Lyla's New Room

I hit the Benjamin Moore store in Hunt Valley this morning at 8:45 a.m. They open at 7:00 a.m. (how sweet is that?). I was questing for the perfect gray wall color for the new house. We plan to do the bulk of painting in this color, so it must be right. I had to pick a gray for our current house in a hurry from a Duron swatch book, and the choice read way bluer than I wanted, and I won't allow that mistake to happen again. I poured over every magazine I had to find shades of gray used in spreads so I could see the finished product. I also consulted with one of my fave blogs A Perfect Gray which has an ongoing list of the perfect gray paints, which is posted on Houzz (one of my new obsessions).
BM sells massive swatches (probably 15X15") for you to hang on your wall to see how the color will actually look. I settled on one of those (Gray Owl #2137-60), and a sample pint of a much lighter gray (White Wisp #2137-70) for those of you interested, or who might be searching for that special gray as well. Let's hope one of them works, so the hunter green, sunflower yellow, and royal blue walls on the first floor can be retired ASAP. We'll get to the fluorescent yellow, purple and red/blue combo bedrooms upstairs in a later post.

We also hit up Plymouth Wallpaper, one of my favorite wallpaper stores to look for wallpaper for Lyla's new room.

This is the inspiration for the room, which is much more modern and streamlined that hers will be but is still the basis for which I am designing the room. I channeled the idea of this rug pictured here into the idea for the wallpaper which I had seen a few months ago and loved for her room then as well.

The wallpaper is all discounted, and I love a discount. There are samples everywhere, and the place really must seen to be believed. The store is an old stone bank, which is easily missed from the road. In typical Jen fashion I saw it as we were passing it, and my Dad had to pull a fast left, leading us into a pseudo driveway, over a curb and back into the lane going in the right direction. They really know their stuff, and therefore I always go back to them. Unlike the "designer" at BM who had absolutely no idea what she was talking about much less what wallpaper I was looking for. Never trust a woman who calls herself a designer who wears shoes that look like this and has a much too strong affinity for a Stevie Nicks-esque ruffle skirt.

I had clipped a photo from a mag to find the wallpaper, but lost the clipping in the moving frenzy, couldn't remember the mag, and only had an idea in my head of what the pattern looked like which was very difficult to describe. In BM, I took a pic of a rug that had a similar design, and showed Gill, the enthusiastic (and equally flamboyant) expert at Plymouth. The first book not only matched what I described, it had the exact wallpaper I had seen! He even had the magazine there. It was fate.
Gill was very helpful, and I think we'll be ordering the rolls as soon as I determine the square footage needed to get the job done. Di and Frank have graciously volunteered to paper the wall (we're just doing one wall), a saving grace to us. Trent and I did two walls of my old office (now Eden's room) five years ago, and it was the one of the most frustrating and longest days of our lives. I think it took us four hours just to determine where the plum line should go. We also ran out of paper in the middle of the job, and had to paint one of the walls instead. A fiasco of course for the two most unhandy people you will ever meet.

Here is a picture of the wallpaper close-up, as well as it shown in an office set-up. I was planning on using a sleek white dresser in her new room, but I may keep her dark brown dresser to break up the monochromatic effect in my inspiration photo just a bit.

We also have a bench that my sister Tracey gave us that we adore and Lyla adores that I will either see how to fit in, or figure out how to re-purpose in another room (perhaps the front entry with lots of pillows?). Here, I have shown how I could see it working in Lyla's room with pillows that match the new color scheme of course. I want everything to have the same feel in the room, so some shabby chic elements from Ly's old room may have to be left to a minimum.

Finally, I've been doting on the revival of both tented beds, and formally-encased window treatments with ornate patterns. For Lyla's room, I would certainly tent cautiously, and not go as bold as the print here, but I'm entertaining the idea of doing this to pretty-up the bunk beds you see in the inset of this pic (already on order). We stayed with the most basic of bunks for two reasons: 1. in case she decides she really doesn't like or becomes "fearful" of the beds, and we didn't waste a ton of dough on fancy bunks and 2. because the more girly, more designed versions of the beds become to focal in the room, too big, too this is a kids room-- which--for those of you who know me, know I hate.

This is what I'm working on now, since Lyla's room is one of the most important in the house. She spends a lot of time in there, as do we, and I want her to love it, and us to love it. Since it won't be like her room now, I want her to be excited about what it could be. Even better...

Thoughts, questions, concerns?