One Room Challenge Week 5 – Fall 2019: Refreshed Living/Dining/Entry

Hello,

{Welcome to my little space on the internet. If you are new here, I’m an Interior Decorator living in Milton, ON and I love to create beautiful, livable spaces. I believe that everyone should have a home that makes them happy. It’s just so good for the soul, don’t you think?}

Welcome to Week 5 of the One Room Challenge! I’m decorating my living room, dining room and entry which are all one connected, long space. If you missed a post, you can catch up here:

Week 1 | Week 2 & 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Reveal

A lot happened this past week and I’m finally feeling like things have come together and all that needs to be done is styling, oh and also painting a piece for the art wall.

I picked up my beautiful console for the entry which I had custom made. I just love the simple design and we used Roasted Ash. When wood is roasted, it is dried more than you would normally dry wood. It’s put in a kiln at an elevated temp so you are essentially cooking the wood. As my friends at Exotic Woods explained to me, you are carmelizing the sugars of the wood, burning off the cellulose so you are left with the lignin which is strong and stiff. The wood is therefore more stable and doesn’t respond to moisture shifts. I’m a bit of a nerd so I found that fascinating. ☺️

I tested out a few stains/urethanes but I really like the console in its natural state. I will probably urethane it with Rubio Pure after the photo shoot this week – it changed the colour on the test piece slightly.

As you can see from the opening photo, my beautiful sofa from Whittington’s was delivered and I couldn’t love it any more. It’s so comfortable and I love the long, lean look and the waterfall skirt. (Whittington’s is a trade only showroom, so contact me if you are looking to upgrade your current sofa. ) It looks so good in the JF Fabrics performance fabric – a linen look but much more forgiving when it’s actually polyester. The drapery fabric and the dark grey velvet cushion fabric are also from JF Fabrics. The beautiful teal cushion is from Tonic Living.

You can also see that I (and when I say I, I mean Artstall) hung the gallery wall in the living room. I love how it looks on the black wall. I just wanted to share a few tips, some of which I shared in this article which I wrote after I appeared on the Steven and Chris show in 2012. PS Don’t judge the art wall in my former home – that was one of my first ones and I hadn’t perfected it quite yet. ?

Gallery Wall Tips:

1) There are no rules. If you look at my Art/Art Wall board on Pinterest, you can see that there is no tried and true formula when it comes to gallery walls. I have only pinned ones that appeal to me. Everyone is different so find a style that speaks to you. Do you like the art to be placed in the same size frames and hung in a grid and be symmetrical or do you prefer it to look more eclectic with different size frames hung more random? Do you prefer the frames to be the same finish or like mixing it up with black, gold, white and maybe some wood frames?

2) I like a mix of photographs (including ones I have taken like the one of my husband and daughter on the beach in Barbados and a photo of a door in Paris), art prints or original art and posters (like the one I picked up at the Picasso Museum in Barcelona.) I’m not personally big on empty frames , mirrors or other objects. But that’s just me. Do what appeals to you! Everything should relate to each other in some way. For example, my gallery wall doesn’t have a lot of colour except for teal and sepia tones.

3) Lay the art on the floor within the same size space as you have on the wall – painter’s tape can help to create the space you are working within. Move pieces around until you arrive at something that looks visually appealing. It’s always a good idea to have similar frame finishes placed randomly on the wall and not all together. And the same goes with the pieces – space out the photographs, art etc so you don’t have a few photographs side by side for example.

4. At this point, you could cut out the sizes of the frames using Kraft paper and then place them on the wall. But I’m too lazy, so I just transfer what’s on the floor to the wall. I knew I wanted the Picasso poster to be just above the media console and to the left of the TV so she was hung first and then we hung to the right of her and then to the left. And then we finished off with the top row. As a general rule, I like 2.5″ spacing between pieces but I also like when the spacing is larger than that in some areas as it looks eclectic. Using a professional art install company like Artstall will ensure your gallery is hung perfectly.

I can’t wait to share the entire gallery wall with you next week! Yes, the reveal should be up by Thursday so come back to see!

In the meantime, take a look at what the featured designers are up to here and the guest participants here. And follow these hashtags on social media to see 100’s of other transformations: #oneroomchallenge and #bhgorc

Thank you in advance for following along!