Pepper Design Blog

Dining Room Dilemma: A Colorful Bench

Last week I added the new Orla Kiely curtains to the dining room and I immediately loved how the vibrant pop of blue worked with the vintage buffet! But with the new matching color scheme, the room also felt like it was lacking a dose of contrasting color to really mix things up. So the wheels began turning for updating our current ottoman-turned-dining bench…

Right off the bat I’m thinking that a new set of taller legs and a covering in a soft velvet would make this guy work for the space. The tufted ottoman is a Craigslist find (surprise!) but he’s been with us for a while and has slowly begun to wear and tear (literally) and up until recently has been on the replace or let go list.

But perhaps he can be remade into something awesome. Here are a few badly photoshopped ideas of what colors might work well with that bold blue (and a few random lumbar pillows that might coordinate well for the end chairs):

A soft pink to lighten things up? I found the softest pink velvet for $10/yard at our discount fabric shop. (pillow)

Or how about mint green? A favorite summer accent of mine! (pillow)

Or perhaps something a little more limey would look best… (pillow)

Burnt orange?

Or how about plum to cool down that bright blue? (pillow)

I’m not quite sold on any of the pillow pairings but you can see where I’m hoping to go with a little color in this space, and if pricing out velvet and new legs ends up being pricier than a new upgrade, here are a few benches that I have my eye on:

1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Oh I love that minty Ballard bench with the curved legs!

Read the full dining room story by starting here: choosing a rug, curtain call part 3, curtain call part 2, curtain call part 1, newly styled bookshelves, a buffet-over, upgrading the lighting, the before.

Curb Appeal: We’re Painting the House!

Kevin and I headed up to San Francisco for a quick trip to celebrate our 5th anniversary and we had such a great time! Thanks to those who left a comment or sent an email wishing us a great day!

Now that Kevin is out of school for the summer, I cannot think of a better anniversary present than spending some time together working on a few big changes for the front of our home. We tend to reserve major renovation projects for when Kev finishes up classes for the summer (which, by the way, I’m so proud of him for right now! Three of his hardest years down, two to go until he finishes up his degree in architecture ), and he just wrapped up finals last week.

This summer is no exception with a big wrap around deck (side yard and back), pergola, outdoor eating area, side yard wall, landscaping and overall outdoor beautification on the list. I am even more excited about that fact that we are once again partnering with Lowe’s to help participate in their Trend & Design theme for the summer – curb appeal!

The above is our home today, and here’s a quick reminder of where we started at:

Not too shabby so far, right? But we have BIG plans, starting with painting the house!

Olympic and Graco have offered to partner with us for this project and of course that made the reality of such a big undertaking feasible for us to move ahead with as early as this upcoming weekend! Wow.

I have been patiently looking forward to updating the traditional white on the front of our home since the day we moved in four years ago and excited doesn’t even begin to capture my feelings at the moment. Overwhelmed, giddy, smiling ear to ear might get me a little closer.

Olympic has a helpful tool that allows you to upload a picture and then play with paint colors. I can’t get too color carried away as we live in a Spanish style house and I tend to love these particular bungalows in beiges, tans and browns anyway, but that’s where we’re starting our search.I uploaded our current outdoor photo into ColorClix to get a better idea of what our home would look like in a few favorite shades.

The first step is to use the tool markers to identify what is a paintable wall vs plants vs roof, etc. (these same steps apply for interiors, but identifying interior walls, furniture, windows and trim instead).

Then it was time to experiment away!

This light Vanilla Brandy is a favorite:

As is Dusty Trails with its ever so smoky-tan appeal:

A slightly darker option is Stony Creek:

Applesauce Cafe rounds out my fourth favorite tan (I sometimes wonder where these names come from – what a fun job) with its honey undertone:

Kevin really digs the idea of a mossy grey house. If we lived in any other style I think that I would be on board (or at least seriously consider the option), but I’m not such a fan for our home:

Will keep you posted on the progress! We are deciding colors asap and it’s quite daunting.

Next up on the paint list is trim. I’m thinking white, but perhaps a dark brown would be option 2. Spanish homes are known for their creative trim-on-trim styles and maybe an even better, dual option is out there somewhere… this is when long walks with Liv and sneaky iPhone camera shots of my favorite homes in the neighborhood become very helpful as local inspiration. It’s not odd to pretend like you’re talking to someone at arms length while you line up a shot of the neighbor around the corner’s home, right?

Any home painting tips, thoughts? or do you have any big projects lined up for this summer?

Living Room Find: (Another) New Rug

We have a new rug in the living room! This little addition may have gone unnoticed (it looks just like our old rug after all) except that I was so SO thrilled with our new rug purchase that I had to share it here so that I could recommend a favorite rug to any future white-shag-rug-shoppers out there.

I love a white rug. Even though they can be tough to maintain (with a busy house, a baby and a dog) I make every effort because to me that classic, easy look is so very much worth it (plus finding anything else at a reasonable price for a large room is so tough!). Sadly, our previous rug underwent some serious water damage last month when carpet cleaners from a Groupon deal accidentally cleaned the area rug on top of the rug pad and pulled all of that recycled rug pad color right up through the carpet fibers leaving big brown water spots all over:(. We tried to reclean it three times before we finally gave in to replacing it.

But! Not long after we said goodbye to a favorite plush play mat, I found this guy on Overstock. Huge rugs are hard to come by at a good price, and since I still have to figure out the whole reimbursement situation with the local rug company, I was very wary of purchasing anything that we couldn’t afford if we ended up having to pay for the new one out of pocket.

Yay for Overstock! and yay for the plushest, softest rug we have ever owned in an awesome size and at an awesome price. I ended up purchasing during their 15% off rug sale (going on through today) and bought this huge 7’6″x9′x6″ for $239.50 along with this rug pad (which we then cut to size) for $63 + $2.95 for shipping. I’ve shopped, I’ve searched and you just can’t beat it. Truly, truly.

We’ve had this rug for a couple of weeks now and it’s our favorite play spot in the entire house. We unload blocks and legos and books and play, play, play. I use it for short yoga sessions at the end of the day, we watch movies curled up with pillows, we crawl, we sprawl and we relax in its coziness.

Any reservations about a huge rug at this crazy reasonable price are absolutely gone! It feels just like a plush shag Pottery Barn or West Elm rug (in my world that’s the high end budget) and it’s a necessity in our house since our living room is very much Liv’s full time play room.

And yes, Bodie hair blends right in – total plus, but we do vacuum it often. Being the shag rug that it is a good vacuuming is recommended to get rid of the initial shedding anyhow.

When it comes to keeping rugs clean, shag rugs are my best friend. Any funky spots get a bit of spot cleaning and a little trim (aka just cut those bad fibers right out and give the rug a nice tousle). Good to go. I mentioned a while ago that I buy two rug cleanings per year off of Groupon for bigger issues, too. That $40/pop every six months is worth every penny for all of the area rugs and couches in our house – but next time I will make sure that the carpet cleaners are the well-reviewed Yelp types that separate rug pad from rug and don’t work directly on wood floors – also so bad for the house with all of the water they use. Ah well, live and learn. No major harm done and now we have an awesome new rug!

PS more living room posts right here.