Brocky Proxmire wrote us about the bedroom his mother, interior designer Kelley Proxmire, designed for the DC Design House. It’s stunning, so elegant and sophisticated, and had a special feature: “The big hit of the room was the now you watch it (#7) now you don’t (#8) TV. The TV is mounted on a swing arm behind the drapery panels. There is a slit in the drapery panel on the end so that swing arm may be extended several inches into the room. The size of TV (19″) is correct size for this distance of TV viewing from the bed.” Brilliant! Thanks Brocky (and Kelley!)

It’s official – I have lost my mind. I have 6 cats in my house. Yesterday I became a foster mom to a cat (I named him Felix) who’s been a fixture in my yard for the past few weeks. He went to the vets yesterday and has all sorts of health problems, but all treatable with antibiotics (PHEW!). I am fostering him through a FANTASTIC organization here in Ottawa called Friends of Abandoned Pets, who are graciously paying for all his medical bills. He has to live in my second bedroom until I get some test results back, so things are a little “hairy” at my house. 🙂 Pun intended. I wanted to post this because I am very grateful they are helping Felix and I hope they can find him a great home, especially since he turned out to be such an amazing cat. They are having their annual dog walk in a couple weekends so I thought I’d plug that too, because that would be a blast…and I may be their photographer. 🙂 So I’d like to introduce you to the newest (though hopefully temporary) member of my brood, Felix, one of the luckiest cats around.

Tessa wrote us with a design dilemma hoping we could offer some help: “I am writing to you now with a problem of my own. We live in a beautiful 19th century mansion in Washington, DC. It is gorgeous and wonderful, but we rent it and are not allowed to paint any of the rooms. I am about to move into a different bedroom that is gorgeous, but painted one of my least favorite colors- burgundy. I hate burgundy! I tend to lean toward super bright hues (oranges, yellows, apple greens, etc.) when I decorate, and I am wondering (and hoping) that you guys might have some suggestions of what could possibly look good with this awful dark mess. Anything I have tried makes the room look like either a men’s smoking lounge or a cheesy Victorian salon. I haven’t seen you post many pics of burgundy rooms, so I thought you might have some cool ones hiding somewhere. Please help me out.”

I went through my photo stash and just as I suspected, no one paints a bedroom burgundy. 🙂 And I hate burgundy too!!! First, here are a few bedrooms that have dark walls (a couple burgundy-ish) that might inspire you to work with what you’ve got.

For alternatives, if you’re allowed to put holes in the walls, maybe you should consider finding some not-too-sheer sheers and hanging them from those wire systems (Ikea I think has it) around the room (if it’s not too big). Also, how about painting some really large pieces of foam core (if you can paint that stuff)/thin MDF and leaning it behind your bed, dressers etc. to hide as much of the burgundy as you can, or you can make a screen, like the one below.

Domino

And the following photo I thought was very inspiring and SO gorgeous. Now the walls are not burgundy, but imagine they were, and maybe the light shade of bluey-green that are used in the large upholstered pieces were a light pink. Sounds crazy but it could work to tone down the darkness, as they do in this photo.

Nicholas Haslam

So forget about my post the other day about the Eames shell side chair that I found that I was going to make my office chair. That will now be an office visitors chair. Because I scored this a couple hours ago, for $160:

What’s kind of funny is the guy I bought the yellow chair from was supposed to email me a photo of a kelly green shell chair he had that I told him I was interested in (he never did). I’m glad he didn’t because this one is WAY better!!! (And ignore the background of the photo – my office needs ALOT of work).

Since jumping on the Eames shell chair bandwagon yesterday, I have these chairs on my mind, so I thought I would do a post dedicated to this classic, versatile beauty. I was surprised to see how many photos featured it in white. BORING. Makes my lemon yellow one seem extra special. 😉

Beckers	Bolig Magasinet
Minh Wass	Elle Deco
Cookie	Teresa Sapey
Fawn Galli	Gary’s Loft
Apartment Therapy	jpg Magazine
Living Etc.	Living Etc.
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COMINGHOME interior	Inspace Locations