The Living Room - A Vibe

The first step was to fix all of the plaster. Drywall mud is a perfectly reasonable medium to use. It sticks very well to plaster. I made my way around the room filling old anchor holes and repairing cracks. This room had the least amount of work to do and it's the first room you see when you walk in, so we wanted to start here.

After I patched everything, it was time to replace the generic round light fixture. We love aspects of Art Deco and the Art Nouveau movements and we're letting those styles guide us. We love mixing and blending styles and don't want to be pigeonholed into a single concept. but we do want everything to feel like it's from the same time period.

The first purchase was this wedding cake chandelier light from Rejuvenation. The hardware is unlacquered brass (my favorite) as it will patina over the years. I like to control the patina, and a good way to do that is keeping a bottle of Barkeeper's Friend around. A light wipe with a rag will pull off as much patina as you like.

PAINT IT BLACK

We wanted to go bold right out of the gate. We think that the outside of the house is certainly not something you see every day in central Florida, so we wanted to make a similar statement with the first color you see upon entering. We think a variation of black was the right choice for this. Another reason we chose this color was to make the Coquina fireplace pop. Benjamin Moore: 'Soot' Flat Finish

ABOUT COQUINA STONE

Coquina was used as a building stone in St. Augustine as early as 1598 for the construction of a powder house. This was the beginning of a building tradition that extended into the 1930s along Florida's Atlantic Coast. So, this fireplace fits in perfectly for showcasing a little of old Florida.

Still occasionally quarried or mined, and used as a building stone in Florida for over 400 years, coquina forms the walls of the Castillo in St. Augustine. The stone made a very good material for building forts, particularly those built during the period of heavy cannon use. Because of coquina's softness, cannonballs would sink into, rather than shatter or puncture the walls. The first Saint Augustine lighthouse, built by the Spanish, was also made of coquina.

We basically only had to do some plaster work, paint, change out the light fixture and add new window treatments. The rest was accomplished with decor.

We love this room at Christmas because of the fireplace. We always put the live Christmas tree in here and it's super cozy.