Moving In! - ORC Fall 2020 - The Parlour Wk 5

Written By Lex Brooks

Once upon a time, there was a young girl who was told “You may not be the first person to do it, but make sure you’re not the last”. And that young girl is now the Vice President elect (woohoo Kamala Harris!!!), which is just the biggest moment in our collective history to celebrate. Interiors decorating just seems to pale in comparison, and as such my actual changes to the parlour this week have been rather dull and non-existent in light of the monumental changes occurring out in the “real world” and the very long wait we all endured to get there. There have been so many emotions to capture, experience, share. I cried many happy tears in a U-Haul truck this week, something I haven’t done in a long time, nor did I ever expect to do. So there’s that. But I’m ecstatic that there is hope in the future again, that we can look to a leader with decency and respect, and that we can tell our children that all of these things matter. They matter. Their vote matters (in 15 years time…). Their futures matter. Their friends matter, no matter their colour or size or gender, and that they will ALL have equal opportunity to become whatever they want.

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Alas I digress as usual, you came here for a One Room Challenge update… which is fairly plain and simple to be honest. We moved in! (Sort of!) I don’t have any exciting (or even boring!) pictures to share because our weekend was literally spent loading up half of our furniture from the townhouse on Friday into a little U-Haul truck and then unloading it all on Saturday. Followed by cleaning said furniture before it entered the house, and then finally re-constructing our master bed and the two kid’s beds to get us to a semi-ready move-in state. We’re not planning to fully move-in until after Thanksgiving when the kitchen is closer to a finished state… BUT it does mean, we now have almost all of our furniture in the parlour (and the kid’s desk ready to paint) so the final touches really are coming together. Ok so I have a couple of sneak peek in progress type shots… Now, I have to figure out this whole curtain situation and try to dig some books out from many packed boxes in the attic to fill our bookcases for some photos!! That will be fun! =/

As for the curtains, well I keep going around the houses on this one. We originally put out a poll on Instagram asking our delightful followers to help us pick a fabric… and that was 4 weeks ago! About a week later we finally received a sample of the most liked fabric (“Wild Things” by Lewis & Wood) and it all felt a little too matchy matchy with our rug, plus the fabric pattern felt a bit too “fuddy duddy” as we like to call it between the velvet fabric and the pale pinks / light blues of the pattern. But, as usual, now that I’ve been staring at it for a few weeks, I’m wondering if it just feels grandmotherly because we only got the floral section of the print and not the parts with the lions and other elements. We’ve been questioning a lot whether it is “us” enough, even though design-wise it would definitely work. Nevertheless, I’ve been staring at all of our original fabric samples and trying to make a decision, but still failing miserably. I know at this point I won’t have curtains made for the the final reveal, so I’ve accepted that.

But I do intend to hang something temporary as we need some privacy in the room regardless. The one thing I’ve definitely decided on though, is HOW to hang those curtains which had been equally perplexing. The original plan had been to hang curtains within each window “box”, as we didn’t want the curtains to protrude over the long 4’ radiator of the main window. And then we would hang roman blinds in the two smaller windows on the opposite wall. But everything about this feels unbalanced to me. But now, I’m leaning towards a more elegant solution, which is to build out a cornice box at the top of the big window section which will house curtain rods across all 3 large windows. The curtains will then sit at each column space and be primarily decorative, and we will have roman blinds on all the windows to act as the real privacy feature. It provides a dynamic approach to the window, adds grandeur to the space and a more hotel-like high-end feel, and solves some of the concerns we had with the picture rail at each window junction. Here’s a little example of what that will eventually look like below. But honestly for the moment, I just intend to hang picture rails and some cheap IKEA curtains to get us through. Rushing this decision in choosing the fabric is not worth the stress for quite a large purchase, so I’m going to take my time and get it right eventually. I know that means I’ve failed the ORC yet again, which is not really the spirit, but I have to do what is right for our family.

So there you have it, week 5 “complete” and onto the final steps, final wax on the woodwork, final paint coats on the furniture, and final install of all the decor items that I can dig out of the attic with any luck. Then just to figure out how to take photos of the space. EEKS!


Love & Cuddles,
Lex

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Lex Brooks
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What on earth is a Burnham Overy? ORC Fall 2020 - The Parlour Wk 4