Pepper Design Blog

Living Room Finds: A Few New Favorite Additions

Happy midweek! This is the time of the week that I just love because I’m starting to plan out my weekend projects and anticipate my time away from work with the fam, but am still not so rushed to finish my desk deadlines that I’m biting my fingernails. Midweek is a great time of the week.

A quick update to share regarding the trending colors that are making a friendly splash in this casa. That is to say that gold might be the new pink in this house. Or maybe they’re tied at this point (as evidenced here, here, here, here and here), but I’m noticing that I’ve been drawn to gold-hued home decor for a while now and that it has begun to pop up with sparkly and brushed gusto over the past couple of months.

Lots of pops of pink. Something so soothing and warm and inviting, no? Perhaps teal or navy should make an entrance…

I feel like I jumped on the gold-lovin’ band wagon early and began to embrace its shiny patina back when Kev and I first married almost six years ago. I’m pretty sure gold was still very not cool back then (remember the grimace you made when visiting Grandma’s perfectly brass-covered bathroom?) and I recall bringing a dainty gold chain necklace in for repair to my local jeweler and having him inspect it oddly, telling me ‘no one wears gold, no one’. I still wear that simple gold chain with a little pendant from Kevin every day.

Okay, side stories aside, here’s a new gold addition that I’m especially enamored with:

And it’s brass, too! Without a coffee table we have been in need of a convenient table solution for drinks and whatnot, especially with friends over. I have a little wooden tray that I usually keep on the couch that houses all things reading material, remote controls, etc but with a bouncing toddler and snuggly dog it never felt quite sturdy enough to hold mugs of tea or glasses of water.

So it’s been a side/coffee table search.

I tried out a couple of variations here and there over the past year (loooong search) but quickly found that this end-of-the-couch location called for something low profile and sturdy (anything with legs was easily tipped during the Liv and Bodie trial – one has inquisitive fingers, the other a very strong tail).

This antique brass West Elm drum table passed the test with flying colors.

It is still tail height and it is still visited by inquisitive hands, but now the table is far from tipping when anyone runs by it at a fast speed. It’s also fairly  light weight so we move it to the center of the sofa when it’s needed for wine and water glasses.

I’ve had too much fun at West Elm over the past few months. It’s rare that I’m toddler free outside of work and one of my favorite little stops when running errands is to swing by our local West Elm store and browse the sale section (which happens mayyybbeee once every three months). Other recent West Elm additions? There are a few now that I can spot.

This pink/coral vase that sits atop the bookshelves is a clearance find. (Kevin didn’t love my gold ‘home’ art project that used to also sit here and he ended up winning – I decided the letters might be best elsewhere after a couple of weeks).

As well as a couple of new pillows. How great is that pink and taupe tribal print? Or the striped coral and brown guy that pulls the entire couch ensemble together?

This one also now sits on our old leather corner chair.

On the more pink front, I believe I’ve finally settled the score on deciding on new wallpaper for the new nursery! And my gold Land of Nod desk lamp and pillow for the office have recently arrived. Talk about sparkly .

Happy soon-to-be weekend.

 All living room posts are sorted by tag right here for easy searching.

Living Room Update: A Little Letter Art Bling

While maybe a little overdone, I’ve been kind of loving ‘letter art’ for a while. We have our initials on the bookcase in the dining room and even a ‘LIV’ set in Liv’s room that I don’t think I’ve shared just yet.

When placing an order recently with Land of Nod for a cool new desk lamp, I fell for a free shipping coupon and had to spend $15 ish more on the site to qualify. So at $4 each, I threw four of these letters in for good measure (which with a free shipping discount makes them a steal at like $2 each, right? ).

They were made out of brown craft paper, 8-10″ tall and very light weight. I thought they might be fun to cover in paint or fabric or wallpaper and hang on a wall or bookcase in the house.

For now, my ‘HOME’ letter art calls the bookcases in the living room home:

But that might change soon. They feel a little big for this space? Would love to shrink them down about an inch on each side.

I thought about spray painting these guys for a super quick gold application but ended up sponging gold craft paint (left over from our Easter project) late one night, thinking that I might like a more burnished rather than solid effect (and the sponge would allow me to give that textured look). The result is definitely a solid gold (I nixed the burnished look after a few minutes), but I love how they’ve turned out.

I have a few gold paint containers in my stash but this metallic gold by Folk Art continues to be my favorite:

While the letters might not stay here, I do love the addition of gold and pink to the space!

Now the heart art ties in with the new Spring pillows (still debating pillows over here ) which ties in with that cool new glass coral vase (West Elm’s sale bin) up on the shelf.

My plan B was to set the letters up on top of the kitchen cabinets. Might be fun to add a splash of gold?

What do you think, has letter art become cliche? Overused to the moon and back? or does it still make for a fun and crafty addition?

PS The entire living room makeover is chronicled right here.

Pinterest Challenge: Faux Stacked Log Fireplace Facade

Six ish months ago we had to turn the gas off in our fireplace… which was such a downer as there’s nothing more amazing than flipping that little gas switch and watching a beautiful, blazing fire set the mood for your living room. Perfect for chilly nights that call for family games on the living room rug or for a late night Netflix. But alas, this is an older home with old fireplace issues and we had to switch her off.

Hopefully one day she’ll blaze again.

Until that day it’s time to turn the eye-sore innards of this old fireplace (black bricks, metal curtain and goldish top plate and all) into a prettier focal point for the room. Enter Pinterest Challenge, Winter 2013.

I love these little challenges because they provide the motivation to cross a big project off of the massive to-do list, and usually I can justify choosing a project that I more love and want to complete, and less of one I must do because it’s next on the priority list. Here are a few past projects that we’ve tackled around here, including painter’s tape wallpaper, gold chevron napkins and an ombre stool for Liv (one of my favorites) among others.

With a little motivation, a week to track down materials and a great inspiration picture, I had an idea of where to start.

Oooo I love the above image! What a great way to utilize the empty space in a fireplace while still keeping a room cozy and comfortable (fireplaces and stacked wood have a way of doing that…).

Our finished project… drumroll…

I would be very happy if you thought we went and stacked a bunch of logs in our fireplace and called it a project! But I promise it was much more than that. The goal here was to build a faux log stack facade that we could remove when we were ready to use the actual fireplace, and replace the next day once the fireplace was cool again.

The hope was that the screen would give the depth and perception of a a bunch of stacked wood, but really it would be just a few inches thick and somewhat easy to pop in and out.

What do you think? Are we fooling anyone?

Now on to building the screen!

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Fireplace Faux Wood Stack Facade

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Materials: ~50 variously sized log slices, plywood cut to the shape of your fireplace opening, black matte paint, wood glue (or nail gun) 

I ran into the first big road block while tracking down the actual logs. You’d think that this would be fairly easy… but turns out smaller logs (unchopped) in lighter wood colors (such as birch rather than oak or redwood) are not always readily available in these desert parts of San Diego. Who would have guessed.

I really lucked out when a friend of ours suggested eucalyptus and then found a huge pile of firewood for the taking! And he generously handed over variously sized logs for me to include in the project (thanks, Dave). Other resources that might be useful? Craigslist and Etsy (turns out you can even purchase sliced logs for the right price).

Kevin chopped up my logs into 3″ slices and I began assembling my faux stacked wood.

The backing for our fireplace screen is a piece of plywood measured, cut to size and painted black.

I considered spray painting it but we had only a satin finish in the paint closet, so I used up a bit of leftover chalkboard paint that we had on hand (from this and this project) to achieve a more matte finish (the above is still wet, but once this paint dried it was more than perfect).

Our nail gun is out on loan at the moment or I would have simply lined up my log slices, laid the backing over the top and fired away to secure the slices to the backing and to keep the logs from moving, but instead I lathered each slice individually with a thin coat of wood glue and allowed the entire project to dry overnight (that stuff is tough). When we get the nail gun back I’ll add extra reinforcements to ensure that none of these logs come sliding down, especially with toddlers at play.

I opted for a 3″ depth on the log slices (rather than 1/2″ or something easier to manage/less heavy) so that they would add more depth to the fireplace and (hopefully) make the black backing a bit more invisible. In person it’s obvious that this is a faux fix to our little fireplace conundrum, but it’s a neat faux finish at that! 

Should I paint out that gold top plate a darker, oil rubbed bronze color?

That might be step two to this project, looks kind of nice!

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I’m linking this project back to Katie’s, Sherry’s, Megan’s and Michelle’s Link Parties today!

PS all Pinterest Challenge projects are sorted here, and all living room projects can be found here.