Lola Lane: Formal living, study, and all things eclectic.

My design for this house was simple. Almost too simple. So simple that I was afraid that I was entering the "stark and boring" zone of decorating. But I knew the look that I wanted and it required simple.

Eclectic is the best way to describe my decorating style. It's a miss-match. It's putting my favorite things together and making them work. Nowhere is my eclectic style more evident than in our formal living room, entry way, and study.

Here are some pictures before we purchased the house (i.e., the decor is from the previous owner.) This is the formal living room...

 
 The front door...

This is standing in the formal living, looking into the formal dining...

Another view, this time looking towards the staircase...

Yet another view from the formal living...

So here's where we started to get our hands on things. I told you that I only had about 15 minutes to take pictures before all of the demo started, hence the reason for the totally dark picture. This one was taken standing in the formal dining, looking toward the formal living.
 

I want you to take a good look at the tile floors. Within minutes of taking this picture, the contractors had moved in with sledge hammers to take out the floor. Not any pictures of the demo I'm afraid.

Speaks for itself...

This pic was around Day 3 of the demo. All of the tile is gone and so is the "bench" that separated the formal living and dining. 

Here's a better look...

Once the demo was done on this side of the house, the painters moved in. When I said before that I wanted simple, I was mostly talking about the paint color. I wanted everything white. I wanted the walls white and the trim white. I wanted it all to be the same color. Radical idea I know.

For a lot of people, having walls and trim the same color doesn't make any sense. Usually you want some contrast between the walls and the trim. Usually, I've always had my trim Swiss Coffee and the walls all sorts of different colors. In my last house, almost every room was a different color. But this time, the color was reserved for only a few spaces (laundry room, boys' bedrooms.) The painter thought I was nuts:

Rafel the Painter: "You want everything Swiss Coffee?"

Me: "Yes, everything. I want it all white."

Rafel: "All white. Everything. No contrast? No color?"

Me: "No color. White. Paint it all white."

My contrast would come from my new floors. We replaced all of the tile with a dark gray 12" laminate. Here's a pic that I quickly took after the floors first went down. They are covered in dust, but you get the idea.

It's amazing how much a clean coat of white paint brightens up a room. We also put in brand new baseboards that were very clean and very...simple.

And here's the same room today...

The white works, doesn't it? White walls shows off all of my favorite things so nicely!

The art above the mantel is by an artist from my hometown of Lawton, Oklahoma. It was a gift from my mom for my 40th, after I prompted her by saying, "I want a Jack Bryan original."

Speaking of art and artists, here's another one of my favorite, newly acquired, pieces. The fabulous Rita Ortloff, a sorority sister, friend, and fellow Oklahoman, recently became an artist. And I'm so glad she did. She has amazing talent and I hope she continues to paint for years to come! (Go visit her Etsy shop. You won't be disappointed.)

More favorite things...

A buckets of Instgram pics...

 Art by my oldest, a hand-blown glass fish from the Sawdust Festival in Laguna Beach...

Books and other treasures. The "3" basket and table in the background were both Home Goods finds. Gotta love Home Goods.

Remember that bench that we took out? Well, we took that out as well as the formal dining. We don't need a formal dining room (you'll see why when I get to pics of the kitchen.) We needed a study a lot more.

See the art over the funky armoire? I bought that from an art student at OU. He was having a garage sale and sold it to me for 15 bucks. Its huge and cool and an absolute favorite. I also love telling people I bought it at a garage sale. Makes for good dinner conversation.

And  yes, those are golf clubs you see. Specially, putters. It's a special collection of the Golfers that was beginning to take over our closet at one point in time. So to fix the problem, I decided to display them. Also makes for good conversation.

Every study needs a reading nook...

Up the staircase...

Funky black light fixture from IKEA perfectly compliments our collection of favorite family photos...

And finally, the entry way...

It's simple. Just the way I wanted it.

More home tours to come...