Lately I’ve been planning our Dutch colonial’s living room in my head.
What fun!
Of course, we’ll need comfortable seating + lights for reading.
I must incorporate a TV, my books + artwork, too.
Me being me, I need to try + do this as stylishly as possible.
With a miniscule budget.
Yikes.
Let’s see what we have,
looking in from Dutch colonial’s front door:
Next, as seen from the adjacent dining room,
through our fabulous pocket doors:
A closer view of that large, south-facing window bay:
Here’s the view from that bay past G.O.
+ into the dining room (+ the kitchen, just beyond):
We’ll have ourselves a nice, bright room!
But again — what to do with the TV, my books + artwork,
a.k.a. the media wall?
Answer:
That large, blank wall opposite the front door.
Here ’tis again:
Just this week while perusing Pinterest,
I found a fantastic inspiration for our media wall, here:
Don’t you love it?
It’s inside the L.A. loft of Kristan Cunningham + Scott Jarrell:
You might recognize her from the old HGTV show, Design On A Dime.
These 2 kids also own the L.A. design firm + shop,
Hammer + Spear.
Victorian turned wood easel with mirror $750
Painted Parcheesi + checkers game board $499
Laboratory Perfumes scented candle $60
Cowboy Grass (what?) unisex fragrance by D.S. Durga
$106
Okay. So I love everything, but it’s all too spendy for me!
It’s that miniscule budget I mentioned, before.
* * *
But I digress! Back to their fab media wall!
Let’s have a look-see + determine why it is so awesome:
While it looks like a wall of expensive built-ins,
upon closer inspection,
one realizes that they’ve actually used light-toned wood cabinets
with a matching, light-toned wood wall behind them.
It looks like those are relatively inexpensive brackets + shelves, too.
Please notice the high contrast between the lighter media wall
+ how dark they’ve painted every other wall.
It creates an amazing focal point!
* * *
So. That’s what I want to try + emulate for our media wall!
Instead of the cabinets,
we could use our new/old mid-century dresser.
(We drug it home from the curb about a month ago. Score!)
I like that our rescued dresser’s a whopping 64″ long;
it’s really going to make a statement in our room!
Its simple, mid-century modern good looks will ramp up our style, for sure.
Now to match our dresser with our wall,
as they matched their cabinets with their wall in the L.A. loft.
Our options are to refinish our dresser’s wood
+ install some sort of wood wall behind it.
Or paint everything.
I’m leaning toward painting the dresser + wall, like here.
See how the artwork “pops” + the TV kind of “disappears”?
potterybarn.com
As you no doubt noticed, I’d be switching the lights + darks
from the original loft’s media wall . . .
. . . + go darker for my media wall + much lighter for everything else, like this:
Look how the dark gray renders the TV nearly invisible!
Houzz.com
YAY on the TV “going away” . . .
. . . sure, we have one, but who wants it to be the focal point?
Now that that’s settled (one hopes), next up is the question,
“Dark gray or dark navy?”
houzz.com
Stay tuned!
REDBIRD 