One Direction – The Living Room Plan Not The Boy Band
It’s been a house project zoo in these parts lately. From tree chopping to weeding to house painting to light fixture replacing to rodent remediation to making over an entire room in one week (more on that another day). And the junking…oh the fabulous junking and picking in Vermont! I haven’t met a flea market yet I haven’t loved. And can we pause for a moment to appreciate how our local dump (in rural VT you take your trash to the dump…no curbside pickup) has a freebie section?! I always come home with a haul. But today we’re talking about project planning and room planning.
I really want this house to feel its age. Having an old, circa 1781 farmhouse you just don’t paint your rooms bright, trendy colors. I’ve been thinking a lot about how I want to decorate our house and how I want it to feel and it boils down to three words: neutral, rustic, and muddy. Of course, I need a little color mixed in but the beachy colors that our old home was bathed in have to go. First up on the Vermont farmhouse makeover list, is the living room complete with a mood board:
We’ll come back to that in a second. But I know you’re asking, why the living room? Good question. Well, because this:
We spend a decent amount of time in the living room and it’s a total hot mess. See the mantle? I’m so excited about having a mantle to style but yet I just crammed ALL THE THINGS on it while I was unpacking boxes. Mostly anything I deemed super breakable (like the coral) ended up there. The view of the couch wasn’t looking any better.
So one Saturday I got totally annoyed at the state of the living room. I couldn’t take it anymore. Everything was coming out and I was going to at least paint the walls. I didn’t really have a plan at the time but started clearing out the clutter to quiet the room. Then I got a wild hair (curse you wild hair!) and was just curious as to what was behind door #1 the boarded-up fireplace. So we channeled our inner Nicole Curtis #ijustwantbrick and found it!
Hello lover so nice to meet you. The brick is in fabulous condition albeit a bit dirty.
The fireplace was boarded up as it wasn’t a working fireplace. There is no chimney here as it was removed in the house’s circa 1970s remodel. We have grand intentions of inserting a pellet stove into the fireplace for heating purposes, which only requires some venting as opposed to a full chimney. But alas another project for another day. Today, let’s just talk about how annoying the bright, turquoise, beachy blue-ish media cabinet is next to the older (and cooler) fireplace. It’s like Lady Gaga next to the queen. The cabinet needed a Pretty Woman makeover to class her up enough to live in this house.
The brick fireplace really spawned my game plan for the room. I loved the idea of a deep, army-green cabinet next to the old, red brick. So I went to my crazy place. I needed a plan Stan and I needed one NOWWWWWW!
I love it when bloggers talk about their “design process”. Most are so methodical and really think things through, weigh the options, sketch, and create mockups. Me (not that I would ever consider this “designing”), I turn to the tried and true mass chaos method:
Take over the dining room table for a weekend, pull out ALL the decor and art I love and want to use in the room, pour over the ginormous (and growing) box of torn-out magazine pages for inspiration, and find colors in the paint deck that could work. The one thing I knew I wanted to do was paint the media cabinet army green. I thought that would look amazing next to the brick and with the dark floors. After a couple of hours of percolating and searching for inspiration, this is the mood board I came up with (mostly to keep me on track while working on the room):
Sources:
- Couch: Ikea Ektorp Sofa
- Rug: Rugs USA Marrakesh Shag Rug
- Coffee Table: Wayfair Ridgedale Coffee Table
- Curtains: Ikea Gulsporre
- Mirror: Lamps Plus Round Bezza Mirror in Coral
- Art: Clare Elsaesser Etsy Shop
- Light Fixture: Restoration Hardware Farmhouse Flushmount
- Pillows: Etsy, West Elm, & Pottery Barn
- Pillar Box: Pottery Barn Mirrored Pillar Box
- Paint: Benjamin Moore Rodeo, Cabin Fever, & Icy Blue
We already have the major elements (couch, rug, and coffee table) that we love in this room and want to keep. The rest was fair game and I’m loving the direction this room is taking, full of muddy colors. The deep green, Cabin Fever by Benjamin Moore is slaying me! Spoiler alert, I’ve already painted the media cabinet that color and am deep in love. Fairly certain I’ll end up painting our kitchen cabinets that color as well.
Until next time, keep it classy dear blog readers.
