Seriously.  If there’s anything about your home’s layout or functionality that isn’t working for you, you need to read this book.  (This is not a sponsored post–I am highly recommending it for free.)

The first floor of our house has had me stumped for a while.  (Because you know I have decorating ADD and can’t just think about the project[s] I’m already working on.)

Our kitchen has a semi-closed off breakfast area and a dining room.  For the two of us, it was just redundant.  Especially since the breakfast table was only about 6 feet away from the dining table.  At any given time, one of them was just acting as a junk collector.  Ick.

I’d been trying to think of ways to use the spaces better for months, but I was still stumped.  So I was very excited while browsing the library shelf to see this book:

Right-Sizing Your Home: How to Make Your House Fit Your Lifestyle by Gale C. Steves (affiliate link)

The book really has nothing to do with the size of your home; it’s about making the home you already have work for you.  Not by remodeling either (while you could definitely do that–and she has advice for that too), a lot of the ideas you’ll get when you read it could be done for free by just changing furniture around.  It’s about re-thinking the way you actually use your house and the way your house is currently arranged.

The book is well-organized, starting from the beginning of how and why to re-think your whole house, before going into the details of each room, one per chapter.  There are even pages in each chapter with general dimension guides and extra things to think about if you have kids.

Thanks to some thoughts provoked by the book, we have a solution to the breakfast area/dining room issue (and a couple other issues too!), but there are still some details we need to work out…and of course, it adds another project to our list.  Good thing we like projects.

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Happy Monday!  I’m sharing a tip today that I’ve been using for years: a decorating file.

Whether you’re currently decorating your house or not, it’s very helpful to have.  All of your paint colors and fabric swatches can be kept together in one little folder.  It’s my favorite way to keep track of paint chips (and you have the color on-hand if you need to go buy more).

It’s also small enough to fit into your purse, so if you’re out shopping for new pillows or curtains, or even something big like a sofa, you’ll have pieces of your room with you to make sure the new item will work.

Mine is a coupon organizer from an office supply store (the closest thing I could find online is this).

When I get a gallon of paint, I always grab an extra color card to add to the file.  If you’ve ordered your furniture or linens online, you can often get fabric swatches from the retailer mailed to you for free.

Other good things to keep in the folder are dimensions of rooms or pieces of furniture, for example, if you’re shopping for a new media cabinet, it would be helpful to have the size of the TV handy.  Adding an inspiration photo or two would help keep you on track to if you use the file while you’re out shopping.

This little organizer only took a few minutes to put together and cost $6, and has saved me a ton of time and guessing if something will work.

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I couldn’t help but immediately ask Carmella of Assortment Blog if I could share a photo of her cabin with you as soon as I saw it.

At 665 square feet, it’s almost twice the size as the last itty bitty home I showed you, but a family of 5 lives in this one.

I didn’t even discover this house because of it’s size, but because the design–it’s so pretty.  (The kitchen shelves look kinda familiar, huh?)

Go here to see the before picture and tour the rest of the house–it’s quite impressive.   Obviously, I love it, and I’d love to live in it.  What do you think?  Would you?

PS: Our dining room hardwood is fully exposed–will share photos next week.

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I love black interior doors.  The vast majority of interior doors are either stained wood (which is nice) or white (which is fine), but both are very…expected.  Either way, we usually don’t even notice the doors when we look at a room.

A funny thing happens when doors are painted black, though.  The doors themselves still basically go unnoticed, but we definitely notice the different mood of the room.  They add a lot of sophistication.  It’s been called a trend lately, but it’s actually been done for ages.

So, yes, I’m talking about doors and then showing you a picture of a window.  Sorry.  But it does have the exact same effect.  (I didn’t get a “before” picture of my door.)  See how the white has a very sweet, feminine look?  Especially when it’s paired with a soft color.

(Oh!  Off topic, but this is the perfect illustration of natural light vs. overhead light that I told you about–I forgot to turn off the overhead light.  See how the right side of the trim looks yellowish and the blue wall looks muddy?  The left side is a more accurate representation because the ceiling was blocking the overhead light.  Also, harsh shadows.  And a step stool.  Back to the subject…)

The window and the door aren’t painted a true black.  It’s the very, very dark purple I’ve used throughout the house.  Which, while the difference would be subtle when comparing the two colors side-by-side, they would show very differently in the finished product.  If it isn’t carefully planned, a true black could look harsh very easily.

You can see a few things we have done in the corners of the photos and a few things we haven’t done yet.  Next week, I’ll show you the whole room.

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Why would anyone paint a room with little natural light a dark color?  It seems weird.  And weird wouldn’t necessarily be out of character in this household.  But there is logic behind it!

Last week we painted our dining room dark blue.  The room is stuck in the middle of the floorplan, and doesn’t get much natural light, though it’s surrounded by rooms that are flooded with it.

Last week, the dining room was still the same semi-gloss light yellow that it was when we bought the house.  The color, in itself, wasn’t bad, but here, it was really dreary.  See all the shadows in the “before” pictures that just make the room look drab?  The light color made it obvious that there was no natural light.  While the shadows on the dark walls just seem to add depth and richness.  So many shadows in a light painted room can make it feel cold, while shadows in a dark painted room make it feel warm.

The dark walls have done two things for our room:

1. They give the room definition and clear boundaries and that makes it feel inviting and cozy.

This dining room has doorways in every direction (and the silly half-wall), which make it feel more like a hallway than a room.  But now that it’s painted in such a contrasting color from the other rooms, you can clearly see where the room begins and ends, which is another thing that gives it the warm, intimate feeling.

2. You no longer notice the lack of natural light.  Before, it was all I noticed, it felt like a cave, now it feels like an old fashioned library where you could curl up with a book and stay day.

Much like when driving and your lane is always the slowest, it seems to defy logic that a room without much natural light would feel drab when painted a light color.  It also seems to defy logic that a dark color would make it inviting and make you not realize there wasn’t much natural light.  It seems weird, but it works!  Would you ever try it?

The post Why dark walls look good in a room with little natural light appeared first on Little Victorian.

In addition to helping redecorate Mom and Dad’s living room last year, we made some changes to the dining room too.

This makeover wasn’t as big as the living room.  Here are the “before” photos:

And the “after” photos:

The dining set is antique, so altering it was not an option.  To update it, Mom recovered the damask cushions with white fabric.  We changed out the two captain’s chairs for upholstered ones.  We replaced the dark, traditional rug with a simpler one.

But I think the biggest change in the room was replacing the original, very tiny light fixture (you can barely see it in the first picture) with a large, bold chandelier (very inexpensive find from Craigslist!).

We made the drive to my parent’s house last week.  They have a gorgeous 1913 Bungalo.  I had every intention of giving you a house tour…but I forgot my camera.    Maybe next year we’ll try again.  Thanks for the photos, Mom!

The post Simple updates to a traditional dining room appeared first on Little Victorian.

A year and a half ago, we visited my parents who live 1,100 miles away.  While we were there, I helped them redecorate their living room, dining room and home office.  But, after all the work we did, I didn’t get any “after” photos.  18 months later, I finally have some to show you.

My parents have a mix of personal styles, from southern traditional to contemporary.  We found a good balance because they both love it!

Here it is before their traditional living room makeover:

One of the biggest changes we made was simply rearranging the furniture.  They had difficulty placing the furniture because the room layout was tricky.  The front door opens to the corner of the living room, and it is open to the dining room with the exception of the two built-in bookcases on either side.  The room is fairly small for a living room too.

We added curtains to the gorgeous window to make it more substantial and draw even more attention to it and the wonderfully high 12′ ceilings.  We picked out a traditional impressionist-style painting to go above the television and complete the space.

And here it is after:

Things we purchased for the living room makeover:

• Two bookcases to flank either side of the media stand they already had (Target)
• The painting (Pier 1)
• Two side tables (Pier 1 floor models)
• Two table lamps
• Console table (HomeGoods)
• Chandelier

The sofa and chairs will be replaced, they like this combination:

Sofa, Chairs

I love the cream slipper chairs for this room, it will really open it up and make it feel roomier.

Here are the before and after photos, side-by-side for easy viewing!

Next week, I’ll show you the small makeover the dining room got.

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Have you seen the July issue of HGTV magazine?  It’s the first issue I have read from them, and so far, it’s not all that exciting to me–it’s mostly made up of curated lists of decor items.

BUT, I was excited over the editor’s page.

She stated the two exact reasons I love dollhouses and miniatures: you can “fulfill decorating dreams” (and also city boutique and loft ownership dreams) and it’s “good practice.”

It is excellent practice and I highly recommend it for any DIY decorator, even if it’s just decorating a shoe box. 

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One of our favorite restaurants while we were staying in Canada was a little winery restaurant called Mica.  The food and wine (Nk’Mip) were delicious, and we were really impressed with the decor too.  The overall look was just my style: simple and clean with white walls, a few wood tones and natural elements.  We’d love to steal a few of their design ideas.

Like a wall of branches, all painted white:

Or the wood ceiling with lights recessed into a large decorative piece:

We really loved what they did in the bar with layered cedar planks, some sticking out far enough to be shelves.  (And the ornate, vintage light is a great compliment to the modern, masculine wall too.)

They had a nice, all-white gallery wall where they displayed photos of their wine making process.  Which now makes me want to have a gallery wall of something unique instead of the standard family photos.

The purple velvet banquette it hung above was really plush and cozy too.  (I apologize for the quality of the photo—the table was occupied until after the sun had set.)

Surprisingly, there were only two displays of color in the room.

One was the grayed-purple velvet seating (which happens to be just what I am planning for our dining room!).

And the other was the little bit of mint on the kitchen door.  What a great idea to paint the back side of the glass on the door.  If privacy is an issue for anyone, that could be a great solution for a front door.  And instead of putting an unpainted circle in the middle, you could leave your house number unpainted?

I didn’t think to get a photo of the whole restaurant, so here is one from their own website to give you some perspective:

Oh, and down the center of the room: that is one long, and gorgeous table.  Loved that idea.

The post DIY design ideas to steal from a restaurant appeared first on Little Victorian.

On the way home from our big trip, we stayed at an absolutely wonderful hotel in Seattle.  It’s a beautiful historic hotel, but unfortunately, it seems the historical status of the place is keeping them from updating the decor.

As I’ve mentioned before, I can hardly walk into a room without redecorating it in my head.  But this room got me thinking about how many rooms there are out there that aren’t ugly, they’re just dated.  Those rooms could still keep their traditional or Victorian styles and just make some very minor, easy and inexpensive tweaks to make them fresh and current again.

Here are 6 quick projects I recommend to update a dated room (and they don’t require a big budget!):

Here is the before-and-after of the simple updates mentioned above:

(Pillows from Anthropologie.)

Any other changes you would have made to this room?

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