The mint walls are driving me crazy.

We’re renting, and our landlord has given us permission to paint if we’d like to.  We’ll definitely be painting the master bedroom (we already bought the paint), but we don’t want to invest too much time and money in repainting the house.

Still, the mint walls in the living room aren’t really up my alley.  Solution?  See what we can do to work with the mint walls.  I pulled up Photoshop yesterday evening to create a decor board and see if I could make the mint walls work with the other elements we have in that room.  I think I got it.  Here’s what I came up with:

LivingRoomMoodBoard

There are four elements in the room that won’t be changed:

1. The mint green paint.

2. The gold silk drapes (which belong to the homeowner).

3. The piano.

4. The brown upholstered furniture.  I’ve been designing around these two pieces for years.  Yes, I know we could slip cover them, but we’re working on a tight budget.

The remaining furniture can be painted:

5. The small media cabinet and the side table will be done over in French White.  This will give the room a much more modern and fresh feel.

6. This is the part I’m not sold on.  Our TV cabinet is a solid oak piece that’s a little dated.  I think a greyish tone on the body and a dark stain on the top like this would bring it more up to date.  Jason prefers the idea of looking for a free piece on Craigslist to customize.  I think I might agree with him on that.

7. This is my vision for The Four Pound Wonder, a piece my Dad found at the local tip when we lived in England.  He paid £4 for the old wardrobe, which has been outfitted with shelves for linens and silver and the like.  I’d like to do it over in a subtle metallic finish like this, and replace the [again, dated] stained glass with hammered metalwork.  The metal finish would coordinate with the gold curtains and with the frame around our Bayeux piece (seen here).

8. This guitar photo is by my friend Melissa; she took it on a trip to Mexico last year.  I gave it to Jason last Christmas, and we haven’t put it up yet.  It is printed on metallic photo paper, and that, combined with the colors, ties it in with this room beautifully.

9. The accessories are from ZGallerie (Love!) and will be supplemented with thrift store finds in white, green & [subtle] gold.  (I’ll probably put the florals together myself, too.)

And that’s about it.  The decor board looks crowded, I know, but so does the room; that’s not about to change.  We have too much furniture for the space, which I think is another reason it’s driving me nuts.  I believe tying it all together with a conscious design and giving it some style will help relieve the feeling of clutter and too-tightness, since moving pieces out isn’t an option just now.

So what do you think?  Have you ever had to work around something that just didn’t sit right with you & make it work?