This post could also be titled:
How to work with 25-foot ceilings.
OR
How to work with a paint color on 25-foot ceilings that you now hate.
OR
How to work with a paint color on 25-foot ceilings that you now hate.
OR
How to work with a sofa you bought waaaay too fast you now can’t stand.
OK, so let’s move on. Remember when I showed you how to cut and install molding here? Well, this is what I was working on:
This wall goes up reeeeeally high, and when we moved in, I knew I had to do something economical to decorate it. I didn’t want to spend one meeeeeellion dollars (thanks Jennifer!) on a massive art piece, so I ended up painting a huge rectangle on the wall and hung some vases in it.
We loved it at first and then the room was just blah. Big massive sofa that didn’t work with the wall color. Big massive wall that didn’t work with the sofa color:
So I got a bunch of brilliant ideas and spent just $3o to do a mini-transformation in the room. I added a little bit of molding to the rectangle and moved the vases around. I knew I needed something else to give the furniture more height. So I made a sofa table out of planks of wood. (It was incredibly easy, I’ll show you how to do it soon!) It was just what the room needed:
I covered the “sofa table” in fabric and found accessories from the basement. Later I made new curtains and added the pillows, pulling in some more color. Pulled the ficus tree from the dining room for some more height:
Well, the ficus tree would practically devour anyone who sat near it. I have Christmas party pics of our friends shooing it out of their hair. It had to go. And all the sudden, EVERY TIME I saw those vases and flowers, I wanted to rip them off. the. wall. They were driving me mad.
So what’s a girl to do on the cheap?? Add more molding!:
For just a few bucks, it created a whole new look in the room. I also removed the fabric covering the sofa table and just painted the wood instead. Again, I pulled from around the house and the basement to make the accessories work better: 
Before: 
After:
The wall color is still driving me nutzo and the sofa is OH-so-comfortable but a couch cover is calling my name. But we really, really love this room now.
For just a few bucks, it created a whole new look in the room. I also removed the fabric covering the sofa table and just painted the wood instead. Again, I pulled from around the house and the basement to make the accessories work better: 
Before: After:
The wall color is still driving me nutzo and the sofa is OH-so-comfortable but a couch cover is calling my name. But we really, really love this room now.
This is something I cannot stress enough — I think making a room you absolutely love can take a lot of time. This transformation has taken five years and I’m sure I’m not done yet. You have to live with it, see what works, what doesn’t — before you find the happy ending.
