Hey Brooke!

Thank you so much. The chair is called “Cole” and is from Room and Board. The chair is totally perfect for lounging and being comfortable, but at the same time being nice and petite. Ha, yes I know all about the legality of painted woodwork, I feel you.

Hey Alison! (I’m glad we both spell it the correct way). Thanks for noticing the artwork, both the photos are part of a series of photos I did about 10 years. I made Camera Obscuras inside rooms by blocking all the light – except for one small hole. Then I took photographs of the space with the projected image. A lot of the exposures were over 8 hours long.

One of my best friends in the world Matt Scharenbroich painted and drew almost all of the artwork in my home, including that painting in the bedroom. He is from Minneapolis but is currently going to grad school at the Savannah College of Art and Design. You can look him up here! He’s always open to commissions although he is busy these days.

I just went to the Baltimore Museum of Art yesterday, and one of the rooms was painted this deep, luminous, peacock blue, and they had LOTS of beautiful old wood moulding in that room and it looked fabulous, so I think part of the issue is just picking the right shade of paint.

Anyway, I love what you have done, and the teal paint is beautiful!! The white frames were a great idea.

Your house sounds so amazing. I’m so curious to see what others are doing with their century-old midwestern four squares covered in woodwork.

I would call ours a four square too, but it’s own weird version of a four square. It doesn’t look like one from the exterior, but totally is one from the inside. Glad you found me!!

Hi Erin!
Yes, I do the same thing to my house. Even when I think I have come to peace with my wood moldings, I find myself scheming and trying to figure out if I can paint all or some of them white.

Eew, carpet in the dining room, that stinks. I know that we lucked out with our house not needing major updating. I’ve never really shown much of my kitchen on the blog though, it is a weird mess, made up of about 3 different rooms and not functional in the slightest.

My friend Nicole has a house almost with the same layout to mine, and sounds very similar to yours too. Hers was covered with carpet (even in the dining room). It’s taken her almost three years to get all the carpet out and all the wood floors re-sanded but it looks so good now.

Hang in there! I love how hearing stories of old houses. Hope to see you more around the blog :)

Hey Kelly, The wall color is called “Dragonfly” by Benjamin Moore and you can find more info on my room and official after shots here!

Regarding your bedroom, do you like your birch trim?, if so I say keep it. If not, consider painting it white. Adding lots of white accents to a room really worked for me in lieu of painting the trim. The white accents add crisp contrast to the room in the same way white trim would. Consider adding some white curtains too, and have them hang over the edge of your trim.

Good Luck!

I like the stones ref., nice one :) I know, I love Ribba frames too!

No problem.

You can not see through them at night, they are made of a more heavy weight fabric with grommet curtains at the top. They also work well during the day for blocking out the sun.

The pattern running through them is a charcoal color and they are of- white, as you can see in the pics above. I also have these hanging next to the gray walls in my dining room and they look great. I think they could look good with many different colors. I’ve had them for 3 years and still really like them.

You need and IKEA!!!

Thank you for the link! Can you see through the curtains at night from outside? I’m just wondering how sheer they are. Unfortunately, I live in Oklahoma where there is no IKEA!! So if I order them, I really want to be sure that they will work. Also, I have gray walls. How do you think they would look against gray? Thanks so much!

Hey Cheryl,

They are from ikea, here’s the link.
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/90155002/