This past weekend we got the Christmas tree out. I cannot believe it’s already that time of year. The months have just flown by!

Trimming the tree and decking the halls helps me make the transition to the holiday season but have you thought about what a difference your trim makes to your doors and windows?

I just ran across some before and after photos of the wall of doors/windows in our living room. It really is amazing how the trim either adds to or takes away from the decor of your home. So since this is the trimming season, take a look and just what a difference your trim makes.

BEFORE – our house was built in around 1992 – sadly for us that seems to be the time when everyone was in love with oak. It. Is. Everywhere in this house. Ugh! And if that wasn’t bad enough, it was the honey stain!

So, little by little we have been replacing it. What we haven’t been able to replace yet, we have painted (for the most part.)

I am embarrassed to admit that this is how the living room looked for the three years we have lived here. We have been updating other rooms but because this one just was what it was.

DURING: The first step was to pull out those window grids. WOW what a difference! Kind of like getting braces off your teeth!

Since privacy is not an issue and there is a deck right outside with lots of rails, removing the grids should have been a no brainer! The Before was really  such a visual mess!

AFTER: We replaced all the trim and painted it. Another option would have been to have just painted it. However, we are slowing replacing all the standard trim with 1×4 and 1×6 trim like you would see in homes built 100 years ago.

I love the character it adds to a house. Best of all, it’s not something you see in every home you go in to.

Attention to detail.

It’s a “signature” of my personal style and something I enjoy bringing to my client projects.

Of course, it seems in my own house it can be hard to be as detail oriented as I’d like. Projects seemed to get pushed aside for work and other things {just keeping it real ;o)}

I love little touches that bring a smile to someone’s face. The details that say, “I’m thinking of you.” {Of course, these little luxuries are great to enjoy on a day-to-day basis.}

Take these vinegar bottles, simple bottles transformed with a  rub-on label {from Hambly Studios}. Lotions and potions are so much lovelier displayed this way, don’t you think? Even honey or Mason jars would work beautifully for storing cotton balls, Q-Tips, etc.

A small touch. A little detail that makes life beautiful,  if just for the moment you have to sit and do your business in the bathroom! Ahhh.

What “devine” details do you have in your home that make life beautiful? Please share.

{Photo Country Living}

Last night my husband and I sat out on our front porch in the white wicker rockers I bought at the thrift store. The air was warm and still; blue jays hawked and cardinals serenaded. In the distance we could hear the joyous voices of children enjoying the summer evening.

Our porch is narrow but comfortable enough to sit in our rockers and cross our legs. I wish it was a wider, southern-style porch {as pictured on Paula Wallace’s Perfect Porches book, left} but I am glad we have a porch that is functional. {At my husband’s condo that I moved into when we married, his front porch was not the width of a chair. That was just sad!}

I love how front porches just beckon us to come and sit a spell. Porches are the perfect place to use your mix and match items for an eclectic look or you can opt for a matching patio set. Personally, I love the mix and match.

I also like using lamps outdoors as you see on Paula’s bookcover - I have one on our front porch. When I turn it on at night instead of the two mounted lights on either side of our door, it gives such a warm, welcoming glow.

Another “must have” for me is movement – I must have chairs, a swing, or even a hammock that will allow me to slowly rock all summer long. I like the trend we’ve been seeing for the past several years of porch bed swings.

A bed swing seems like the perfect place to relax with your summer read or to take an afternoon catnap!

Ahhhh, I just love porches! Enjoy the links below of beautiful porches and if you’re in the mood make a bedswing!

BHG Tour of Porches
Make a Swinging Porch Daybed
Elements of a Great Porch

When we work on the Dream House project we always have a pretty tight budget for the room we are designing and decorating. Just like in real life, we have to find a way to make those dollars s-t-r-e-t-c-h.

When I splurged on an amazing chair for my reading nook in the Great Room, I knew it meant I was going to have to find places to creatively save money. The chair is called the Lowden. It’s 50″ round {right}  and swivels 360 degrees. It’s from Arhaus and retails for nearly $1,900! It was SO perfect for catching the views out of the two windows and I just HAD to have it. While I got it on sale for $1,279, it was a large part of my $8,000 budget {which was my entire furnishings budget for the kitchen, dinette, butler’s pantry, and great room!}

Splurging on the chair meant I had to save in other areas and one way I did that was by using window treatments that I call “semi-custom.” When you look at the wall of windows I had in the Great Room, it might seem hard to believe that I spent less than $150 on the two drapery panels.

My drapes were 13.5 feet long – fabric alone could have eaten up a lot of my budget. I was able to use ready-made drapes from Lowes as the main body of my panels. {Yes, you read correctly, drapes from Lowes – as in the big box home improvement store}.

Lowes is one of my favorite places to shop from drapes. In my area, Lowes carries a nice variety of window treatments that are on trend and reasonably priced. I bought four ready-made panels @ $24.99 each – they are a grommet top which was perfect for our clean-lined look. The brand is Allen+Roth and they are one of my favorites. I used the Milton panels in the color “mineral“.

I then used a two-foot band of fabric between the two panels to create our custom look. We lined our new panels and voila!

When I was at the house on Friday, people were commenting on the drapes and were shocked when I told them my secret! Such a great way to get a custom look! Had these been made by a typical workroom, they would have cost upwards of $3,000 – $4,000! Ours were under $150.00. I love saving money with syle!

Sometimes it’s the little things that can have the biggest impact when it comes to giving a room a facelift. That’s my latest discovery as we work on this year’s remodeling project.

In the three years we’ve lived in our Cottage In The Woods, our living room has stayed pretty much the way it was on the day we bought it. That means builder white paint on the walls and original honey oak baseboards and trim as you see in this picture above.

One day in the middle of this project we decided to remove the grids in this wall of windows and doors. The view is wonderful and the grids almost seemed to interfere, especially since there are deck railings beyond.

Some of the grids were barely attached so within just a couple of minutes we had them all out {by we, I really mean Mr. DH – he took out most of them}. It was an easy, no-cost makeover that made it look brand new. You can see the “after” in this photo below. 

Okay, this is where the “no-cost part” ends. We could have just painted the old trim but since we have been replacing trim throughout the house on a room-by-room basis, we decided to just go ahead and update it.

We are using 1×4 and 1×6 boards with an edging called scribe. It is a treatment you see in older homes. I love the simplicity and how it adds instant character. I also like the fact that it’s not the pre-molded stuff you buy at the big box stores.

For a couple of reasons we decided to use MDF, not a paint-grade wood. This is because: 1) it’s more cost effective than wood and, 2) MDF does not expand and contract with the cold and humidity. That means we don’t have any caulking of seams once or twice a year.

You can find pre-cut MDF in 1×4, 8-foot lengths at your local lumber supply store.

So, our new molding has been painted as have the walls. We’re not finished with the room yet, but here’s the final transformation of that wall. I don’t plan on putting any window treatments on them. We don’t have privacy issues and want to let as much sunshine in as possible. 

The color on the walls is one of my favorites, it’s called Sea Salt.I first fell in love with this color when I used it in an in-law suite I helped design some five years ago.  The color is a very soft blue gray green. I think it should be called sea glass because that’s what it looks like to me.

Within the next four weeks we should be wrapping up this year’s adventure in remodeling. I can’t wait!

The arrival of warm, sunny spring days means spending more time outside – and that’s a good thing in my book. However, it does mean seeing your house and yard up close and personal from the outside in. That’s a complete shift from the winter view we have of our homes – from the inside out.

I have a client who wants to freshen up the outside of their home with a new coat of paint. They were thinking of using the same color – white  (as seen in this photo above).

My suggestion is to not only freshen up the paint but to give the house an instant facelift by painting it a new color! The exterior is very common for homes in our area built in the 1950s.

We don’t have a large budget so painting is pretty much what we are able to afford. So this is your chance to be the designer! What paint color would you suggest? Keep in  mind the stone on the lower part is staying.

I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts. I have already sent my clients a mock up with my suggested color palette. I’ll show that to you next time!

Next week is St. Patty’s day and everyone will be wearing green and drinking green . . . and that gets me to thinking about how green can also be a powerful force in decorating our homes.

I’m not talking green as in money {although it can’t hurt}, I’m talking plants! They are one of the most important elements in decorating but are often forgotten. Plants are the finishing touches in decorating.

Here are a few tips regarding “faux” or silk plants that will have your house looking fabulous and your friends green with envy!

#1 Palms are IN  Ficus Trees are OUT!
I know, I know. You can get a ficus on sale at the craft stores for $10.00. Well I’m here to tell you that the ficus tree is passé, out of date, gone with the wind. Palms {like the one shown here} are in and designers have been using them on the coasts for years. That means they probably won’t get popular here in Ohio for another couple years!

Palms are gracious and have beautiful depth and dimension. It’s gotten to be a joke  about me not liking ficus trees. It’s nothing personal, mind you, but most of them look cheap and that’s how they make your house look. Pop a palm in the dark corner of a room and illuminate it with a canned light and voila! Instant elegance.

#2 Variegated it OUT
What’s variegated you ask?? The spider plants and other silks you have in your house that have two colors  sometimes three. They are out because, again, they look cheap. Solid color leaves on your plants please! (And the ficus trees that have the burgundy under their leaves – they are the worst offenders!)

#3 Nature Rulz
Only buy silk plants in the colors that nature makes them. Oh, those hideous blue flowers -Mother Nature is having a fit! When you go to the craft stores to buy your silk flowers, only select the ones that look like they do in nature. In real life, the good Lord does not make bright blue daisies, so please don’t pick those daisies when you’re at the craft store. They look cheap and really do nothing for your house  – I promise!

If you want some cheap but chic ideas for giving a room in your house an update, hop on over to this link in our local newspaper today. They interviewed me for their Progress Series of articles.

The reporter who interviewed me, Jean Bonchak, was super terrific to talk with and we had fun discussing the latest trends for keeping our homes on trend. Hopefully readers will find a nuggest or two that will help them spruce their nest up for spring!

I’m so happy that they were able to include a small list of some of my favorite design/decorating blog friends! {www.susieharrisblog.com, www.thenester.com, www.livingwithlindsay.com and www.theletteredcottage.net.}