New Sitting Room Rug and Planned Changes

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I kind of left y’all hanging with the sitting room rug debacle. The last time I mentioned it, the rug was lost and the delivery date was being rescheduled day after day after day. Well, it finally arrived. And I love it.

If you’re confused about the room I’m talking about, it’s our breakfast room. And if you’re wondering why I’m changing it, I’m doing so at Matt’s request. He wanted a place where he could have a recliner and a TV, so I am temporarily changing the breakfast room into a sitting room, and it will stay this way until we build our addition to include a large family room where he will have very comfy seating specifically for him, and a very large TV.

But with building supplies at astronomical prices and somewhat scarce right now, we have no idea when that addition will happen. So for the foreseeable future, Matt has a comfy recliner and decent TV in the sitting room (i.e., breakfast room). And to answer the most-asked question about this transition, we do still eat our meals in that room. 🙂 Matt does quite well eating in his recliner, so not having a table hasn’t been an issue for us. It’s different, but life with a person with MS who relies on a wheelchair to get from place to place is different from most people’s lives in many ways. This is just one of the many, and we’re used to adapting.

So anyway, back to the sitting room. The reason I didn’t show you the rug immediately is because the addition of the new rug necessitates other changes in the room, and I’ve been completely lost about the direction I wanted to go with those changes or just how extensive I wanted those changes to be. I was even considering reupholstering the two benches, and repainting the buffet, but even with giving myself permission to redo those pretty major projects, an overall cohesive plan still wasn’t coming to me.

Well, I think this past weekend, I stumbled upon a plan that I actually love. And it happened at the perfect time because I wasn’t able to work on the home gym last week because the guys working on the master bathroom had to be in and out of that room pretty regularly to work on some more extensive plumbing issues than we had originally anticipated, and now they’re working on electrical, which also requires them to be in there. (Both scuttle holes to the crawl space under our house, as well as to the attic, are in the home gym closet.) So I’ll try to stay out of their way this week as well.

So while I’m staying out of their way, I’m going to spend this week working on the sitting room and see just how much I can get done before returning to the home gym project next week. Let me show you what I have in mind.

First, here’s the new rug in all of it’s colorful glory. You can find this rug here.

There are so many colors to work with in there, so that’s fun for me. The problem is that there’s no green. So the original curtains that I had in this room would look really out of place in here now since they were white with green trim on the leading edge.

But instead of thinking about all new curtains, I was stuck on the idea of keeping these same curtains and just swapping out the edge trim for a new color. And that’s what got me stuck on the entire design. Because I couldn’t get past the idea that I had to use these curtains, nothing else was coming together.

I started dragging out fabrics from my fabric stash, and I made a couple of trips to Joann Fabrics. But still, nothing was clicking in my mind.

One of the fabrics I dragged out of my stash was this beautiful azalea velvet that I bought from Tonic Living a while back to recover two chairs for the music room. Do you remember this? (It’s been a while, so it’s no longer in stock.)

Obviously, I ended up going a different direction for the music room and purchasing this settee in a very similar color…

So I had nine yard of that beautiful velvet in my stash. And the only way I could think of to use it as on the two breakfast room benches.

But that just wasn’t sitting well with me. The purple buffet and the two purple benches create a cohesive look with the two purple chairs in the living room, and I really like cohesion. But I couldn’t think of any other way to use the azalea velvet.

And then this past weekend, it finally came to me. NEW AZALEA VELVET CURTAINS!! I draped the fabric over the curtain rod, and I loved it!! And do you see the trim draped over the edge of the velvet fabric? Do you recognize it?

That is a sari trim that I had purchased years back to use on living room curtains, and that plan never materialized. So when I saw it in my stash, I pulled it out to see if I could use it in this room. But there was a problem. The trim was way too pink/salmon in color, and I really wanted orange.

After another trip to Joann Fabrics to see if they had any orange trim that would work, and striking out yet again, I decided to try dying this trim to see if I could get it just the right color. I used the Rit Dye made specifically for polyester, and it took me four tries, but I finally got it just right.

You can see the original trim (right) plus my first attempt (left) and the final trim (center) below.

The original is on the right. See how pinkish/salmon that original color was? The one on the left was my first attempt. I mixed an orange and yellow dye together (but used way too much orange) and then left it in the dye bath for about ten minutes (the directions say 60 minutes). That process even dyed the gold thread and the sequins! The sequins are literally orange. 😀 I added way more yellow and watered down the dye bath quite a bit, and then did a couple more test swatches before going for it with my final 6-yard piece, which is the one you see in the middle. With that final piece, I left it in the dye bath for exactly ONE minute. That’s it. I didn’t want to end up with orange embroidery thread and sequins, so one minute did the job. And I ended up with the perfect soft orange color.

I also got a couple of orange herringbone throws from Amazon, and then picked up these teal pillows from World Market.

I’ll be using both of those on the recliners after turning the pillows into lumbar pillows.

The two white curtain panels are some that I picked up at World Market after visiting Joann Fabrics and not being able to find a single bolt or yard of plain white decorator fabric (or any other color that would work, for that matter, because the decorator fabric section was almost completely bare) to make new pillow covers to go on the benches. So I bought this and will dye it the colors I need. So here’s a peek at all of these things together…

The TV wall will also be getting a little makeover. I’ll keep that to myself for now (mostly because I’m still working out the details 😀 ), but the plates and lanterns will be going, and will be replaced with something much more colorful.

And finally, I’ll be doing new artwork to go above the benches, which will have new and more vibrant pillow covers.

I like those paintings, but I’m ready to add something more colorful that includes some pinks and oranges along with the teals and purples. And I have just the thing in mind. I’ll be creating some artwork inspired by one of my favorite artists on Instagram, Kristi Kohut at @hapiart. If you go to her account and find the LOVE artwork that’s colorful and stripy and glittery, that’s the one that inspired me. I’ll be doing something similar to that, but I’ll use colors that coordinate with my house, and words that are meaningful to Matt and me, and I’ll be framing them in a way that’s new to me. I think it’ll be a fun (and probably pretty messy) project.

So that’s the direction I’m heading in with the sitting room. I have no idea how much I’ll be able to get done in this next week, so we’ll see! Regardless, I’ll be back in the home gym next week, because that’s a bit of a higher priority right now. But I’ll definitely finish up the sitting room before I get started on my studio.