LIVING ROOM
In designing the living room, we realized it was about three things: the fireplace, the piano, & the paintings, and how to showcase all three. Again we chose a brown wallpaper, this time it’s a tone on tone that looks like wrought iron, and very subtle.
TIP: Most people don’t realize that brown is the most colorful neutral, and a GREAT background for very colorful paintings and art work.
LIVING ROOM front view
We added track lighting to accentuate the artwork, and arranged the furniture to welcome you when you walked in. We feel it says, “Come in, and sit down for a while”, because of the angle of the rug and the furniture around it. We chose to add two red occasional chairs and some red and orange pillows to bring in some of the great colors from the paintings.
TIP: Adding color this way makes a room more electric, and not as static as if everything was the same color.
DINING ROOM
What you can’t see from the picture, was that there was an elevator in the corner where the china cabinet is now. Dino dismantled it! Besides that, Dino felt that he wanted more drama to the entrance hall, so he took the 1930’s arches all they way up and put in french doors. This also allows us to close the rooms off to Lucy & Trixie (our Westies). We again chose a wallpaper with brown, this time with a number of different shades of greens. We added a lot of layers of crown moulding, a chandelier, sconces and some track lighting accentuating the art work, to complete the look.
KITCHEN
We combined a small kitchen with an even smaller laundry room/mud room to make the larger kitchen. We knew we wanted to have an island, but the overall design changed when we realized that we needed to honor the time period of our home. This meant that we couldn’t/shouldn’t have a modern contemporary kitchen in a 1931 Tudor/Cotswold Revival home. We embraced the idea with dark woods, William Morris wallpaper, and a coffered ceiling, but still chose very modern appliances and radiant heated floors, and we made VERY affordable choices.
GUEST BEDROOM
With this being the only guest room, and us having a number of out of town friends & relatives, we wanted it to feel like a boutique hotel. We chose calm colors and textures, with drama added by the use of the canopy over the bed that Dino designed, and with three windows, it’s the brightest room in the house.
MASTER BEDROOM
The first thing that we addressed was the fact that there was only ONE tiny closet, and no place to put the television, other electronics, and collectibles. Still wanting a classic feel, we chose the laurel wreath wallpaper in a milk chocolate brown and a “greeny-blue”, or is it “bluey-green”.
TIP: It is important to have a color palette chosen for the complete house, so that one room isn’t jarring when you walk into it.
We constructed the built-ins and connected to the original closet, then connected them to the new, full wall of closets on the right. We painted the background behind each bookcase shelf to make the contents stand out more.
