And the Wallpaper Winner Is...

Hey guys, thanks so much for entering the Graham and Brown wallpaper giveaway! It was super fun to read about your decorating hopes and dreams... sorry I'm about to crush most of them.

Hopefully not permanently?

Anyhow, comments are now closed and I ran the numbers through the magical doohickey, bee bopp booo bing zam:

Wow, that is just weird. Numbers be crazy, yo.

Congratulations to Lauren, you are the winner!

"Would love to win Bao in cream. I'm buying a small fixer upper apartment and would love to use this in the entry."

Sounds like an awesome plan to me... I would slap some crazy art on top and call that space done.

HUGE thanks to Graham and Brown for hosting this amazing giveaway!

For everyone who didn't win, here is some wallpaper porn to get you through this trying time. Don't say I never did anything for you.

Happy Friday!

[pinterest]

Rug Mystery Solved!

So, remember the crazy rug I bought in a parking lot? The one from the sale that showered dirt all over my babe and surely gave me a bacterial infection of some sort? This rug?

I couldn't decide whether to keep or sell. You guys were not impressed by its Versacesque glamours, but I saw something in there... My spidey senses were a' tingling. Lucky for me I have awesomely smart blog buddies. Cassie sent me a link to Lisa the Rug Chick, a textile expert who knows EVERYTHING about rugs. Read her blog... it's amazing. Anyway, Lisa was kind enough to email me with her take on Mystery Rug.

Drumroll, please...

1940s Spanish Savonnerie.

Exciting! I mean, it wasn't a $4 million 18th century French Savonnerie rug:

But it was something.

In the meantime, I had grown very attached to Mystery Rug. I had plans.

Master bedroom Versacefication plans.

However, Lisa the Rug Chick had some not so glamorous news: Mystery Rug was very dirty, and because it was woven on a jute foundation it would need to be painstakingly hand cleaned by a professional. No hosing this 100 pound beast down in a driveway unless I wanted it to disintegrate. Plus the jute edges had some unraveling and repair issues... plus Ben hated it.

I called Deep Eddy rug cleaners and they quoted me $425 to start -- which is not insane to clean a giant dirty antique rug -- but I didn't want to put more money into that particular rug.

Sadness.

I decided to try to sell it, so on a whim I emailed Nazmiyal Rugs in New York. They deal in all sorts of amazing antique rugs, rugs that cost more than my car.

Aaannnnd, I got an immediate call back. They wanted to buy it at the price I had set... If you watch Pawn Stars you know that dealers make you set the price because dummies like me have no idea what their stuff is worth. Therefore I had probably underpriced the rug.

I emailed another dealer, who told me the rug was possibly Austrian. Then I looked up Austrian savonnerie rugs and found this one on Ebay. Looks similar, right?

It's $12,000. Kinda more than I asked for. Ooops.

By this point I had already entered into an email contract with Nazmiyal. Hey kids, a written email agreement between a seller and buyer is legally binding.

Good to know, right?

And then I had to ship my rug off to NY on approval, which was nerve wracking. What if they stole my rug AND I was out shipping???

They didn't. They are professional dealers with a fancy brick and mortar location in New York. My little ole rug was chump change to them. Also they were very nice and reassuring.

Cherry popped. Check cashed. Tidy profit made.

Nazmiyal will make a tidier profit, but unlike many people I have no issues with selling to dealers. Yes, they will sell your item for more (a lot more) than you sold it to them, but they have massive overhead to finance PLUS they have invested time and money into building a clientele.

I mean, I could have put my rug on Ebay and asked $10,000, but who would buy it?

Probably nobody.

I hope.

So now I am a tiny bit richer and minus one rug.... guess what that means?

Rug shopping!!!

Probably for the living room (AGAIN), because I think this is going to happen:

I feel pretty good about this plan. I mean, I LOVE my blue rug, but I don't love it with the red persian rug in the living room.

Two rugs in the same room is just tricky town.

We will discuss this ad nauseum later... I have 700 pictures and opinions ready to share regarding this subject.

And someday I will finish my next how to post on buying rugs. Sorry I am so slow.

In the meantime, don't forget to enter the mega Graham and Brown wallpaper giveaway!

It ends Thursday night.

Do it.

Mega Graham and Brown Wallpaper Giveaway!

Friends, I don't do giveaways very often. On a daily basis I am inundated with emails from press people trying to get me to review off brand paint and eco toilets, but I try to keep the blog strictly related to things I want to get in my house right now.

Things like wallpaper.

Me and wallpaper have a lifelong love affair going on. It started when I was a wee baby, swaddled in a muslin cloth tacked together by wallpaper paste, rocked to sleep with the sweet smell of wet wheat in the air... fast forward to today, when I have a closet filled with stacks of wallpaper samples. Sometimes I stroke them gently at night and whisper sweet nothings into their ears. Don't tell anyone.

All this to say I am a little excited to be giving away THREE ROLLS of Graham and Brown wallpaper designed by Steve Leung!

The winner will have her/his choice from any of the six Asian inspired patterns designed by Steve Leung in any available colorway.

THREE. ROLLS. BAM.

That's enough to paper a huge feature wall, or perhaps a small powder room, foyer, or laundry room.

So, basically $80000 worth of wallpaper... or maybe $255 USD. Whatever. That's a lot of wallpaper. Let's check out the players, shall we?

There's Jiao, which has a touch of the De Gournay about it. This color is very pretty in real life, but other colors are also available.

This is Bao, which means treasure. Adorable, because my Chinese bud always calls my kids "bao bao." Anyway, the rep sent me a black sample but I lovessss the cream on cream. You can't tell from the picture but this pattern is very textured.

Hua has some metallic interest in the branches.

Juan is so sparkly it's like a disco in your eyeballs. I am kind of obsessed with the gold on cream colorway.

Ling has great scale, and is slightly textured. All of the colors are nice. Karly likes the cream on cream but I think the red might be Chinese Chippendaletastic.

And then there's Mai.

Let me tell you about this honey of a paper: you can hang it vertically or horizontally. It has a teeny touch of metallic interest, but not Kim Kardashian much. All the colors are great -- the white and silver is dreamy and versatile, but the charcoal is dramatown and would be perfect in a foyer.

In short, I want to marry this paper and I'm a little annoyed I agreed to give it away rather than keep it for myself. 100% serious.

There better be a lot of entries or I will be tempted to create 100 anonymous email addresses and enter my own contest.

Kidding! Hahaha.

Ha.

I took some pictures of the samples the rep sent me so you could kind of get a sense of the texture on the papers.

Jiao/Mai

Bao/Hua

Juan/Ling

All of these patterns are nonwoven paste-the-wall papers that are so easy to hang even a dummy like me can do it. And if you tire of them, just peel the paper off the wall in strips.

You need this in your life.

Contest rules:

Please peruse the available selections here and pick a fave pattern and color. Leave a comment telling me all about your favorite paper and what you plan to use it for. The winner is free to change her/his mind so don't get all analysis paralysis on me... I'm really just curious and y'all know I love to talk decorating projects.

That's it! Leave a comment and you are entered for a chance to win three rolls of Graham and Brown wallpaper designed by Steve Leung.

The contest ends at midnight central time on Thursday, May 16. Winner will be announced on Friday.

Let's blow it up, people.

[Graham and Brown]