Be Colorful Coastal: August 2015

08/27/2015

Lighted Granite Dresses Up A Coastal Powder Room

Welcome to our newly updated powder room.

When we first saw this room, almost a year ago now, it was the scariest room in the house.

This was our starting point.

Nothing about this room said coastal to me.

Those dark red walls HAD to go. The first thing we did in this room was to paint the walls a medium gray.

The cabinet is a custom piece so we opted to keep it but I didn't like the gingerbread embellishment on the front of it so I popped it off, sanded it down and painted the cabinet gray too. I remembered I had two leftover handles from a remodeling project up north so I brought them down and added them to the cabinet. Win. Win.

They are part of the Chareau Collection from Top Knobs.

The hardware and paint were a step in the right direction.

The jury is still out on these sconces. I have so many places to spend a finite number of dollars so for now they are staying but I did add some shades that I had taken off of the dining room chandelier and this seems to help soften the look.

It was looking better to us but that sink, shiny brass faucet, and composite countertop were really such a dated look.

So we took the plunge and decided to splurge and replace them all. We went with a Cristallo Granite. It has the look of white marble but this stone will actually allow light to shine through it.

After the old countertop had been removed we added some trim around the perimeter of the inside of the base cabinet then laid out the led lighting that we purchased here.

There is a small control switch that we brought through to the outside of one end of the cabinet that allows us to dim the lights or turn them off completely.

A lighted granite vanity isn't something you see everyday and I like that.

It is pretty by day but magical at night.

I like how the light source coming from inside the cabinet accentuates the veining in the granite.

We added a new mirror, a splash of coral for color and some coastal inspired accessories.

The end result is a Hollywood Regency meets Coastal Inspired powder room.

The beach is calling.

xoxo,

Sharing my updated powder room here:

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08/10/2015

Modern Meets Traditional Dining Room

AKA Bye Bye Purple

When we first started at looking at homes in this area I had hoped to buy one already furnished. We don't have any plans of selling our home up north so this meant we wouldn't be bringing much with us to this house. We would literally be starting over with almost nothing. It is like being twenty something again but with a fifty something body and budget. :D

The design side of me was excited by this opportunity but I also knew that it would be an expensive undertaking. My husband kept reminding me as we were looking at houses that the whole furnishing process would be " A marathon, not a sprint". Patience has never been a virtue for me so this would be a challenge.

This is a photo, via Zillow, of how the dining room looked the first time we toured the house.

We didn't get very much in the way of furniture with our home purchase but this dining room set and the rug did stay. The buffet is a built in so I could at least consider this space basically furnished...for now.

It seemed like an eternity between having our offer accepted and the actual closing. In the meantime I was house obsessed and one night while I was on the internet I found this older image of our dining room.

Holy Purple!

I would guess that in the interest of making the home more appealing to a greater audience the seller's realtor suggested a more neutral color.

The seller might have agreed to paint the walls but held out on the ceilings.

What you couldn't see from the first images is that the ceilings were also a lighter shade of purple. So although the walls were toned down to a neutral flax seed color, they left the ceilings painted a two tone orchid and eggplant.

It wasn't so horrible but it didn't fit my vision for the home so one of the first items on our to-do list was to hire a painter and begin repainting the main living areas.

It was difficult to know what color to paint the walls when we had only been in the house for a couple of days. I knew I wanted to stay neutral and have the artwork take center stage but what about those tray ceilings? Should I accent them, and if so, with what colors?

I had to move quickly. The painter had some time right before Christmas and it would be so much easier to paint these rooms before there was any more furniture. Most of the new construction we toured was finished in neutral shades of gray but our house has a taupe/cream tile in the main living areas so I needed a neutral color that leaned a bit warmer. These images seem to appear more green but in reality they suggest a hint of brown.

My choices:

I love bold color so something so tame is unusual for me but I think these will be great colors to create my canvas. I want a colorful coastal meets a refined island look. The Balboa Mist is the wall color and the Cumulus Cloud is on the horizontal part of the tray ceiling and the Dash of Pepper is the accent color.

When we looked at new construction I fell in love with the modern industrial vibe lighting but the house we bought is fourteen years old with more traditional fixtures.

I needed something to sit on more than I needed a new chandelier, so I opted to keep them, at least for now, and contrast them with more modern touches like the black and white abstract paintings we purchased at a local gallery.

This artist incorporates sand into each of her pieces. The perfect touch for a coastal home.

Eventually I hope to bring in some color on the dining chairs and maybe some fabric panels on either side of the arched window, but for now I added this oversized bowl in cobalt blue.