Friday Find – September 23 {Urban cows}

Browsing through October’s issue of Style at Home magazine I came across THE coolest wallpaper.  Check this out…

 

Now here it is in an application…

I love the “graphic-ness” of it, how you have to look closely to make out the cows.  This beats your grand-mothers Guernsey cow theme any day!

A one armed paper hanger – huh?

The other day I was responding to an email from my friend Joan and this expression came to my fingers out of the blue while describing how busy I have been lately.  “I’m as busy as a one armed paper hanger” was the phrase I used.  My hubby would be proud of me – he is the undisputed KING of clichés and one liners.

As soon as it flew from my fingers I started to wonder from whence it came.  So, off I go to my handy-dandy personal encyclopaedia and dictionary – my pal Google: 

“As you may have gleaned from reading between the lines of that little rant, a "paper hanger" is a contactor, one who specializes in the art of installing wallpaper. "Hanging" wallpaper is a tricky business under the best of circumstances, requiring, at a minimum, steady nerves and both arms, so the vision of a "one-armed paper hanger" is one of frenzied desperation as the "hanger" frantically attempts to slap paste on the wall, apply and align the paper, and smooth out the whole shebang. "Impossible" doesn't begin to cover it.

Of course, wallpaper hanging isn't the only task that becomes infinitely more difficult with only one arm, and "one-armed" has been used to mean "not fully effective" since the 19th century. The earliest use in print of the "one-armed paper hanger" image occurs in the 1908 O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) short story "The Gentle Grafter": "And then I got as busy as a one-armed man with the nettle-rash pasting on wall-paper." That "nettle-rash" is a nice detail, conveying, on top of the poor sap's other problems, an urgent need to scratch a terrible itch.”

from http://www.word-detective.com/080805.html

Well, now you’ve learned something – let’s have a peek at some great wallpapers that need better than a one-armed paper hanger :)

       

I’m loving all these papers, and am now rethinking  my plans for some of the rooms in my home :) – but isn’t that true for any research we do for blog posts?  It’s so very inspirational!

Wallpaper envy

A little while back, Arren Williams showed this fantabulous wallpaper on Cityline. It’s cork and copper, and I think it’s beyond amazing!!

I really, really, REALLY want to use it in our house — either in the kitchen or the family room, where we already have some copper accents.

It’s available through The Internet Wallpaper Store, and Arren said it’ll be available soon through the Design By Color web site.

Here’s another cool wallpaper I came across:

And how about this one — just like being outdoors, but without the bugs :-)

Now that wallpaper is making a big comeback, are there any papers that you think are drool-worthy?? If yes, let us know about it :-)

What would you do with this dining room??

I’ve been stumped on what to do with our dining room since last summer. Hubby installed the wainscoting, I painted it, and that’s where things stopped. I’ve had all sorts of colour scheme and design ideas since then… I’ve pretty much finally decided that the room needs purple and a touch of Hollywood glam :-)

Here’s the very sad-looking dining room. As you can see, there’s a lot of over-spray from painting the wainscoting. Whoops!!! (After hubby sprayed on the primer, we decided it would be better to paint it the old-fashioned way after all.) The table & chairs and chandelier are staying. There’s also a little mirrored console table that I’m planning to use in the room. There’s not really enough space for a sideboard, unless it’s on the small side. And it can’t go on the wall where the mirror is, because there isn’t enough space between the chairs and the wall. The room is about 16’ x 11’ and the window faces the street and gets southern light.

These are my inspiration rooms. I LOVE the purple ceiling in this first picture. My idea here would be to paint the ceiling a similar shade of purple (I still can’t remember where I found this picture)…

…and I’d add just a few touches of vibrant purple to the room with the curtains and the upholstered seats on the chairs, kind of like this…

The upper walls would be painted a creamy white in a matte finish that matches the background of the wallpaper I’ve bought for the long wall – Darcy from Graham & Brown….

This is the dining room that Sarah Richardson decorated on the first season of Sarah’s House. This wallpapered wall is a bit different than mine with the niche, but the overall look is similar to what I’m going for…

I love this room designed David Collins. It’s not a dining room, but the colour scheme is fantastic and would work just as well in a dining room, I think…

The dilemma with this design is, what colours do I use on the wall and the trim?? The wainscoting and trim are currently pure white in a semi-gloss finish. Do I keep the white and just paint the upper walls dark gray… or re-paint the wainscoting dark gray and the upper walls white… or paint the walls, wainscoting, and trim all dark gray. What do you think??

I came across this clutch on Etsy — I love this fabric!! It’s by Stroheim and Romann. I think it would work with either of the designs I’m contemplating…

And finally, I found these two fabrics yesterday that I could use to recover the chair seats. The purple in each of them is too different for them to work together. So, it would be one or the other… and would probably also mean a different design than the two I’ve been contemplating. The first fabric is by Master Fabrics Ltd and is called Ego…

This one is also from Master Fabrics Ltd. and is called Wasabi…

Side-by-side comparison…

To give you an idea of how the chairs would look with each of them….

One more thing — the living room is right across the hallway from the dining room and is a mirror image of the dining room. So there really needs to be some connection between the two rooms…

So that’s where I am with the dining room. I’d love to hear what you think — if you have any suggestions, please let me know :-) If I don’t get it done soon, it’ll probably sit there naked and neglected until the fall…