Family Room Pillow Scheming

Well you know what? I deconstructed my very first ever DIY project. Long before pinterest, long before this blog (or even blogs that I knew about at all) existed, pre-kids, pre-marriage, pre-first house, Matthew and I turned a coffee table into an ottoman. I'm not very good with DIY and truth be told it always looked like crap. It looked like we cut some foam to size, covered it with batting and stapled on some meh fabric that neither of us loved to the top of a coffee table. I didn't even bother to bring it with us to Richmond when we moved up here three years ago.

When our house sold back in June it finally made its way to our family room where I've been hating it ever since. I was waiting to see what fabric I wanted to recover it in when I realized that between that and the two white sofas it was too much fabric. So I just ripped it all off. I love it so much more! So very much more! I plan to do a lime wax finish on it to take away some of that yellow tone soon.

Eventually I'd love to get a gold and glass table or clear lucite table. But both of those options really aren't smart until the kids are older. All those hard edges and glass is an accident waiting to happen in my house. And I have zero interest in keeping sticky fingerprints off a clear table just yet.

Thanks to the magic of photoshop I also realize that I really need to paint the shelves on our built-ins white and update the pillows. It's a neat look but this room is already so dark that every bit of brightness really helps. Take a look below of what I'm thinking. I want to purchase a few new pillow covers. Two 22" Alan Campbell Potalla pillow covers and two 20" China Seas in Fiorentina. I'm thinking of doing a 14"x24" bolster in the Alan Campbell for the love seat.

It's so good right? Fresh and fun and colorful. All things I'm starting to love. Color, but not too much color. These will be a big investment but I think they'll make a major overhaul of the entire room. I'm really excited about all of the shades of blue in the Alan Campbell fabric. It gives so many options for pulling others things in later. I tend to get stuck in one or two colors so I think this will give me the push I need to get out of my comfort zone.

I'm also loving the addition of Quadrille Blue Kazak in the mix like in the image below. Keeps it from being too cottagey or predictable. And then image below that adds in some coral from Caitlin Wilson Textiles. I'm loving either the stripe or the deco.

I absolutely love this combination but I also don't want to jump the gun on the first non-neutral pillow combo I like. I don't want to be in the same situation a year from now regretting an expensive pillow decision. I feel like this look is really right for us but I'll probably need to sit on it for a while to be sure. I literally can't afford to make a mistake here.

The picture above is where the room is today. I think it looks nice but it's just not feeling quite right. It doesn't feel like "me" if you know what I mean. I still absolutely love the chenonceau pillow covers but they'll just have to find a home somewhere else. I'm not sure how I took such a misstep but sometimes what I think I like and what I like in the final product aren't always congruent. Does this happen to you too?

Still really pretty and feeling much more complete but just off track from where I want the room to end up.

Pawleys Island Posh