The Story of a Room: The Finished Room

If you are just tuning in check out the intro to this series here.

Thank you all so much for reading my series this week. I have had a great response and I feel like it's been good for readers to know that most design stories aren't just a before and an after. There is so much more that goes into each project. And I want to thank my amazing client for letting me share this story and her home with all of you. 

Let's review what we started with:

And here is what we ended up with! 

At that first initial consult I think her and I were both looking for something bold and maybe more modern feeling but in the end we came up with this beautiful, breezy and easy feeling space. 

The Swivel chairs and ottoman are from Lee Industries. The rug is from West Elm. 

Bird figure and pinecone from Alice Lane Home Collection. 

Trophies and vases from Alice Lane Home Collection. Basket and Books owned by client. 

Small houses and Orbs from Alice Lane Home Collection. 

Pillow sewn by Plush Studio in Schumacher Bleeker. Lamp from Visual Comfort. 

Leather sofa is from Alice Lane Home Collection. 

The floral pillows are done in Schumacher Hot House in Spark. 

The wood side table is antique from Great Exchange in Laguna Beach. 

Matches and candle snuffer are from Alice Lane Home Collection. 

Coffee table bench was custom made by the client's husband. White shams from Debbie's Porch. 

The set of mirrors are from Ballard Designs, no longer available. 

One thing that we really struggled with was where to put the piano. Pianos can be tricky to decorate around. 

We tried to break up the brown by having a custom slipcover made for the bench. 

Turtle Shell from Alice Lane Home Collection. 

While I was helping her with her Living Room she also enlisted my help with her Foyer. 

Mirror is from Star Mill in American Fork, Utah. 

The bench was a great consignment find by my client and she painted it white. It's an amazing piece. 

All photos by the amazing Jessica Kettle 

This will probably be one of my most memorable design experiences. It took almost a year to complete from start to finish so I felt like I evolved a lot as a designer through the process. My client was wonderful to work with and she really has great taste. I think she and I both taught each other a lot. She needed reassurance and a second opinion along the way and I needed someone to help me look outside my own "style". I pushed her to look outside of her box and she pushed me to look outside of mine. Designers can be pushy and sometimes they need to be. But this project was about letting the client's voice and personality come through in this space. Not mine. 

I wanted to share this experience with you on my blog so you could see how the process of a room comes together. Of course every room and every client evolve differently but this helps you see how much thought and effort goes into each room. With every project I encounter obstacles and it makes it that much more exciting to see the finished project come together. 

Just like a person, every room has a story. There is a history and an evolution to the spaces that we live. I love it when I get to be a part of that! 

The Story of a Room: Final Details and a Sneak Peak

If you are just tuning in check out the intro to this series here.

We were so close to being done with the room now that we had "THE" fabric and a new sofa.  But finding the right rug was really proving to be a problem. I started sending my client lots and lots of different ideas. 

Here are just a few of the many ideas I sent over. 

My client wanted some subtle pattern but she kept finding herself drawn to natural fibers like jute and sisal. We finally decided on going with a Fallon rug with a shag on top of it. Something similar to this.

photo via Alice Lane Home Collection

I thought at least this way we could get some pattern while keeping things textured and soft underfoot. 

 Here is a picture she sent me of the day she got the shag rug. 

After living with the shag rug for awhile she decided it just wasn't the "one".  I also agreed that we needed something different. 

We finally decided on this one which I blogged about here. We loved it. To this day it remains one of my favorite rugs. 

Another thing on the list was a meaningful piece of art.  She also was able to find a piece of art that she loved at a consignment shop by Dietrich Grunewald. 

It had all the right colors so we were pretty excited about it.

As for the coffee table she wanted simple and clean and was very inspired by this one that she found on ebay. 

She ended up having her handy husband custom make one for her. 

So with all that done it looked like we had crossed off everything on our list. 

Right before we had wrapped up the project my client decided that after looking at all those fabrics and picking this one she was still in love with the Hot House. 

This was a great lesson to me. No matter how "over" a fabric you are as a Designer it's important to listen to what your client wants and loves. Plus fabric has a way of taking on new life and shape in each room it goes into. In each room and home it is able to become unique to that space. The fabric looks amazing in the space and I'm glad my client stuck to her "gut feeling".  Plus if she ever wants to change the feel of the space she can use the other fabric that we picked out. 

In addition to changing out the pillows we also did a few other things like add bookshelves to that empty space behind the chairs.

Here is a little sneak peak of the finished room. 

You'll have to tune in tomorrow to see all the pictures of this finished room!

photo by Jessica Kettle Photography 

The Story of a Room: The Room Reinvented

If you are just tuning in check out the intro to this series here. 

So at this point what started out as an almost finished room had evolved into something else. While it's hard to start over on things in a room I'm really glad my client was honest with herself at this point in the process. If she had moved forward with things she didn't love she would have never felt happy in that room. 

The room as a whole just wasn't feeling "right" to her. Here are the things my client wanted going forward in the room: 

She also committed to herself to stop buying mindless accessories which is something we all do. She would pick up "good deals" here or there but then end up not loving them. So we wanted to move forward with purposeful pieces. Those two Kohl's side tables were great deals but she didn't love them. So we took them out of the plan.

She also decided the rug was a little too "heavy" feeling for the room and I agreed so now we needed a new rug. 

She mentioned she wanted more green and a natural feel in the room so I fell in love with this fabric. 

It's Kelmscott Manor in Indigo by Schumacher and then I thought it would be great paired with Schumacher's Betwixt. 

This was the new board that we were running with. 

She had also mentioned loving Hot House in Spark. 

I wasn't sold on it just because I've seen it used sooooo much but she loved it so we ordered samples of all three fabrics for her to see which she liked best. 

I also took a trip to the showroom and pulled some other fabric I liked for the room just to give her more options.

You may remember this fabric from this post here. 

But after all that she still liked the Hot House best. So I told her just to be sure I would have her go out to the showroom with me and we would look at every possible other option. After going out there we found a green and blue fabric that we both loved with hints of orange and chartreuse.

We both loved the youthful feel of this fabric. It was easy going and breezy. Just what we wanted. So with a new fabric in mind we now had a new plan. 

But we still had the issue of the rug! Stay tuned tomorrow for The Story of a Room: Final Details and a Sneak Peak.

The Story of a Room: A Change of Plans

If you are just tuning in check out the intro to this series here. 

Since we already had the majority of the fabric and furniture we decided to start with the rug.  My client and I went back and forth with rug ideas for awhile. I probably have 10 emails back and forth between her and I all with different rug combos. She felt like something in the room just wasn't right and we were both hoping the rug would be the piece to tie it all together. 

We talked about layering a hide on top of another rug which seemed to be the plan for awhile. Then my client found this rug from Williams Sonoma Home. 

It was really beautiful and the blues tied in the chairs perfectly. 

Here is another image of it at night. I wasn't completely sold on it but I think she was for awhile. 

She also decided that the coffee table wasn't really her favorite. She was thinking of something more simple along the lines of this. In the meantime I had fallen in love with it so she sold it to me! You may remember that from this post. It was a match made in heaven for me. I have loved it ever since. 

So now with the new rug this was the new board for the room. 

She had also purchased a couple of side tables from Kohls for a great deal. It was starting to come together!

Just as we thought we were making progress my client had a change of heart about her sofa. Although it was very beautiful it just wasn't comfortable or deep enough. She and her husband got a great deal on a deep leather sofa from Alice Lane and so suddenly we had a new sofa to work with!

You can get a feel for how dark and deep it is. Here is the new board with the new sofa. As I work with clients I like to update the mood board as often as possible so we are getting a feel for the room in it's entirety.

The new sofa brought on a new issue. We needed to lighten up this room big time! There was a lot of brown going on.

We decided to add board and batten to the walls. I sent her this picture by Lisman Studios as inspiration for the wall.

Here is a progress shot of the back wall. 

 It lightened up the room considerably. 

At this point we had a new sofa, we needed a new coffee table and just when we thought we had the room and color scheme figured out my client had a revelation.

This room just wasn't going in the direction she wanted. She felt like something wasn't quite right.

She really wanted more green and more white and in her own words this is how she wanted the room to feel, "clean, classic, comfortable, light, with some crusty vintage and FUN thrown in there". So we set out to come up with an entirely new design plan...


 Stay tuned tomorrow for The Story of a Room: The Room Reinvented.