Recession Style: Living Room "BEFORE"

Meet our new room! This brave homeowner has agreed to let me re-decorate her living room using primarily hand-me-downs, yard sale finds, and items bought off of Craig's List!

I invite you to follow along with us as we undertake this challenge, and of course, your comments, suggestions and questions are always welcome!

Things to Keep in Mind:

This room is the primary living space for our homeowner and her family. They have two small children and a couple of cats so everything we do will have to take into consideration their needs.

They would like the furnishings in this room to be comfortable, durable and made of a fabric that can be cleaned easily.

This is a long, skinny room with a fireplace on one end and a picture window on the other. This limits our options for sofa and television placement and the homeowner has expressed some frustration with this.

What's We're Keeping:

The homeowner likes the rug in the middle of the room and likes the colors in it, so we're going to take our color scheme from it. They also recently bought this television stand which she said is indicative of the style of furniture she and her husband like.

To save money, we're also going to keep the window treatments which came with the house.




Right now, the homeowner says she feels so-so about the window treatments, but we've decided to keep them because the color closely matches the green in her area rug; they were custom-made for the windows and are on a good scale for the room so we're going to keep them and divert that money to other parts of our budget.

AND, just to make it interesting and to prove that it can be done, we're keeping the husband's comfy TV-watching recliner. I know...I know! I'm a miracle-worker. What can I say? :o)

What We're Losing:

Pretty much the rest of the furniture. The homeowners are ready for something new!

Our Budget? $1,500

Style Goal? This homeowner knows what she likes and has told me her tastes lean toward the traditional. My goal is to give her a traditional room that is still comfortable and durable enough to meet the needs of her young family.

Well, that's it for now. It looks like I have my marching orders, my budget and my color scheme, so I'm heading out to do some shopping. Don't forget to check back and follow our progress!

Creating Cornice Boards

Cornice boards can do a lot to maximize the look of a room and help you make the most of your windows and window treatments. They are the "master of disguise" for most designers because they can help make windows look taller, shorter, or wider dependng on how you choose to use them. They can also help you solidify the "style" of your room or help you coordinate a certain fabric in your room by giving it a place on your walls. Here are three examples...

Fabric Cornice Board

The homeowner loved this fabric when she saw it, but didn't love the price. It was pretty expensive. She wanted to use it in her master bedroom but knew that if we bought enough of the fabric to make a king-size bedspread that our budget would be blown before we ever even made it to the window treatments.

The solution? We bought enough fabric to make a custom dust ruffle and shams that would coordinate with a store-bought bedspread and then bought two extra yards to make fabric cornice boards. This helped give the homeowner a custom-looking bedroom at a fraction of the price.

To make a fabric cornic board...

(1) Measure the width of your window including the trim. If you want your window treatments to make your window appear wider than it is, add at least six inches on to either side.

(2) Next, determine how far you want your cornice board to come out from the window. I recommend at least six inches...any less than that and you won't have room for your drapery hardware.

(3) Cut MDF board to your specifications and put together using wood screws and wood glue.

(4) Using a staple gun, attach cotton batting to the board.

(5) Then attach your fabric. For a professional finish, fold hospital corners in the same direction. NOTE: If you are working with a fabric that contains a motif such as this one or a large-scale print, make sure you center it onto your board. If you are making identical boards for matching windows, take care to match the two.

Another challenge we needed to address with these windows was the street light outside. The client's husband wanted a drapery that could be closed every night because the streetlight at the end of their driveway shown right into his eyes at night...even through the blinds. We made drapery panels out of a much less expensive coordinating fabric and lined them with black-out lining and here was the final product.



Wooden Cornice Board #1

We opted for a cornice board in my daughter's room because it's a rear-facing room that doesn't get a lot of sunlight and we wanted to take care not to block any light if we could. We also wanted to use the existing blind, but wanted to be able to hide it. We could have gone with a fabric window treatment and still hidden the blind, but one of the beds sits very close to this window and I was afraid it would make that side of the room appear "fabric-heavy."

Wooden Cornice Board #2

We chose cornice boards for this room for a couple of reasons. First, this is a very traditional room in a Colonial Williamsburg home so cornice boards are appropriate to the style of the home.

Secondly, the window on the left sat closer to the entryway for the room than the other window did to the wall. If we'd gone with traditional drapery hardware, it would have appeared cramped and awkward...and even blocked the entryway somewhat.

The cornice board was the perfect solution to hide the drapery, yet still give the room the symmetrical appearance that Williamsburg Colonial is noted for.




We also chose to hang the cornice boards in this room higher up the wall in order to make the windows seem larger and more elegant.

To make wooden cornice boards:

Follow the steps above, but attach a crown molding of your choice. You can attach it to the top only or to the top and bottom as we did here. You will need a miter or coping saw for this project...or of course, you can hire me!

NOTE: In these examples, the cornice boards are decidedly traditional, but they can be made to suit almost any decor. If you prefer a modern, more streamlined appearance you can use anything from metal flashing to a simple wood box painted silver.

I have also done upholstered cornice boards with metal upholstery tacks and painted a faux leather finish that turned out better than I expected it would!

Window Treatments

Kelly,
I had to create a post in order to creat a category for window treatments. So when you create your first post that you know you want to go in this category, come to this one and you can edit it. Any other post that you want to show up under this category, simply click on show all in the box while creating the post and click on window treatments.