Small Space Decorating Tips

With all the work we've done on small houses over the last few years, I've learned a few things about decorating these spaces.  In a small house, every inch counts.  But if you follow just a few simple guidelines, you can make small rooms both attractive and functional!

Furniture Scale - Buy small sized furniture.  I know, I know, it sounds simplistic!  But when you get into the giant furniture store with the tall, open ceilings, it's easy to fall in love with the big comfy couch.  And when they deliver that big couch, you might be appalled to discover it overwhelms your living room.

A typical couch is 84" long.  But the depth can very dramatically.  So be extra sure to check - some are as deep as 48".   For many early 20th century homes and cottages, that's just too big to work.  Instead, find a smaller version or consider a loveseat.  Pottery Barn, Crate and Barrel and Restoration Hardware have all realized size is a factor and now offer 'apartment' sized furnishings.  Or if you want something a little more affordable, check out IKEA.  I'm a big fan of their EKTORP sofa and loveseat.  Look at this one from our 2nd project.  At 70" long and 35" deep, the loveseat is a versatile option (it's only $379).  And it comes in a variety of washable slipcovers. (Click here for more photos)

Project 2: IKEA EKTORP Loveseat  (Wicker Chairs and Chest -  Pottery Barn)

SoPo Cottage Project 2 - Pickwick Pine Dining Room

For the Dining Room, get a table with leaves that can extend the size when you need to.  Of course if you have 4 kids - you probably need a big table all the time.  But for many households, you only need to add leaves to a table when you have guests.  And the rest of the time, the dining space will seem much bigger.  I've dragged this Pottery Barn table and chair set to 3 of our own homes and every one of our staging projects.  With it's round shape and classic style, it works every time!  But if you add the leaves to it, it can seat a crowd!

SoPo Cottage Project 5

In the bedroom, forget about that sleigh bed that you've always wanted.  It will take up a lot of extra space in your small bedroom.  Consider instead, a wall mounted headboard.  You can easily make a padded one in almost any shape and they are especially great with low knee walls.  Depending what fabric you use, it can add lots of color and interest to your decorating scheme.  Oh, and they're easy to make!  Click here for simple instructions.

Tufted velvet headboard, custom made to fit under the windows

Project 2 - Guest Bedroom

Another suggestion for a bedroom.  Use small side tables.  All you need is a space for a pair of glasses and maybe a glass of water for the night.  So give yourself more space in the room with a smaller table.





























You can wall mount a light fixture - to provide even more table space!

Project 2 

Storage, storage, storage - in a small house, you need all the storage you can get.  But it's helpful to make it attractive as well.  Bathrooms can be particularly tricky.  In this example, we had an awkward space behind the toilet (with the vent pipe going up to the roof).  But rather than wall it off, we added some mosaic tile and a shelf to provide a little more storage, with a decorative flair.






Baskets are another big help.  You can hide lots of clutter in a basket and yet it looks great.  We had a skinny space next to this bathtub and filled it will shelves, baskets and a cabinet to give the homeowners a myriad of storage options.

Project 1

I also frequently incorporate a china 'hutch' in the kitchen.  It provides a way to display attractive dishes and saves space from using a big hutch in a dining room.

Project 4 - New Englander

Light - More light makes a space seem bigger.  Look for ways to use mirrors.  They reflect the light - but also make a room seem bigger as they visually expand the space.  And there are so many attractive mirrors out there.  These mirrors were all from  HomeGoods - and I've used them many times!

Project 5 - Dining Room

Project 1 - Victorian Foyer

In the same way, try to use all the daylight from your windows that you can.  Heavy window treatments can make a room look and feel much smaller.  You can still have a nice pop of color and pattern with a valance or a narrow panel - you don't need to cover the whole space.  And blinds can be added inconspicuously to give privacy at night.

Project 6 - Bungalow Breakfast Nook

Paint Colors.  I'm a big fan of a light color palette.  You can always do a 'feature wall' to make a color statement.  Look at the far wall in this breakfast room.  It's a deep shade of green - but compliments the cream on the other walls.   And it's hard to beat pale wall colors with white trim to make a space feel bigger and brighter.





















In the room below, the walls are a neutral Sherwin Williams color called Rice Grain.  The light color gives the room an open, airy feel.  But with the navy accents, the room has lots of color!

Project 5 - Light color palette with navy accents

So as you think about decorating your small house, keep in mind Scale, Storage, Light and Color to help your home feel bigger and more organized!

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Crisp Blue and White Guest Room

We are lucky to have two guest rooms in our house.  One is pretty large with a great view.  But the other guest room is a little on the small side, so I wanted to make it a really cozy space that guests would enjoy.  

The original plan was to have closets on either side of the front window, with a window seat below.  But once we started framing up the room, we decided that would make it too cozy!  So we settled for one closet. That leaves room for this chest with basket storage.

A key design element was to install wainscoting.  I wanted bright white woodwork with bright color above it.  But I was a bit worried that installing narrow bead board would be too busy in this room.  So to give it simpler lines, we did something a little different.  Richard and I installed simple 1x3 strips of wood around the room, added a plate rail above and then painted the entire space a white semi gloss.  It makes the room seem nice and bright – but adds some architectural interest as well.  And it give us a shelf for artwork, to provide pops of color in the room.  

Speaking of color, inspiration for this room started with the multi colored rag rug.  I loved the different hues of blue, green and orange and thought it would make a great starting point for the rest of the design. I found the comforter and shams on sale with their bright green dragonfly motif.  I bought an extra king sized sheet and made the coordinating roman shades for the windows.

The headboard was a bright 80’s style brass, with lots of tarnish spots on the finish.  I picked it up for a song at a second hand furniture store, sanded it down and spray painted it this bright blue.  I love how it pops against the white wainscoting.

The chair in this room started life at IKEA.  And after my DIY upholstery experience, I learned my lesson and hired an upholsterer to recover it for me in this custom green polka dot print.  That cost a lot more than the chair, but I’m pleased with the way it came out!

I added this curved cabinet - one of my favorite pieces!  And it gave me the opportunity to add some colored accents that compliment the rug.

Living in Maine, we get a lot of houseguests.  And I think they really enjoy spending time in this cozy room!






Sources:  
Rug - Crate & Barrel
Chest - Pottery Barn
Chair - IKEA - Ektorp Tullsta 
Curved Cabinet - Ballard Designs - Chilton Cabinet
Pillows:  Company C and HomeGoods
Shams and Comforter - Company C

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Police and Contractors are Never a Good Combination - Especially at 3 am

Granite countertops shouldn't be the most challenging part of a project.  But somehow, that's exactly what happened on our house.

We are big fans of granite countertops.  We've installed them in four of our own kitchens and love the functionality and low maintenance.  We wanted that again for this kitchen, but in keeping with a classic New England style, we wanted a non-shiny finish.  So we decided on a honed finish.  It has that classic satin sheen, but still lets you see the texture of the stone.

As we quickly discovered, granite is usually shipped right to the end fabricator already polished.  So they need to grind that finish off, to create the honed finish we wanted.  Many fabricators won't even attempt this - it's tricky and they don't want to deal with it.

We had used one of the big local granite places on a previous kitchen and ran into some challenges.  So for this kitchen, we wanted to find a different place.  We heard about a small place nearby and went to visit them.  The owner was very enthusiastic and showed us some examples of his work.  We agreed on the plan and set a date for templating the design.

In the course of planning the work, we discovered that the owner wouldn't be doing the work himself, he was sourcing it to his brother - 'the only other person in Maine I trust to do the work'.  Ah huh.

After waiting a couple of weeks, we heard that the brother was ready to do the install.  Oddly, they wanted to do it on a Sunday afternoon.  Since we could only get to the house on weekends anyway, that was fine with us.  We agreed on 3:30 Sunday.  It shouldn't be a big deal - usually the granite install takes 1-2 hours.

3:30 Sunday came and went and no one showed up.  After repeated phone calls, I finally got in touch with the brother's wife around 5:00.  She said they were just packing up and were heading to our place.  6:00 came....no show.  7:00 came....no show.  We kept calling his cell phone and he finally answered and said they decided to stop at Applebee's for dinner, before coming to our house.  So we waited.  And waited.  At 10:00, we decided they weren't coming and started packing up to leave (we were camped out with beach chairs, a cooler and take out Chinese food while we waited).

Just as we were headed out, they showed up.  We suggested that they reschedule, but they said no, this was the only time they could do it.  So, against our better judgement, they got started.  Big mistake.

They brought in the first piece of granite, a small rectangle to fit over a 36" cabinet.  It didn't fit.  It was short, by about 4".  Geezzz......not even close!  They would have to cut a new piece.

Next they brought in the big L shaped piece that fit along the back wall.  It was big and extremely heavy.  They had to turn their truck around and back it up to the front porch, so they could use their boom truck to move the piece in.  It was midnight now - and the truck made the big beep beep beep noise as they backed up.  Then there were all kinds of additional machine noises, as they lifted the granite with their boom.

After multiple cans of Red Bull, they tried to slide the big piece into place.  But they couldn't figure out how to get it in.  The angles were admittedly complicated, but we finally had to help them remove a cabinet, in order to get the granite in place.

And that's when we discovered they didn't pre-cut anything.  Typically, a granite installer has already cut the holes for the sink and faucets (and we had 2 sinks and lots of faucet holes).  But these clowns waited until they got on site.  So now they proceeded to get out their high speed drills and saws and make a noisy mess.

That's when the doorbell rang.  Richard was appalled, the couple across the street had just had a baby and he was sure they were coming to complain.  Instead, when he opened the door, he found a petite policewoman on the doorstep.

The policewoman said they had received a phone call that we were being robbed.  Ha, our neighbours were so polite they didn't want to complain about the noise - instead they suggested we had very noisy burglars!!   But she looked around the house, in its state of construction, at our beach chairs and the left over chinese food - and commented there wasn't anything to steal :-)  (seriously, I think only a woman cop would notice this.....true?)  She wrote down everyone's license info and asked us to keep the noise to a minimum.

And they kept on working.  With a few more trips out to the truck to drink a Red Bull and ingest who knows what else.

The installers didn't finish until 3:30 am.  And the other granite pieces didn't fit very well. For example, there was a gap ranging from 1/2 - 3/4 inch along the back wall.  (Thankfully,  I was able to use some tiling tricks to help hide the issues.)  It was obviously not quality work!

The next day, I bought a bottle of wine for each of the neighbors and delivered it with a note of apology.  It was the least I could do after disturbing their sleep!

And we still had to wait another couple of weeks for the final piece to be installed.  They got it right on the second try.  But even after all the craziness, we're still not happy with the granite.  The finish doesn't have the satin texture we were looking for.  It's blotchy in some areas and is a pain to clean.  I called to have the business owner come out and look at it - and big surprise, he never came.

Lessons learned - sometimes it's better to go with the big companies.  They have a trained crew of experts who can handle challenges.  They also have new equipment (the folks I use now have laser systems and don't even do old fashioned templating for a perfect fit), using the latest techniques.

At least we learned our lesson!



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Sea Glass Blue and Green Guest Room

So, here's my starting point for every guest room.  A queen or full sized bed.  Small chest of drawers for storage (and to leave things for your guests (hand lotion, slippers, etc)), a bedside table with a light, a TV for entertainment (in case they're real nite owls) and a comfortable chair.  I try and incorporate all these elements into every guest room we create!

But this room has an added bonus.  When we planned it, we really didn’t know what the views would be like.  So we were pleasantly surprised to see how good they were from this room.  When we have a house full of guests, they all want this room!  It's nice to see the water and the islands when you wake up in the morning!

Similar to the first floor bath, I wanted to do this room in seaglass colors.  The inspiration was a quilt that I found at Maine Cottage (when they were still in Maine).  It has nautical/island terms embroidered all over it and I absolutely love it. 

While there, I also found some coordinating fabric (on clearance - yea!) and started what I still think of as the ‘great upholstery project’.  I took a class to learn how to do upholstery and over the course of 10 weeks (2.5 hours a week) I hauled this chair back and forth to class and transformed it (and didn’t throw my back out in the process!).  But my lessons learned: hire someone to do it.  Lots and lots of work and I didn’t achieve the quality level of a professional.  And while I have bragging rights that I've learned upholstery skills, given the number of hours that went into it, it would have been worth it to pay someone!

I wanted to use black wood for the furniture.  The bombe’ chest comes from Crate and Barrel.  The headboard - Restoration Hardware Outlet for $99 (but we did look comical driving from Boston with it strapped to the roof of my car!).  The side tables are fashioned from shutters with a milk paint finish.  They came from Dwellings in Falmouth, one of my favorite little shops.

But the piece de resistance?  The striped wall.  I started with the blue in the quilt and tried to combine lots of sea glass colors to create a dramatic statement.  I also used different sheens with each color (eggshell, flat and satin)..  It's tough to see that in the photos, but its adds to the interest of the wall.

First try at artwork for the walls......not successful!

I struggled to find the perfect artwork for the room.  My starting point didn't add enough color or interest to the cream walls.  But while we were in Wiscasset one weekend, browsing through an antique shop, I came across an antique map of our neighborhood.   I had it framed in an antique style black frame and love the way it looks.  The piece above the bed is a canvas print of local artist Catherine Breer’s work.  And I found the small prints at the local SoPo Art in the Park festival that’s held each summer. 

For window treatments, we wanted to keep it simple, so we wouldn’t compete with the view through the windows and door to the balcony.  So we installed simple sailcloth panels.

And the balcony?  Isn't that a great touch?  Well, it's the perfect spot to relax with that first cup of coffee in the morning. And yes, the dogs enjoy it as well!

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The Really, Really Bad Flip: aka the Little Farm of Horrors

Our kids just bought a flip.  And it's a really, really bad one.  The kind that makes me cringe and want to shout to people - I don't flip houses!  I renovate them.  Because truth be told, that's what most people think about house flipping.

So I have a classification system for house flipping:

1)  Reno Done Right - a full renovation to modernize an older home - leaving antique qualities in place, but providing modern amenities (I'd like to think that's SoPo Cottage!)
2) Fluff and Buff - updating the easy to see elements (say tile work and refinishing floors), but not addressing the infrastructure.  Lots of the TV shows are in this category.
3)  Buyer Beware - as in 'we don't need no stinkin' permits' .  Poor quality - no focus on safety or integrity.






They bought a Buyer Beware

So here are the low points:
-  Furnace vents into the attic (somehow the house inspector didn't catch it....amazing!).















And then the whole vent collapsed into the basement a couple of weeks after they moved in.






















-  The shower drain sits higher than the tile.  So you guessed it, there is a constant puddle and due to really lousy tile work and missing grout, it ultimately drains into the basement.



And see what happened the first time they took a shower?  All the water drained into the basement.

-  There are no outlets on the kitchen counters (seriously, no outlets!!!  Why install tile and granite??  Now it's really hard to fix)

Open ground (one of many)

-  Serious electrical issues (for example, they installed an oven outlet for the dryer, open grounds, no junction boxes, etc).  This was all supposed to get fixed before closing by a licensed electrician.  But I don't think they even know a licensed electrician!!!

Why bother with a junction box when you can use electrical tape?

-  Underspanned roofing and they cut through some of the rafters!




















-  The refrigerator cabinet was installed so low you can't put a refrigerator under it
-  The air conditioning died a week after they moved in (this is HotLanta folks - 90 degrees in May)

And then there are the poor fit and finish issues:
- Poor tile work - look at that grout job!
















-  Poor trim work - light fixtures shouldn't be mounted sideways!











- And the gutters are brand new, but they didn't install enough supports, so they bent and leak right into the basement





Honestly, I'm not making this up!

Move in day - see the 'dry' basement!

The disclosure said 'new kitchen kabnets', no water in the basement (check out photos from the day they moved in), and upgraded electrical.









Why did they buy this?  Particularly with a 2 year old and a very pregnant mom??  And how in the world did we not jump in and say 'are you crazy'?  Well, they live in the Atlanta area - which is too far for my team to travel!  And they wanted something with at least 5 acres to allow them to start a small farm.  That's a tough combination to find.  This met a couple of their criteria - with house quality/safety at the bottom of the list.

Thankfully, our son-in-law Joe is handy.  And we'll pitch in when we visit, to help them get the place ship shape.  But it's going to be a lot of work!

In the meantime, they've started making it their home.  But it's had a lot of nasty and dangerous surprises - they're nicknamed it the Little Farm of Horrors.  Want to hear more about their adventures rescuing a derelict farm with the worst flip job ever?  Visit Tucker Farm for all their adventures!

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