Ep. 466: Trials and Triumphs

0:01Welcome to How to Decorate from Ballard Designs, a weekly podcast all about the trials and triumphs of decorating and redecorating your home. I'm Caroline. I'm on the marketing team. And I'm Taryn, and I'm a product designer. I'm Liz. I head up the creative team. We're your hosts. Join the expert team at Ballard Designs for tips, tricks, and tales from interior designers, stylists, and other talents in the design world. Plus, we'll answer your decorating dilemmas at the end of each episode. We love answering your questions, so don't forget to email us at podcast at ballardesigns.net. Now, on with the show.

0:34We're back for Trials and Triumphs. Who's excited? I am excited. I need the updates on your homes. I feel like it's been a hot minute, so I want all the updates. I know. We said we were going to be doing this more, and then we haven't done one in entirely too long. But that should mean that we all have great things to talk about. All right. Who's going first? Okay. I'll go first if y 'all want. Okay. Thanks, Caroline. I think I went last last time. I have lots of updates. So a few I'm just going to rattle through. And then I have a PSA warning. I have a recommendation. And I have some things in progress that hopefully I'll be able to report next time.

1:20There's a little synopsis of what I'm going to cover in my time. I'm trying to go fast. Okay, so I think last time we talked, we had not gotten Birdie's bed. We've gotten her bed. We got it like four months ago now. But it's great. It's so cozy. It looks good. I'll post a picture. But anyway, finally happy to see that sort of project and space. Does she love it? Oh, she's so proud of it. She's so, oh my gosh, everyone that comes to our house, she's like, can I show you my big girl room? Oh, I love that. It's always the cutest. So, and she, she has fallen out of the bed twice, but at this point, it's been a few months since she fell out.

2:05And so we're good now. Okay, good. We learn by doing. It's fine. Well, one, she was like trying to crawl out. Oh, no. So, you know, but. But she's okay. The good news is that we have, so, you know, it's like a daybed with a trundle. so sometimes if she gets worried about it which hasn't happened in a while but we would just pull the trundle out so at least if she fell out of the bed oh that's smart yes that's adorable i will say that one time she did fall this is when she was trying to get out and she fell and she fell face first and got a bloody nose oh no so woke us up in the middle of the night literally screaming bloody murder and we find her like we run and we like find her in the kitchen and there's just like blood everywhere oh my gosh it was terrifying you know how no oh that's horrifying nothing is actually wrong it's just scary because of how much oh my gosh anyways that was a little traumatizing but she was fine and it was always well but anyway so birdie's bed check yay that room is done um i will say that i added my favorite um my favorite plug-in swing arm wall sconces from Lamps Plus.

3:21I now have five of them total in our house. Oh my gosh. And it is, I think, the greatest product ever. It's literally just a swing arm sconce, but it plugs in so you don't have to have an electrician. And the best part about it is that it already comes with a dimmer. So the switch itself is a dimmer switch and it just feels so luxurious. It's great. I'll try to put a link to it. I mean, if you look up, if you go to Lamps Plus and you look up Swing Arm Sconce, then there are lots of options. It's like V1? No, no, there's lots of options. Like a ton of things will come up and there's probably 10 different varieties.

3:57But I put each of those on either side of this big diptych painting that we hung over her bed and it just looks so cozy. And I put a little, two little pooky lampshades on it and it's really pretty. together so that was that um okay here is my psa slash warning do not put vitamins in your pants pocket intending to later take them because you will forget and then all of your clean laundry will smell like fish oh oh that's terrible literally a few weeks ago i was i had met a friend, we were going to a sale, like a little sample sale. And I kept thinking, why do I keep smelling fish? And then I went home and I was getting laundry and I was like, why does our laundry room smell like fish?

4:55And I just kept thinking, am I going insane that I just keep smelling the smell over and over again? And then I realized, no, it's me. I smell like fish because I had put my vitamins for the day, which included omega-3 fish oil in my pocket and then forgot about them and then washed those pants. And then that entire load of laundry and the washing machine smells like fish. So just PSA to everyone. Don't do that. Bad idea. So how'd you get it out? How'd you get the smell out? Just had to wash it again and again. And again, again. then yeah i mean it was like sheets there was two shirts in there i mean i know it was really but the worst part is that i fully wore the shirt out before i realized like it wasn't so pungent that it was just that underlying stank oh isn't that lovely that is pretty bad um do you ever use those scent beads thing in your laundry?

5:57No. My family calls them blue nerds and then they tease me that they're going to eat them with the Tide Pods. Great. Yeah, it's good. They work. I probably should. I do sometimes add vinegar, white vinegar, to my laundry to cut odor. But I don't know. I think my skin is sensitive and I try to avoid it. Oh. Mm. Laundry items. Yeah. Then that's a great way to go natural. Unless it's omegas. Yeah. That's a good FSA. The fish oil did not appear to irritate my skin. It just irritated my nose. Mm. Mm-hmm. Okay. And then, let's see. Here is my recommendation. So, I don't know about either of y 'all. I have a Sonos system.

6:54And that's kind of like just what we've had it for years. And that's kind of how we play music around the house. Well, I discovered, well, hold on, let me back up. So, Taryn, I don't know if you remember, but whenever we used to record at Karen's house, she used to always have, like, we would come in the door, you know, we would record after hours. We would record like six o 'clock. And we would invite our guest to Karen's house and we would record at her dining room table. And I always loved how every time we would go over to her house, there would be candles burning. There would be like vibey music playing.

7:25She would have a water, like a pitcher of water on the table. And she's just always such a great host. But part of that vibe that she creates is always having music playing. And she, I think, always has music playing at her house. She would even bring a speaker and sometimes play music really quietly in her office. So I always aspire to have a playlist playing, say, at night while I'm cooking. and even in the morning, I had seen this TikTok video about a woman who tries to set up like a nice, relaxing, vibey playlist in the morning when her kids are waking up and eating breakfast to try to create a good mood to set their day off on the right path.

8:02So I've always aspired to do that, but I can never actually remember to turn, that's just the last thing on my mind when I walk in the door is to go on my phone and click, you know, pick out a playlist. So I never actually did it. Well, I discovered that on Sonos, you can set an alarm that plays a playlist. And so I set a morning alarm, which plays like instrumental pop. Like it's like a piano or piano version of pop music. And then I set an evening playlist too. Both of them are kind of different vibes. And it just automatically plays. And I don't actually have to think about it. So 6.30 in the morning, our morning playlist kicks in.

8:445 30 i don't if i'm not home it still plays anyway that is a recommendation to anyone out there who aspires to create a mood in their home but like me can't actually pick out sounds has it shifted your day it's never on my list yeah wonderful it creates a it really does make our morning feel better. And on the days where it starts playing before I've even gotten home, it's so nice to walk into the house and there's already a great, you know, relaxing playlist playing. How welcoming. That's so great. I know. And it's wonderful. So if anyone is out there, has a Sonos system already. Amazing. I'm sure there are other ways that you could do this with whatever sound system you have.

9:38I just happen to have Sonos. But go into your settings and set an alarm, and you can create all your different vibes. Set a mood. I love that. That's like Liz taught me about how you can have all these different modes on your iPhone. That, like, it's not just the focus one. Like, you can make specific, like, I was like, oh, I didn't know you could do that. Which is fantastic. There is a master class on how to change the focuses on your iPhone, and it changed my life. I need to dig more into this. To the point where I have one that's just for my nephews. So when they take my phone and they're five, so I switch it to their focus and it just shows the play apps, the game apps that they use all the time.

10:24I was like, that's what I need too and my kids are on it. So I did something similar, Caroline, with a setup on our Google Home system where you tell it good morning and it says, you know, good morning. It tells you the weather. It turns on certain lights around the house. And then it plays some like, I have it set to play John Coltrane, which honestly makes sense why my Spotify end of the year thing said that I was 93. Yeah. I'm like, okay, great. because every morning it's playing John Coltrane. But we did just recently change it up, but yeah. So that's like another tip of just like, just automating those things that you don't have to think about.

11:13Yeah. It's really nice. Yeah, that is really nice. And like you said too, it's something that changes your mood. And so like to put it as a to-do thing only adds anxiety, but to have something like that that could automatically influence how you feel. Yeah. That's wonderful. It's very wonderful. I'm jealous. I will say that Will at one point was like, okay, I'm sick of this playlist. Can I change it? And he chose some other playlist that was playing like really aggressive Beethoven, like dun, dun, dun. I was like, okay, this is, no, this is not the vibe we're going for. So you might have to play a little bit and see which playlist makes so much sense.

11:55um okay and then for real quick before i wrap up we spoke at beginning of the year about our goals and our house-related resolutions so we'll update on mine i believe i had mentioned that there were some reupholstering projects that i wanted to do one of them was the storage ottoman in our living room, which has really been in bad shape. Like the pop, the hinges all broke. It was not looking good. Well, I had always thought like I could repurpose it. I could just reupholster it and do a new fabric and maybe put a skirt on it and it'd be really cute. Well, I priced out the fabric that I wanted.

12:41I looked into how much it would cost to reupholster it and ultimately just kind of felt like I could buy a new coffee table for like half of this. And I think a coffee table would better serve the purposes I want in that room, which is that's our room for entertaining when we have people over. I always have to like put a tray on the ottoman for like snacks. And I also I'm starting to run out of storage space for all of the books that we have and get. Got a lot of coffee table books so I could use a little bit more coffee table storage so I got our Sabine coffee table which I've always loved and it has two shelves so I can put all of my books in the lower shelves it has a nice top so it's easy to wipe down and it has just totally changed the vibe in our living room and I'm so pleased with it I you know kind of went back and forth on whether I should try to repurpose what I already have or get something new.

13:42But I think ultimately it would have cost probably three times what I paid for the coffee table to reupholster it. And it really just kind of serves us better anyway. So I'm really happy with that. And I have a new styling opportunity in my house. I got one of those little tortoise candles with the little, remember we were talking about the candle with the hat? Yeah. Candle with a hat. I have some little tchotchkes, a bowl of shells we picked up at the beach. And so it's been fun to kind of play around with style. So that's update number one. And then update number two was two other reupholstery product projects I wanted to do that are not complete, but they're underway.

14:26Taryn I went to your upholstery shop that you recommended to me where you got your chairs done and I took the ottoman from our tv room which was just a gray velvet and it just it's gotten marker it's gotten stains milk spills bottle like all the things it's just not and so um the turnaround time they gave me was like two weeks it was crazy so it might be done soon. We'll see. And then I haven't taken it to the upholstery shop, but I also am getting my striped Borgere chair that lives in my living room, reupholstered. And I got some... What are you going to do? I feel like you've had that chair forever in the stripe.

15:10I have. Well, the funny thing, okay, the funny thing is anyone who... So my old roommate will remember but before it was a stripe it was a yellow sort of pique like lemon yellow and I think I'm gonna take it back to yellow oh that's gonna be so fun in there girl you know I like it I know well so you know that's the room this is the room where I have that big yellow painting that Will did and yellow just looks so good in there and so I kind of was playing around with well, I have thought for a long time, should I do a pattern? And, you know, maybe I do a big floral or something funky and organic.

15:52And I think ultimately I've just decided I want, I think I just want to do a solid, but like a punchy color. And so I sort of was playing around with all the different colors. And so I just feel like yellow and it echoes off the painting and it was just kind of a new color to add in there. So I ordered my fabric. I've gotten it. I just have to actually take it to the upholstery shop, but it's kind of a sunshine yellow performance velvet. Yellow is a hard color, by the way, to find the right swatch of. I probably ordered 15 different performance velvets from all various companies before I found one that was right.

16:32But anyway, so TBD. Hopefully next Trials and Triumphs, I'll have a finished. That is very exciting. So, yeah, I've been like rock and rolling. Girl. That is awesome. I'm impressed. Yeah. You've made some, like, you've been moving. For sure. Now I'm like, man, I don't feel like I've been moving as much as you. All right, Liz, you want to go next? Well, you had a lot of action, you know, maybe the last six months. So just your own upholstery projects and some curtains. So, you know. Yeah. That's fair. All right, Liz, you're up. All right. Right. So I have been doing just tons of small projects to get to a bigger goal of graduation parties.

17:18So, yeah, we are at high school graduation time and we're having a graduation party here. So it's just figuring out like, OK, getting the yard together, getting the interiors to get just like small projects everywhere just to be house ready. um but the so the biggest shift has been outside i bought some raised garden beds so we had we had a tree taken out last fall that changed the ecosystem out there a lot more sunshine so i'm doing garden beds i'm really excited i haven't done any like vegetable gardens in some time. So trying that out. So I bought these raised garden beds from Vago Garden. Oh, the colored ones?

18:08Yes. Those are so pretty. I don't know what those look like. Oh, they're so pretty. They're sort of like corrugated. They're corrugated metal. And then they're painted. You showed us these, I think. I think you did show us these. I probably did. They're great. And I got the ones that are kind of a dark green. but they come in like powder blue and cream and white and coral and all these like different great colors. Highly, highly recommend. The construction is so good. They're easy to put together. They come with like a little lip that goes around the edge that kind of protects you after you've put them all together.

18:51So you're not cutting yourself on the corrugated metal. highly recommend but we did that we did um and so i did them in different configurations too because they can come in a bunch of different configurations like you can do them in nine different ways so i've got two two beds that are two feet by eight feet with a trellis that goes up arch trellis that goes up and over so we'll see how fancy how things grow up and around that this summer. And then the other two, I did five foot by five foot square beds. So those, I think I'm going to do some flowers and herbs and things like that. So things will be growing like crazy.

19:37So I've just been doing a whole bunch of things like that, prepping, mulching, moving plants, kind of getting all of that together so that people can hang out in the yard. Mm-hmm. That's exciting. And this is the time to do it. Yeah. Yeah. And honestly, ever since we had Margot Shaw on the show, and she told me that I was a gardener, and I am taking that time. I'm like, Margot Shaw says. She would know. She would know. Yeah. So, yeah. So, I've been gardening up like a storm. It's been really great. and putting in more flowers, wildflowers that are native to Georgia. So yeah, we'll see how that all goes.

20:21And then inside, just kind of small changes. I have one of our Conley benches, which is a metal framed bench, and you can pop the seat off and do a slip seat on it. So I bought some fabric and I'm recovering that and something really fun. Yeah. So those are, I am using, it's actually in our clearance section right now. It's the, it's a really great fabric. It's a Sunbrella fabric. It's either Sunbrella or Inside Out. I know it's performance, but it's kind of a natural tone. And then it has a stripe of hot pink. Oh yeah, that one's fun. It's really, really good. It's really, really good. Highly recommend it.

21:10Don't sleep on it because it's in the clearance section right now. It's such a great fabric. And I really love a pop of hot pink. I love a pop of hot pink and yellow. So you guys are rubbing off on this, Taryn. I'm honored if you would think that I rubbed off on you. I think we all rub on each other constantly. Yeah, as we constantly are talking about home decor. Liz, such fun things. So those are good triumphs. Those are good. So satisfying to do that kind of thing. So my trials, though. We're still— I like the voice change there. We're still, like, working in the kitchen to get our details right before we kind of go into construction in a few months.

22:02but I've got to tell you I had this conversation with my husband the other night because I was doing dishes because as you all know we don't have a dishwasher so I'm at the sink doing dishes he's walking outside taking the trash out and he notices water coming out the side of our house right at the sink Hi listeners if this episode has inspired you to tackle a project in your own home we want to help with a special offer just for podcast fans. We know how exciting it is to bring your vision to life, whether you're updating a room or starting a refresh. You'll find everything you need to create a space that feels uniquely yours.

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23:03No. Yeah, yeah. So. Just coming out, you're like sighting? Oh. Yeah. It's real good. And so, I mean, I don't know where it's leaking. We've got to have somebody come in. This is just, this is like. No. New release, hot off the press. This is what's happening at the house. But because we have this sink that's kind of this big built-in freestanding sink that's huge, I think that it's leaking somewhere in between there and the wall and the wall and down to the basement. So my husband comes in and he's like, yeah, so, you know, he's like, it's a good thing we're doing the kitchen because, you know, he's like, this really, you know, this is really something that needs to get done now.

23:56And I was like, buddy, this is not a cosmetic redo. Like, this kitchen has not been done in almost 100 years. Like, really. That is insane. It is a 1930s kitchen through and through. So I that part alone is insane. Like, oh, my God. Bonkers. But so is that changing your timeline at all? Is that? um it's definitely going to up our time frame a little bit but i mean we're pre-permitting phase so our next step is once we get all the the drawings completed we have to go into permitting so that's up to the city i'm sorry that's to be determined i mean at least we know it's going to get fixed and but yeah i hope it's not wish plumbing or water issues on anyone such a drag such a drag literally anytime i see water in a place that it's not supposed to be my like heart pressure goes up you know like yeah it's just so damaging and right yeah the build for whatever it is it's going to be more it's going to be more than you want it to be it's going to be more than you estimate it to be you know um i mean part of part of what we need to do to the house too it does have some structural stuff on the facade of the house on the exterior of the house so i'm trying not to stress about it too much because i know we're going to need to do work and we're going to need to do pin tucking and we need to go in with the brickwork anyway.

25:49Yeah.

25:53So, yeah. Latest trial. For sure. Yeah. But I did love how he was like, oh, yeah, you know, now we really need to do it. I was like, no, that's as if this whole thing was cosmetic. I'm like, no, no. Yeah. Now the water's pouring out the house. As you're doing dishes again and like still no dishwasher. I still am like, man, it's impressive. I'm still impressed by you. Every time you're like, I'm doing the dishes. I'm like. Oh, they're still not done. I mean, it just takes forever. Yeah, they never get finished. I will say there have been a few sections where our dishwasher wasn't working. and sometimes when I can't or like if your dishwasher is full and you still have dishes to do and you're I'm just like I'm just gonna do them sometimes I'm like okay this you know what I thought this was catastrophic it doesn't take that long it's not that bad no I mean it's definitely irritating well yeah because you prefer to have a dish yes but right yeah right you are correct in that because I know with my dishwasher, we don't, it runs like every three days.

27:07So you're not leaving gunk off. Like, so you still have to wash them off prior, you know, but it is nice to know that I'm not like scrubbing. I'm not the final. Yeah. It's also the stack of dishes and then you have to like dry and put away. It's like laundry. I don't mind starting the washer. It's almost really like it's the whole thing. It's putting the clothes back in the drawer for me. that's like, I don't know why. It doesn't take that much time, but it's like the... I have started to... Not a lot, but I will... I have a few times paid Blair to put her clothes away, like$2. I'm like, if you fold and put these clothes away, this load of your own laundry, I'll pay you$2.

27:51And she does a pretty good job. That's amazing. That's amazing. I need to just like keep this going. I only ask her to do her own laundry, but... Get those boys working, Taryn. That's true. That's on me right there. I just need to put them to work. If she ever kind of asks, sometimes she'll be like, I want to buy such and such. And I'm like, well, do you have enough money for that in your wallet? And she's like, no. I'm like, okay, you've got to make some more money. I mean. This is one of the avenues she has for that. But honestly, if you don't have cash on you, too, because, like, I feel like we live in such a cashless world.

28:30uh-huh that's been part of the problem yeah i used to make i used to make things called special treat tickets and so that would be and honestly it was just a slip a piece of paper special treat ticket you know you did good on your chores you know you did good on whatever you know you got a good grade like whatever and you just toss one of those in yeah that's smart i mean the teachers are her a piece of paper that says money and have that fill in when I don't have cash. Yeah, good idea. Exactly. I have thought, like, I need to just go next time I'm at the store, get$20 in dollar bills and just have that as a backup.

29:14But yeah. She keeps being like, oh, well, I'll get some tooth fairy money. I'm like, girlfriend, you ain't got no loose teeth left. You've lost them all. I wouldn't wait for that tooth fairy. No teeth left. Those molars aren't coming out until you're 10. That's really funny. Sweet babe. All right. So always, I know you guys have found our rhythm of the year it's spring so minor i have a lot kind of like liz where uh we did a lot of we've we've had some planters that we've been refilling anyway we have two of these big planters that we sold they're beautiful they're very pedestal like and we had to maybe i think you're right um and we have two sizes of them but anyway we had the bigger ones and we had put a pear tree and a peach tree why David wanted one of each, put one in each.

30:17So we had them right on the edge of kind of our - Partridge in a pear tree. There you go. So they're right on the edge of our kind of endless little like stoop in the back. So it's a nice kind of visual to have them on both sides. So anyway, the pear tree got scorched in the summer and like we lost half of its limbs. But right now you wouldn't know it because we like cut them back and it's doing well the rest of it. But the peach tree did great last summer, but I think the winter scorched the sweet peach tree because half of its branches like did not come back this spring. So they were looking a little not cute anymore and poor things.

31:00So we have scooted those out into the backyard, not in the visual space, but over behind kind of the one-car garage area because— You put them in jail, basically. Well, hopefully it won't be jail. Hopefully they'll thrive better over their way. We'll see. We're in a recovery zone. Yeah. We're in timeout. But David had ordered two large olive trees, and he put those in, and they look so good. So that was—I think we're learning— Like, we did all lavender around the pool, and that scorched the last few summers. So we were like, all right, we can't do all lavender on the pool because these little beds dry out or get super wet.