Southern Living Idea House - Master Suite

This is the third post in a series about my tour of the Abercorn Place 2010 Southern Living Idea House in my hometown, Senoia, Georgia.


Here are ALL the Posts in this series -
House and Town details plus the Kitchen
The Top Floor - entertainment room and craft room
The Master Suite
The Main Floor - mostly the living room & dining room
Laundry and Children's Bedrooms
Family Room and More



I took tons of photos and have plenty more to share.  Today I am posting about the master suite, which is on the third floor.  Click here to see the floor plan.


The master suite picks up the colors used throughout the house - robin's egg blue and earth tones. 

I always like to see beside tables.  You can see if a person is more interested in creating a look or if their main thought is to keep what they need close by. In this case, since it's a staged house, it's not quite as much fun.  But I still found it interesting that the picture was propped, instead of hung.  If this were my house, I know that sometime in the night, the picture would be knocked over by me or one of the cats.  The lamp would go flying and my husband would wake up cussing.  Decorating is not easy at my house!  :-)

There's a sitting area opposite the bed.  I liked that the basket table pulled in another natural texture.  Everyone seemed to like the dog pillow.  You picture the owners of the house having a little four legged baby that they adore. It makes the decor less serious, which appeals to me.  I am not in love with this room.  I have tried to figure out why.  It's a nice room. I certainly don't dislike it.  At first I thought maybe I was wishing to see a few pops of a vibrant color.  But I love the bathroom, which you'll see in a bit and it uses these same colors.  I finally decided that this room is too serious and grown up for me.  I'm 54.  I should like a grown up room, right?  I guess I'm immature.  I like fun and whimsy.  I would like more whimsical touches - like the dog pillow.  I want to see a little more personality. 

The closet area is nice.  On one side of the hallway leading to the bath is a bank of built in storage.  Very nice.  Everything is tucked behind closed doors or drawers, so even if you make a mess in a last minute search for something, no one but you will know.

The walk in closet area is opposite.  The whole closet has this great organized closet look. 

Now, my favorite part of the master suite - the bathroom.  The tub is lovely.  Shut the door, fill the tug, Calgon take me away.

I fell completely in love with the burlap-textured curtains and bronze rod.  So much so that I think that's the look I'm going to go for in my master bath.  I have some make-do curtains there now.  I still haven't committed to a look for that room.  Now, I have a good starting point.  A while back I bought a set of the large grommets in this style of curtain.  I wanted to try them out and see if I could make it work and look nice.  I've never been pleased when trying to do smaller grommets in the past, but I keep hoping I can master them.

I like the over-sized ledge next to the tub.  The glass containers are pretty, but again I picture a catastrophe waiting to happen.  Wet hands, slippery glass...  big mess.  If I were more mature, I'm sure everything would be fine.  I would scoop out what I need before getting in the tub... before my hands were wet.

I've seen this idea before, and I love it.  The bathroom chair is covered in soft terrycloth.  My fanny would be very happy here.  However, I would have preferred to have a chair with a removable cushion, slipcovered in terrycloth.  My fanny would like that slipcover to be washed often!

His and her sinks like this were on opposite sides of the room.  The cabinets are nice and they work well in the room.

I didn't take photos of the shower and toilet area.  I think someone was in there looking around.  I should have waited.  I think I glanced in and decided there wasn't anything spectacular and I wanted to move on.  Anyway, I was still in the thrill zone from the curtains.

Want more while you wait?  Check these links -
Southern Living 2010 Official Developer Site
2010 Georgia Idea House - Southern Living's site
The Historic Senoia Project
Senoia View of Good Life - AJC article on the Idea House

I have linked this post to the following parties:

Making the World Cuter Monday at Making the World Cuter  

Motivate Me Monday at Keeping it Simple 

Show off Your Cottage Monday at The House in Roses 

Blue Monday at Smiling Sally

Keepin' The Loft Cool

My loft has lots of windows.  There are 5 large double windows that face the south.  Since we designed our house using passive solar principles, the sun does not come in through those windows during the hot months.  We get plenty of light from them, but not direct sun.  In the winter, the sun is lower in the sky and we get lots of sun for added warmth.

There are two smaller windows in the loft.  One faces east, the other west.  We get morning sun all year long through one and evening through the other.  That's fine when it's cold, but this time of year, way too much heat comes in.  They need to be covered when the weather is warm.

I had some not-so-pretty curtains hanging from a tension rod.  Then I discovered a better option.  The toile curtain/shade panels that I had made for the bedroom in our old house were just the right width for these windows.

East Side Window

I had planned to alter the length, but in playing around with them, I realized that just rolling them up at the bottom was good enough.  I have so much on my to do list right now.  Plus, the Nesting Place motto kept ringing through my head - It doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful. 

West Side Window

So, this turned into a really fast, easy and FREE solution.  Aren't those the best!?!?!?

I'm linking up to Nifty Thrifty Tuesdays at Coastal Charm.

Toile Curtains

My curtain project began before Christmas. I quickly realized that I had way too much going on and knew that it was highly unlikely that I could finish them before going back to work. So what did I do? I did a quick mistreatment (favorite decorating trick from The Nester). In fact, the job I did is less than mistreated. Cut sections of fabric are just clipped in place - a little crooked in places.

One of the panels is lined and sewn properly. Once they were all hung, no one seemed to notice which were complete and which weren't unless they made a point of examining them. I can be happy with that until I have a chance to get back to it.

The curtains still need a little something extra. I may add to them down the road - an extra bit of fabric at the top... maybe fringe... who knows. I have plenty of time to think about it.

Don't judge this room yet. It's a work in progress. The BONES of the room are coming along. I still need a couple of great tables, two more comfortable chairs (that can be slipcovered) and either a coffee table or large ottoman. Then I'll be ready for the fun. I know the fun will involve red and who knows what other colors. I'm watching for a great kicking off fabric. The fun things are easy to change when the mood strikes. It's easy to be brave and/or crazy with the fun things because it really doesn't cost much to change the extra touches - especially when your favorite shopping places are second hand stores.

Grown-Up Drapes for the Family Room

For the last year, we've been living with sheets on our family room windows. It has annoyed me for every one of those days. Like so many other spots in our home, this was an area that I knew would be improved one day. I have so many plans and ideas. I'm just short on money and time.

But finally, I am getting my family room curtains taken care of. I deliberated for ages on the fabric. I thought I would be going with red, but in the end, in went with black and cream toile. O ordered it from Fabric.com using a great coupon. I love toile! Even though it's a pattern, it's also somewhat of a neutral and it's easy to bring other colors and patterns in around it.

Years ago, I heard Christopher Lowell advise his viewers to go neutral on the big items. Then it's easy and inexpensive to change the look of the room by changing paint, pillows and "chotskies". Since I like to change things around often, I decided this was good advice for me.

Right now the room colors are starting to remind me of the coloring in the room pictured below. Don't get me wrong... I love that room. I look at that picture often. It's fabulous.
But, I plan to mix in more color. I want to add some brighter touches, like in this photo from Country Living. Try to imagine a blending of the two pictures. It will be tricky to pull off, but I'm going to try.
I originally thought I was going to make drapes with a top hanging over like the ones in this article by Jennifer Thoden. But if I did it with toile, the fabric scenes on the top part would be upside down, unless I sewed them in two pieces. Plus it would require more fabric. I already needed 36 yards just for plain panels.


Down the road, I could always come back and add a top panel like these pretty ones from Southern Hospitality.
Or add some trim, like The Nester likes to do. She likes to use her glue gun, but I wouldn't be able to do that, because with all our pets, it's important to be able to wash everything.
Stay tuned to see how my drapes turn out!

Drape Dilemna

What in the world can I do with all these windows? Our family room and dining room has a long expanse of windows. It was a wonderful idea except when it comes to window treatments. I plan to make drapes, but it will cost a fortune. I've been using sheets which I can later use for the lining, but that's getting old.

I hung a bunch of fabrics around today just to get an idea of how different colors looked in the room. It's pretty obvious that with the wall color I have, I'll need a color with some pop to it - no whites or tans or creams - nothing safe. It looks like I'll be stepping out of my comfort zone.


Everyone who saw the fabrics fell in love with the red, including me. That fabric is perfect. It's Stonington Vintage by Waverly. Unfortunately, that scrap is a bit old and I can't find that fabric anywhere. I suppose I'll be on the lookout for something similar.