Room of the Day: Colorful Living Room Hums With New Energy

Carol Estrada gets bored easily. The interior designer finds herself completely redoing rooms in her Houston condo about every two years. Estrada has lived in the unit with her husband, Murray Kaiman, a home-building-performance consultant, for 13 years. Throughout that time her living room has taken on a Shabby Chic look, her sofa has been reupholstered several times — changing from yellow to green to blue — and she’s even converted the space into a large dining room.

Photos by Jon McConnell

For her most recent update, Estrada used a colorful Broadway poster as inspiration for an energetic color palette, reupholstering her sofa and relacquering her dining table to pick up colors from it. She also replaced bubbling and cracking Pergo floors with hardwood and ripped out a large TV built-in unit to add a brick wall feature and a faux fireplace.

“I’m constantly getting tired of the way my home looks,” she says. “But I really like this latest look, so I might stick with it for a little while longer.”

Previously Estrada had a huge dining table in the middle of this open room and a smaller seating area near the stairs. She flipped the arrangement, replacing the large dining table with a smaller round one and expanding the living room. The brick wall and faux fireplace help create more of a focal point. “The front door opens right into this room, so I wanted something that really got your attention,” she says.

Blue chairs: High Fashion Home; coffee table: marble, One Kings Lane; chandelier: Tara Shaw



Estrada, a singer-songwriter, hangs her guitar on the wall for easy access — but also to make use of an awkward wall surface that hides ductwork.

She found the poster at the Round Top Antiques Fair in Texas last year. “I was so lucky to have gotten to see the original Broadway show of Flower Drum Song. I loved it. I bought the poster home and based the whole room off it,” she says.

She bought the bench sofa seen here 12 years ago. It was originally covered in a red checkered fabric, but she recently reupholstered it in a light cream linen. She found the lamp at an antiques shop for $30. “It works with the whole pagoda style above it; it was a happy accident,” she says.

Nesting tables: Houzz; pillows with circles: West Elm; square pillows: custom; wall paint: Downing Sand, Sherwin-Williams



The condo is in a former Masonic Lodge built in 1910. Estrada added the wainscoting millwork n 2001 to help break up the walls’ 20-foot height.

The sofa was originally yellow. Estrada changed it to a soft green during her Shabby Chic phase. For the third iteration, she made it teal and tufted. “I believe in trying to save the pieces you have and not sending them off to the Dumpster,” she says.



The recently lacquered dining table matches the coral red in the poster. Estrada purposefully kept the pieces simple and easy to swap out, just in case the need for change should strike again. “I love keeping it an open concept, because I can add a dining table right under the chandelier and accommodate 20 people for dinner, or move all the furniture out and hold a concert for friends,” she says. “I love to use it as a versatile space.”

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