Has your home ever felt chaotic? Not the people, but the furnishings? We’ve lived with pretty much the same furnishings and curtains since we moved into our home almost fifteen years ago. While I’ve added some pieces of furniture over the years, once something is set in place, it pretty much stays there. But lately I’ve been feeling like our home is a little chaotic.
It started this past winter when I decided to paint our kitchen walls in preparation for my daughter’s high school graduation party. Then it all seemed to snowball from there.
Here’s a picture of our dining room/kitchen area taken last Halloween – thus the decorations and black chairs. As you can see there’s so many different colors going on in the space. I wanted to calm the space rather than have things jump out at me every time I walked into the room. This meant having fewer colors that blended and balanced.
After going through every color in the rainbow, I finally decided I didn’t mind the yellow walls. Unlike the grays, whites, and tans I sampled, the yellow just seemed to blend fine with my dining room furniture and kitchen cabinets. The old yellow did need to be toned down though. I also wanted the room to feel lighter and brighter, so it was important to choose a lighter yellow.
After removing the curtains, curtain rods, and art and then painting with Valspar’s Saffron Ivory, the space immediately felt lighter, brighter, and less chaotic. Don’t bother looking up the color swatch online, it’s completely different in person.
It was now time to start adding decor items back in to the space.
As you can see in the photo above, the original curtains were a deep red. I’m a creature of habit and dramatic change is hard for me. I actually searched high and low for a similar (but updated) fabric, but now happy I didn’t find anything. What I did find were these Keegan grommet panels from Pier 1 Imports ( #Pier1 ).
The colors are a deep navy blue and a natural flax – which happen to blend really well with the denim blue on my recently recovered counter stools and the jute Boucle flax runners under them. My runners are from West Elm, but these jute runners on Amazon are almost identical and a little less expensive.
It’s funny… my original intention with this room was to add more navy blue. It’s my favorite color so this was a happy accident.
Since I recently added the natural wood sideboard on the opposite side of the room (you can see that furniture makeover here), it was a good idea to change out the thin black metal curtain rods for natural wood ones to balance the woods on opposite ends of the room.
Do you know I could not find curtain rods in natural wood in any home improvement store? So I went with the next best thing… an unfinished wood closet rod. At just $8.00 per sixty-inch pole, they also turned out to be more economical. Amazon does have the same natural wood rods here. Just be sure they fit the brackets which are usually 1-3/8″.
Now I just had to learn how to use a drill. Crazy right! My husband just happened to have to work late that day, but I was determined to hang these new curtains before the graduation party the following day.
So I did what every teenager would do… I watched a YouTube video on how to operate a drill and hung these wood brackets! The color is different from the rods, but it’s fine since they’re completely hidden behind the curtain. I purchased the brackets at Lowes. Amazon has similar natural wood ones available here.
The rods were hung to accommodate standard 84-inch curtain panels, but I purchased 108-inch panels. My original plan was to cut the grommets off the top and create a pole pocket. I ended up liking the grommets more than I thought I would.
Plus, now that there’s about 24 inches of excess material on the bottom (currently tucked under and tacked with pins), I plan to trim off the extra fabric and make valances for the windows on the opposite side of the room where these yellow ones currently hang.
The new blue & flax colored curtain panels seem to calm the space because they now balance the dark charcoal fireplace and blend with the natural woods, flax rugs, and adjacent gray living room.
The new curtains also blend really nicely with the Threshold turned wood colum lamps which are my favorite!
Now that the curtains, rugs, lamps, fireplace, and furniture blend together, the entire space feels less chaotic and much more relaxing. Which is exactly what I need right now as I’m crazy busy with client refinishing projects and two books. Oh… did I forget to mention the books I’m writing? More on that later so don’t forget to follow along via email.
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