Meet StyleMutt Home's NEW Design Assistant!

Hi Friends! We are THRILLED to introduce you to StyleMutt Home's newest team member, Joy Lewis! When we started the process of bringing on a design assistant to our team, we were completely humbled by the response. The turn out of passion and talent far exceeded our expectations, but we just kept coming back to Joy through each phase of the process. After meeting her it was the feeling I needed to have; total peace. She is someone that makes this growing process feel like the most natural thing in the world and she has already slid right in and taken on her first job, (with our first Australian client, nonetheless)!

It's such a delight to celebrate bringing Joy on our team with you today!

Joy has an impressive portfolio of projects under her belt that includes both her own home as well as corporate and private clients. We thought it might be a fun way of getting to know her better if we shared a few snippets of her past work!

Joy has the impressive skill of refinishing furniture to suit the style of the project at hand - this sweet storage cabinet was refinished by her hand and we are just smitten with her attention to detail, from color choice to the styling!

Joy and her husband tackled their own kitchen renovation recently and turned it into a functional, family friendly space that still maintains the character of their home.

The following are just a couple furniture makeover projects Joy has done. Isn't that ottoman the sweetest?!

Please join us in welcoming Joy to the StyleMutt Home team! We couldn't be more excited to have this sweet and talented lady on board with us. She truly is an answered prayer and the way she's jumped right in and gotten down to work in the brief time since she's started has already blessed our business in various ways.

We look forward to sharing the work that Joy is doing for StyleMutt Home as her projects progress! If you would like to see more of her previous work we invite you to head over to her site, Joy Lewis Design!

Thank you all so much for coming by!

Pendleton Slipper Chairs || 2018 Flip List Item No.3

First Flip List item of the year is a wrap!  Wait... what’s a Flip List you ask?  Well every year I set out to do seven new diy projects. Usually they’re a combination of things (both furniture and decor related) that scare me and things I’ve always wanted to try.

So this year’s list is as follows:

Now let’s meet the slipper chairs:

It was actually that citridelic yellow that drew me to them in the first place, but up-close, the fabric was sad and scratchy.  I loved the beautiful wood and cane frame so that had to stay, but the seat fabric was another animal.  I decided to do two things I’ve long wanted to do: 

1) Restore these beautiful chairs
2) Use a Pendleton Wool Blanket pattern to do it: 

Pendleton wool comes from a family owned company that's been weaving wool blankets for over 150 years.  They have a myriad of blanket patterns - mostly Native American inspired designs but they also produce a series of blankets unique to several National Parks.  It is these blankets that inspired my latest reupholstery project - specifically the Glacier National Park pattern.

Rainier National Park

Glacier National Park

Yellowstone National Park

Grand Canyon National Park

To me, the bright-colored stripes on the upholstery are a young twist on a classic design.  

To keep it fresh, I cut the patterns to be mirror images of each other instead of centering the design the keep it symmetrical.

I would have loved to use the real blanket on this project but they are admittedly priiiiiiiicey.  Plus let's be real... I don’t think I could bear to cut one up.  So instead I had a suede replica made by Spoonflower - something soft for the tushy (and less itchy than wool).  

The handy thing about the pattern was I could use the lines in the design to help create pleats at the corners. 

There is something somewhat traditional about cane-backed chairs.  So to me, pairing them with the primary colors of the classic Pendleton pattern makes them tres Ralph Lauren (as Chelsea puts it).

That gorgeous cane just needed a little oil to bring it back.

And this time, I moved the entire Matisse grid wall from our kitchen just to style this shoot.  

Pendleton Slipper Chairs
Now Available for Sale
$345 for the pair

If you are interested in this piece or a custom order like it, email me at cate@stylemutthome.com for availability or to ask about our third-party shipping policy.

One down, six to go.  Catch up on the 2018 Furniture Flip Bucket List:

Geometric Tallboy

In all my furniture hunting, I have not seen a piece with that geometric detailing down the drawer fronts.  When I saw it on the Facebook marketplace, I just had to get my hands on it! 

Now I have a rather strict price-to-distance ratio where I am more willing to buy a piece if the pick-up is local.  This hit my price point just fine but was waaaay outside of my usual driving radius.  I decided to reach out to the seller anyway only to find out there was already a lot of interest (I figured as much) so I was ready to let it go and keep hunting.  A few weeks before the holidays I ran across the listing again.  It turns out the seller was preoccupied with selling a house and hadn't locked in a buyer yet.  I blew on my fingers, rubbed my hands together, and went to work... 

Despite her slow response rate, my persistence paid off and paid off big!  Turns out it was already loaded in the family van and her husband was going to be traveling my way for work.  Score!  Over a month of begging the seller for updates while weighing the logistics of driving deep into Maryland and her husband literally dropped it off at my garage door at no extra expense!

Once I had it in the workshop, I realized I had to do some serious repairs to the veneer on the sides - repairs which I could not mask without the help of paint.  And so I turned to my new favorite "Black Boudoir" by Behr Paint. 

But I wanted to save as much of the wood grain as possible (just look at it!!!) so I settled on a two-tone look:

While he was dropping it off, the husband told me it was his mother's dresser.  I tried to do her justice by bringing it back to life.

The original knobs got a quick refresh.

The exposed wood on the drawer front got some serious conditioning.

Because of the repaired damage, the top, sides, and geometric detailing got a coat of paint and sealed in a wax which I buffed to a satiny sheen. 

For styling, I decided to play with faces - literally.  I hung a few of my favorite Matisse portraits above an offset it with my new favorite home décor accessory: a Jonathan Adler-esque Dora Maar-inspired vase.

Geometric Tallboy
Now Available for Sale
36"W x 18"D x 42"H
$495

If you are interested in this piece or a custom order like it, email me at cate@stylemutthome.com to ask about availability and our shipping policy.