The Interior Decorating thread.

[Cas Stark]

One of our bathrooms and one bedroom is painted grey, I like it, it sets off the molding very well and is neutral.  We had lost our minds in the bathroom and so the floor is very expensive, beautiful green tile and the bathtub enclosure--I could not tell you why or how this happened--is grey tile?????  Insane.  And no one to blame but ourselves.  The bathroom was once painted dark green to match the floor tiles and is now grey to match the bathtub tiles.  No one would ever believe the same people put in the floor and the tub surround.   Sadly, the kitchen counters are the Home Depot grade warm oak color that is now hideous to me.  They will eventually be either doors replaced or redone in a darker cherry [yeah I know that is out of fashion, but I like it] or white. 

[Mlle. Zabzie]

11 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

One of our bathrooms and one bedroom is painted grey, I like it, it sets off the molding very well and is neutral.  We had lost our minds in the bathroom and so the floor is very expensive, beautiful green tile and the bathtub enclosure--I could not tell you why or how this happened--is grey tile?????  Insane.  And no one to blame but ourselves.  The bathroom was once painted dark green to match the floor tiles and is now grey to match the bathtub tiles.  No one would ever believe the same people put in the floor and the tub surround.   Sadly, the kitchen counters are the Home Depot grade warm oak color that is now hideous to me.  They will eventually be either doors replaced or redone in a darker cherry [yeah I know that is out of fashion, but I like it] or white. 

1.  If you like cherry, go for cherry.  I love the look of cherry and walnut.  And I think cherry cabinetry is coming back.  Fits the turn towards warmer neutrals happening right now (designers have to sell something).  

2.  ALTERNATIVELY you can’t go wrong with white kitchen cabinets.  

It’s a bit of a pain, but cabinet refinishing is a totally possible DIY project.

Ok, I have a question.  I’m not a wallpaper person (AT ALL).  However, I’m kind of eyeing a peel and stick alternative for one small room.  Anyone have any experience with that? 

[lady narcissa]

What I have been really fascinated by lately design wise is what I see on instagram.  Half for the designs done and half for people doing the designing.  Instagram is interesting because you get actual professional designers of the whole range - from the Architectural Digest set to smaller less known but very good designers. Then you get people with a whole range of tastes and styles decorating their homes and posting pictures of them - of these I tend to like those in England with medium sized manor houses and eclectic taste.

But what fascinates me most are this set of stay at home moms in suburban homes who all have identical houses in layouts and style who manage to get very large followings of similarly situated followers.  They get tons of free things from businesses because they have such large followings from carpets to decorative items to furniture and are constantly updating their homes with these free items and promoting them.  All their houses look the same - white with mainly black and an accent of grey.  Even the kids rooms are black, white, and grey.  There is hardly any bright colors to be found except at Christmas when red comes in.  Their followers aspire to copy their designs and will do their own homes as similarly as they can in hopes of getting a retweet and a follow.  No judgement on this, its great they are able to find a creative outlet this way and free stuff for their houses.  But I do find it fascinating to observe.  And I wonder what they are all going to do with their Rae Dunn dishes when this all goes out favor.

[Cas Stark]

52 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

1.  If you like cherry, go for cherry.  I love the look of cherry and walnut.  And I think cherry cabinetry is coming back.  Fits the turn towards warmer neutrals happening right now (designers have to sell something).  

2.  ALTERNATIVELY you can’t go wrong with white kitchen cabinets.  

It’s a bit of a pain, but cabinet refinishing is a totally possible DIY project.

Ok, I have a question.  I’m not a wallpaper person (AT ALL).  However, I’m kind of eyeing a peel and stick alternative for one small room.  Anyone have any experience with that? 

I think we will probably go with white, which we will do when we upgrade the counters to granite, hopefully some time this year.  

Wallpaper is too intimidating, so no advice there.  I always wanted one of those country house bedrooms with the wall sized scene hand painted wallpaper.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

52 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

I think we will probably go with white, which we will do when we upgrade the counters to granite, hopefully some time this year.  

Wallpaper is too intimidating, so no advice there.  I always wanted one of those country house bedrooms with the wall sized scene hand painted wallpaper.

https://www.wayfair.com/decor-pillows/pdp/gk-wall-design-blossom-wall-mural-gkwd1644.html?piid=54567650

Exists in peel and stick!

[S John]

2 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

https://www.wayfair.com/decor-pillows/pdp/gk-wall-design-blossom-wall-mural-gkwd1644.html?piid=54567650

Exists in peel and stick!

Hmm interesting. I could see doing something like that in the baby’s room when he gets a little older. Like if he’s into dinosaurs or something, have a dinosaur wall. Level of effort to remove is a factor too though.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

4 minutes ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

Apparently, the new wallpaper is NOT our parents’ fussy wallpaper that had to be steamed or chemically stripped to remove. Removal is said to be easy with the new stuff.

Yes, that is the supposed benefit of peel and stick.  Apparently you can just unpeel?

[BigFatCoward]

33 minutes ago, S John said:

Hmm interesting. I could see doing something like that in the baby’s room when he gets a little older. Like if he’s into dinosaurs or something, have a dinosaur wall. Level of effort to remove is a factor too though.

We want to get a huge mural across one wall in her room (my dad will do it, I had some awesome 10ft x 6ft ones when I was younger) but she currently goes in and out of 'favourite things' too quickly at present. I'm not committing him to something that big for her to be over paw patrol in a month. 

[Liffguard]

I live in a small-ish flat that I've tried to make as comfortable and homey as possible, but haven't really changed anything fundamental about the way it looks since I've moved in. 90% of my furniture is either hand-me-down or 2nd-hand, so there is very much not a unified design there.

I say this not to disdain interior design as a concept - I enjoy trying to make my living space look nice - rather my own approach is based around making do and being creative with what I've got rather than designing the whole look of my home from the ground up.

If I have one major complaint about my place it's that it's too dark. The kitchen is all dark brown wood cabinets and dark grey fake granite counters, with similar dark grey fake tiles on the floor. The adjoining living room has three off-white walls but one very dark red accent wall. Sometimes it feels very warm and cozy, but other times it's too heavy and gloomy. I'm thinking of re-painting it something a little brighter, but not too cool, like teal or similar.

I did make one decorative change a little while ago. The bathroom used to be an absolutely awful magnolia colour, with sandstone coloured tiles around the bath and shower unit. I liked the tiles but not the wall colour. So for the time being I've repainted the walls white, but I'm thinking of going with a tropical cyan. I think the combination of bright cyan walls, sandstone tiles, and white units will give a kind of surf and beach effect.

I do enjoy putting up art and various knick-knacks as well. My bookshelves have loads of little memorabilia items as well as books including, but not limited to:

• A carved whale vertebrae that I brought back from Newfoundland for my now late grandmother.
• A clay miniature Corinithian helmet that I picked up from Crete during a stopover on the way back from one of my ship's tours of the Gulf.
• A grey slate slab painted with a breaking wave, bought from a local pop-up garden centre.
• My late grandad's old toy artillery gun, mounted on a display plinth. He was Royal Canadian Artillery during the war.
• My silver ceremonial fairbairns-sykes knife, for the RM King's Badge.
• A couple of engraved brass bowls, again from my gran.
• A copper Aladdin-style oil lamp. I got it from a Moroccan market for a Disney-themed costume party. It's tacky as hell but looks kind of cool.
• My (currently living) grandmother's Royal Canadian Air Force bookends that she got during the war.
• My dad's old wood and brass analogue barometer.
• Multiple cards and postcards with interesting artwork.

Definitely not minimalist. But I enjoy having loads of items I can tell stories about. And they all have a place on a shelf somewhere, so it's not clutter as such.

[Iskaral Pust]

We have a recently built “contemporary farmhouse” of monstrous proportions: 7200sqft, but nearly a third of that is finished basement.  We’ve always liked a style somewhere between modern and contemporary, so it’s a good thing that we agree on it.  It’s tough to compromise on styles that are far apart.

I find it very aesthetically pleasing when buildings have the right proportions, flow, light and external view.  I’m sure we all do.  Our last place sounds quite different: a high rise condo, so much smaller, but very modern, high ceilings, massive windows, and a view of the lake and the city skyline.  So we enjoy both places for a similar sensation and aesthetic, even if they are very different as buildings.

Our decor has a monochrome foundation, with targeted, tactical use of color.  Our furniture is mostly in place now — new home theater seats arrived today, but the set of dining chairs will take several more weeks.  We still need to add some more art pieces on the walls, but mainly on the upper floor now.  The main floor is so open plan, and has such large windows, that there isn’t much wall space still lacking. 

[HexMachina]

6 hours ago, lady narcissa said:

In the 1990s everything was beige. I was working on the construction of high rise high end condominiums at the time and everyone did their bathrooms and kitchens in shades of beige and brown. When I went looking for apartments for myself at that time I was hard pressed to find an apartment that did not have beige carpeting. I longed for grey and actually ultimately ended up paying more for a rental apartment that came with grey carpeting. So I certainly do not dislike grey, it is my preferred neutral color.  But I do think the difference is a lot of people now use it as their only accent color while I use it as a neutral.  Of course now you would be hard pressed to find beige anything. But I am sure it will be back.

Interesting, I'm thinking about my parent's house which they moved into in 1999 (don'tcha wanna go, don'tcha wanna go). It was a council house which got completely remodelled when they moved in because it was a complete state when they moved in. And sure enough the entire bathroom was a very bland beige, and same with the kitchen. This also caused problems down the road when we needed to replace the bath panel and found the exact colour was no longer produced.

And again on the grey, they redecorated mid-2010's after I moved out for university and it was all grey wall paint, grey-black speckled carpet, and a "feature wall" with Black and silver wallpaper.

4 hours ago, S John said:

Hmm interesting. I could see doing something like that in the baby’s room when he gets a little older. Like if he’s into dinosaurs or something, have a dinosaur wall. Level of effort to remove is a factor too though.

This prompted a memory of my parents wallpapering my room with dinosaur paper when I was little. They spent so much time on it. And being the little shit that I was, I immediately tore a big chunk off when I noticed a little corner sticking up.

4 hours ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

Apparently, the new wallpaper is NOT our parents’ fussy wallpaper that had to be steamed or chemically stripped to remove. Removal is said to be easy with the new stuff.

More memories, this time of spending a whole weekend trying to peel the wallpaper off my Nanna's walls. It was a whole ordeal, steamers, scrapers, buckets of water which ended up a disgusting grey to wet the paper, awful fumes. I'm glad to hear its not so involved anymore...

[Mlle. Zabzie]

Speaking of wall coverings, the people who lived here before were INTO wall coverings (the old fashioned kind).  Every room was papered (sometimes white).  Cost a small fortune to take it down, skim coat and paint.  We have actually left up a little of it because it was too expensive to take down.  We also have some upholstered (padded) walls.  Apparently that was a thing?  Anyhow, also too expensive to change, so good job the fabric is neutral.  

[Iskaral Pust]

1 hour ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Speaking of wall coverings, the people who lived here before were INTO wall coverings (the old fashioned kind).  Every room was papered (sometimes white).  Cost a small fortune to take it down, skim coat and paint.  We have actually left up a little of it because it was too expensive to take down.  We also have some upholstered (padded) walls.  Apparently that was a thing?  Anyhow, also too expensive to change, so good job the fabric is neutral.  

Whenever my wife sees dark wood-paneled walls, she gives an involuntary shudder.  The hunting lodge or 70’s den look just kills her.  Compared to that, a little wall paper isn’t so bad.

In our house, walls should be stone or paint, with wood only used for modern style accent.  Neutral paint colors are good provided you include some large contrast accents, like a bold stone wall on one side.

White is good for cabinets and kitchen counters.  Save the grey for rugs and/or furniture that can be changed when fashions have.

[S John]

One interesting design tidbit in my house, though it’s technically exterior, is the blue ceiling on the front porch.

When my wife and I moved to our current town we noticed on our hundreds of walks - since we couldn’t do anything else due to Covid - that many (most?) of the houses in the older part of town had their porch ceilings painted a robins egg blue color. When we eventually bought our own house in the same older part of town it had a blue ceiling on the porch as well.

We looked it up after we moved in and apparently there’s a whole thing about this. There are two common explanations for it. The most common one is that it is due to a superstition that ghosts cannot cross water, so the blue color mimics water and keeps the ghosts away. The particular shade of blue that I called Robins egg is actually known as “haint” blue, which I guess some kind of regional slang for haunt that’s fallen out of use. 

The blue ceilings are supposedly fairly common along the eastern seaboard, the South in particular, and even moreso in places with a ‘haunted’ history and/ or reputation (like, say, Savannah). My town falls into all three categories, which explains why it is so common here. 

The other explanation is that some people think that it keeps bugs away because they confuse the ceiling with the sky and therefore will not nest there.

Obviously the first story is the one I’m going with.

[DireWolfSpirit]

So earlier posts were lamenting HGTV designer shows that were no longer airing?

There's quite a few on YouTube (including full episodes so I wonder whether they might find some of these lost shows over there?

 

[BigFatCoward]

9 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

We have a recently built “contemporary farmhouse” of monstrous proportions: 7200sqft, but nearly a third of that is finished basement.  . 

How the fuck do you even begin to furnish something that big?  When we moved out of our flat into our house we had to buy everything new (rented the flat) and it cost a fortune and I felt like the delivery van was at ours every day for weeks, and we have nowhere near that sq footage. 

[MercenaryChef]

we only decorated over quarantine. it was actually just some of the self care we needed. 

our small and modest studio plus apartment is decorated with framed concert posters,  various art from tattoo artists and fantasy artists and pics of family. we have a couple bookcases full of books and random memorabilia,  knickknacks, toys, etc. two magnetic blocks hold some of my knives just off the kitchen area. two walls are dominated by ikea shelves filled with our ample bar,  fermenting veggies and auxiliary kitchen equipment. 

it isn't luxurious, but it's home and we like it.

[Cas Stark]

6 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

How the fuck do you even begin to furnish something that big?  When we moved out of our flat into our house we had to buy everything new (rented the flat) and it cost a fortune and I felt like the delivery van was at ours every day for weeks, and we have nowhere near that sq footage. 

Giant houses are an American thing.  While our house, including the basement is about half that size, a little over 3,000 sq feet, it is chock full of furniture, wall art, candle holders, vases, books, collectible crap, so much so that it could easily fill up a larger space.  But, I've admitted I'm a maximalist when it comes to home decor, so I'm pretty sure I could fill 7,000 sq ft w/out much trouble.

[Iskaral Pust]

16 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

How the fuck do you even begin to furnish something that big?  When we moved out of our flat into our house we had to buy everything new (rented the flat) and it cost a fortune and I felt like the delivery van was at ours every day for weeks, and we have nowhere near that sq footage. 

Slowly, and at jaw-dropping cost.  We still have some guest bedrooms awaiting furniture this summer.

But the over-sized sprawl does mean we can play table tennis in our basement.

[BigFatCoward]

5 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

 

But the over-sized sprawl does mean we can play table tennis in our basement.

It sounds like you could play actual tennis down there.