housegal's Profile

Layout #2 for all the same reasons as above, especially with a narrow console table behind the couch to use as a buffet. Set off the living room part of the room with an area rug to anchor those pieces. Your dining corner needs an expandable round table, not another rectangle. You already have enough right angles with the possible sectional & console table.

I agree that you should be looking for small-scale sectional or couch. Here's one of several previous AT features on that: http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/good-questions-40-10090.

Visit the red couch page on Houzz, which has countless color combinations:

http://www.houzz.com/red-couch

One last thing. Define the couch/table space with a great-looking area rug.

I know that bathroom! Along with thousands of others, we too had that same, dreary generic bathroom. I just submitted our before and after shots in response to yours. Like you, something had to be done. I love what you did--so clean and smooth looking. I'm guessing that we're older folk, so our new bathroom has a different vibe. Hope AT can get the photos up so you can see how we dealt with the same design challenge you had.

My husband and I downsized from a house then went off to have a couple years of travel overseas while we put our remaining furniture in storage. Two trunks made the cut to the storage unit--a gorgeous pine sea captain's trunk we'd bought an antique shop and our daughter's camp trunk, which had formerly been my husband's camp trunk. Our daughter had plastered the camp trunk with My Little Pony stickers as well as travel stickers from years of family travel--Grand Canyon, Quechee Gorge, Catskill Game Farm, etc. When it came time to downsize again into a condo, guess which trunk made the cut? A local history professor bought the beautiful sea captain trunk, but the camp trunk is now in the den of our condo being used as a coffee table. It doesn't "go" with anything else. But we couldn't part with it. It's as battered as can be, the stickers have faded or curled up, it's not quite level or very sturdy, but it's family history!

I'm with the leave-the-original-wood-lots of mirrors-by-the-windos-white furniture-curtains-rugs folks. That's what a ski chalet should look like--in character. I would add Ikea's Makros lamps all over the place.

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/90147465/

They're white, come in large and medium sizes. Best of all Makros lamps look like snowflakes! They're beautiful. I'm sitting under one now in my sunroom/not-chalet/office. Go skiing, not painting.

I wish I could caption some of the photos, since I'm the granny. One of the photos shows Daphne's great-grandmother's evening mesh purse. The floppy bear-dressed-up-as a bunny was something my husband and I bought for Deirdre when she was a newborn. Many of the books are the parents' baby books.

Deirdre comes from a family of ten aunts!!!! many of whom chipped in for the crib. What's not there yet is a dollhouse a great-great aunt, long gone, brought home from Macy's in New York to Torrington, CT for eight of the aunts on Grandpa's side of the family. They generously bequeathed it to Deirdre. She made tiny furnishings for it with her dad while she was growing up and well before there was an Apartment Therapy. So there's some history going on in little Daphne's room, and we'll all be able to tell her stories about it.

Yes, it's all very glam for a little baby, but the baby rooms Daphne's grandparents and great-grandparents came from were pretty modest. So bring on the glam! In any case, most of it was put together from Craigslist, estate sales, eBay, Ikea, baby items wonderful friends passed on. I love the mix even though my husband and I still have the same stuff we bought forty years ago. I hope we get the next Apartment Therapy makeover: When Daughters Make Over Their Parents' Digs! It's gonna be a challenge.

Meanwhile, well done, Daughter!

I think I got the tarp and poles from a Home Depot. Maybe replacement tall tent poles would work as well.