I need a "Happy" Room (Sorry, Long Rambling Post)
The back story - our house was built in 1929 and was intended to be a summer cottage on a lake. We bought it 25+ years ago. We spent those years building our home business and working on the garden/outside in our spare time so we never did much with the interior. The interior remodeling was DH's retirement project.
DH retired in September. He passed away in January. So...the ball is in my court.
I need one "happy" room that's freshly painted and nicely decorated. I'm thinking it should be our bedroom first. That's easier right now than the bathroom and kitchen, and I can do almost all of it myself.
Here's my first attempt at an inspiration board:
The background is about 1/3 BM Windham Cream on the left and BM Hawthorne Yellow on the right. I have the two lithos on the top (Pin Oak and Ginkgo). The Pin Oak colors are truer to real life than the Ginkgo one is. They are framed with dark green linen matting and a quarter sawn oak frame (darker than our furniture, but I don't mind mixing stain colors). They are also very large - 28" high and 32" wide. I grabbed the "Goes Well With" strips from the BM site for Hawthorne Yellow. I have a lot of green "stuff" so I threw that in there. I have some pieces of Roseville's Zephyr Lily (the vase under the Gingko print) that were my grandmother's. The lamp to the right of that is one I got from L.L. Bean when they were big into bungalow stuff years back. I only have one. Behind the lamp is the wall color currently in the bedroom. IRL, it looks a lot worse than that. It's a sickly turquoise that I can't wait to get rid of and has darker turquoise painted trim. Yuck :-)
I like the way the blue strip goes with Hawthorne Yellow. The blue duvet cover is another set I got from L.L. Bean - it's a knockoff of the William Morris Marigold print. I have the same cover in green. I also have a lot of artwork and framed stuff with blue matting and some touches of red. I thought it would be nice to be able to switch out some artwork and bedding and have a totally different feel.
Below that is our furniture (part of the headboard and a glimpse of the nightstand). DH and I designed and built it when we still had a cabinet shop. It's oak with some maple trim and that's staying. The pottery lamps with the mica shades (I have two - one on each nightstand) were made about 40+ years ago by a friend of his in California. I don't like the grey and brown with the yellow, but I love the lamps so they can go upstairs in the guest room. I like the bungalow lamp better. I wish I would have bought another one.
The bottom picture is one I found on Houzz for inspiration. I want to strip my woodwork (it's 80+ year old fir and is in pretty good shape underneath all the layers of paint. At least the piece I test stripped is). Again, I don't mind the mix of wood stain colors. I adore stained wood trim. I'm not a fan of painted trim (nothing personal to anyone that paints it - that's just me).
There is hardwood flooring underneath the ratty beige carpet. I pulled back one corner of the carpet, and it looks to be in decent shape, but I won't know for sure until I rip all the carpet up. Since this was a summer cottage, the flooring is laid directly on the floor joists. Yeah, I know.
I originally said "Nah" to yellow. And I do realize that I will have to paint some sample patches to see how it will really look. The one double window faces west, so it's not a terribly bright room. No neighbors on that side so no curtains or shades. It's very pretty when the moonlight shines in at night :-)
So if you've managed to stay interested in my incredibly rambling post, do you have any other suggestions for paint color on the walls/decorating ideas? I nixed green paint, as I thought that was too limiting. Same with blue. I thought of beige/grey/griege, but I couldn't find a "happy" color. Also have to apologize for the lousy pictures - they are old random shots. My point and shoot camera finally broke, I don't have a cell phone, and I haven't gotten around to reading the manual for DH's honkin' big Nikon digital camera.
And naturally, I have a VERY small budget, hence wanting to use and coordinate what I have. At the moment, the budget consists of rolling up spare change from the jars around the house. Surprisingly, you can collect a pretty good amount in 25 years :-)
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beckysharp Reinstate SW Unconditionally
9 years agomalna thanked beckysharp Reinstate SW Unconditionally
jlc712
9 years agoYes, you need a happy room! I'm very sorry for your loss. Maybe this project will be a good diversion and bring you some joy.
I love Arts and Crafts, and you have lots of great items to incorporate. Love your prints, lamps, bedding, and Roseville. The plan to strip your woodwork and reveal your wood floor will be perfect. Perhaps you could add insulation under the wood floors, if they're laid directly on the joists?
I like the Hawthorne yellow. It would be cheerful and pretty with everything you have. I think it would be beautiful to do one wall in an A&C wallpaper.
This is a William Morris paper, Golden Lily:
It's expensive, but I bet you could find a more reasonable reproduction wallpaper, or just do a small area. It would be gorgeous!
If you wanted to go less yellow, more cream, you could do BM Waterbury Cream-- here's a link to some A&C colors that pair with Bradbury wallpapers:
http://www.bradbury.com/ac2_colors.html
Keep us posted, I'd love to see how it goes!
malna thanked jlc712
malna
9 years agolast modified: 9 years ago
Annie Deighnaugh
9 years agoI'm so sorry for your loss. I rue the day my own DH will pass. It's got to be so terribly hard. My deepest sympathies and am glad for your strength and courage.
Honest opinions on your mood board. I completely understand wanting a happy room but when I look at your mood board, I see a warm yellow and a happy blue and beautiful prints, but somehow, they don't all mesh for me. Rather than the blue, I think I would pick up on the very soft sage green that's on the back side of the ginko leaf in the print. But that would yield a warm and cozy atmosphere which would go beautifully with your gorgeous woodwork...but I wouldn't call it "happy". To me it would be lovely and comforting.
To me, a "happy" room would be even lighter and brighter and more whimisical.
Something with bold colors and prints
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Or something that has some pop
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So I guess the question is, do you want an energetic bedroom that's happy? Or do you want something that is more warm and comforting?malna thanked Annie Deighnaugh
Olychick
9 years agolast modified: 9 years agoMalna, I'm so very sorry that your husband died. I was in the same situation 20 years ago when mine died unexpectedly at 48. It does take a very long time to settle into a new "normal" and I think your project will be a great way to begin that journey. I do hope you will be able to stay in your home. That's one change I just fought to avoid! Love your bedroom furniture and some of the choices you've made. It will be lovely!
I was determined to find a matching lamp for you, but have had no luck! Maybe someone else can. Surely, they are around. But when I was looking, I noticed some lamps that might work on the other beside table and look like a deliberate mismatch rather than a miss mismatch :). For example, something like this, which might make a good reading light if you read in bed.
Or maybe you could put your existing lamp on your dresser and buy two new lamps for bedside, something that would coordinate with your style, but be much more plain than the one you have now, letting it be a feature in your room. You might be able to find a pair on CL for not much $. Good luck on your project.
malna thanked Olychickmalna
9 years agomalna
9 years agolast modified: 9 years agomalna
9 years agoI don't know if this is good or bad. I went to the local BM paint store today. I was going to grab some paint chips of Hawthorne Yellow (is that what you call the paper strips with three or four or five colors on them?) to put next to "stuff". None in the rack. The only slot out of the 47,000 they have that was empty.
I went to the 2 oz. sample rack. Nope, no Hawthorne Yellow (didn't think I'd get lucky). Not a lot of other neat colors, either, but the paint mixer-upper did tell me they are not restocking the small sample jars. The pints are only $7 and the 2 oz. sample jars were $5, so all of us cheapskates around here just buy pints.
I did have them mix up a sample pint. Dang, it looks oh-so-different in the can than it does on the chip. Wonder what it's gonna look like on the walls. Guess I'll find out.
So do you think in my neck of the woods, it's the color slathered on everyone's walls? Here I thought I was going to pick something unique :-)
Now for something completely different: saw these euro shams on clearance plus an additional discount plus free shipping. They didn't have anything else in the pattern which was probably a good thing :-)
Does the bicycle print go with anything else in my universe? Nope. Do I care? Nope. We haven't had a car in years, so DH and I rode bicycles everywhere. I saw the pattern, it brought a smile to my face thinking of our many bike rides together so, for somewhere around 12 bucks, I got a much needed dose of temporary happy. I put green sheets on the bed, the blue in the two shams make the icky turquoise on the walls look almost palatable, and the yellow matches Hawthorne Yellow almost exactly.
Sometimes it's just little things that put a silly grin on my face :-)
ppbenn