New sofa arrives

I thought poor George was going to die of impatience waiting for our new sofa, purchased a couple months ago, to arrive from North Carolina via HD Buttercup. Happily, it arrived today, the day before we're having a bunch of family visit for a belated Thanksgiving. It looks great with the new wall colors and the new club chairs we bought. Wanting to get everything pulled together, we spent the afternoon hanging some twenty-odd things on the wall, including a bunch of watercolors that we'd acquired in various travels and only recently got framed. Our concept was to do an eclectic collage of artwork across the wall, which ended up looking very cool, although it was tricky to get everything properly aligned and distributed.

We've been very happy with the local framer that we found, Aaron Ballard, and we've been bringing more and more stuff to him. We framed a couple of old grape crate labels from George's father's old business and put those up in the family room.

New dining room lamp

Our "infrastructure stimulus project" has been mostly focused on the living room, but a few other things have got attention. We replaced the more traditional-looking light fixture in the dining room with this new one. Still traditional-ish, but much cleaner lines and modern aesthetic.

Adding color to the downstairs walls

So after ten years of living with nearly our whole house with its original white walls, we finally decided to get into some color, at least in the downstairs. Since we've been working on redesigning the living room anyway, this was the right time. So our friend Mary, an interior designer, came over with her Dunn Edwards color strips, and we had swatches from the new couch we'd ordered, and we started pondering colors. For most of the walls, we wanted a neutral color that would add richness, and make the white trim (including the new crown molding) pop, but wouldn't call attention to itself. We settled on Fine Grain (DE6213), a warm gray taupe that was prominently featured in this year's Pasadena Showcase House of Design. We used that on most of the downstairs walls.

Mary suggested using a couple tones lighter on the same color strip for the ceiling (Light Beige DE6211), and then going a shade or two darker for accent colors on the fireplace wall and the opposite family room wall. So we went for Pigeon Gray (DE6214) in the family room, and one notch darker to Wooden Peg (DE6215) to contrast the white fireplace mantel. That worked out great in the family room, but in the living room, when we saw the color on the wall, it was just a bit too Army greenish in cast, and we had to do a hasty color reselection. (They always say you should get a sample of your colors, and paint a big patch on the wall to see how it really looks. We knew that, but we're impatient.) So, for the fireplace wall, Wooden Peg was painted over and replaced with Cobblestone Path (DE6068), a brown of similar darkness but with purple casts rather than green casts. It's marvelous. Finally, in the raised part of our coffered ceiling in the dining room, we picked a pale sky blue called Blustery Wind (DE 6304). We also used that color on the wall of the stairway landing, and echoed it in the back of the niche where Guanyin sits.

Adding crown molding

In preparation for painting the downstairs, we decided to add crown molding in the living room and the family room. Since we're finally moving away from white walls, the crown molding should not only add a detail of interest, but the white molding will contrast the new wall color.