When my good friend and long time Weekend Decorator collaborator, Manuel bought a new apartment with his boyfriend last year I knew I had to get my hands on it. If you follow my work you'll know that Manuel photographs a lot of my projects so I was thrilled to be able to work a little DIY magic in his space.
With beautiful high ceilings and huge windows the bedroom had a lot going for it. However, like a lot of new construction, the space was pretty minimal. So my goal was to add a little old world detail. With a coat of blue paint (Benjamin Moore Bespoke) and some black grosgrain ribbon, I brought some classical details to this Tribeca abode. Keep reading for more imaes and a dramatic before and after!
Before the space was in need of a little style. The downside of high ceilings is that they can make your furniture feel squat and it's hard to figure out how to take advantage of all that vertical real estate. In additon, Manuel and Tobias were in need of a bedside table refresh and desperate for some "grown up" bedding!
To get started we gave the walls a fresh coat of paint. My kick ass assistant Ian taped off the edges and we got to work. By the way, I found Ian on Task Rabbit. I highly reccomend hiring a helper if you need to knock out a project fast!
Next, we got to work creating the ribbon molding. Using the edges of the wall as a guide I marked out the positions of my moldings. I positioned the ribbons to framed the bed. This had the unexpected benefit of creating a faux headboard. We used nail head to hold the corners in place. Funny side note: I used a black Sharpie marker to color the nail heads black.
We cut the ribbons extra long and left the greek key details for last. To create the greek key I used a template that I gridded out on graph paper. If your Interesed in a Steep-by-steep how-2 for this project? check out the full post on the One Kings Lane Style blog here.
As someone who loves to change thigs around I love how simple this project is to create and how easy it would be to remove (although I can't imagine wanted to take them down). Even thought Manuel and Tobias plan on being in this apartment for a while ribbon moldings are a simple and low-commitment way to add charter to a wall. Attention renters, this one's for you.
Photo my Manuel Rodriguez
Here are my go-to supplies for this project:
Photo my Manuel Rodriguez
Photo my Manuel Rodriguez
Get the Look!
All photos by Me, unless otherwise noted.