Mixing sets

I'm not one for "sets" of things, any more than I am an "outfit" person.  I suppose it's that I don't like things too matchy-matchy, and I always want to keep my options open.

I have had several clients recently who tend to buy sets of the showroom floor because it is easy, or because they are not sure what they love or how to mix it.  My response?  I've never bought a set in my life.

While this is technically true, I do have some partial sets, and the truth is, put to the right use, they can be a great thing.  The key?  Separate them.  Counter-intuitive, I know, but breaking up a set to different corners of the house not only means that you cut down on a single room looking too much like a showroom, you also create continuity throughout your space.

My parents bought this bedroom set before I was born.  It moved in to my bedroom as a teenager, and I inherited the armoire when I bought my first apartment and the headboard when I bought my first house.  I love the visual relationship between the two now--in separate rooms, but sometimes visible together.

This works with bedding, too.  And china!  Anything that typically comes in a group, but two different sets and mix 'em together.

What do you think: are you a "set" person?  Or do you like more of a mix?

What's in a sofa?

Did you see this piece, analyzing the couch, from the Home and Garden section of the NYTimes?

The author asks the question: what is the difference (really) between a $1000 mass market sofa and a $13,000 designer breed?

The answer: quality.

The author concludes that under $1000, you are going low end and you will likely pay for it.  What I find interesting is the conclusion that there's not much difference in the mid-range, which, let's face it, is where most of us live.

Here's my two cents: when it comes to high-use upholstery, buy the best you can afford.  Have you ever read the reviews for an Urban Outfitters couch?  Go do it.  Complaints about everything from marked discomfort to quickly disintegrating product.  While I can't imagine buying a couch that costs more than my car, I have purchased couches twice in my life (and I am 38!) and both times I saved my pennies for a good one.  The first, (seen here at the end of its days) was from the ABC Carpet and Home outlet, so while I paid about $1000, the value was higher, and I certainly got my money's worth with 10+ years of hard use.

The second is the Bantam from DWR, the entry level price point for that often out-of-reach retailer. We have had it for 3.5 years and I imagine we will have it for many more.

Oh!  And our loveseat is from Lee, in a Kravet fabric, and I plan to have it forever.  The classic lines and small shape mean I can reupholster it and use it in various rooms and in any house, forever and ever, amen.

I often think about how weird it is that I am reluctant to buy "real" furniture--all my case goods are vintage or ikea, I made most of our headboards, curtains, and soft goods--but when it comes to upholstery, I firmly believe you just have to go with the real deal.

If you read the comments in the Time article, you will see that opinion on this point varies widely.  Where do you stand?

In Case You Missed It

Time is flying, isn't it?

I feel like blog reading is slowing down all around.  Maybe if you were a daily reader (of whatever, whoever's blog), maybe now you miss once or twice a week.  If you were a weekly reader, you may have dwindled to twice a month.  I feel this in my own reading: my ritual used to be to eat lunch at my desk and catch up on all the great content out there (and see what my blog friends were up to), but more and more, work has me on the road and I miss days here and there.  I like to catch up, though.  Since this blog is still mostly daily, I thought I would do a little Best Of at the end of the month, in case you missed some great posts.

Let me know what you think?

In February, I finally shared my secrets for hanging a massive art wall.

I let you in on the process of planning a giant piece of art to hide my TV.

I banished the "temporary" with some new bamboo blinds (from a great, cheap source!)

A new plan for my girls' room led to selling these.  (Still available if you are interested, email me!).

And I rounded up a ton of merchandise in sunny, summery yellow, as well as the woven leather seating I seem to be craving these days.


We did a lot of organizing work this weekend, coming to terms with how we really live, and trying to plan our storage accordingly.  I took a lot of pictures, too, and can't wait to share ideas here all week long.

I hope you'll join me!

Heather

P.S.  The spam comments have gotten completely out of control!  Have you noticed?  I'm sorry to say you will now need to prove you are not a robot to post a comment.  Please don't let it slow you down!

Small Measures

I have a new client, a 6-year-old boy with severe allergies.  No draperies, no upholstery, and no rugs means coming up with other places to bring in pattern, texture, and FUN.

For additional DIY window shade projects, go here!

Printed Upholstery

I find myself pinning a lot of pretty printed upholstery these days.

Peter Dunham

Better Homes and Gardens via The Inspired Room

Julie Nightingale Design via Centsational Girl

I recently got the latest West Elm catalog, and, always on trend, I'm loving their new fabric prints collection.  Have you seen?

from top, Everett, Victor, Bliss, and Oliver chairs.  All available in all of the prints.  There are butterflies, too!    Shop them here.

And for a bolder floral, how about the World Market Victoria?

What about you: do you dig bold prints on upholstery?  I still want to do this, but maybe using this.

How to Hang a Massive photo wall

Okay folks, here we go.

If you want ideas about how to plan and hang a basic gallery-style wall, you can check out this old post.  If you want a little inspiration, you can check out walls I have done here, here, here, here, and here.  And some other people's art walls that I have blogged about here, here, here, and here.

Today we are assuming you're in it to win it, and talking the logistics of actually planning and hanging it all up.  There are lots, so settle in!

1. Determine your outlines
First you need to decide exactly where you're going to work.  Not jut which wall, but where ON the wall.  No matter what, you want your arrangement to relate deliberately to your architecture.  In this case, we chose the long wall of the conference room, visible from the office entry.  The adjacent wall has a wall-to-wall window, and we decided to create a wide band that basically followed its path.  (I can't believe I don't have a picture of that!)  To create the outline, I measured down from the ceiling to the top of the window, then took that same measurement along the picture wall, and taped a straight (enough) line across with painter's tape.  Then I measured down from that line and taped the bottom edge in line with the bottom of the window, all the way across.

2. Create an organizing principle
Generally, a large group of photos or artworks are going to tell some kind of story.  Your job is to author the story, as it were.  In this case, my job was easy: as all the photos were of one family, we created a chronology.  Since we had a horizontal band, it naturally "reads" as a timeline from left to right.

Once you have your concept, you can decide on frames.  Do you want to unify, or divide, your subjects?  Do you want to call more attention to some subjects than others?  To unify, use matching frames.  To call special attention to one image or work, use a different color, weight, or size of frame.

3.  Divide the space
This is not strictly necessary, but it sure helps, both in keeping organized and in creating a grid to work within as you start to hang things up.  Here I used two pairs of portraits of the patriarch and matriarch, early in their marriage and later in their lives.  (The photos are being worked on, so they aren't actually in the frame yet!  They will also get oval mats to further set them apart.)  Using larger frames and a pair of sconces helps to visually break up a big expanse.  (Mirrors would work, too, or inserting circles or ovals into a field of squares and rectangles.  You get the idea.)

This also helped me in organizing the photographs in to sections.  The far left became pre-marriage, marriage, and life with their first children; the middle is the entire family into young adulthood; the right section features the next generation.

To further delineate the middle section, we chose portraits of each of the five children and printed 5x7s, just slightly larger than the rest of the photos, which are all 4x6.

4. Lay it out
Clear the floor!  It's time to lay it all out.  Even if you have followed all the steps above, there is still organizing work to do.  When I was in the early stages of planning this wall, I considered several options for arrangement.  Once I divided the space with the portraits, my left over space pretty much dictated that the rest of the pictures would fall in to columns around them.

If you are working with photography in frames and need to edit your photos down anyway, you have some flexibility to plan your frame layout first, and then choose the photos to go in to the layout.  But be prepared to change!  I had a layout that I was happy with that had a ton of horizontal frames, only to discover we had more vertical photos.

5.  Prep your frames
This is a step that takes a tremendous amount of time, and people don't realize it.  Again, this applies only when you are framing things yourself.  You need to open up the frame, center the photo, tape it in place, and clean the mat and glass, then carefully reassemble it all.  I mean, you don't have to, but it's kind of a shame to skip it when you're doing all this work.

You will want:

I have always just used paper towels and spray glass cleaner in the past, but it was slow going, and we discovered that lint-free microfiber cloths do a bang-up job on the mats, and glass wipes are far superior to spray for the glass.  You'll thank me for this.  (Or, actually, thank my aunt, who figured this out!)  As for the tape dispenser, you really just need something you can use one-handed; disposable plastic dispensers just don't work.

6. Start to hang
Here's where dividing the space really comes in handy!  where do you start with a project of this size?  Well, in this case, you start with the sconces and the large frames that create the division in the overall project. Then the portraits.
It is critical that you get this spacing right.  Mess up now, and you will be putting a LOT of extra holes in the wall.  With such a wide expanse (my wall was 25' long), tape measures get finicky and the math gets complicated.  I had to re-hang several of these portraits to get it just right.  You can see here that the spacing was off at first:

(Oh, hey, if you look at the left side of the picture, you can see the corner of that window I mentioned.)

To get hanging, you will want:

Okay, duh, you also need a hammer and nails or picture hooks.  

With each picture, use a SMALL and lightweight tape measure to measure your placement and mark the top center of the frame on the wall. Then measure down the back of the frame from the top of the molding to the bottom of the hook, then measure that distance from your mark on the wall, mark with the pencil, hang the frame.  Add small dots of blue stik or other sticky adhesive to the back of the bottom corners.  Use a hand-held level to straighten the frame, then press gently until the blue stik adhered.  This may sound like extra work, but it's worth it: If each frame is level as you go, you have a stable reference point to work from as you hang more frames around it.  One wonky frame can have a ripple effect through the whole wall.

7. Do the math
With a grid like this (or even just columns), hanging the rest of the frames is simple math.  For example, a column of 5 frames in a row will have even spacing--say 1 inch apart.  So measure the frame from hook to molding, add the 1" (or whatever specified space), then measure that distance down from the existing frame on the wall, and place your hook.  Works the same horizontally.

8. When in doubt, level it out.
Yeah, I just wrote that.  Do you see how long this post is?  A trick in keeping a column straight.  Do the math as above for the vertical spacing.  Then, to be sure the frames will line up side to side, use a level to ensure that the hooks are in a vertical line.  Does that make sense?  So, hang one hook, hang the picture.  Then do the matht o place the hook for the picture below it.  Now take the first picture back down, and before you hammer in the second hook, use a long level to line up the existing nail with the spot you have marked for the new nail.  You may need to adjust a bit to the left or right.

8.  Fill it in!

I'm not going to lie: this was a pretty big undertaking.  Once we had our general plan and had all of our supplies on site, it took a couple of hours to lay it all out, finalize the arrangement, and edit the photos.  Then it took about twelve hours to prep and hang it all.  And that was me and another person.

So there you have it.  I'll show you again when the sconces are installed and the proper portraits are in the large frames.  Maybe I'll even use a real camera, and show you the rest of the office, too.

If any of the details don't make sense, or if I need to make drawings to explain the math of it, just let me know! 

Progress on the TV art

One of the nice things about projects in your own home is the freedom to experiment on-site.  You don't have to have it all figured out before you start the install.

I mentioned a while back that I wanted to install a giant canvas over my TV, partly to hide the thing when not in use (and perhaps reduce the TV watching that I am engaging in), but mostly to make the room feel more finished most of the time.

I figured out the scale I wanted, my husband built a frame, and I covered it in inexpensive painters canvas (from here) with my staple gun, and hung it on up.  By which I mean I put the cross brace on the back of the frame right on top of the TV.

Without the TV visible and acting as a reference point, I noticed that the canvas feels a bit low.  So there's that.  Especially in relationship to the vertical stack of stamp art on the same wall.

See?  So it will move up, probably with some blocks added to the cross-brace in the back. Speaking of which, I noticed that whatever wood sits directly on the TV will need to be covered in felt, pronto.  No need to scratch up a perfectly good TV.

Before I started painting, I wanted to test out some ideas.  Do not judge what you are about to see.  Since I am thinking about a black and white abstract,  I got out all the black construction paper form my kids' pack and started taping it to the canvas in a sort of geometric way.

The idea is just to mock up the general gist of it to see how it plays in the room and how it relates to the other art and furniture.  I left it up for a day or two to see how I reacted to it as I moved through the house.

(By the way, do you like our state of the art stereo system?  I think my husband got that boom box in the 80s.  It's great for my 4 year old, who loves to play DJ.)

The verdict?  The bold black geometric pulls too much focus.  It grabbed my eye any time I went remotely near.  I'm thinking it needs to be more organic (the geometry mimics the frame stack too much), and medium to large scale (the framed paper is small scale, loose, and busy).  It needs to be a little more delicate, either in color or in line.  Another mock up is in my future.

An important note.  Generally, I would not recommend planning a painting this way.  No, sir.  Art should be art, and should not be "decor."  But in this case, it is a major statement in the space but also the last piece coming in to the room and I don't have any money to buy real art right now, so it makes sense to do something myself and plan it to the room.

Very process-y, right?  I hope it helps to see the thinking process, and to show that, while sometimes things just "work," more often there is a lot of planning and playing that goes in to each design decision along the way.