This newsletter is my third in the “evolution of a space series” and so far it is the most straight-forward. I haven’t (yet) made any major mistakes in this room and where it ended up continues to set the tone for the whole house. So without further ado…our TV room.

The first thing to note is that the previous owners used it as a dining room. It had white beadboard and beige colored walls. The archways (leading to the kitchen and the entry) were red oak. There was a utility closet with a white door and a red oak built-in cabinet with glass doors on top.

I planned to use the room as a dining room as well. When we moved in July 2022, the only thing that had changed in the room was the floor (we had it stained darker with the rest of the downstairs) and we replaced the light. Before we had even moved north, I had purchased this poppy wallpaper from Serena & Lily. I experimented with two colors of green paint before deciding I would use Clare Paint Daily Greens on the beadboard and all the woodwork.

But for the first few months in the house, while the kitchen was under renovation, the room looked like the above. Pure chaos. (Why are there so many vitamins on that table? I have no memory of any of this.) You can see in the photo the walls are a different color. In anticipation of the future wallpapering, I hired the kitchen drywall guy to skim coat the walls so they would be smooth for application.

On the left in the photo above, you can see the vintage wood cabinet I found at a local consignment shop. I thought it would be a good fit for this future dining room.

Eventually the kitchen remodel had progressed enough that we could clear the room and I started to paint the beadboard and trim. Getting all the wood painted green made a huge difference. Suddenly, everything matched! What a simple win.