12 Design Mistakes We (Hopefully) Will not Make Again, gathered in one list
Q: I have an idea for a journal post. “Design mistakes we will not make again.” As I look through pictures of all the striking work you’ve done, I am thinking of choosing many similar styles & purchases. But then I wonder, over time – did you ever regret a design choice? – Shannon
A: That is a good one. And now for 1,970 words on the subject. We will start by saying that we certainly do not consistently know what we are doing when we do something (us = so not experts) so we simply try to take things one day at a time and learn as we go. We make tons of mistakes. You’ve simply gotta feel your way around and course-correct along the way.
The reality is that doing something, even if it is a bad something, is so much more of a learning experience than doing nothing and being frozen in indecision (which never truly gets your house anywhere). So here are a few live-and-learn mistakes of ours that come to mind:
1. Buying an pricey-for-us Pottery Barn sofa. I do not think we will ever be able to buy 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 ordered a cheaper 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 “perhaps you have to spend a lot on something to get something good” so we saved up and ordered 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 truly enjoyed it. It is totally simply one of those personal preference things but it consistently felt kind of baggy and frumpy. Here is a less glamorous glimpse of those top cushions from this old old old post from back in the day:
It simply never felt/looked as pleasant as the living room sofa that we in fact paid $400 less for from Rowe (read about that here). Even Karl the sectional (who is three times bigger) was less pricey! He’s also more comfy and looks 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 simply because something is more pricey, it is not consistently better.
2. Black trim in the bathroom. Bad idea. But I am glad we tried it. I had this cool graphic Domino vision and it was not simply working. But it only took about two hours to paint it…
… and then unpaint it. And it did not hurt to eliminate a few other odd items like the blue plastic shower curtain, my blue pashmina window treatment (that was certainly a work with whatcha got oddity), and those funny old shutters on the windows (among other things).
So the black trim was certainly a mistake worth making, simply to learn that it was not the right move so we could get past it and find out what we truly liked. Turned out white on white on white made for a pleasant spa like effect until we could reno the whole bathroom (up close the original tile was a disaster, so it sadly could not be saved).
3. Not bringing sufficient furniture into a room. Like our stark and fully non-functional living room in the early days:
This mistake was fairly straightforward to remedy over time. We simply saved our pennies and slowly brought in items to fill out the long skinny never-used-it-at-all room. Here is here is how it looked a few years into the whole evolution (adding a dining area off of the kitchen was 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 distinct color of the rainbow- read more about that here).
The black trim bathroom debacle taught us to try something, even if it does not consistently work out. And this is more of that lesson. Slowly over time we tried a bunch of colors, identified the ones we enjoyed best, painted over the rest, and ended up with a sea-glass inspired palette for our first house that was truly welcoming and serene.
For our current house we are in the mood for something a bit more moody, risky, and sophisticated (who wants to clone the same house twice?). Could be excellent. Might suck. Only time will tell!
5. Dinky, not-big-sufficient items. Even if your space is small, we have learned that plenty of small furniture or art & accessories can in fact make it feel smaller (and more cluttered) – at least through our eyes. Yup, we are certainly 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 is what she said), but the drama of a giant 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 more time, that is what she said). Of course when Clara gets a little bigger we might have to nix the giant glass objects, but we will cross that bridge hide that vase when we get there. Ha.
6. Growing grass everywhere. A bag of grass seed is certainly cheaper than a bunch of bushes, and the straightforward-care regional grass that we use does not need much water or weeding once it is established (we do not use fertilizer or sprinklers or anything). But it is 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 certainly ate into our “lively family time.”
Keeping a more naturalized landscape with a few areas of grass for the pup and the child(s) is more of the plan when it comes to this house. So we will certainly add some grass 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 sufficient on craigslist and thrift stores for furnishings. Some of our go-to 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 giant 6-drawer dresser, a large white pedestal table, a crisp slipcovered armchair, and a two tiered glass and iron coffee table. Insanity.
We are so glad we did not end up dropping $200+ for each thing from a big box store. And since moving into our new house we have brought in eight dining chairs from craigslist (scored for simply $25 a pop) along with two $35 chairs from a secondhand shop, and all of the lively thrifted finds seen here. Secondhand treasures = yes please.
8. Not building things. It is not that hard. Even though we are the first to admit that it sounds intimidating (it took us three months to work up the nerve to tackle our latest build). But everything from our custom door-topped desk and our postcard shelves to the book ledges that John made in the nursery were so affordable 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 is something sweet and poetic about making furniture together at home (even if you are simply the cheerleader, and even better if you are the one slinging the drill). Petersik-style romance is building something under your own roof (or outside in the yard). Sawdust + teamwork (even if it is simply me watching Clara and cheering John on while he works) = amore.
9. The whole matchy-matchy crime. In our first house we learned that we enjoy a mixture of dark wood and white painted pieces along with brown faux 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 are having lively switching things up by adding more boldness, distinct wood tones, and even things like gray beams or deep saturated walls. But one thing’s for sure. We will never have a room full of furnishings that are all the exact same wood tone or the same upholstery fabric. It is simply too much lively 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. Buying things that do not work with anything else in our house. We thankfully never picked up a giant piece of furniture that did not fit in with anything else that we own (other than the PB sofa we never truly enjoyed), but we have certainly picked up pillows and accessories that never felt quite right with other items in our house (and eventually they made it into the Goodwill/yard sale pile). Read more about trying to avoid grabbing tons of stuff that does not work with the rest of the stuff that you already have here.
11. Refinishing the floors of our first house with traditional materials like oil-based stain and polyurethane. It stunk for months. We both got headaches for weeks and it felt truly 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 more about that floor refinishing process here and here).
Moving forward we’d only use green products like simply-as-remarkable water based stain and eco sealants that are not 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 redo our floors someday).
12. Buying a boob lights (yes, that is a technical term). Or buying any interim item for that matter. For us it is typically best simply to wait and get something remarkable that we enjoy when we can afford it instead of rushing to buy something simply to fill space until the real purchase is made later (read more on that here). We picked up a boob light for something like $10 to get rid of the old never-used ceiling fan in our first house’s compact guest bedroom.
The switch instantly 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 truly plan things out we have learned that we can save a step or two (and some money, even if it is only $10) and not introduce boob lights to begin with. Or any other simply-for-now-and-we will-upgrade-later item.
And so ends our little hope-we-do not-make-these-mistakes-again-but-will-likely-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 do not say that? Oh well. These are simply a few of the things that came to mind when we looked back and tried to come up with “stuff we do not wanna do again.” We are sure there are likely fifty other decorating and renovating whoopsies looming in our future. But I guess I will be corny and say whisper “bring it on.” How else will we learn what we enjoy (and do not) if not by trial and error? Glad mistake making to one and all!
Update – Wanna know where we got something in our house or what paint colors we used? Simply click on this button:
