Our goals for this project:
Address the weird layout. The pattern is a historic volute dating from the time the house was built, but rendered in a wild and modern palette. Our 160-year old Italianate Victorian had, after being abandoned for many years, received a quickie renovation in the 1990s. (Image credits: Chris Stout-Hazard; Chris Hazard-Stout ) Our solution was to add paneling to the lower half of the walls to create a shiplap look. All of them were painted a sickly, pinkish beige, and the paint was scratched, chipped, and rusting. Fix the walls. Probably not. Name: Roger + ChrisLocation: Sharon Springs, New York
We turned a rough, boring bedroom into an unforgettable space for our guests. For artwork, we decided to create something that would appeal to one of the most likely house guests — Chris’ mom Carla, a poet who often writes about crows. In addition to repairing all the cracks, lumps, and holes, we needed to add some details to the walls to break up the expanse of boring sheetrock. The floor in this bedroom has a noticeable slope, but the ceilings are even worse. Running wallpaper all the way up to the ceiling would emphasize the waves and slope. Charming. The huge piece is visible from the street when the blinds are open and definitely gets noticed. We fastened the frames together with self-drilling screws to create a single piece, and carefully hung it above the bed. For more photos and to see how they created this fun room, check out Chris and Roger’s blog post. Our guests would mostly visit during warm months, so we aimed to create a room that was happy, bright, and summery. Contact the editors through our decorating or renovation Project Submission Form. Bringing it back down
With so much color in the room, we opted for relatively neutral furniture and decor. But we wanted to give our visitors a boutique hotel experience for a few nights, and it’s color and whimsy that makes those hotels so memorable. It probably saved the home from eventual demolition, but resulted in some questionable decisions — like, for instance, turning the only upstairs bathroom into an ensuite only accessible through the guest bedroom. Thanks Chris and Roger! Lumpy, cracked drywall, rough trim, and uneven baseboards weren’t creating a welcoming space. To avoid this and provide a level stopping point for the wallpaper, Chris applied lengths of board around the room about six inches below the ceiling. Dealing with the walls was another challenge. Making things disappear
Like the ceiling, the paneling, windows, and baseboards were all painted the same color. Chris cut down four-by-eight sheets of thin plywood and fastened them to the walls with adhesive and brad nails, leaving a small gap between each piece to create interest. We planned to restore the bathroom entry in the hall, so the doorway inside the guest bedroom would be closed up to give more flexibility for furniture arrangement. The board, wall above it, and ceiling were all painted to match the wallpaper. Ceiling fans are almost always hideous, so we opted for an inexpensive model without a light that Roger spray painted to match the ceiling. Chris enlarged the image in Photoshop, mapped out the positioning of each frame to ensure the assembled image would align, and printed each panel on velvet art paper. We were starting with a room full of poorly taped and floated sheetrock.
