House woes

We’ve recently rearranged our entire living space! Our house is quite small, so we are trying to make the most of the space we have. We had a porch on one end of our house that we never ever used, so we closed it in and made it in to the living room! I love it out there. It’s bright even on cloudy days, and has a beautiful view.  Our old living room is our new dining room. I’m having a hard time with it! I like the location. But it looks… wrong. The walls look strange now that the entertainment system is gone from the one wall. So I have just decided to post my pictures and ideas here, and see what input you might have!

First, pictures of our current situation.

(yes, that is Cloe next to the fireplace, with a doily on her head!)

Here are the issues we have. I can’t duplicate exactly the yellow wash on the walls. I can’t change the tile floor or the tile/brick ceiling… so any colors we do have to work with those. I like the contrast we have going on the arches down the hallway. The maroon/brick color goes well with the ceiling AND floor. I’d like to add a little more color to the dining room walls, but still want to keep it mostly bright. Because once rainy season starts and we go weeks without sunshine, I need the light walls. I think. 🙂 So here’s my one and only idea!

I have this bunch of picture frames that Nathan made for me. Our idea was to make a sort of collage out of them. They are simple silver frames, and 2 pieces of glass that the picture goes between. Each frame is made to be a few inches larger than each picture, so that a little bit of the wall behind it is visible. I am thinking of painting the wall JUST behind the collage the same maroon/brick color as we have around the arch windows. Because I don’t love the way the yellow looks behind the pictures. Nathan suggested maybe painting a big brick-colored square on the right wall (the one that currently has the 3 mountain scenes on it), making a silver frame to go around it, then putting our collage of small frames inside that. Similar to something we saw in a Pottery Barn magazine one time. Then on the wall with the quilt and candles I want to paint a saying or verse or something. www.tradingphrases.com Has some ideas that I like a lot. But I would do the words in the same brick color.

I’ve also considered doing some kind of border up near the ceiling or maybe a chair rail of some sort… these walls are huge. All of our ceilings are 10′ so it feels like a ton of wall to deal with. But they are concrete and irregular so we can’t do anything like a wood chair rail or crown molding… the wall is too bumpy! What do you think? I can’t wait to read your thoughts.