Pale and Interesting… Gotta save up my tips and build my shelter book library :)