12 design mistakes WE (HOPEFULLY) WON’T MAKE again

Q: I have an idea for a blog post. “Design mistakes we won’t make again.” As I look through pictures of all the stunning work you’ve done, I’m thinking of choosing lots of similar styles & purchases. but then I wonder, over time – did you ever regret a design choice? – Shannon

A: That’s a good one. and now for 1,970 words on the subject. We’ll start by saying that we absolutely don’t always know what we’re doing when we do something (us = so not experts) so we just try to take things one day at a time and learn as we go. We make tons of mistakes. You’ve just gotta feel your way around and course-correct along the way.

The reality is that doing something, even if it’s a bad something, is so much a lot more of a learning experience than doing nothing and being frozen in indecision (which never really gets your house anywhere). So here are a few live-and-learn mistakes of ours that come to mind:
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1. getting an expensive-for-us Pottery Barn sofa. I don’t think we’ll ever be able to get a sofa without seeing it in person (and sitting down on that baby). The reason we got a PB one for our first house’s den was because we bought a more affordable sofa from target.com and then it arrived and it was terrible. The scale and proportion was all wrong and it was hard as a rock. Thankfully it was fully returnable, but we were left feeling like “maybe you have to spend a lot on something to get something good” so we saved up and bought the PB basic sofa after sitting on it in the store (to the tune of around $1300 with delivery at the time).

But in all of the 3+ years that we spent with it, we never really loved it. It’s absolutely just one of those personal preference things but it always felt kind of baggy and frumpy. Here’s a less glamorous look of those top cushions from this old old old post from back in the day:

It just never felt/looked as great as the living room sofa that we actually paid $400 less for from Rowe (read about that here). even Karl the sectional (who is three times bigger) was less expensive! He’s also a lot more comfy and looks a lot more like “us” than our old PB sofa (which we craigslisted for $500 before the big move). So I guess the lesson that we learned was that just because something is a lot more expensive, it’s not always better.

2. Black trim in the bathroom. bad idea. but I’m delighted we tried it. I had this amazing graphic Domino vision and it was not just working. but it only took about two hours to paint it…

… and then unpaint it. and it didn’t hurt to eliminate a few other odd items like the blue plastic shower curtain, my blue pashmina window treatment (that was absolutely a work with whatcha got oddity), and those funny old shutters on the windows (among other things).

So the black trim was absolutely a mistake worth making, just to learn that it wasn’t the ideal step so we could get past it and find out what we really liked. turned out white on white on white made for a great day spa like effect until we could reno the entire shower room (up close the original tile was a disaster, so it sadly couldn’t be saved).

3. Not bringing enough furniture into a room. like our stark and completely non-functional living room in the early days:

This mistake was pretty easy to remedy over time. We just saved our pennies and slowly added items to fill out the long skinny never-used-it-at-all room. Here’s here’s how it looked a few years into the whole evolution (adding a dining area off of the kitchen was a lot a lot more functional, so we used the room a lot more).

4. Going too crazy with our whole house color scheme. At first we thought every room called for a different color of the rainbow- read a lot more about that here).

The black trim shower room debacle taught us to try something, even if it doesn’t always work out. and this is a lot more of that lesson. slowly over time we tried a bunch of colors, identified the ones we loved best, painted over the rest, and ended up with a sea-glass inspired palette for our first house that was really welcoming and serene.

For our current house we’re in the mood for something a bit a lot more moody, risky, and sophisticated (who wants to clone the same house twice?). could be awesome. might suck. only time will tell!

5. Dinky, not-big-enough items. even if your space is small, we’ve learned that lots of small furniture or art & accessories can actually make it feel smaller (and a lot more cluttered) – at least through our eyes. Yup, we’re absolutely fans of a nicely sized sofa or a large scale art item to add a little something extra. Some might say we like things too big (that’s what she said), but the drama of a gigantic light fixture, like this one in our current bedroom…

… or an oversized vase, like this one in our hallway…

… seems to add interest and presence to spaces that might not feel as special without them. Whatever tickles your pickle I guess (one alot more time, that’s what she said). Of course when Clara gets a little bigger we might have to nix the gigantic glass objects, but we’ll cross that bridge hide that vase when we get there. Ha.

6. growing lawn everywhere. A bag of lawn seed is absolutely more affordable than a bunch of bushes, and the easy-care regional lawn that we use doesn’t need much water or weeding once it’s well established (we don’t use fertilizer or sprinklers or anything). but it’s still a lot to mow. It used to take John at least an hour and a half to mow the front and back yards of our first house. and in the summer it would grow like crazy so it absolutely ate into our “fun family time.”

Keeping a a lot more naturalized landscape with a few areas of lawn for the pup and the kiddo(s) is a lot more of the plan when it pertains to this house. So we’ll absolutely add some lawn in a few places for t-ball and picnics, but we hope to leave other areas au naturale (and add low maintenance wildflowers, grasses, ground cover, etc).

7. Not relying enough on craigslist and thrift stores for furnishings. some of our favorite items, like our old living room coffee table (which is now being borrowed by John’s parents), the white slipcovered chair from the den (which now lives in the sunroom), the white pedestal table from our old sunroom (which now sits in the living room by the window) and Clara’s old dresser (which still resides in her room) are secondhand finds that cost less than $30 each. Yup, we paid under $120 for a gigantic 6-drawer dresser, a large white pedestal table, a crisp slipcovered armchair, and a two tiered glass and iron coffee table. Insanity.

We’re so delighted we didn’t end up dropping $200+ for each thing from a big box store. and considering that moving into our new house we’ve added eight dining chairs from craigslist (scored for just $25 a pop) along with two $35 chairs from a secondhand shop, and all of the fun thrifted finds seen here. Secondhand treasures = yes please.

8. Not building things. It’s not that hard. even though we’re the first to admit that it sounds intimidating (it took us three months to work up the nerve to tackle our most current build). but everything from our custom-made door-topped desk and our postcard shelves to the book ledges that John made in the nursery were so budget-friendly and doable when we think back.

And now that John’s tackling our 140″ console table (he’s still hard at work – details soon). There’s something sweet and poetic about making furniture together at home (even if you’re just the cheerleader, and even better if you’re the one slinging the drill). Petersik-style romance is building something under your own roofing (or outside in the yard). Sawdust + teamwork (even if it’s just me enjoying Clara and cheering John on while he works) = amore.

9. The whole matchy-matchy crime. In our first house we learned that we love a mixture of dark wood and white painted pieces along with brown artificial leather upholstery mixed with white slipcovers and and even a few soft painted pieces (like a celery toned bookcase or bench). and in our current place we’re having fun switching things up by adding a lot more boldness, different wood tones, and even things like gray beams or deep saturated walls. but one thing’s for sure. We’ll never have a room full of furnishings that are all the exact same wood tone or the same upholstery fabric. It’s just too much fun to switch it up with things like a green luggage-rack-turned-side-table (see how we DIYed that here)…

… or create a two-tone dresser like Clara’s (that we DIYed here).

10. getting things that don’t work with anything else in our house. We thankfully never gotten a gigantic piece of furniture that didn’t fit in with anything else that we own (other than the PB sofa we never really loved), but we’ve absolutely picked up pillows and accessories that never felt quite ideal with other items in our house (and eventually they made it into the Goodwill/yard sale pile). read a lot more about trying to avoid grabbing tons of stuff that doesn’t work with the rest of the stuff that you already have here.

11. Refinishing the floors of our first house with standard materials like oil-based stain and polyurethane. It stunk for months. We both got headaches for weeks and it felt really unhealthy, even though we ran fans and cracked windows (even in the dead of winter). thank goodness it was two years before Clara was born (read a lot more about that floor refinishing process here and here).

Moving forward we’d only use green products like just-as-amazing water based stain and eco sealants that aren’t full of nasty VOCs and odors that hang in the air for months on end (a local place called Eco Logic here in Richmond sells that stuff, which we plan to use when we redesign our floors someday).

12. getting a boob lights (yes, that’s a technical term). Or getting any interim item for that matter. For us it’s normally best just to wait and get something fantastic that we love when we can afford it instead of rushing to get something just to fill space until the real purchase is made later (read a lot more on that here). We gotten a boob light for something like $10 to get rid of the old never-used ceiling fan in our first house’s tiny guest bedroom.

The switch quickly made the small space feel ten times bigger, but we later switched El Boob out for a nicer long term fixture (learn how we made it here):

So if we really plan things out we’ve learned that we can save a step or two (and some money, even if it’s only $10) and not introduce boob lights to begin with. Or any other just-for-now-and-we’ll-upgrade-later item.

And so ends our little hope-we-don’t-make-these-mistakes-again-but-will-probably-make-others roundup. Of course all of these “errors” are subjective. You know what they say: “one man’s decorating ooops is another man’s decorating booyah.” wait they don’t say that? Oh well. These are just a few of the things that pertained to mind when we looked back and tried to come up with “stuff we don’t wanna do again.” We’re sure there are probably fifty other decorating and renovating whoopsies looming in our future. but I guess I’ll be corny and say whisper “bring it on.” how else will we learn what we love (and don’t) if not by trial and error? delighted mistake making to one and all!

Update – Wanna know where we got something in our house or what paint colors we used? just click on this button: 

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