Guess what! Guess what! Guess what!
I am doing a sale on One Kings Lane today. I’ll let you know when it is live.
I am mildly thrilled.
We put together lots of my personal treasures and pieces from the store at extry special prices, and there are a lot of other bossy folks with treats as well, so stay tuned on how to get you some.
To celebrate we have our playroom before & after, which y’all haven’t seen yet.
You might recall our family room in Chicago:
Which I then basically recreated in Austin:
With the major upgrade, IMHO, of a gold disco ball.
The sectional was a custom piece I had made for our family room in Chicago, and oddly enough the dimensions have fit absolutely perfectly in each new space. The ottoman is a storage ottoman from Ballard that I had upholstered in some tiger velvet. The rug there was a Jonathan Adler custom color that unfortunately got destroyed with baby/dog stains.
Lesson learned for the next time.
The footprint of this house is much smaller than our Austin home, but we have a usable third floor in the converted attic space. This was the space before:
We didn’t end up changing all that much construction-wise. Added and changed out some lighting, painted, redid the carpet but…
It doesn’t feel like the same room at all.
Looking back towards the stairs and Pete’s office before.
Same view after.
Now you haven’t seen this room yet because it still needs a lot of work, and was even less ready for its closeup for the Matchbook shoot. But I figured now we are all in this together, and maybe y’all would like to see the work in progress?
So let me backtrack a bit.
I wanted the room to be fun and more than a little kooky. It is on the third floor, separate from the rest of the house so I felt like we could let ‘er rip without being too offensive.
The color combination in our previous family room iterations was one of my first balls out color experiments that I really loved. The idea came from the vintage circus poster that lives in the room, where I pulled the powdery gray/blue from the background and the intense red/orange trim color from some of the illustrations.
I wanted to do another equally unexpected color combination that maybe pushed the boundaries of appealing design- but was totally stumped.
The room is obviously pretty dark with very little natural light and super low ceilings. I think the way it was before with all the white just drew attention to that. There was really no way to make it not be a dark attic space, so I thought we should go for it and make it a full on circus tent. That way the ceilings/light would actually be a plus, seem more purposeful, and it would be fun for Grace.
The plan for the whole room eventually came from this carpeting.
We had to have wall to wall carpet, which is nerve wracking in a family space where spills and stains are inevitable. Like I said, the rug we had over our carpeting in Austin got completely destroyed by Grace and the dogs. This carpeting is perfection. You could pour an entire bottle of red wine on it and never see it. Not to mention it had a bit of the blue from our couch we would be reusing here.
It also worked with the WaterForElephantsBut LessTragicFancyGypsyCircus feel I was going for.
and ahm all like TAH-DAH!!
I also love Tim Walker’s work and have been consulting his books heavily for inspiration lately.
This portrait he did of Vivienne Westwood was particularly appealing to me and stayed in my minds eye when I was planning for this space.
So back to the overall room.
I promise I will have it photographed in a way that will do it justice once it is finished. Please ignore the one lightbulb that is out. #reallife.
This was my chance to let my freak flag fly with the color, and ultimately I decided on a chartreuse I pulled from the carpet inspired by the Tim Walker picture.
Which was definitely a risky decision as chartreuse can go baby poop very quickly and this room has terrible light.
And I know it’s not for everyone- Pete actually hates it. But I adore it. It is just the right amount of ugly, which to me makes it that much more beautiful.
I toyed with the idea of actually tenting the ceiling with fabric, but that seemed a little intense for the playroom. So I settled on the stripes in blue from the couch. There was a lot going on in a small space and although another color would have ramped it up even more, sometimes I gotta hold myself back. And I am glad for it.
Originally I wanted the stripes to meet the walls and then have a faux sort of swag/scallop at that seem, and I still might do that, but they got the stripes up first and were going to go back and add the detail and I kind of liked that it was a bit more modern and not so obvious without it. So I decided to wait and decide.
The bedrooms in the house are pretty small, and there isn’t much room for toys/playing so the playroom gets a lot of…play.
I didn’t want to over decorate it or make it too precious that it wouldn’t be for the kids anymore.
We reused the furniture from the previous playrooms, and just added some ikea shelving.
On the “work in progress” front…
The room has these two nooks I want to do something really special with.
I have been waiting to see more of what Grace likes to do and what she might find magical, and like I said I don’t want to do too much here so that she can’t make it her own. But I an thinking in that nook where I am currently curating piles of books/crap in a very intentional and artistic way…That I want to have a cushion made and throw a bunch of pillows and stuffed animals in there for snuggly time. And maybe do some shelves on the walls for books? Like this:
Then in this nook.
I’m not sure. I think I will let Grace decide.
The circus poster made its way in here again. There is so much going on in the picture, it’s like a really beautiful Where’s Waldo and Grace loves staring at it.
Then over by the couch, it backs up to the railing over the stairs and I need to have some sort of barrier made so that bubbles don’t go tumbling over. I am thinking about doing an upholstered (perhaps chartreuse leather???) screen so that it is removable if we need to fit something up the narrow stair case.
We really like it up here.
It still has a ways to go, but what do you think so far? Do you hate the chartreuse as much as Pete does, or do you kind of dig the ugly/beautiful? Any thoughts on my remaining to-dos in here?
Pete’s office is up on the third floor as well, which is also a work in progress that I will show you later this week.
wall colors: Paddington Blue & Flower Power both Benjamin Moore.
Love it! I’m on team chartreuse after all (not even sure how to spell it). Get it gurl.
I’m also coming in late, but have to say I’m on Team Pete as well. Maybe it’s the lighting or something and it looks better in person?
I LOVE the carpet, and the acid green is the best color to play against it. Do I LOVE acid green, no, but in the room it works, and the carpet is so worth it. Ceiling is the gravy.
Absolutely love it! Except for the carpet which seems to fight the rest of the design. Other than that, I want to space for my own.
Ohmygeez…I can’t decide. The carpet/ottoman/stripes are seriously my jam, but I can’t figure out if the chartreuse works?!? In some of the photos it is working, but it is clash city in others. Would a more mossy green be better, or too pukesville? I really like the idea of green, maybe just a different tint??
I LOVE the green, and adore the navy stripes. Not sure how i feel about the carpet, but I see where you’re going with it and stain-wise, it’s perfect. I also really love those nooks! One of them definitely has to be a reading area, the other one could be a perfect home for a dollhouse, perhaps?
I’m with Pete, that color doesn’t work for me, but I love the stripes!
I love that you really went for it in the playroom and of course I LOVE the carpet. That said, I am not sure I love the chartreuse with the carpet. Maybe it just doesn’t photograph well. In any event- kuddos for braving a bold color choice.
didn’t read all of the comments – did anyone suggest painting all of the trim work the same blue as the stripes? The colors are all fab- just a slight disconnect between ceiling and floor. IMHRIDO. (In my humble Registered Interior Designer’s Opinion.)
I like it!!!! It is fun, happy, youthful and chic :a hard combo to balance ,imho.
I love the chartreuse color. I am a chartreuse person. But I think this color needs to be toned a little to be more like the chartreuse in the Vivienne portrait so as not to fight with the stripes and carpet and ottoman and kidgear. To give the eye a resting place in the room, cause right now, there isn’t one. But I do love the room and what you have done to make it fun! Lucky Grace!
Wondering if you can provide the coral/orange paint color you used in the Chicago family room and Austin Playroom. Thanks! Love it!
I have to be honest, I’m not sure I love the chartreuse. Perhaps it’s the mix with the carpet, which is very busy – completely understand why you need that in a playroom, though.
However, I think it might actually be because the striped ceiling/chartreuse walls look a little unfinished to my eye. Your suggestion about doing a scalloped ‘edge’ to the stripes (so it would ‘hang’ onto the chartreuse wall) sounds like the perfect way to finish it off, and I think I might like it a lot better if that idea was integrated.
All that being said, a playroom should be fun, and that one most certainly is! Love your work!
The chartreuse is fabulous, as is the rest of the room.
Celerie Kemble advised in one of her books that a fear of having bad taste should not prevent one from having no taste. I think of that often. I’m going to be thinking it when I (ask my husband to) paint over our reserved Farrow & Ball hallway color with a bright coral. “Safe” white rooms are too easy, uninspired, and ubiquitous these days (every room in Country Living or Traditional Home seems to be white or beige; House Beautiful is an exception). Bravo to you for going all out here. Yours is quickly becoming one of my favorite design blog reads.
My grandfather used to build desks into the little nooks created by a dormer – might work for Grace? Love your design as always