SmartTart's Profile

Plan 1) If you do not have many guests over for dinner, you can use the eat-in kitchen as your dining area and use the diningroom/ livingroom as the living room (the entire area). You can add a fold down leaf to the eat-in kitchen island to add more place settings and counter space or fold it down to save space.

Plan 2) Use the couch as a room divider between the living area and the kitchen and dining area by adding a sofa table to the back and put the television on the opposite wall.

I think the only way to display a flat screen TV above a fireplace is to make a frame for it and when it is not in use, you can display an art DVD on the screen with all of your favorite pieces of art work on it. Otherwise, a TV in that location can look out of place depending on how modern the design of the home is.

Too many throw pillows on a couch is the perfect fix for a client who owns pieces of furniture that they do not want pets on. The pillow can easily be removed for a desired guest. Most of the time, a pet will take one look at a couch filled with pillows and not even attempt to jump on it. If they still do, then covering the piece may be necessary.

My pet peave is going by that old rule that even numbers of the same type of decor looks contrived. I think depending on what the goal is, the rule should be left open for debate.

Diagonal is a good idea! If you never use the fireplace, you can clean it, close it up, and put a tv inside it, face the sofa toward it and put a sofa table along the back of the sofa. Or use the mantle as a tv stand.

A spare bedroom can be used as a tv room. It's great because it has a bathroom and you can turn the closet into a butler's pantry equipt with a mini fridge and microwave!

You could actually kill two birds with one stone by not buying window treatments and opting for the genie in a bottle look. The process can be even more renter friendly and faster to accomplish by tacking up or 3Ming velcro strips to the tops of the walls and the tops of the curtains (preferably gathered curtains to get the desired effect) and just stuck on. Same for small spaces below windows when the drapes in those areas are moved. Just attach under the window seal.

I would also paint the porch, stairs, and fence white to compliment the house. I would also put topiaries in the planters by the door. For the blank space on the wall, I'd add some lighting, a clock, or a solar powered fountain. When the fountain that is in the fountain that is in the center of the yard is not in use, I would cover it with a cousioned cover. One that can be locked in place so that there are no mishaps. This can provide extra seating on days when it is not in use. I think I would have landscaped the slope in the backyard differently also. I might have added a waterfall that flowed from the top to the bottom and into either a hot tub or a lap pool that stretched the length of the bottom of the slope. I would also cover the back porch area with a lattice of some sort and drape it with a flowering vine that is indiginous to that area. I would also make sure yard tools were put away and the waterhose was kept covered with something decorative.

For this room, I would have purchased a larger bed, put bed curtains around it, pushed it up against the window, hung a light fixture from the ceiling over the bed, and put small matching end tables on either side at the foot of the bed. I would just make the bed every morning starting from the window to the opposite side before getting out of the bed.

That's great! They also make fitted and tailored tv stand covers that are gorgeous. It makes using them for formal events or to decorate formal spaces an option.

Buying or making a fitted stool cover is an option also.