Design update

Posted by Ashley on August 11th, 2008

We ordered a couch! Yay! I’m so excited. It’s a real piece of grown-up furniture. I don’t have a picture as it’s a custom-built piece. But it’ll be black durasuede and have a tufted back seat cushion. I also have received the two fabrics below and will probably make pillows from that. Bummer is that we have to wait about 8 weeks for the couch…oh well. It’ll allow us to do some bargain hunting for accessories, etc. We’re on our way to Hollywood glam!

The hunt is on

Posted by Ashley on July 17th, 2008

We all went to a few shops yesterday to look at fabrics and furniture. The clincher is figuring out what to do with our brown and black checked couch. It’s been great to have — it’s from Bryce’s folks — but the color and style don’t go with the look we’re going for. We’re trying to decide if it makes sense to buy a slipcover if that’s not even the look we want; so we’re checking out some model home furniture places to see if we can find a modern black couch. Something like this would be ideal:
couch

I’ve found a dark silver silk (or imitation silk, not sure) fabric that would make great curtains. And there are a few fabrics on Etsy that I’m excited about:
fabric1

fabric2

We’re planning to revamp our small wood china cabinet into a bar (painting it black, mirrors on shelves, etc) and painting our white mirror w/ hooks black too. I want to find some cool lampshades or recover the ones we have with fabric. Anyone know how to do that?

We’re at a bit of a standstill as we can’t do much until we’ve solved the couch dilemma. Nonetheless it’s been fun researching and I’m looking forward to getting started soon.

Design!

Posted by Ashley on July 12th, 2008

b&w chairs

So, we’re all moved in to our place in San Diego and have a few things left to unpack. I’ve been absolutely hooked on HGTV’s Design Star and have been procrastinating from the unpacking process by watching episodes online. The good thing, however, is that it’s getting me all crafty and Bryce and I are really excited to get working on pulling our living room together into a cohesive style.

We’ll have to do things in stages and since we can’t paint (since we’re renting), we’ll have to be creative about what we hang on the wall. Bryce and I stayed in The Viceroy(pictures below) in Palm Springs for a get-a-way last fall and loved the bold, geometric designs and colors and were hoping to copy some of that when were buying a downtown LA loft. The color palette at the Viceroy is bold black and white with accents of yellow and feels like 30’s Hollywood glam. So although that would’ve been perfect for a loft space, there is a bit of it that feels mid-century retro, too. We’re going to do our best to adapt the color palette for our current living room space (sage/seafoam green, black and white) and are looking for a slipcover for one sofa and some great accessories. Bryce is also going to build some wood panels for our walls that we’ll paint (putting his new table saw to use!). It’ll be a mix of minimalism, clean lines, geometric shapes with a touch of old Hollywood glamour (and perhaps a bit of the Hollywood Regency style). I’m so excited to get going!

We have a bunch of red accents right now in our living room that we’ll have to transition to the kitchen eventually. It’s hard as we’ll only be in our current space for a year, to know how to purchase and make things as this isn’t a permanent space to work with. So it’ll have to be a transitional design. Let me know if you have any thoughts or suggestions. I’m scouring Etsy for ideas and great finds!

viceroy1

I guess it makes sense that I really liked Katie’s bathroom: varela bath