Beals Project: Living Room
Before we even knew that the ceiling would end up being open, exposing all that texture and warmth furnishing this Living Room was given lots of thought. One of the first pieces that fell into place was those gorgeous shibori upholstered antique chairs. Once that was in place everything else needed to play a supporting role.
The whole house couldn’t be grey, white and blue so I was on the hunt for another color and a rug to ground the space. That’s about when we decided to keep the ceiling open. Which is a beautiful architectural element but also busy. Clearly we needed a rug to ground the space, not compete with other elements. Goldenrod is the obvious choice, right? If you know me you know this color is NOT in my wheelhouse. In fact I think in nearly 20 years designing I’ve never once worked with anything in the mustard family.
But here it made total sense. Plants would bring in the green and I wanted something earthy. The Dining Room chairs influenced this decision as well as they came in a few colors and one was pretty much spot on this color. A nice way to tie the spaces together now that we had an open plan.
Can you imagine this was the before? The wall on the right is what came down, allowing us to open up the space to the connector that now housed the Dining / Kitchen in a more open plan way.
So where did the wall go? It wasn’t our intention to take it out. As you unravel old houses that fun thing called project creep kicks in. The framing was a mess, not nearly substantial enough for proper insulation and they discovered the corner of the house had been crashed into and all the framing at the corner was cracked. Just lovely.
Like I always say, it looks worse before it gets better!
