Everything for this room arrived in boxes, one piece at a time. Before another dollar goes out, it all comes out and goes on one surface together.
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I am building this room around a pair of green lamps.
I had been looking at them for over a year. Green is my husband’s favorite color, and not green generally, a very particular shade of it. When I finally bought them it settled what the room would become, because almost everything since has had to answer to that green.
Most of what is going into this room is for him. The bed was ours, but the dresser at his bedside was his grandmother’s and the color on the wall will be his. I am fine with that. I am also aware that if I am not careful I will finish it and find that I am not represented in it anywhere.
That is the actual reason I build a board.
Why a board and not a cart
A cart tells you what things cost. A board tells you whether they agree with each other.
Everything for this room arrived in boxes, one piece at a time. Fabric in a bag. Hardware in a box. Paper in a tube. You cannot judge any of it that way. A curtain ring on its own is an isolated idea.
So it all comes out and goes on one surface, together, in the same light, and I look at it before another dollar is spent.
I did this on the dresser in the entry, because that is where it is at the moment. It came down for its facelift and it goes back up when the room is done.
What is not moving
The bed is a cherry sleigh, headboard and footboard, in a medium neutral stain. We bought it when we moved into this house and it is still the best thing in the room. Nothing in this refresh touches it.
It came as a set — the bed, a dresser, a chest, and one nightstand. One, because we were trying to save money. It was heirloom quality and the only way to afford it was to give something up, so we gave up the second nightstand and the mirror that came with the dresser.
I have never once missed the mirror.
The nightstand is a different story, and what it cost us is still standing on both sides of the bed. His side is his grandmother’s dresser, the one I cleaned up a few weeks ago. It has been in this house all along and it is getting a facelift, not a replacement. My side is a different antique dresser, close in size and close in color, and a far more ornate piece.
The two of them do not go together at all.
They still beat the alternative. One matching nightstand next to a dresser is a scale problem, and a scale problem is not something you stop noticing. It would gnaw at me. Two antiques that disagree about style but agree about scale read better than a matched piece that is the wrong size.
That is the same argument at furniture scale. You do not replace the good thing because you are bored of the room around it. You build the room back up to it.
The bed is on the board too, in the sense that everything else has to be able to sit next to it without arguing.
The window behind the bed
The window sits directly behind the bed.
The answer is drapery, hung the full width, falling behind the headboard. Not instead of a headboard. I know the no-headboard look has its people. I am not one of them.
Four panels of olive linen, pinch pleated, on a warm gold rod with a French return. The rod is called warm gold and the rings are called antique brass, which sounds like a mismatch. It is not. Side by side I cannot tell them apart. Two sellers, two names, one finish, and that is worth knowing if you are buying your hardware in pieces.
The panels are forty inches wide and I am using four. I may add two more. That is a decision I can only make with the fabric in my hands, which is another thing a board is for.
What else is on it
Sconces, plug-in and swing arm. The cords run down behind the curtain panels and come through where two panels meet, so nothing has to be hardwired and nobody has to open a wall.
The lamps, obviously, since they started it.
A clock, a pair of trinket dishes, a small brass frame. The things that end up on a nightstand, get chosen last, and matter more than what they cost.
Bedding is a Casaluna quilt I already own, a chunky knit blanket, and two euro pillows. They are on the board because the wall has to work with what is already on the bed, and not the other way around.
The duvet is from HomeGoods, and I tracked down the same one online afterward, which is not how that usually ends.
And four papers
Four peel and stick papers, ordered as small rolls rather than full ones. A full roll is not a small purchase and I was not going to buy four of them to find out which one I liked.
It is worth saying what peel and stick actually is, though. This is the economical end of wallpaper. Traditional paper means paste, a professional or a very patient weekend, and a wall you have committed to. Peel and stick goes up without help and comes back off again. It is still an investment and I am treating it like one. It is just the version I can afford to be wrong about.
Two were out almost immediately. Held up next to the olive lamps and the olive drapery they disappeared a bit too much. Not enough pop. In a room where the loudest thing is already a lamp, the wall cannot also be polite.
Which leaves two, and they are the one thing this board has not settled.
What the board is for, in the end
Everything on that dresser is green, or gold, or answers to green. That is the room, and the room is largely his.
The pattern I keep reaching for is my attempt at balancing a very masculine color with something slightly feminine. That is always the challenge for a couple sharing a space with different aesthetic sensibilities, and a board is where you find out whether you managed it, while it is still cheap to be wrong.
Standing here in front of this grouping, it feels warm and inviting. I hope that the calm and cozy feeling translates when the paper is hung and everything is in its place. There’s only one way to know for sure. Plan and choose carefully as you may, but a little leap of faith is always needed.
So before anything goes on a wall: what would you put on the board for a room you are sharing with somebody whose taste is not yours?
Sources
Table lamps, Threshold designed with Studio McGee
Drapery, MIULEE pinch pleated blackout linen in Loden
Curtain rod, warm gold with French return
Wall sconces, plug-in swing arm
Wallpaper, dark blue and olive floral
Table clock, Hearth & Hand with Magnolia
Trinket dishes, Hearth & Hand with Magnolia
Brass frame with etched detail, 5×7, Hearth & Hand with Magnolia
The duvet came from HomeGoods, but you can buy the same one here: Cabbages & Roses Alderney Duvet
