Inspiration Friday No.11 ~ Chair Rail & Trim

Today I am showing a little of what I've been up to and mixing in an Inspiration Friday because they go together, my mother-in-law's living room & dining room makeover.  I put together an Olioboard here and we are loosely trying to follow that as our inspiration.  Things changed up a bit when I found this Liliana Pier 1 armchair on Craigslist...

The lady had it listed for $100 and my mother-in-law talked her down to $60.  Score!!!

The chair kind of changed the direction of the colors we were planning on using, and then she found a wheat color Storehouse sofa that was barely used, and wrapped in plastic at a yard sale for $175 (pictures to come)... DOUBLE SCORE!!!  So my light, bright, and white furniture design idea kind of went out the window.  

I wrapped her dining room chair pads a few nights ago, this is the old...

...and the new.  

I was a little disappointed when I opened up the box because I was expecting this color fabric...

ummm, it's much brighter on the screen than it is in person.  But the fabric is still gorgeous and it just so happens to match the Pier 1 chair fabric perfectly.  So it works even though it's not what I first imagined, but that's okay, sometimes you just have to roll with it!

I am really loving this design though!!!

I just had the chair pads at my house, I will get pictures of the new pads on the chairs soon!

So now onto the Inspiration Friday part.

  We picked out this Martha Stewart paint color in Myrtle Blossom for the walls.

She painted the top of the wall the blue and then the chair rail and bottom half of the wall is painted Decorators White.  The blue is fantastic AND just so happens to match the stitching in the Pier 1 chair PERFECTLY.  Oh yeah, I like how it's all comin' together!!!

But...the bottom half of the wall is WHITE.  I mean really in-your-face-white in contrast to the dark, wide planked wood floors.  I kept thinking maybe we needed to repaint a darker color on the bottom and then it hit me one night...the problem is it's just too plain and flat looking.  So I thought about possibly having her add a shadow box molding.  Today's inspiration pictures came from that idea.  The two pictures below show what a difference a molding treatment can make in a room.

This is from the Drab to Fab Design blog before of their dining room:

...and the after:

Do you see what a difference just adding molding makes???  It's like the bottom half of the walls are popping out at you, it's amazing!  It has life and character now.

Some other pictures that show how great adding a shadow box molding can look:

www.littlemisspennywenny.blogspot.com

 (all other pictures are from Google images)

I am dying for this molding.  So pretty!

Hoping it looks more like this picture when it's done... I think this looks really sharp.  Obviously this room design is not the same style as our room, but it has that same pulled together look that will be the base of the room.

  On a side note, I am sad to say that my computer crashed the other night and I unfortunately lost all of my pictures.  Thank goodness I keep all of my memory cards from my camera so I still have most of my personal pictures, but I lost a lot of pictures from my design inspiration files.  Which makes me really sad.

  But on a happier note, I got a nice little surprise when I was pulling together the pictures for this post.  I did  a Google search for the paint swatch (because that was one of the pictures I lost), and found that my little 'ol blog is on the first page of Google when you search for "Martha Stewart paint Myrtle Blossom".  So exciting!!!  I know it's by keyword searches and not popularity but I don't care, it is still so exciting to see your blog on the front page!!!

Happy Friday!

~  Kim :)