New Oushak on the Landing

Thank you all for the kind words about the studio reveal! I hope all of you have entered the $2000 give away! I'll be posting more info and sources and angles of the room soon. :)

While I'm working on those posts and tutorials, I wanted to share this pretty rug find with you! My friend Kendra Smoot tipped me off to an eBay listing for this beautiful little Oushak rug (what a friend, right!?). I think I got it for just over $100 and I love how soft and worn it is. It's slightly overdyed with blue and pink pastels. So pretty!

Right now I have it on the landing by the girls' rooms. It fits the floor space perfectly up there. It might end up moving around to one of the other rooms, but I love it here for now.

There's a lot of black happening up there with the stairs still being bare and all the pretty but dark black doors. I think the rug helps lighten things up.

I have the little scalloped secretary on the landing still, but I've yet to decide if I'm going to paint it or leave it as is. I'm leaning toward trying to paint it or doing a limed/cerused finish on a dark base. I think it would look so pretty if I could pull it off!

I put some art up in the landing too. I've had this very naive painting for a couple years now and it always feels like it belongs in the girls' space. I think it's sweet and I love all the bright pops of colors. The frame was pretty lame though, so I painted out the faux gold glaze with some Gentleman's Gray paint I had laying around, which is a deep, soft navy color.

I leaned the painting against my framed button collection that I made a few years ago using buttons I inherited from my grandmothers. The twisty concrete planter was a more recent project.

Anyway, I'm loving my new Oushak! It makes the landing feel like an actual room! :) Makes me also want to put a little bench up here against the stairs. I also need to pick a flush-mount light for the ceiling, and I really need to finish up the stair runner. 

PS if you're looking for a Oushak on eBay, always sort the listings by lowest price first. The private seller listings will almost always be auction style and not Buy It Now.

Rug for Sale, the New Chairish App, and a HUGE Give Away

It's no secret that I have a seriously intense vintage furniture buying habit. It's the thrill of the hunt that really does it for me. So thank heavens I have a job that gives me a good excuse for all the buying! But sometimes enough is enough and even I hit my limit. Or rather, my storage space hits its limit. So my new rule is if one thing comes home, one thing must leave. And, basically, if I don't have a very specific place for something in the new house, it's on the "must leave" list.

The "must leave" list is ever growing as we continue to empty out the garage and try to get more settled into the house. I am considering doing a big sale sometime soon using Chairish, a site I love and have partnered with in the past. It's a lot like 1st Dibs, but much, much more affordable. It's like a really well-curated Craigslist (basically my dream site).

Chairish recently launched a brand new and really beautiful version of their app that makes selling items a breeze. You basically just take a few photos with your phone and add some descriptive info and press submit. The curators at Chairish will take care of the rest of the listing, including whiting out the background of the main photo.

I decided to list this vintage Persian rug as a test run, and I timed myself just for kicks. It took two minutes and 43 seconds to upload this listing from start to finish! I told you it was a breeze!!

Do you remember this rug from the brownstone? We had it in the garden level entry. I don't have the right space for it in the new house, so, instead of storing it somewhere where it could get damaged, I'd rather see it get sold and properly loved by someone else. Wouldn't you like to have this beauty, with its pops of mint, apricot and hot pink, in your own place? :) The listing is here.

And in even MORE exciting news, if you download the newest version of the Chairish app before February 28, you will be automatically entered to win all of the amazing pieces in the designer room below (worth thousands and thousands of dollars in total). You know I'm especially digging that green sofa!

So to enter the fab giveaway, download the app here (or here if you're reading this from your phone), and that's it! Browsing vintage finds and selling your old treasures has never been easier. I know I've got about five sofas that will be uploaded as soon as I can get them unburied enough to photograph! And I only wish that was an exaggeration. :)

Chairish is a valued sponsor of LGN. Thanks for supporting our partners!

Give Away: $500 to eSaleRugs!

Oh what's that you say? You would like a beautiful Persian rug of your own to spruce up your home for the holidays? That's what I thought you said.

ESaleRugs wants to give you $500 to shop for your own new/old rug (and if you're too impatient/nervous to wait for the give away to end, they're also having a 50% off sale right now, with free shipping - and they're throwing in free rug pads!). Here are some of my favorites currently available on the site. There are seriously too many good ones to put here, but here's a handful of them:

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To enter to win the $500 gift certificate, hop on over to eSaleRugs and check out their amazing selection of beautiful Persian, Oriental, Moroccan rugs and then leave a comment here with a link to your favorite rug. I'm turning off the comment registration for a few days so those of you who don't have to have an account can enter (I know that's been an issue for some of you in the past). If you aren't signed in though, please leave an email address in the comment so we can reach you if you are the winner!

Contest ends next Tuesday night at midnight, the winner will be chosen at random and emailed. Good luck!

(rug pictured in top graphic available here)

This post is sponsored by eSaleRugs - and amazing resource for antique, vintage and even new rugs. Thank you for supporting LGN's sponsors.

Black Stairs and a New (Old) Rug

ugh! must find a new light fixture soon!!

Things are starting to shake out in our foyer! Some of you hyper-observant readers noticed the new black stairs peeking out in one of the photos in this post (or maybe you just saw my teaser on instagram). And, best of all, my favorite new rug from eSaleRugs arrived over the weekend. Happy Thanksgiving to me!! Isn't it gorgeous??

So, about the stairs. I liked the gray paint color okay, but I kept wishing the color was darker, especially as I was picking wall colors and was leaning toward the Brushed Aluminum color, which is a little darker than I was originally planning. You can see my test color here on the wall under the railing by the vent. The gray on gray was a no-go. So I pulled out my gallon of Onyx that I've been using on doors and the fireplace and tried a little bit on the stairs. It was obviously the right choice. I asked the painters to add the stairs to the bid and they didn't charge me much more than the cost of paint (nice!). It made sense to get the stairs finished while the painters were here when this part of the house was sort of out of commission anyway. Also, I don't really regret all the work I did before with the gray paint color because in the end it actually helped me lean more toward the darker gray on the walls. And most of all, all that filling and sanding needed to happen regardless. So you know, whatever. All's well that ends well.

And I really do love how the stairs turned out. The contrast is so pretty against the lighter walls and floors. And the railings are far and away less 80s to me in black.

The only downside is the dusty footprints have been killing me, so I moved up finding a runner on my to do list. You might have seen that I found this rug at Homegoods a week or two ago. I liked the colors and the small repeat on the pattern will make installation SO much easier, and will help to hide dirt, but I wasn't totally sure it was the right choice.

Until I found a new old rug for the entry.

It's a 100 year-old Shiraz Persian rug from my favorite rug source, eSaleRugs. I've purchased half a dozen rugs from them in the past few years and every time I've been thrilled with the rugs in person. I got Abbey's bedroom rug from eSaleRugs, the runner I had in the kitchen in our loft and the long rug I kept in the garden level entry at the brownstone. They're like priceless little treasures to me. So unique and so beautiful (and all of them were so affordable - less than the cost of a new rug at West Elm). This rug is 4.5x9.5' and it cost about $350 with free shipping.

I love how the dye colors are sort of all over the place. The reds and pinks and oranges in the medallions are so pretty! And that inky blue stripe in the black background? Be still my beating heart.

The two rugs are perfect together, don't you think? I feel like an older patterned rug brings soul to a space and that's exactly what was missing here with the new runner.

Anyway, I'm super happy with how things are starting to come together! We're going back up to my parents' on Wednesday for Thanksgiving, but we'll be back earlier in the weekend and I want to spend some of our down-time hanging art in here and in the living room. I think we'll have ourselves a comfy home just in time for Christmas. :)

FLOR Summer Sale

Oh! Just saw that FLOR is having their annual summer sale right now (through the end of June it looks like) where everything is a whopping 25% off. I've been dreaming of the Vintage Vibe tiles since popping in their Atlantic Ave store a couple weeks ago and completely falling for the small scale Moroccan-inspired pattern. (and it looks like Kirsten used these in her living room recently, so you know they must be chic!)

With this sale going on, I'm so, so tempted to make our first rug purchase for the new house. I think it would be the perfect choice for the family room that's right off the kitchen (working on floor plans right now to share!). If the last two homes we've lived in have been any indication of our future, the rug nearest the kitchen sees the most spills.  :) It would be a dream to be able to totally replace the tiles in the areas of greatest offense.

That was my favorite part of Abbey's entry project using FLOR tiles. Depending on the pattern you want, they can be a bit of an investment, but they hold up SO well. And I know Abbey's been able to reuse her carpet tiles in her newest apartment, so they must travel well too.

For Anna

Remember this rug?


I think it is so great. Neutral, but not boring at all. It can be found in so many incredible rooms these days.

Look for designer knock-offs at:

West Elm $299 (9x12)

{It seems to look less dark/graphic in a room setting.}


Home Decorators $379 (9'6" x 13) or $549 (12' x 15')


or Pottery Barn online $449 (9x12)