One Room Challenge Drapery and Around Town

Jul 20

It's the second half of The One Room Challenge, and I'm busy busy busy trying to put all the pieces together. The photo above is one of my inspiration rooms and the drapery panels are very similar to what I want to do.

Here's my family room pre One Room Challenge. With the paneling and the vaulted ceiling, I think it goes a bit cottage. What do you think? I'm a former teacher, and have no education or training in interior design. I'm just a very enthusiastic enthusiast. And if you've been keeping up, you may be noticing that I keep repeating this. Yes, I'm hedging.

A trend I love is adding a header on drapery with a contrasting trim. This is the fabric I'll be using with a trim sample I picked up at Rutherford's here in Dallas. I love the trim with the fabric, but when I put it in the room, I got a strong feeling that it was just wrong. Since I'm not a designer, I get feelings instead of intelligent thoughts about these things. Putting something that goes too formal or sophisticated in here may be the problem for me. Or, I may be wanting to keep it soft, and the trim would create strong vertical lines. Who knows. I think I need to not use trim, or use something very subtle, like a tone on tone idea. Please share your thoughts.

A friend recommended that I look at the drapery panels at Restoration Hardware, so I went in Wednesday. It would have been nice to not have to go through having panels made custom, but the colors didn't work, and the prices are so high it would be more expensive than custom. Not good. Also, they make you pay for fabric samples. Each sample is $3, but you can return them. I didn't really like having to pay for swatches, or having to run an extra errand to return them. While I was there, I took some pictures. I think I'm too old or not hip enough to get the Restoration Hardware thing. See what you think.