One Room Challenge | Week 2

My eyes are up here. Yes, you can design a room around art. This beautiful painting was done by my incredible friend Ross Weldon and I’m so excited to have it be the main attraction of the parlor.

Week 1 of the One Room Challenge™ went by so fast!

And now here we are at Week 2 and this has certainly been one of those weeks… our daughter is graduating from high school on Sunday. Big graduation party on Saturday. Family arrives Friday. We’ve been trying to plant the garden. The house is destroyed. Gary is ready to murder me because he has spent all week ironing table cloths. AGHHHH! But the show must go on.

I think every room needs something extra special. A star of the room. And in the case of this particular room, that piece is the beautiful Ross Weldon painting pictured above. I just fell in love with it! I refurbished an old frame from our hoard, gold-leafed it, cleaned it up, and framed it. It reminds me of Picasso and if you look close enough you can see that she is wearing the Maria Felix Cartier snake necklace. It is just genius and I’m obsessed.

Anyhow, back to the progress on the Norma Costa Parlor this week. Gary’s beautiful plasterwork needs just a bit of sanding and a few touchups. It is truly glorious!

The walls in the parlor were the strangest texture. It was almost like sprayed concrete. Was “Country Caveman” a theme in the late 90s? Look at how gorgeous and smooth these walls are! He really could open a plastering business.

MY First DISASTER:

I had the MOST fabulous idea to design six individual curtain panels to look like they were handpainted. I really wanted handpainted silk but I can’t paint at all and I knew that would turn into a hot mess with destroyed silk so I just photoshopped them. I was so thrilled with myself and then the sample showed up today and I proudly showed it to Gary. He looked at me like I threw his baby to the dingos and then firmly said “Hell no.” Gary generally says no the first few times but this wasn’t one of those “maybe we can negotiate this” no’s. It was a firm NO. In hindsight… it could be the wrong direction.

My second choice was these ridiculously gorgeous curtains from CB2 but they are sold out until October. Why am I being punished?

SO… here we are at Week 2 and we have no curtains. My original plan (three plans ago) was to embellish velvet drapes with sequin appliques. Maybe I can talk Gary into doing that. Two gay men trying to decorate a home together really requires a staff of terrorist negotiators, therapists, and referees.

PAINT COLOR PROGRESS:

These are fabulous. And I don’t care what anyone says. #FABULOUS

I’m turning this into a kimono. I’ll be buried in it.

I think we’ve decided on a peachy/coral color. Gary insists that ALL trim must be Dover White. He is obsessed with it. The color is pretty so I just go with it. Picking a wall color for this room is tricky because only one window gets a lot of light. The other two windows face our covered front porch.

I’m really loving Claret color from Benjamin Moore or Faded Terracotta from Kelly Wearstler’s collection for Farrow & Ball. OR any of the colors from Kelly Wearstler’s collection for Farrow & Ball. I think it needs to be somewhat saturated because I don’t want anything pastel. With peach/coral, there seems to be a fine line between cheery/sexy/moody and hipster nursery.

I love both of these rooms and this is the vibe we are going for.