Dreams of Design

“Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it's really how it works.”

Steve Jobs

Dreaming of a home for 8 months leaves a lot of down time for planning.  A LOT.  We have gone to the local furniture stores so many times now, they pretty much know us on a first name bases and don't even get me started on the internet shopping!

As of this exact moment, it seems that we have narrowed it all down to a simple palette of white and gray being our base colors with shades of teal and navy being our 'pop's.  We really want the house to feel open and airy, so we are trying hard to keep all our colors in line with that, but yet keep it comfortable and some-what cozy.

For paint:


The image is from Theturquoisehome.com, it shows perfectly the color against a crisp wainscoting, like ours will be.

Yes, we are jumping on the grey bandwagon too.  We have taken home many samples of grey paint only to find them all to be way to dark once we left the store.  Revere Pewter was recommended to us by Pottery Barn as the perfect light grey.  (They had this up in their stores a few months ago but have since changed it, at least in their Michigan locations)

Our kitchen cabinets are going to be a crisp white with gray flooring. The kitchen and living room tie into together in a semi open concept so the kitchen cabinets are dictating what happens in the rest of the space.

It took us forever, to find a round table.

It had to be a round table because that it all that will look right in the space (eat in kitchen).  One of the sales ladies at our main furniture store said they are hard to find because they are "old fashioned" and no longer trendy. We tried a bunch of other places around town and when we did find one, it was always a really dark wood.  Really dark.  So finally we went online.  and while it still took a few days, we found it!  The perfect white round table.

  

Shelton, Wayfair.com
With a white kitchen table backing right up to the living room the only thing that seems to flow right is a white media center to balance it all out.  Again, in stores with was hard to find.  Actually, online this was hard to find.  But once I started thinking outside the box, I found this gem!

Anastasia Sideboard

She's perfect!

 

This leaves the sofa... We actually found our sofa about two days after we signed the contracts for the house, so this was easy.  It was love at first sight.

The Jade Collection from ArtVan.  I love every single detail about this sofa.  Its simple elegant vintage styling to its unexpected dark teal color.  I said we planed the house around the white cabinets, but really... we planned it all around this sofa. 

 

I had to go back online though to find a coffee table.  I had the same trouble with the coffee table that I did with the table, everything was so dark and heavy.  I nearly gave up until I found this.

This is actually the sofa table, but the coffee table is exactly the same, just shorter, obviously. Its so light and open and the wood top is actually more grey then it looks, which ties in perfectly to our grey floors. 

 

 

The last part to complete the main floor is two accent chairs to go on both sides of the sofa.  So far, we are just not finding what we want.  Those may have to come later.