Get Courtney Giles' Style

Winter has returned to Houston today for one last, icy blast. It's gray, drizzly, and 45 degrees and I'm reminded so much of March in Connecticut. Over the horrors of February weather, you felt for sure that spring must be right around the corner and yet so often winter lingered until well after spring break.

All this bad, wintry weather has me wanting to hibernate until spring in a beautiful, cozy bedroom like the one pictured here designed by Atlanta-based decorator Courtney Giles, who I found via the always inspiring Habitually Chic. I can't get over how much I like this room. The color palette of dark blue-gray walls and orange bed with white linens with navy accents is unusual and bold. The modern elements like the greek key pillow and zig zag rug are the perfect counterpoints to the more traditional buffalo-plaid accent chair, bureau and collection of china plates.

And because I love the "steal their style" feature from LivingEtc, here are the essential elements that you'd need to get this look at home. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattering.

Gustavian Vintage Bed from Viva Terra ($1,995-2,095): Because a bed purchase is usually a big investment, I would generally advise against an orange bed, which would invariably require reupholstering whenever you wanted to switch up the look. Instead, why not get be inspired by the shape of the bed rather than the color (as shown here), and go with a bed that will transition to other rooms and styles as your needs and tastes evolve? Moreover, the antique styling and dark wood of the Gustavian bed echo the wood pieces in Courtney's bedroom.

Ribbon Chainlink and Applique Duvet from Williams-Sonoma Home ($58-$288): You can find white sheets with navy trim just about anywhere, but I love the look and feel of this set from WS Home.

Missoni Home Hector Throw in Orange from Pillows and Throws ($275): To inject the all-important shot of orange into your space, why not use accessories? I'm completely covetous of Missoni's Hector Throw, which comes in myriad of colors, including this soft orange. What's more, it's perfect for this space as its tone-on-tone zig zag pattern is a subtle nod to the MW rug. Orange accessories (in the form of a lamp or vases) could further up the ante.

Greek key Pillow from Jonathan Adler (no longer available): Alas, the Greek-key pillow that Courtney used is no longer available, but you can find a similar look here. Fingers crossed though that Jonathan Adler reissues his destined-to-be-iconic pillow soon though.

Navy Gingham 1" checks fabric from Fashion Fabrics Club ($4.45/yard): Any tired hand-me-down chair could be given a fresh new look with some navy and white buffalo plaid. Even better, you can score this fabric for under $5/yard.

Flea Market Chandelier from Pottery Barn Kids ($129): Pottery Barn Kids and PB Teen are both great sources for fun and inexpensive lighting (and rugs, actually). No one will ever guess it was made for kids. I promise.

Assorted Blue and White China from eBay (various, but generally under $10/plate): Inexpensive blue and white china can be found in abundance on eBay or at your local flea market or Goodwill. You'll score plates well under $10 a piece and achieve that artfully mismatched-but-cohesive look that you're after here for next to nothing.

Blue & White Zig Zag Rug from Madeline Weinrib (approx. $900 for 8'x10'): I love how fresh and graphic this rug feels while still maintaining a bit of bohemian edge. I've been dying to visit ABC Carpet and Home for a while now and am sorely tempted to make a trip to NYC just to snag one of these babies for myself.

Victoria Scalloped Mirror from Pottery Barn ($159): There are an abundance of star burst mirrors out on the market right now, but since I am getting a little bit tired of them, I thought I'd show you this mirror, which I think compliments the other elements of the room just as well. I also like how the curves of the mirror play off the curves of the Gustavian bed; both nice counterpoints to the very linear patterns at work throughout the space.

And finally, for paint color, I'd go for Benjamin Moore's "Flint" (if you want more gray) or "Mysterious" (if you want more blue), both from the new Affinity line. Either way, try an eggshell or pearl finish -- some sort of sheen will better reflect light, and will keep the room from looking too cave-like.

LLLUUUUUUUUCCCCYYYYYYYYYYYYY

Is it just me or does this ensemble that Alexander McQueen sent down the runway this week remind you just a little bit of Lucy Ricardo, from I Love Lucy?

Okay, okay. I grant that, while you sometimes drew outside the lines, even you didn't use that much lipstick. But still, I feel as though you're about the only person who could pull this look off (even if you were just trying to go incognito to spy on Ricky).

By the way, be sure to check out all of McQueen's completely crazy (and yet completely entertaining) Fall 2009 collection HERE. It's equal parts Cruella de Vil, venice carnival, and Japanese geisha. Don't miss the chainmail-under-ballgown look or the double-umbrella hat -- they're my favorites.

Filling In the Gaps

Over the last two weeks, Dave and I have been sprucing up our pine floors, which run throughout the majority of our house. While pine's heavy grain has a beautiful and rustic quality, it's a relatively soft wood, and as a result can be a major pain to deal with. Indentations from dogs, cats and high heels have all made their marks on our floor, but I'd really just consider that some "character".

The real problem has been in between the wood. Since these aren't engineered planks, there's no interlocking system keeping them next to each other; the floor boards are just nailed straight into the subfloor. And so, as our house has settled (which all houses in Houston inevitably do), the boards have spread apart. The prior owner had filled many of these gaps with wood filler, which was stained to match the floors' finish. And that was fine until Olivia came on the scene. Last spring, Olivia managed -- I'm not quite sure how -- to actually eat most of the filler in the wider gaps. Suddenly, the floors started to look like this:

Not horrible, but definitely noticeable, especially when you repeat this over, oh, 800 square feet of exposed floor. Fearing that the only way to properly fix the floors was a full-on refinishing (which would require (a) removing all our furniture and (b) more money than we wanted to put into fixing the problem), we put off doing anything about it for months. Recently, however, as we contemplate a move (more on that later), we decided it was time to face the music. Luckily for us, the music was pretty sweet: the floors could be fixed without refinishing; some wood filler was all they needed. Encouraged, we decided to tackle the project ourselves. First stop was a trip to Loew's for the necessary supplies.

In order to fill the spaces between your floor boards, you'll need some wood filler. We stumbled on Elmer's Wood Filler, which comes in two convenient sizes depending on the size of your job. This stuff works great. Like their school glue, Elmer's wood filler is water soluble, which makes for super-easy clean up (no worrying about getting the filler all over your floor -- you can just clean up at the end with a mop, water and a little elbow grease). To apply the filler, simply use a spackle knife and smooth some of the filler over the cracks, sweeping perpendicular to the crack/hole. Keeping smoothing the area over with your spackle knife until the filler is flat with the surrounding area, applying more filler as necessary. Since the filler will reduce a little bit as it dries, you may need to come back with a second application for deeper crevices. Once we finished applying the filler (and cleaning up), our floors looked like this:

We let the filler dry overnight before we went back over it with a Mimwax wood finish stain marker (we used "Early American" finish), which works just like any other paint pen. Staining the filler was actually far more tedious than applying it in the first place (though clean-up was -- as usual -- my least favorite part of the whole process) and I managed to get it all over me. Because of the huge area we had to fix, the entire process took us several weeknights and a good bit of a Saturday, but smaller jobs could easily be tackled in an afternoon. But the finished product turned out pretty well I think:

In the above photo, you can see how beat up our floors really are in some places, but I think the filled crack blends in pretty well, don't you? As a warning about the Mimwax stain markers: they don't go very far; in fact, we ended up running through a half dozen of them during the course of the job, so I'd suggest buying several if you're doing anything more than a minor touch up or two. Additionally, I thought the stain was rather transparent, so we ended up having do go over most areas several times to get the right depth of color.

Now that we've finished the project and our cleaning service thoroughly cleaned the floors, I'm really happy with the result. It took a good bit of work, but by doing it ourselves, we saved a lot of money on labor and in the end spent less than $100 on the necessary supplies. My only regret is that I didn't do it sooner!