I’m doing my little girl’s bedroom little by little as my daughter keeps being over enthusiastic with her felt tips. As a result we have a little bit of decor done when there’s no additions to her graffiti wall.
Here are some of the ideas I’ve been saving for her bedroom.
Looking ahead to decorating our second spare room, 15 inspiring American French Country bedroom details.
My main goal next year is to finish our new kitchen at long last. I’ve written about it many times, but we still haven’t finished. Nevertheless when it is finished our plan is to move the dining room to the room that’s beside the kitchen, connected via the small entrance area that I spoke about in yesterday’s post.
I love chinoiserie and thought about how I could get the look in the hallway, bedrooms and now I’m thinking of the dining room.
Chinoiserie is expensive, so the only way we can realistically afford this look is if I hand painted it with the help of stencils. I’ll, of course, share here when I do it. However in the meantime you can click on this link to see my last attempt at painting birds with a stencil like tool.
Now to the chinoiserie.
Which is a way of painting in shades of grey, as the name suggests. I love it, but I don’t think I’d ever be able to manage it myself. Here are some of the images that make me want to blow the budget though.
As I’m a SAHM I need to make sure that I decorate our home as inexpensively as possible. So I buy old furniture to paint and upholster, along with doing as much diy myself as I can.
One of my purchases was a kidney shaped dressing table. I’d love one like these of course….
…..but the budget will never allow for that. Originally I’d bought it for my eldest daughter’s bedroom and had planned something like this….
….but it’s nearly Christmas and we have guests coming, so it’s necessary to provide a dressing table in the spare rooms. As we only have the one the kidney dressing table has been sequestered for the English country bedroom, so I’ve been searching for inspiration.
It’s a very modern design, so something like below would have been closest to it’s current form. However that wouldn’t sit well in the bedroom’s style.
So I was left with the options of a traditional dressing table with a fabric skirt. My search pulled up the following options; the first being these, with smocked tops. They look striking, but I’m not convinced that I’d manage this with my basic sewing skills.
Another option is a valence like top, which would work with the drawer in the design. You could lift up the valence and access the drawer.
Alternatively is this more structured top.
In terms of the drawer I could do as below and include the structure of the furniture as part of design.
These aren’t kidney dressing tables, but if you don’t want frou-frou then I’m sure these cleaner lines could be accommodated within the kidney shape.
In fact, this decorator has done that with a hall table and I think it looks fantastic.
These designs have more unusual elements, kind of similar to my upholstery post.
However the style I liked the most are these gathered skirts. They can be very feminine and traditional, but the plain off-white ones can accommodate very stylish to clean, country decor.
Which option would you go for?
You may have noticed that I jump around a lot in my decorating; enthusiasm and circumstances result in my haphazard approach. Unfortunately there are no big ‘reveal’ moments from me. Just an ongoing saga of the decoration of an ancient home. But I love it.
It’s also necessary for me to, once again, apologise for my posting absence. I’ve been finishing curtains, decorating rooms, struggling with local artisans and being an, albeit rather squiffy, hostess. As the much awaited guests needed something a little more than the bare minimum than I’d been providing I’d felt a change of decoration and a new focus on the guest room was in order.
This is what it looked like before…..
Now, I’m a pink person – but……..Also it’s a little somber.
The first thing I started to do was make these curtains. In fact that was all I was originally going to do. They’re double width and pool at the bottom giving them a sumptuous feel in an otherwise Edwardian country bedroom.
I edged the curtains in this scalloped lace and the voiles compliment them. They were originally in the dining room, but were so perfect for the lace edging I moved them.
Here’s a closer look at those Art Nouveau plates that I’ve hung between the curtains…
I have so many little nik naks that I’ve bought from French brocantes over the years, just waiting for the right place to go, that I don’t always know where I’m going to put what. However the green in the plates, along with the design, seemed to fit perfectly. In fact, although you’d think the bed dominated the decor design, it was actually these plates. Once they were in situ other things naturally followed. Like these Art Nouveau prints…
Perfect fit, no?
From there I took this old, French country style iron chandelier…
…with its adorable bows. I might add some clip on light shades, I don’t know yet. I’m going to do a stencil freeze around the room and it may be too much. We’ll see.
As I said, I’d only intended to sew curtains. However I suddenly wondered to myself if I could paint over the wallpaper. It was very thick, typical of the type used in old houses. Often when the walls are old and the plaster weaker thick, textured wallpaper is used to ensure it goes on, stays on and covers the imperfections in the wall. As a result its thickness means you can paint it as the paper is strong enough not to be damaged by the moisture. If you live in an old house and are afraid of taking off structurally sound but unattractive wallpaper because of what you may find underneath this can be a good option.
Here’s a wider look of the same corner of the room….
…the lighter paint makes such a difference doesn’t it?
You can see that I’ve moved the secrétaire that I had here (here’s the original how to). The coverlets on the bed are only a temporary, summer set. I’ve bought some high quality, white cotton for when my guests return at New Year.
Here’s the other side of the room…
In the corner is this dressing table…
As I added pictures and the light to the room it took on a definitive theme of Edwardian country; it wasn’t by design, it just fell into place like that. Isn’t it lovely when that happens? All of a sudden in the middle of a room project you realise “Oh, so this is who you’re going to be!”
As a result I don’t know whether this dressing table will stay here. I have a beautiful Edwardian one in my own bedroom that I love, but I just feel that it will be perfect in this room. Take a look and tell me what you think.
I need to redo the paintwork on this cream one, you can see in the pictures below how the wood was cracked by a falling wardrobe (!). My plan is to decorate the next spare room in a French country style, so it might be transported there. We’ll see what I end up with!
As you can see I’ve styled the dressing table top. I didn’t want it to feel barren and soulless when my friends arrived. I’ll do a post later on preparing rooms for guests (my husband thinks I’m crazy, but it may give you a few ideas).
Here’s a lovely panel detail on the armour wardrobe that I picked up in another brocante adventure. I bought it prior to our move here, it was in the house we rented when we first arrived. However the parts of the dismantled wardrobe have been leaning against a wall. When we went to refit it it wouldn’t slot into place correctly. We’re unsure if it’s warped or if we need to keep playing around with it (I’m using the word ‘we’ lightly).
I may end up putting a curtain on the armoire, or even salvaging parts to use in other projects and buying a new one.
Do you remember how I said that I was going to stencil, well here’s the start of that part of the project…
I started above the door here. I think it will look really nice. It may not end up being so close together though as it’s tall and may not work round the beams well as a result. Consequently I may space the design between the beams, leaving appropriate gaps. I’ll paint over the additional stencil if need be.
I ordered the stencil from Royal Design Stencils in the US and my husband brought it back from one of his work trips there.
I’ll post a final picture when it’s all done; in fact I might have a post on ‘finally, completely finished rooms’. In the meantime I’d love to know what you think.
One of the big plans we have for the house is to turn an ajoining bedroom into a walk in wardrobe and on suite. The walk in wardrobe part sounds very upscale, but I’m actually talking about something like this…..
which is a lot cheaper than a fitted wardrobe.
We took an unexpected step towards this situation over the weekend when we tried to move an armoir into our bedroom. The owners had kindly left us two of these wardrobes…
and I wanted to move the armoir in, but we couldn’t due to the layout of the landing. There is already an interior door between ours and the spare room, but it was sealed. The hubby and I were contemplating putting the armoir back and unsealing it during the week. As we talked about it my Pops, who was there, asked for a hammer and a flat screwdriver. If you’re British you’ll have heard jokes about Scousers, of whom my Pops is one; let’s just say he lived up to the reputation. Within minutes the lock was broken, the door taken off its hinges and we were in. Here are some photos of the doorway…..
Don’t you love the floorboards? Alas it looks like they don’t extend to our bedroom, so we’ll be keeping the laminate. But the floorboards will definitely be a feature of the bathroom/walk in wardrobe.
The armoire is in and it looks like this…
The room seems to be taking on an Edwardian/Art Nouveau feel. I found the chandelier on a site called Le Bon Coin and chose it because it went so well with the Tiffany lampshade that sits on the dresser and it was a steal at 15€.
Speaking of the dresser, which I love, it was only 120€ and is incredibly well made. I’ll post some more photos of the details on it at a later date.
In this image here you can see the curtains that where in the living room when we first moved in. They were left by the previous owner and are incredibly thick and well made. However they didn’t quite go downstairs, so I thought I’d move them here. I’m not 100% certain if they’ll stay and if they do I intend to add a cornice.
At the moment I’m only working with what I’ve got in the bedroom. My main concern is getting the walk in set up and finishing the dining room and living room this year. It’s really a next year project, but I like how it’s coming together; especially now I’ve removed the insulation from that interior door.
What do you think?
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