Client Before and After- Living Room/Dining Room

This before and after is actually of a space I did a couple of years ago but only came back to shoot recently.  Just as an FYI- the pictures were taken by me, not my photographer, so they are good, not great in the photo quality sense.  Here are the before pictures....

 And after...

Images Marianne Strong Interiors and a big thank you to the client for letting me show this transformation.

Happy Mother's Day!!!

To all of my readers who are moms--- I hope you had an amazing mother's day!!!  

Becoming a parent changes you inexplicably:  It's hard to explain, but I seem to feel both more and less.  Being a parent has relaxed me about most of life and helps put things into perspective.  So much that was a big deal, just isn't.   Yet I feel such an intensity of feelings too.  That feeling when you're holding your child...  it's definitely real and it's definitely both emotional & chemical.  It's such a strong palpable thing.  (And this is weird: I've realized that when I'm looking at one of my kids and thinking that he's so cute I need to squeeze him, I do this thing with my teeth where I sort of grind them.  A little piece of my bottom tooth chipped off last weekend!!! Seriously??!!! )  Yeah, probably too much.

I never thought the hi-light of my week would be a five year-old's soccer game.   (It really is... I sit on a blanket with the two littler ones and yell my head off cheering.  Yes, I'm THAT parent;)  

If I'm being honest, being a parent also makes me forget things, has squashed my vocabulary, and it makes me tired.   But anyone who is one, wouldn't ask for any of their brains back in exchange for a kid.  (At least on most days... I haven't hit the teenage years yet ;) ;)

One of my best friends visited last weekend and seeing her and her husband with their daughter was amazing.  My other best friend and my cousin (also my maid of honor) are both due with the first babies and I couldn't be more excited for them.  They're going to be amazing parents and I am going to grind some teeth when these babies are born!!  :( 

{Baby Hailey (my best friend's daughter) and Louie- our little guy enjoying a bath}

I also just wanted to share a bit about my mom- she's one of the strongest people I know and I love her so much.  She was a single mom for most of my childhood and always put me first.  She gives such honest, unbiased advice and is always there when I need her.  (and pretty much anyone else in her life.)

{My mom & me peeking out from behind... and my "bunny}

So, happy mother's day to all of you moms out there!!  Thank you so much for taking time out of your week to visit here!!

 

If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.

Quiet Time-Mother's Day

During one of my business classes in college my usually detached professor lecturing on something to do with taking over the world stopped, looked at the class and simply stated- "at the end of the day you always want your Mom to be proud of you, her approval is whose you will seek first."

It stuck with me then and now because there is a heavy truth about it.  There is something about a Mother's love that cannot be duplicated.

I have found motherhood provides another glimpse into God's vision of us.  If God is my Father and His love for me is greater (albeit inconceivable) than my love for Henry, then why do I fret?

Today I want to take a moment to thank God for my Mom- who is my best friend and whose approval I know I have unconditionally.  For Henry, the being that made me "Mom"; my love for whom there are not even words. For my Mother-In-Law and Step-Mother-In-Law who bring me another family I am so honored to be a part of.  For the blessing of getting to watch my friends and others around me navigate the crazy, amazing and humbling experience of motherhood.

I hope you all have a wonderful Mother's day.  

A Little Imperfection in the Seat

I've developed a love for a bit of "imperfection" in the seat of a sofa or chair.

An uneven-looking upholstered seat cushion often results from being a down or down-wrapped seat cushion, so I think I'm a bit like Pavlov's dog and when I see a seat that's slightly uneven, I associate it with a down-wrapped cushion (which are super-comfy) and it looks more comfortable to me, which makes me like it more.  You also see it a bit more in single seat cushions or double because the longer a seat cushion is, the more it will vary.  

{Sofa by Verellen}

There are the quarter-bouncing seat cushions and the more slouchy down ones and while I think both are great (and each definitely has its place in certain homes or rooms) I myself love the more imperfect look of the slouchy ones in my own home because I'm an extremely casual person (it matches my sweats better ;) and when I sit in sofas, I tend to curl up in them & get cozy vs. sit on the edge of them & sip cocktails.  (And you can sip cocktails from a curled up position just as well- trust me  ;) ;)

{Garden & Gun--- loooove this house!!}

In my work for clients, we do both types of seats- quarter-bouncers and relaxed seats.   It really just depends upon my client and the function of the room.  I find my perfectionists & very busy clients are often more drawn to tighter seat cushions because of the look and the fact that they don't need fluffing.  (Flipping yes, always, but fluffing, no.)  I consider myself pretty busy too, but I guess I just have a thing for imperfection.


I'm the type of person who usually picks a favorite but still appreciates the alternatives.  It's probably why our client & client projects are all so varied...  I think different things are right for different people.

You don't often see imperfect down seats in photos because they usually get fluffed and primped before they're photographed, but you can still pick them out:

{perfectly fluffed, but you know she's a slouchy sitter... love}

I've found a couple of photos which look like they were shot just after my boys visited and had a party on the sofa, but they somehow look really beautiful & chic to me:

{I'm not sure where this image is from but I think about it a LOT.. someone let me know it's from Lonny}

I particularly love the look of a down seat without piping on the cushion.  Piping adds more "structure" to the look of a seat cushion and so a doubleneedle stitch often takes that away a bit and makes the seat more round/ less squared off.  (like above)

I can spy a little bit of the doublestitched down seat on the sofa on the left below:

Here's a leather seat cushion that really doesn't seem like it was prepped for it's photo and I love it (with piping):

{Lonny}

There's often so much newness and perfection in a home that's getting decorated that I really love to see elements that feel as if they're been there for a while & that have patina like the gorgeous leather on the wing chair above.  People often have unrealistic expectations with what will happen to a piece of furniture after it lives in a house for a while.  The reality is that pieces with fabrics and cushions and stuffing will change over time and that's okay.  Sometimes that change (or need to fluff/ whatever you want to call it) is a hallmark of quality & natural materials, which have their own innate beauty.  Good shoes can scuff, a great t-shirt gets softer, and jeans fade...  Life makes its mark on everything, so of course it will affect the things in our homes too.  I see this as part of everything & think these slow subtle changes are good.  Eventually, something can wear through to tatters, and you fix it or recover it, but along the road to tatters, that piece has a beautiful life as long as you take care of it.

It's the pieces that are made so that they look like they shouldn't change that end up looking bad as life hits them.  (In a sofa I'm thinking of an inexpensive foam or cushion insert that just gets smashed down and doesn't come back up leaving the seat cushion all baggy & lonely looking.) Like this:

{Image from Apartment Therapy}

Upholstered furniture requires care & maintenance:  flipping cushions periodically, vacuuming gently, washing or spot cleaning...

The seats on the chairs above look like they might be quarter-bouncers, but I love the slipcovers on the chairs because there's the tiniest bit of movement/ wrinkle in the fabric.  I love that little bit of reality which I think is beautiful.  (Reminds me of an unironed linen napkin = love}

Here's a room that's totally not my own personal style but that I find really charming.  I'd love to visit and  curl up:

{via Cote de Texas...  love the seat cushions!!}

Here's a pretty example of the slightly imperfect seat cushions I love on an English arm sofa:

{love this and found it on pinterest but am not sure of the source}

There's something so inviting about it to me.

 Here's a totally primped picture but I know these pretties are what I'm talking about:

Here's an example of a French mattress-style cushion that doesn't look like it's down wrapped but that still has that very "real" look I like:

I did a few of these layered together in the DC Design House a couple of years ago for a relaxed and "imperfect" feel:

 Anyway, I'm off for the day but would love to hear your thoughts on perfectly imperfect upholstery. Tight perfection? Love it or hate it?  Have a great day!!

If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.

Be Back Soon...

My computer decided it needed a vacation. Which ended with me in the Apple store for 3+ hours yesterday.  Which led to it being shipped off for 5 days.  Which puts me in terrible situation for the rest of the week.  I will be back soon... in theory. Hope you have a great week.

PS- Dear Apple, not that you need another way to print money, but you should consider putting a real bar at your Genius Bar for those who have to sit there for long periods of time.  I guarantee a few glass of wine later I would have bought a desktop for the office to back up my laptop.  Just a thought.

Our Library Loft Plans

In a few weeks, we're renovating the upstairs loft at our place.  (I CANNOT WAIT!!!! ... well, can't wait for it to be over, I should say ;) ;)   The loft is basically a family room where we keep all of the boys' toys, watch movies, read, etc... (Sidenote on why I love this floorplan so much: The boys don't keep any toys in their bedrooms here because the loft is right outside of their rooms, which has made our lives sooooo much easier.  Cleaning their rooms pretty much consists of making beds and dealing with clothes.  It's sort of like the old homes with the bedrooms off of the "nursery"... love it.)  Anyway, here's what the loft looked like when we bought the house:

We've removed the paneling and will removing the two existing windows and replacing them with one massive window, similar to this one in It's Complicated:

The window is actually 3 separate windows and will be around fifteen feet long.  It will completely open our loft to the back yard and I cannot wait!!!

Here's that area of the loft when we were living in it and using it as our kitchen during the renovations:

It's how it pretty much looks now with our wall-to-wall seagrass and half-painted walls.   The guys got as much done up here before we moved in.  You can really see how "pink" the beige was in the house compared to the cream we're changing it to...

And here's the view from this past Fall:

When you walk into the loft when we're finished, you'll really get to appreciate the view & almost feel as if you're outside.  We've added & enlarged windows wherever possible.  When I come home to our house (the downstairs) after travelling, I'm really struck by how open it is and I feel slightly exposed, but in a good way.  When it snows, you feel like you're almost out there with the snow.  This past week or two, everything turned technicolor green outside with the Spring, and there's a bit of a green glow in our house right now because it's so open.  (I was on facetime with my dad and he asked me what color green was on the walls!!)  I love it!! So, I think adding this massive window upstairs will really get the upstairs feeling the same way.

We're planning to add a window seat under the window:

This is going to be the biggest window seat I've ever seen at fifteen feet long...  I'm wondering how our workroom will get the cushion here.  ("Where there's a will" I guess?? ;) ;)

Here's another view of the family room "before": 

We've removed the built-ins in the pic and we are adding built-in bookshelves to all of the walls.  The new built-ins will consist of vertical drywall columns that support old wood shelves.  In the back of the room, we'll float our sofa in front of the shelves and use the inaccessible space behind the sofa for things we rarely need to access/storage:

We won't have room for floor lamps of end tables with lamps for the sofa, so I'm on the hunt for the perfect sconces to go above the sofa.
I should probably mention here -since I find that people often have questions about this- that we love to read and have a disgusting number of books.  We have ugly books, which I have ways of making look a little better, and we also have some really beautiful books, that yes, we actually read.  ( I say it like that because the last time I posted photos of a bookshelf of mine I got comments saying that the books on our shelves didn't look like they'd ever been read....  I'm amazed you can tell from a photo if a book's been read or not!) My husband (a former English teacher) and I both love to read and he loves collecting first or early editions of books.  My grandfather has also been gifting me (and now my husband & boys too) classics every Thanksgiving, so we've really gotten a fair-sized library going.  AND -I'll admit-  whenever I see a book that's really beautiful & looks interesting for a great price, I buy it, figuring it'll get read sometime.  I CANNOT WAIT to get our books out of our parking spot in our garage and into the house!!!   I've missed my books so much (it's  been since September) and can't wait to dig into them again.  
Here's a quick sketch of how the window wall will look, also surrounded by books:

The window seat will fit in with the shelves and then come out slightly farther than the shelves, which will be 24" deep on this will so the window seat looks more seamless.  Again, the drywall itself will be what shapes the buiilt-ins.  The window seat cushion will sit on a small drywall platform and the shelves above it and the vertical columns will all be made of drywall.  (House dream one day is to coat all of our drywall in a smooth plaster but for now, it's drywall.)  Because this wall of built-ins, is 24" deep, I plan to use it to really stash a lot of our books.  I have an insane collection of cheesy teen horror books from when I was a kid (books I still loooooove & read occasionally... Christopher Pike anyone??  He & L.J. Smith did Vampires best, I think!!!) and so they'll go above the window seat a few rows deep with their pages side forward instead of with their flourescent pink, green, and orange spines outward.  
Anyway, we're starting this next phase in a few weeks and are hoping to finish up this Summer...  Now that the elevations are figured out, it's time for me to start thinking about the fabrics & furnishings.  I'm planning on moving a table of ours up to the window seat so the boys can do crafts & projects, and eventually homework up there.  I'll keep you posted as I put the fabrics together... I'm envisioning a solid on the window seat mixed with a bunch of pillows in my fabrics.
Have a great day & can't wait to hear what you think!!


If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.

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