ORC Week 3: The Agony of Decisions

This week I bought a chair, hung my curtains, and looked at light fixtures.

Along with more than 100 other linking participants, I am scrambling madly to completely make over one room in my house in five short weeks. (Six posts, but five weeks if you start on the day of your first post. Fortunately, I started a bit before that--but not by much!)

I am doing over my dining room/study.

The plans for this room are here in week one: The Befores and a Vision
The adventure that is week two is here: The Painted Room

The chair was easy. I knew I wanted something comfy for reading in this room from the start. In fact, that's one of the reasons I took on this madness.

I decided on the Ikea Byholma.

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With the Byholma flipped over upside down in my cart and on my way to the cash registers, I came across this little beauty.

Obviously, she came home with me. It's called Lacko, but I cannot find it on their site, strangely enough.

The curtains were a bit more complicated.

Also from Ikea, I bought a set at the same time I bought the chair. The next day, I realised I had bought the longer, more expensive curtains. So, I returned them. (I would have kept them, but I already had two panels of the shorter length.)

I washed both pairs and then set about to hang my curtain rods higher.

Did I measure the curtains?

No. (You can see where this is going. Why didn't I?)

I wanted to hang them high, so high I had to enlist my husband's help. While he was watching a movie.

That did not go over well.

Then, I realised we had hung them too high.

I wailed. So, no pictures. Taking pity on me, hubs drilled a couple more holes just below the first ones. Not low enough. Tempers frayed, we had a minor argument about the wisdom of doing projects late at night. And went to bed with lots of holes in our walls.

We tried again a couple of days later.

sorry, the cabinet is still dark. It just might stay that way. I haven't decided, yet.

Meanwhile, I searched the internet and brick and mortar stores for an overhead light fixture. I looked at thousands of lights and visited five stores.

I got a lovely lesson in design from a wonderful saleswoman on size and scale.

From my internet reading, I'd figured out that my light fixture needed to be the diameter of my room length and width (in feet) added together and expressed in inches. So, for example, my room is 10.5 feet by 11 feet. Thus, my light fixture should be at least 21.5 inches in diameter.

But then she asked me "What colour is your table?"

Here's why:

Traditional Dining Room by Gibsonia Interior Designers & Decorators Susan Muschweck Interior Design, LLC

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The size looks OK: but doesn't it look odd? There's no balance at all.


Here is a dark table and a dark chandy:

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So delicious.

When I told her my table top was white, she said I should be looking at silver fixtures. (brushed nickel, chrome, etc.) I recoiled.

No.

But we did agree it should be lighter in visual mass. Airier.

Something like this, I would imagine:

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However, I am not so sure my table top is staying white. I'm giving serious thought to building something like the above (galvanized pipe painted grey or off-black and a "natural wood" top).

or this:

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Dark metal legs and a lighter "driftwood" coloured top.

Decisions, decisions.

But I won't be doing any of it late at night. 

Catch up with the inspiring projects from the professionals here and the wannabees, like me, here.