My cousin Crystal and her fiance Kelly just bought their first house in Florida. She wrote to me and sent me a couple of pictures, asking for a little help deciding on paint color, furniture ideas, and layout.
Here are a few before pictures:
The cute little nook with a window seat.
Part of the dining room and the kitchen.
The living room and one set of the slider doors.
And a little floorplan sketch:
These are the ideas that I came up with for Crystal, using her ideas of a brown/tan sectional with an ottoman in place of a coffee table, using light/airy/beachy colors, as well as blue and turquoise:
And, here is the description for her:
When you walk into the house, on your right in the nook, I would place your current slipcovered couch against the right wall, facing out to the door. I didn’t know if you had any ideas for this space, but since you already had a dining area, I thought that this could be a nice reading area or something. I would also place a small table in between the window seat & the door to catch keys, etc.
In the living room, I would place a sectional on the left wall (on the plan), facing the wall with the sliders, with the short/chaise end of the section on the right wall and the long side of the couch perpendicular to that. I would place the TV directly across from the couch on your new TV stand.
To the right of the couch, place two chairs (to be explained further down)- make sure there is enough space to walk between them and the sectional. I put the chairs here instead of a loveseat because it will make the seating area a little more open and thus, welcoming. Hug the chairs towards the dining room, but not so far out that they become separated from the sectional- you don’t want people to have to yell to have a conversation.
Underneath the furniture, place a large area rug. I’ve shown an idea in the PDF. Pull the rug to the front of the couch, so that it will go as far towards the new chairs as possible- extending the length and definition of the living room.
The dining room is pretty self explanatory- table in the space with chairs around it. I would pull the dining table and chairs a bit towards the living room in order to further reduce the amount of dead space in front of the sliders. In order to help accomplish this, I am suggesting that you place a dresser/chest on the wall perpendicular to the wall with the sliders. This can store dishes, serving pieces, linens, etc. and serve as a buffet.
The Board
1- The colors from left to right:
The walls- Sherwin Williams 6693 Lily (or a similar beige/khaki color).
Your accent wall- Sherwin Williams 6501 Manitou.
I would put this color on the wall opposite the sliders- start it underneath the bar and then run it to the other wall. This will pull across the room the color that you will see later.
This is the color of your floors, just to include it in the palette.
The last color is a nice chocolate brown/espresso color that will be an accent seen in furniture.
2- In addition to the brown and blue accent colors, I included white pieces to break up the color and make the space light feeling. Your baseboards are currently white and they will work nicely with the white accents.
3- A bit of light brown to pull in the floor color and the beach!
4- Some more cheap white pieces.
5- I couldn’t tell if there was lighting above the dining table, but I would suggest installing a simple pendant such as this one in order to define the dining area. Plus, its super cheap!
6- This is the chest that I suggest you use as a buffet and dining room storage. The white is to beak up some of the tan on the walls and since you don’t have the dining table that you want yet, I didn’t want a wood that would then clash when you find what you want. Besides, the white feels very clean
7- These are very clean lined shelves. I would get three and install them above the buffet to hold a few knick knacks and display some pictures. Use the accessories that are on the board to decorate these shelves. If you find some sweet white, blue, brown, glass, wood accessories, those will work awesome too. This will mirror what is happening on the other side of the room- hold your horses and I’ll tell you.
8- These are some barstools that will work well if you decide to replace the existing stools. They are a nice brown/wood that will work with anything and they add some color to the kitchen area.
9- White picture frames! Get a bunch and in all different sizes! These will be what mirror the shelves in the dining room. Create a collage with the frames on the wall in the living room above the chaise end of the sectional.
10- The piece de resistance (maybe? I never took French)- your sectional. It isn’t available in stores, but there is FA-REE shipping. It’s a sweet tan and chocolate brown color. Oh- and it comes with an ottoman!
11- The most perfect accent pillows ever- and on sale. Woo hoo! These pillows have ALL of our color palette in them and will provide a ton of color to the sofa!
12- Grab two of these- for the price of one chair anywhere else! These are super comfortable- I have one and love it. The white is not too white making it nice and refreshing while the wood color is perfect for the palette. Keep these relatively close to each other to allow for walking space around them.
13- Since we don’t have much space to have end tables, there is no place to put a table lamp- enter the floor lamp! Put this on the (dining room) end of the sectional for a little extra light and a bunch of extra style J Oh what’s that? Our chocolate brown accent color? It must have been meant to be.
14- I LOVE this rug- why oh why isn’t it larger? This rug will be placed in the window seat nook underneath and in front of your sofa! This will incorporate the colors from the other rooms and pull the theme to this space too.
15- This is the large, neutral rug that will be placed in the living room. Its relatively plain, but super cheap. If you ever decide to change up your accent colors and palette, you can keep this rug.
16- THESE are what will pull the color from the accent wall to the opposite side of the room. These curtains are the perfect color to coordinate with the rest of the space. (The price is pretty dang good for something like this too!) Put one on each side of your sliders.
17- Don’t leave the windows just yet- when you’re at Target, grab a double curtain rod (we’ve gotten these for like $5 each). On the outside put your blue curtains, on the inside put these suckers. They will add a little texture to this wall and reference the tan.
18- Put this baby in the left corner across from the sectional. Fill it up with your DVD’s and pictures.
19- Place this right next to the bookcase you will create the illusion of an awesome entertainment center. Put your TV on this and voila- Kelly will be distracted enough to not notice when you buy everything I just showed you.
If you get super ambitious- the next step that I would recommend is to replace the hardware on your kitchen cabinets. Since the cabinets are already white- they will work well with the white accents introduced into all of the adjacent space. New hardware will completely update them.
I suggest these:
They are super clean and smooth. For a couple of bucks, the kitchen will have a completely new look!
And there you go, Crystal & Kelly's new, updated, beachy house!
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Minus the Jaq of course.
The center is a piece of 4x6 kraft cardstock with a red and white patterend wrapping paper on one side. I found the wrapping paper on the Michael's clearance aisle! I picked up a couple of rolls!
