QUARTERLY DESIGN TIP: A LIVING ROOM TO LOVE For my design tips, I'd like to reveal the hows and whys behind the makeover of our living room, using before and after pictures. "Before" brings to mind my first tip: No matter how busy you are, find the five minutes it'll take to snap digital photographs of your room(s) before the work begins; otherwise when friends want to see how a space looked originally, you'll wind up having to show a photograph of, oh, let's say your daughter's birthday party from six years ago. Let's begin by listing the many design don'ts with the original living room: No focal point in the room; no color; outdated railing; outdated blah draperies that obscure the windows; outdated and beat-up furniture; no comfortable seating arrangement to beckon more than two people into the room; no cozy area for reading or for listening to the piano; extreme overuse of bulky rectangular shapes. Yeesh! Who lives here?! Why don't they hire a decorator?!? Upgrading Sometimes you find yourself wanting to wait until your finances are in order and your kids have reached an age at which they will no longer be jumping off your new sofa and crashing through your new coffee table. The catch, however, is that there is no perfect time to begin a remodel. Financially, it's always cheaper now than it will be later, and as kids mature, college costs loom. Once education bills have been paid, retirement looms. My advice is borrowed from Nike ads: Just do it. Looking on the positive side, by the time we embarked on our remodel, I had a very good idea of what I wanted, and I'd learned quite a bit about design. I did considerable research and chose the type of flooring I wanted a full year before the remodel began. I decided to install Brazilian cherry throughout the kitchen and dining room, and I soon realized that the Spanish tile by our front door was going to look dingy in comparison, so I wisely opted to extend the cherry hardwood throughout the foyer. I also knew that I wanted a carpeted living room and family room, because the noise absorption from carpeting is considerable. Also, those separate rooms within our split-level house would be nicely delineated and yet provide overall continuity when all of the sunken floors featured the same carpet. The honey-gold tan and the softness of our eight-year-old living room carpet provided an ideal color and texture contrast with the cherry hardwood, and the carpet was in excellent shape (because our living room was so icky that the room was seldom used, but enough self-bludgeoning). The carpet was the only feature of our living room that remained unaltered. The room now has brand new windows, wall-and-ceiling texture, light fixtures, a half wall, a window seat, crown molding, door-and-window casings, baseboards, doors, and paint. Alas, when you upgrade the container, the contents need to be upgraded as well. The only furniture of high enough quality to remain in our living room was our piano. Everything else would have been eyesores. When remodeling, creating a fabulous focal point in every room is paramount. The bay window is the focal point in my living room. I wanted to create a reading/daydreaming nook with a window seat and sconces. By discussing this with my contractor and the owner of the window store, the bay window became a large bump out of our front wall. Note that I did not install any window coverings and have no intention of ever doing so. The room is nestled with trees that provide us with the privacy we need, plus lovely views. In the original living room, there was a wood-dowel railing along the edge of the entrance way and the step down into the living room. This was changed to a half wall. Installing a wall was not expensive and worked well with my furniture plan; I could back a loveseat against the half wall and place a matching sofa to face my focal point—the bay window. BEFORE AFTER Harmony Many factors go into harmonizing a room via furniture and accessories. The goal is to balance the space visually. Texture, color, shape, weight, scale, lines, and patterns all play a part in the overall feel and harmony of a room. The guiding principle behind creating harmony and, indeed, behind most decisions in interior design, is: Draw the eye where you most want it to be. Our ceiling fixtures, for example, were chosen so as to blend in, rather than to distract. They are unobtrusive dome shapes, white glass to match the white plaster texture, and white-painted rims with the same tonal quality as our trim. Trim has a major impact on a room and is relatively inexpensive. We installed crown molding and substantial baseboards and casings that complement one another and give this joint some class. When selecting furniture, it's easiest to start with the major piece, which, in a living room, is the sofa. I had a sofa in mind—camelback, cream-colored, cabriole legs—and I tried for weeks to find that sofa. I finally realized that I needed to shift my focus from finding my dream sofa to finding my dream furniture store and so, instead, sought to find a store that carried merchandise I liked. After all, I could always custom-order the fabric. We found the perfect sofa, with a matching loveseat, at a store some forty miles from our house. Note that "perfect" was nothing like the sofa I'd envisioned, but it's wonderfully neutral and is such high quality that it will last a lifetime. I also knew that an oval glass coffee table would harmonize and balance the room beautifully. I found that exact table at the store where we bought our love seat and sofa, as well as an overstuffed chair and ottoman that we placed in our family room. This leads us to color, but I'm running long, and the wall color and the specific fabric patterns and colors of my furnishings were all determined by the wallpaper on the accent wall in my dining room, directly opposite the bay window. So I will hold off on the color discussion till next time. Until then, may all your spaces be lovely . . . and happy reading! Read previous design tips.