THE PROBLEM: Loud, vibrant, bold living room designed for young kids with fraying 20-year-old carpet
THE HOMEOWNERS: Soon-to-be empty nesters with two kids in college
THE SOLUTION: “Calm The Chaos”
Alyssa & I love design and we set a goal of redesigning a part of our house every couple of years. We’ve been continually changing things up ever since we moved into our home in 2006. The house was painted with 8 different shades of taupe. Generic, suburban, boring. So we’ve added vibrancy and color and style. BUT: the vibrancy and color and style we wanted when our kids were little doesn’t match the more contemporary chic elegance we’re into now. We’re not in our 30s anymore! It’s time to calm the chaos and grow up.
We used our favorite contractors, Custom One, and their renovations division to help come up with a plan. We wanted carpet gone in our living room, and if you’ve ever replaced one room’s floor on your main level you understand that you end up needing to replace the flooring on the whole level. Carpet gone in our living room and our dining room, the light maple wood flooring gone from the foyer. We looked at luxury vinyl, but we would have needed to build a subfloor and the cost of that was almost identical to the cost of just doing wood. A no-brainer.
We had bold wallpaper in our living room that we wanted to replace, but we still wanted that wall to have visual interest. Custom One’s designer Leah Kovar came up with a beautiful idea for a designed wood plank accent wall – it’s modern, it’s unique, and it gives great texture to the room.
Then it was furniture time. The only furniture we were keeping was two metal shelving units that we bought years ago from Room & Board. Based in the Twin Cities, we’ve had many friends who worked for Room & Board – and I’ve never heard a bad thing. Great people, a great mission, and a dedication to sourcing their furniture from made in America craftspeople. I love Hennepin Made lighting, and Hennepin Made’s owner has talked about how their business from Room & Board has been a lifeline for them – a consistent customer that is keeping glass artists employed in the heart of Minneapolis.
So the mission is great: but the furniture fit our “Calm The Chaos” theme perfectly. On top of that, Room & Board provides free in-store design services. So we went to the Room & Board in Edina, and met with Heather, and just absolutely loved her. We had some ideas coming in from shopping the website, and Heather walked us around the showroom, made her own suggestions, we sat on the furniture, decided what looked good and what felt good. Heather helped us find throw pillows that tied in with the colors in the Mercury Mosaics tile in our kitchen, tying the whole first floor together. We picked out a rug that would bring warmth to the room.
As happens, we got into replacing our furniture, and we decided to add in a new storage buffet unit for our dining room too as- a lighter wood to counterbalance our darker wood floors and table. [Kenwood Storage Unit]
Our selections:
🪑 Lily Chair in Dornick Ivory
🛋️ Reese Sofa in Laino Camel leather
🗂️Graft Coffee Table in orchard walnut
📜Nomad rug in Ivory/Grey
💡 Grace Table Lamp with Smoke base (by @hennepinmade)
💡 Tri-Plex Floor Lamp
Slim Console Table
Watch the install:
View this post on Instagram
Jason DeRusha is a proud partner with Room & Board on this project, and a portion of the furniture was provided in exchange for marketing support.