the highlow

Tag: Pinterest

  • Leather, Leather on My Sofa…

    Let me just start by saying that rebellion at 37 looks nary a thing like one at 16.  Case in point:  I have traded climbing out of my window in the dead of night so as to attend the latest glamorous bonfire party being hosted down by the river in my little town for wanting to…wait for it, wait for it…add a BLACK.LEATHER.SOFA to my living room.  I’m baaaaad.

    Now, when I was 16, you didn’t really have to put much thought into being bad / you just kind of did whatever was dumb and destructive and called it a day / no further research necessary.  Unfortunately, the older version of bad kind of comes with a little more baggage.  Like, one must think about what kind of bad they want to actually be. 

    Is it a Portia de Rossi & Ellen DeGeneres kind of bad?  (Check out their living room in Elle Décor below and maybe you can figure out what exactly that means…and let me know if you do.)

    Ellen-EDC-05-13-002-lgn

    Maybe throw in a little Swedish kind of bad?

    lively-and-light-interior-of-house-in-sweden-1-554x261

    Or perhaps a little bohemian bad:

    Bohemian+Living+Room+Decorative+screens+flanking+8iF7NP93GeOl

    How about Fornasetti bad? 

    c534a5aeb23f8e4cff6d88306a8afe81

    Or, even crazier…rustic bad:

    4b5b12a63ba5135b1a9089e54ced059b

    Okay, so truth be told, none of these were exactly the kind of bad I’m going for, but they did provide some good inspiration. 

    So off I went to make my own rebellion in this world (btw, I’m guessing my parents are wondering why on God’s green earth they couldn’t have had this version 20 years ago).

    Here were some of my favorite finds along the way (and you can also check out my more extensive/less curated Pinterest collection as well if you’re so inclined):

    Blog_LeatherSofa Final

     

    1: West Elm / 2: Talisman / 3: 1stdibs / 4: Cisco Home / 5: Benchmade by Brownstone / 6: 1stdibs / 7: Dering Hall

    But I still hadn’t found exactly that je ne sais quoi bad that I was looking for.  What was a girl to do?  Answer:  DIY.  In other words, comb through the sofa fields ad nauseum, find a silhouette that sings to you, imagine it in leather, decide to do it “COL” (customer’s own leather), go on a leather hunting mission, strike gold, combine the two…and pray that you’ve got it all right in your head. 

    Now the million dollar question becomes…am I baaaaad…or just plain old bad? 

    Tune in in about eight to ten weeks and we’ll have the answer…

    *Note: if you want some other well-researched ideas, check out Victoria Smith’s / aka sfgirlbybay’s piece on the subject. 

     Photos from here, here, here, here, and here. 

  • Cherishing on Chairish.com

    I’m not really sure when one technically “earns” the right to a home makeover, but I’m going to call it for the Faust family after nine years.  (Does a marriage, three cities to call home, a bambino, and two new jobs help my cause?)  

    Let’s start with the living room for now (baby steps, baby steps):

    IMG_0781

    So serene…and orderly…and white!   (Those poor couches, I can see them shudder every time our toddler son’s eyes light up in preparation to scale them.) 

    As perfect as this space once was for us, it doesn’t seem to quite capture the new, older, edgier, chaotic, willing-to-throw-caution-to-the-wind version of our little family…and as our mothers always told us, making sure we present ourselves in an honest light is super important, right?  While this pitch still technically needs to clear the family congress around here (where we vote one to one and I get the tie-breaker “in case” of a deadlock), visions of home décor sugarplums are already dancing in my head.   

    The goal:  clean California design with a dollop of glamor and an appreciation for the cheeky edginess of modern design…or in other words, a cutting edge yet livable design aesthetic.

    First step:  creating a new layout that works with this space that I’m convinced was just some evil attempt by the original architect to have the last laugh.  Think a long rectangular room running from the second you step into the house until you hit the hallway leading to the bedrooms broken up on both sides by French doors on the one hand (which we originally decided to treat as middle children and ignore by plunking a couch right in front of them) and a fireplace on the other.  Awwwesome.  (Sorry, what I meant to say was, “OMG, what a cool challenge!”)

    Second step:  consult the Oracle / aka Pinterest for some inspiration. 

    Oooh, I’ll take a little helping of that casual glamor via Kelly Behun:

    Faust Family Redo 2

    And add a dab of elegant eclecticism:

    Faust Family Redo 4

    A dollop of California rustic:

    Faust Family Redo 3

    And just one more little one of those, please:

    Faust Family Redo 5

    And a lot of Mid Century fun:

    Faust Family Redo Blog 1

    And you get…????

    Answer:  a heart palpitation when considering (a) how the heck you’re going to integrate all of these styles into a cohesive whole and (b) what your grand operatic vision will run you. 

    So what is one to do? 

    Why, head to my newest obsession, Chairish.com, of course. 

    Straight from the horse’s mouth:

    Chairish is an online consignment marketplace for design obsessed people to buy and sell exceptional pre-owned home furnishings.  Our mission is to make the world more beautiful, one room at a time and save people money in the process.

    I’m now thinking I myself might be the inspiration behind this site?!  Okay, if they’re not going to credit me, at least I can reap the benefits with aaaamazing, inspiring finds which hopefully won’t break the bank.  Check out a few such things that caught my eye during my last scouring session (note: while some of these might break my bank, they might not yours so I’ll include them here as well since I had so much fun window shopping them):

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    While each and every one of these pieces won’t make their way into the Faust Family Operation Update, I’m sweating a little less knowing that Chairish has my back on this…and that like a good friend, it will always be there when I need it.  And that, my fellow design obsessors, is why I’m cherishing Chairish these days. 

    Pictures from here, here, here, here, and here.