I LOVE LAMP: My Faux Bois Flea Market Find

Last weekend I made it out of the house!!  wahooo  (I really do just hibernate after I have a baby.)  I headed to the "DC Flea Market" in Chantilly with one of my best friends, Lindsey.  We CONQUERED that place in 3 hours:  Power-walking & bargaining till it closed.  But my first find of the day was LOVE:  This awesome 1950s Faux Bois Lamp!

When I saw it at first I smiled.  It looked a little tacky as things surrounded by mounds of other things often do at flea markets...  but it piqued my interest.  I took another look at it started to imagine it in the right setting (errr my house ;)...  It had that quirky element I love and the turquoise leaves were perfect for our family room.   It was interesting & unique & overscaled and I knew it could be beautiful!  (AND I've  been looking for a lamp to replace the temporary tiny one in the family room that belongs in the baby's nursery.)

At first the 3 shades kind of threw me off.  We don't really see much of this anymore.  But again, this is part of what attracted me to the lamp.  And I love the stars on the shade...  It's beautiful when lit but I coudn't get a good photo of it.  The lamp was marked at $65, but I very nicely asked the dealer what his best price was and he kindly dropped it to $50.  SOLD. I did a little research on faux bois and any faux bois over 50 years old is considered an antique & is highly collectible if it's in good condition.  yay!  I wonder if I got a deal?

The faux bois is a fun play on all the real driftwood we have in our family room like this huge cypress root by dad found while fishing in Georgia:

My "end table" next to the sofa is actually a console table standing in until the right piece comes along & attacks me at another flea market or thrift store.  To get the lamp at the right height and to keep it from receeding below the arm of the shelter sofa, I piled a few books under it.  The artwork above the sofa is a growing collection of flea market & thrift store paintings I've been collecting.

  I know it's not a piece that's to everyone's taste, but I'm so happy with it!!  It''s such a unique & personal find and I love incorporating accessories like this into a room.  Our family room is a fun, playful place & nothing in it should be taken too seriously.   (My cousin was over with her new boyfriend the other night & he looked around the room and said, "This is a fun color."  The first words out of my mouth were, "Who told you to say that?!" and looked accusingly at my husband & cousin.  Both shook their heads in innocence and I realized he'd come up with it all on his own. =  Best compliment ever because that's exactly what I'd assured my skeptical husband about the wall color before it went up & what I've been going for in this room all along! ;)  One last little pic of my lamp.  I repeat:  I LOVE LAMP.

Have a great weekend & keep sending me your Project 2 Closet pics!!  Thank you- I LOVE seeing your takes on the projects!!

xoxo,

lauren

ps- Sofa: discontinued Restoration Hardware Sofa

      Striped Blanket:  Dash & Albert

Eddie Ross: Before & After Guest Blog

Hi, everyone! Eddie Ross here. I'm super excited to be able to guest blog today for Lauren, one of Jaithan's and my closest friends! It's not something we do very often, but Lauren's definitely a designer after my own heart. I love the way she mixes new and old, classic and modern. She has amazing style and is so humble about it! Can you believe it's been over a year since we all met on our first shopping trip to the New York City flea market? In the blogging world especially, you never know whom you'll meet if you just put it out there!

Speaking of the old becoming new, here's a quick before and after with a sweet, little tray I picked up last week in Atlanta. I'd been looking for a piece with handles that went with our bar cart—something I could could cary and serve, say, two or three drinks at a cocktail party here at home. You never know when luck is going to strike, and this time around, it was at a tiny, hole-in-the-wall thrift shop in Norcross on our way to Larson-Juhl to prep for the framing party. It's a faux bamboo brass tray, probably, from the 50s, so stained with water marks, even I wasn't sure it would come clean. But for $2, I was willing to take a chance!

Flash forward, and we're back upstate, unpacking from the trip, when out came the tray, soiled and spotted as ever. Quickly, I went to the sink or, as I like to call it, the Restoration Department. Out came the gloves, Brillo pad and Brasso, my favorite polish for brass. Call me crazy (compulsive, neurotic, etc.), but I love taking something like this forgotten little tray from trash to treasure. A little polish goes a long way!

Fifteen or so minutes later—"scrub, Christina, scrub!"—and voilà! I love how the tray turned a nice matte finish while the crevices kept their tarnish, accentuating the bamboo. Here's something that cost all of two bucks that now looks like it could have come from the 7th floor of Bergdorf Goodman!

So where to use it? On the dresser as a vanity tray for cuff links and cologne? Passed hors d'oeuvres at cocktail hour? How about lining it with a pretty linen napkin for rolls at a dinner party? For now at least, I'm taking the Rat Pack-route, propping it appropriately with L-monogrammed highballs from our Etsy shop, Grecian lowballs from our friend Steve McKenzie, a shaker we picked up in Kansas City, and an Italian tiered tray from the Goodwill.

Talk about trash to treasure! Cocktails, anyone?


-----------------------------------------------

Ahhhh love it!!!  Thanks so much to Eddie & Jaithan for putting together this awesome before & after.  The tray is GORGEOUS & I love the Ratt-Pack-esque cocktail set-up above...  SO ready for it after 9 months!!  (and for $2?!!!  INSANITY.)  I'm always floored by everything Eddie does but am never surprised by its perfection...  Mm mm good! 

xoxo,
lauren

ps- Guest Blogger up next week:  Maria Killam the Color Queen of Colour Me Happy!

Really Love This...

I'm dying to use this chandelier made out of capiz shells somewhere- be it my house or a client's!!   (I'm running out of light fixtures to replace in my own--eek! ;)  It reminds me a bit of a vintage sputnik chandelier:

It's the Pearl Lotus Flower Chandelier from VivaTerra and depending upon the size is either $329 or $649. 

On another note, I'm so behind on my emails & my blog reading and am really sorry if you've emailed me & I haven't gotten back to you.  (Just trying to stay afloat over here with the new little guy.)  Please feel free to email me again if you had a question I didn't answer. 

xoxo,

lauren

Pure Organization Project #2: Coat Closet Makeover

Hope you had a great weekend!  Ready for Project #2?  (In case you're new, we're attempting to do an organizational project almost every week of 2010.  I'll show how I did it & then I'm inviting you to come along & do the project at home & send me pics.   This way, we are sort of holding ourselves accountable to each other ;) Before I get to Project #2, I wanted to share some reader photos of Project #1 from last week.  Thanks so much to everyone who followed along at home!  I love how each person took her own unique angle on the project.   Here's my version:

Tina, in Austalia, used these beautiful Martha Stewart tags for her leftover paint:

She wrote, "I used simple twine and my precious Martha Stewart gift tags that I have been saving (lets face it they are too gorgeous to give away on a gift only to be tossed into a bin!!)"  SO pretty!!!

Berta, in Virginia, used this cute little bear container below for her paint:

Yvalie used these mini paint cans for her leftover paint.  She attached typed labels (the words are in German) to the cans along with a sample of the paint on the lids.  How cool?!!!  Love that perfectly clean metal:

And finally, Jennifer found this great idea in Parenting Magazine of using pversized pill boxes for your paint samples.  perfect!!

Thanks so much to everyone who joined & is planning on joining in!  Just knowing we're working on the projects together makes it less of a chore!!

And now onto Project #2:  Organize the Coat Closet

I'm actually embarrassed to show you the 'before' pic of our coat closet.  Yes, we've been living like this.   We threw our shoes in the bottom of the yucky closet where they got smashed & lost.  An overflowing box sat on the shelf and it housed all of our hats, scarves, mittens, gloves, etc.   Miscellaneous items like extension cords and shopping returns got thrown in the mix.  Uggggggh:

And here's our coat closet now:

We took all of this...

... And removed it so we could paint the walls in aqua paint (leftover from our basement).  The best part about this project was that it cost $0 because we just used things we already had. 

The first the step is getting everything out & starting from scratch.  For me, I enjoy projects so much more when they can be a little pretty.  Clearly the closet would be just as functional without the aqua paint, but opening the closet door & seeing this fun color just makes me happy, so it was really worth repainting.  (Thank you Dave!!)     

Next on the "pretty list" is matching hangers. They're a MUST. If you don't have them already, just head out to the store & grab some- even Home Depot sells them. I love Ikea's (cheap!) wooden hangers & have been using them for years so I can tell you they hold up well.

The closet door is an often-underutilized space for storage.  Here, I hung a canvas shoe organizer and filled it with all of our winter accessories:

If you have kids, you can put their things at the bottom to encourage them to put their things away by themselves:

We're trying really hard of getting into the habit of heading to the coat closet with all of our winter gear on instead of dropping it off in the entryway.  (Our coat closet is up the stairs & down the hall-  argggg.)  It looks like we need to put Christian's hat on the next row down:

I put our lint-rollers in here for a quick fix on the way out the door:

I switched out the overflowing box on the shelf...

...with a basket we had.  The basket is a lot bigger & (now emptier) and we'll juse it to corral miscellaneous items like shopping returns and anything too large to fit in the door organizer.  (I think empty overflow storage is a good idea if you're anything like me & just need to stash things for quick clean-up sometimes.  When they get too full, make sure to clean them out. )

Here's our mess of shoes before:  (so embarrassing! :)

And now it's so much better!  Dave made this awesome angled shoe rack out of leftover wood:

It's a shelf attached on the sides with a little lip at the bottom so the shoes don't fall down.  We put it in all the way at the front for easy access to the shoes and because there's hidden dead space in the back where I put the shoes we rarely use.  (Again, another overflow space:  it'lll get messy but I won't see it on a daily basis and when it gets cluttered, I'll reassess.)

Having the shoes down low, again, encourages little ones to help:

Christian was so proud of himself for putting away his shoes (a little crookedly! ;) on the shelf. 

"Yay!!!" he said:

This project has made us feel SO much better!!  I don't dread stuffing shoes in the closet or rummaging for Christian's hat when we're running late.  Everthing has a place and that's the key to getting it right:  just make sure everthing that will realistically be in the closet has a spot.  (1)  Then, use your door for storage (2) by getting a shoe organizer or some other type of system, make sure to use matching hangers (3), and add in some type of empty overflow space (4)- like the basket.   Finally, if you're anything like me, making it pretty (5) somehow- whether it be paint or wallpaper or color-coding your coats or a pretty box or anything else- will make you so happy when you open that door. 

Hope you enjoyed & I look forward to seeing & hearing about your projects!! (Just send me an email by Sunday if you want me to include your project in next week's post.)   Did anyone else join in last week? 

xoxo,

lauren

Have a Beautiful Weekend!!

I'm not gonna lie.  What's going on in my living room (above) is making me yearn a bit for Spring.  My paperwhites are shooting up (I still have to make a run to the liquor store for some alcohol to add to the water to keep the stalks from being too leggy-  we're all out since I've been pregnant haha!- and we don't have any rubbing alcohol.)  and I pulled out some throw pillows in a vintage-inspired floral I've had for years.  (It pays to have a ton of fabrics in my favorite color -GREEEEEEEEEN- around ;)

Have a beautiful weekend & if you have any free time, maybe give Project #1 a shot & be sure to send me a pic if you do!! (Sadly I only have 1 right now but it's a beauty!! I'll need the pics by Sun evening if you want them in the post on Monday :)  Enjoy the weekend!!!

xoxo,
lauren

FRAGILE- "It must be Italian!"

I was browsing through Tom Scheerer's portfolio (again) and found this:

Who but Tom Scheerer could actually make a leg lamp look good?!!!  I think I love it here.  It's a beach house & it looks like a couple sharing a kiss on the beach.  VERY vintage-quirky feeling and SO SO odd.  It would totally make me laugh if it were in my beach house.  And it's very reminiscent of this:

It's "frajee-lay"

And in case you don't know what I'm talking about you can check it out here.  "You should see what it looks like from the street!"

Just out of curiosity, would anyone let this enter their home?  What about the kissing couple?

xoxo,
lauren

Guest Blogger Before & After: Laura Casey Interiors

Welcome to our first guest bloggger, Laura Casey!  Laura is an interior designer in Charlotte, NC and creates beautiful light & airy spaces.   She's been chosen for blogwatch by the Washington Post and has an easy, elegant style you'll love.  You can check out some photos of her work here.   And now...  here she is!!

Happy New Year to all of Lauren's readers.I would like to congratulate Lauren on the arrival of Justin, there is nothing better than the family and a new baby to be thankful for. Pure Style Home quickly became one of my favorite blogs because of Lauren's great style and wonderful eye. I appreciate Lauren asking me to be a guest blogger. She asked if I had a before/after to share with you all so here is a room I recently worked on
for a more traditional client.

To give a family room an easy update I changed the layout of the furniture, put in a new carpet under the rug, painted the walls, fireplace, backs of the bookcases and recovered a sofa that had been in another room. I had the outdated attached fireplace screen removed as well.  The family has two young boys so the room needed to be comfortable and still have plenty of space on the floor for the boys to play. The boys are now sharing a bedroom and one room is now a play room where all the toys went. Here's the before:

The paint on the walls is Benjamin Moore Pale Smoke and the color on the backs of the bookcases is Benjamin Moore Slate Blue . Here's the after:

We moved the treadmill upstairs and brought in their piano.

They are happy and I love how painting the fireplace turned out too. Thanks
again Lauren for including me as a guest blogger.


--------------Thank you so much for your before & after Laura!!  It's amazing how these little changes can really transorm a room.  I love the blues you pulled out of the painting --especially the brighter blue in the sholves--  and painting the brick was perfect!!!  We appreciate your taking the time to do this!!

xoxo,
lauren

Guest Blogger Up Next: Eddie Ross