Stillwater B & B Now Open For Business

Actually this room and it's bath were the FIRST rooms tackled in "the White House" (...the ALL white, all the time, everywhere white white white house). I always tell Design clients as they move into new homes to remember that they don't HAVE to hang and display every single thing they had in their former digs. Now I've lived that experience myself. It is difficult. I have big boxes of "stuff" earmarked for a garage sale this summer, but there are still some old favorite things I felt the need to have around me.

This room, the real, honest to goodness GUEST ROOM provided the space in which to cluster all those dear things together. Like... an old table from my Grandparents ( great Grandparents?) painted white used as a night stand; a wonderful desk given me by a dear aunt also at least a generation older; favorite bedding, long of tooth but still loved for what the blue and white palette always does for my soul.

There's the flotsam and jetsam of accessories that have swirled through our many different households; Antique plates gifted us by friends and family, hand painted lamp shades and an all time favorite delphinium fabric which has made a circuit from our Winter Pine Way home to a friend's home and now back to me again . ( THAT'S a friend!) A sampler wisely advising "Bloom Where You Are Sown" reminds me of the days when I produced one elaborate sampler a year...years when my eyesight was far superior to it's present state and babies were in bed by 7:30 p.m.

I LOVE the room. It is comforting and sweet. It was the first stab at new colors in the new, WHITE house. The walls are Benjamin Moore Beacon Gray 2128-60...doesn't look gray to me. It's light and cheerful and a new favorite shade.

If you're in the Holland area we've a sweet place waiting for you!

One New Thing.

"New Things" seems to be God's theme for us in the past year. I vaguely recall days and years when I was nursing and diapering babies... when days and months seemed to run together in much sameness and routine. I am no longer living in those times.

It was my intent to blog as each room in "the white house" we moved into at the end of last August was transformed. I never envisioned the whole house being changed simultaneously....but better to get it all over at once. What's alittle more chaos when you've been living with your belongings in a storage facility for two months as you progressively sell the roofs over your head?

So, for those who haven't seen it in person, here is "the big reveal."

In many ways, this "great room" was the most difficult because other areas in the house formed first and this big open space, the first encountered by visitors, really stymied me.

The room has so many windows that I found myself actually avoiding walking through it. It hurt my eyes when the sun was shining. The first inspiration was an already "tried and loved" favorite Benjamin Moore paint color on the two storey's of walls... "Sandy Hook Gray HC-108.

I like to pat myself on the back for spending months sifting through greys years back and finding this wonderful color years before it became a Pottery Barn favorite color this year.

Another interesting challenge was presented in that the buyers of our condo requested purchasing many of our furnishings. This meant less to put in storage for a still unknown home we didn't know would fit the old furnishings AND presented a truly "clean palette" when we finally landed wherever.

It was good until we realized we had nothing to sit on once we arrived here .

It's eclectic, and the acquisition of the elements in this room were without rhyme or reason. Interior Design ADHD to be sure! It is still a "work in progress", which my homes ALWAYS are, but with the addition of the grey washed thick wicker chairs it all "clicked".

It's eclectic alright, with the felt penny rug, my antique platter collection and Paula Dean's funky, over sized table. ( THAT was practical...on clearance and huge enough for our whole extended family with it's two giant leaves...LOVE it!)

I love the room at night with the lights on the garland ( which I MUST remove with Easter approaching ) and the light in my china cabinet. And the lamp on the antique chest lighting my sampler collection.

So, here is the Third Coast Colorista's first "reveal" for your viewing!