Erin contacted me wanting help with her newly refurbished vintage condo.  Although she liked the open floor plan, she was needing help separating the spaces into zones that still felt cohesive.  As far as function, the space needed to incorporate zones for dining, watching TV, reading, working and occasionally entertaining.  Erin professed to loving midcentury design, neutral big ticket items with pops of color elsewhere, and bold patterns…especially Moorish ones.  Other than her fiance’s TV, ceiling surround sound speakers, and subwoofer, Erin was open to replacing all other items. With great bones {neutral wall colors, hardwood floors, architectural columns, fireplace, massive mantel, built-ins}, all Erin’s space needed was a little tweaking.  I set to work creating mood boards for three separate areas in her long, narrow living space: dining area, media room and living room.

To keep things simple, I’ll share and discuss each zone separately in 3 different posts.  Yep, that’s one space, three posts!  Let’s start with the dining area.

BEFORE

As you can see, the dining area is just off the kitchen and adjacent to the media area.  The walls are already painted Benjamin Moore’s Quiet Moments, an airy blue-gray, and Erin wanted to keep the paint color as-is.  Here’s the mood board I came up with for her space…

I took a little time to bring some spring inside.  My family room mantel is an easy way for me freshen up our space:  it’s a small vignette, it’s a simple backdrop to begin with, my kids can’t touch it!, and I can crop out all the mess going on around it.  I started by switching out the velvet slipper chair for a mid-century modern chair from the living room.

I found the chair on the side of the road a few years ago, refinished it, and made new geometric print cushions.  To me, the velvet upholstery felt more wintery and I like the playful, modern look of this chair for spring.  I added a vase of $4 yellow gerber daisies to the scalloped side table and then moved onto the mantel.

Whenever I take on the task of switching up the mantel, I ‘shop’ around the house.  I found the trio of octagon frames in my craft closet and decided they needed to make their mantel debut.

I bought the frames from Goodwill last year, spray painted them white and added swatches of fabric.  I love the touch of geometry that the shapely frames lend to the mantelscape.  The bottom 2 frames are leaning against the wall and the top one is hanging from an adhesive 3M hook that I painted the same as the wall color to disguise it.  Since nearly all of our walls are painted the same color, I figure I can use it again elsewhere and it will blend in just as well.

To keep things fresh and airy – which is what spring feels like to me – I added round white votives and vases, a tall vase of green pom poms {also $4}, and relocated a paper maché ‘M’ from the living room.

Including monograms and typography in a vignette is a great temporary way to make a space feel personal.

I always like to have some warm candlelight glowing on the mantel since it’s about one of the only places I can keep lit candles out of the reach of little hands.

So that’s what my mantel is looking like these days.  I like to tweak it with the changing seasons.  It’s a quick, easy and cheap creative outlet for my fickle creative tendencies.

Have a lovely, springy weekend!

images:  all Dana Miller for House*Tweaking