Decorating with Antique Delft Tiles and Florentine Pumpkins

Delft tiles have been catching my eye when I have been antiquing this summer.  

They never did before, but this is why.

After receiving this pair of blue and white club chairs from my parents,

with our lake house build looming I thought they would be a good fit for that home.  

And because they are this bright cornflower blue

it has steered my decorating path in that direction as well.  

Our current home has become the test ground for the lake house!

Delft tiles are still made in Holland but I have been collecting some of the older tiles I find in  

antique shops.  As a child my parents took us to Amsterdam and we boarded

 a tour bus to visit a factory in Rotterdam.  This factory and others existed from the 17th century!

My parents bought a few souvenirs from the visit, which I have now and they are over 50 years old. 

The little clog is one of their souvenirs, while the Heineken mug

 and the pitcher are two of my finds while antiquing. 

 I love finding the older pieces and tiles are at the top of my list. 

It is fun to be collecting again, with a new perspective on blue and white.

This is a pretty castle scene, much like Cinderella's home!  

You can see the age of the tile, literally, on the back of the signed tile.

The little holes at the top are for wall hanging.

Delft Pottery, also known as Delft Blue, is a general term now used for Dutch tin-glazed 

earthenware. The city of Delft was the major production center, but it can be made elsewhere,

included England.  In the 17th and 18th century, Delft was in it's heyday, exporting all over Europe.

It is amazing to me to find so many pieces in the antique shops in America, but I see it as a 

result of the popularity of blue and white porcelain that many favor today in home decorating.

On another note, I did a crafting project yesterday.  I was inspired by some fancy pumpkins

a friend of mine posted on her blog, Edith and Evelyn.  It involved making clay molds of 

medallions and painting them. I added some gilded Dresden paper trim to mine as well as

did one with decoupage calling to mind a Cinderella castle with an internet image I printed.

It was a fun and fairly easy project and gave me some 

Florentine style pumpkins that go with my decor.

I am not an orange person, and avoid all the spooky stuff that goes

with Halloween decorating.  These are pretty, and that works for me!

Check out Cindy's blog to see the basics on how 

to do the molds and where to buy the products.

Edith and Evelyn's Fancy DIY pumpkins tutorial 

Happy Decorating!!

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Dramatic Bedroom Mural

Our guest bedroom got a new look with a photo mural.  

We updated the room because our son's best friend, Kai,

 is coming to live with us while they start their college freshman year

together at our home, because of the Coronavirus situation. 

 The boys will be taking over the second floor of the house, 

which will serve as their college dorm!

I wanted the room to have a completely new look for the guys.

These murals are actually photos that are blown up and made into wallpaper strips

 to fit the exact dimension of the wall you want to cover.  I was excited to

collaborate with this Swedish company, PhotoWall, and selected a rustic brick

arch wall called "Arch Ruin" as the backdrop for our guest room

 from the thousands of images they stock. 

Look for my 25% discount code at the end

of this blog post for your own order from Photowall!

The wallpaper mural comes with a package of powdered wallpaper paste. 

Mixed up with a gallon of water in a bucket, it was ready to use in  5 minutes.

  I also ordered the $18 wallpaper tool kit so that I would be all set 

when it was time to rock and roll. 

I have hung a ton of wallpaper in my life yet this set up from PhotoWall is a little bit 

different than anything I had seen before.  The roll of wallpaper is continuous, yet has 

each strip numbered, and you cut it with scissors when you are moving on to the next strip.

Simply cut along the dotted line....

You apply the paste on the wall where the strip will go first, 

so I measured out 18" and made a small pencil mark to give 

me a rough guideline for the paste.

                     Apply the paste with the brush to the section of wall next to the strip you just hung.

                        The paste has some globs in it but they brush right out with the wallpaper brush.

This wallpaper was the easiest paper I had ever hung, 

and I was finished with the wall in just two hours. 

Now it was time to style the room....

First I decided to put the bed on the angle so

we could take in the dramatic backdrop of the wall mural.

But wait....do you remember what it use to look like?

When last used this room it had the dollhouse  as well as the pastoral murals

I had painted on the walls giving the room a feminine romantic artistic effect.

It was very pretty, but wouldn't work for a college guy.

So, before I began my wallpapering I painted 

 over the lilac stripe at the top of the room as well as the murals so 

they wouldn't show any trace of pattern through the wallpaper mural.

And two hours later I had a whole new wall of brick!!!

Everyone loves the new look! 

I was able to reuse many of the things we already had in our home, 

including lamps with burlap shades, some Ralph Lauren beige linen pillow covers

my modern office desk chair, and the grey and white checked curtains from Ballards.

Piper gives it a thumbs up too!

Use  Photowall if you want to create a dramatic new look with ease.

All my readers can get 25% off any order of Photowall products

 until the end of August 2020 by using the promo code

amymaisondecor25 for your discount. 

With everyone at home more than ever now because of the coronavirus,

this is an awesome way to improve everyday spaces in your home.

I am already planning my next mural!

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Our Lake House Inspiration Board

Its been months and months of planning for the lake house that we

plan to build next year in New Hampshire.  Dream homes come in 

many shapes, sizes, styles and prices and ours is a modest one,

but a dream home nonetheless!

I have a lot of experience buying a home and redoing it, but never

have we built a home, and so this is exciting but a different process.

We are using a modular company that will build this house to our

specifications, and it needs to conform to the allowances by the town.

When I saw this home of @featherglass on Instagram, it struck me that it was very

similar to the design we had going on our drawing board.

We will have windows flanking a French door topped with transoms facing

 the lake, with a side staircase, similar to her home, also in New England.

Her home has more doors and windows, but this photo is indicative of our plan.

It was so nice to see a house in real life that mimics one on a drawing board.

Our floor plan is very open with the kitchen, dining space, and living room all

in one big room.  We will have our sofas and tv and fireplace in the area closest 

to the wall of windows and French doors, while the kitchen and dining area

will be on the other side of the room. Ellen, of @featherglass has her

 dining table near her staircase, where we will have a sitting area of toile furnishings.

 Most of our existing furniture will be coming with us if it fits in the house and we 

can use it and it looks good.  We aren't millionaires (yet) and so this is the furniture plan. 

 There will be two separate seating areas in the living room.

We love these IKEA Extorp sofa and love seat in beige we purchased two years ago.

They will be centered around a fireplace with an antique mantel creating a cozy space

for our long winters on the lake.

 An antique mantel will be something we will hunt for to give the house some character,

like this one I saw on eBay. So many antique shops up there, so it will be fun to find the right one,

that fits the style we are going for, which is more farmhouse than fancy.

 Then there will be a second seating area facing the French doors that open to the lake,

which will be lovely during the summer with the doors flung open to the deck and the view. 

This personal favorite fabric, Bosphorous Toile by Covington, 

will be made into a slipcover for the new purple sofa that we recently 

got from an estate sale.  I love it's soft gentle colors of sand, grey and misty green.

 The seating area will include the French bergere chair and ottoman that

 wears the same fabric which I did several years ago.

(Click here on how I reupholstered it.)

On my wish list is a fun and coveted piece, like this French Pastry table, that I can use as a

bar and serving table for entertaining.  It will be one of the few "new" things 

that I hope to find for the lake house.

The color of the walls will be white. There is not a lot of wallspace in the room and we 

don't want an outline of color around all the doors, windows and transoms. 

We want the lake and the trees to be the focal point and

 this color will create a serene feel to the space.

A reupholstery project for the dining room chairs is underway, using

this pale blue gingham check by Lilyoake designs at Spoonflower.

Much of my antique lighting will come along, like this basket chandelier.

And this square lantern will hang in the front entryway.

Vintage lighting is one of the things I like best when decorating a home.

Overall there will be less fancy French gilded things.

 Less things in general. Which is a challenge for me!

The goal is simplicity and comfort with the addition of a few well chosen antiques

to create that age that I think gives a home soul.

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Decorating Changes

Our living room has gone through some decorating changes this summer.

It all began with selling the painted baby grand piano.

Since we are planning to move to our lake home one day, (which is yet to be built),

I decided to sell off a few things we wouldn't be taking,
 like the piano to get prepared for the eventual move.

Then we impulsively bought a lilac colored sofa at an estate sale auction 

and played with where to put the sofa, since the piano was gone. 

Yes I said "WE", as hubs egged me on to buy it because it looked

much more comfortable than the Swedish couch we had.

 Also. the lilac of the sofa and the blue color of the wall just was a bit too much

for my taste, and I hated how the sofa looked against the staircase banister.

So that was going to have to change....

The couch went back between the windows, but not before I 

painted the walls a neutral color, French Canvas, by Benjamin Moore.

The corner where the piano was gained the mora clock from the front

entry area and the small French provincial desk.  

The Swedish trundle bed/sofa that started off in the living room last year,

was moved to the dining room for seating along the farm table.

I have been reupholstering it in a blue and white gingham.

I painted a pastoral mural to hang above it, however it ended up being moved

into the living room as seen in the previous pic above.  One thing leads to another,

and our home hasn't seen this much decorating activity in a long time.

A mirror and the opaline sconces got moved over the Swedish sofa.

This was the same mirror that hung on that wall shown in 

Nora Murphy's County House Style book.

An arrangement of purple transferware plates surrounded the mirror.

So it's been a full summer of moving furniture around and painting walls.

I have more changes to share but I will end it here, 

wishing you all a happy and safe Labor Day weekend!

We are visiting the lake cottage these last days of 

August, taking some needed family time with hubs and the kids,

before the school year begins and everyone is back on the wheel.

Goodbye summer and hello to the cool fall days that 

have quickly arrived in New England.

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Curbside Find: A set of Louis XVI French Chairs

 In a bizarre and fortunate twist of fate, there is an update to the story of how I found this

one French chair in front of someone's house waiting for the trash truck. I scooped it up and felt 

very lucky indeed.  Fast forward almost one year to the day, I was driving by the same house

and what astonishing sight to my eyes did appear??

 Four more of the chairs that matched the original curbside treasure I hauled away!

How could this be? It was truly amazing, and even though I was driving my mother in law's 

small Ford Fusion, and not my pickup truck, I lurched to the curb and jumped out.

It was tricky to stuff all four chairs into such a small car, and I was glad I didn't have the baby or any

dogs with me, as they all just barely fit.  Now they are safely ensconced in a storage trailer waiting

to be reupholstered and restored for our lake house (that has not been built yet, haha).

 So the pondering began....what did I want the chairs to look like, and what did I think 

the lake house decor would look like?  The general idea in my mind is to have it be more cottage

style than French style, so the right fabric and finish on the frame would be critical to the look.

For over a year I have been admiring the fabrics designed by Paula Arndt, of LilyOake on Spoonflower.  Paula has created a bunch of designs fit for an updated Swedish cottage look which could work perfectly.

One of my favorites is this small check in a color called faded blueberry.

I brought in a chair and taped the sample to the back. Maybe I will have a coordinating fabric

on the front of the chair with the check on the seat and the back.  Lots to think about,

and it is one of the most pleasant parts of decorating....the pondering.

To give you an idea of how it could look, take a peek at 

Ballard Designs, with a similar French chair in a painted finish

with a gingham or checked fabric.  

But gasp, look at the price!  It would cost $2296 for five chairs

finished in this fabric and finish.  Right now the base chair is on 

sale for $399, still a fortune compared to FREE on the curb and the 

cost of a yard and a half of fabric per chair.

You could pay that for a set of 6 real antique French chairs on first dibs!

These were a few of my very favorite fabrics.  I have learned over the years 

as a window treatment designer and interior decorator that checks and stripes will

always stay in favor with a homeowner over a floral or patterned fabric.

And I plan to have these chairs for a very long time....

Even so I love the Lily of the Valley pattern, as that is a flower I adore, and 

one rarely seen in fabrics and wallpaper.

So the solution is easy....put that darling pattern on a ballroom chair and 

I can have my cake and eat it too!! 

Visit Paula's beautiful Lilyoake fabric designs on Spoonflower here.

Read about the day I found the first French chair here.

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