when i first saw eleanor grosch’s - of push me pull you - work in person at art star philly i immediately feel in love with animal pattern prints. and although i’ve never met her in person, when i saw the pictures from her charming home, i couldn’t help but think this house looks like her! from the bright colors to great finds, eleanor does a great job showing how to make a house a home (more, full-sized images here). to feel even more at home, don’t forget to try out her “in the kitchen with” recipe for strawberry tofu pie. [thanks so much, eleanor!] -anne
My bedroom is painted chartreuse and a lot of the accents are either turquoise or dark brown. I have a lovely Charley Harper screenprint of a Trumpeter swan hung above my bed; it’s from the Ford Times era of his work which is my favorite! The little side table is actually a telephone seat that I found at a thrift store. My bedspread is from Urban (the colors are perfect!) and the beautiful elephant head is from Thailand.
The kitchen in my house is little, but I painted it bright turquoise to liven the area up a bit. I was lucky to get all new appliances with the house, but I would have loved to have seen how this kitchen looked before it was made over with the new cabinets and granite counter top. I’m hoping to replace the ugly floor tiles with 1” hex tiles in black and white sometime soon. To offset the turquoise walls, I installed some lincrusta (linoleum wall paper) and painted it off white. It’s water resistant and washable, so it’s perfect for a high-traffic area like this. My brother bought me lovely copper pots and pans for my birthday a few years ago; they fit nicely with the colorscheme in the kitchen! I display two mexican paintings of birds that were my grandfather’s.
I painted the rickety old staircase alternating moss green and white just like I saw in domino magazine (love it!) and beneath the staircase on the outer wall, I have a bright red anthropologie console table that I got on sale a few months ago, a print from hammerpress, a silver deer sculpture I got in Cambodia, and some other little knick knacks.
The double use studio and guest room take up the 3rd bedroom in the house.
Mint and Moss are the colors I chose to start with in the house. The floors are a lovely warm oak with darker wood inlay and really set off the green walls well. I got a great carpenter to restore all the moulding and replace the crappy hollow doors with salvaged 5 panel ones. Then I painted all the trim and most of the doors an “antique white” to recapture the vintage look that I love so much. I adore Charley Harper (obviously!!) and bought a good few of his prints , two of which are displayed in the dining room. Also, I found some great prints and other stuff on Etsy (bird print by ashleyg). The chairs and tulip table are antiques that I found on ebay; I recovered the chairs with anthropologie bird print dishcloths. They look so cute and they’re totally washable. The side table is another great find from ebay; it’s the perfect size for this room and holds some favorite items such as my jonathan adler bird bowl and an old printer’s tray that has some little items in some of its nooks. The armoire is a side of the road find that I haven’t repainted. It just happened to fit in really nicely with my color scheme. I added some anthro knobs to it to spice it up a bit. Tole floral light fixtures are so pretty. I bought two (the chandelier and the tall lamp ) on ebay also. I’m definitely an addict!
