We have a few items in our house from when we renovated the public spaces/butler’s pantry/laundry room that get a lot of comments, and I think that they are kind of surprising.
First up is the light fixtures over the peninsula. My husband really wanted stained glass/Tiffany style pendants. When we purchased all the fixtures, I searched Houzz.com for options and put items that I thought would work into the shopping cart. Once I had found a bunch of options, my husband went through them with me and we used a process of elimination to get to the final choices. I love the colors in these lights because they look so good with everything else we have going on in the room (especially the blue).
The second thing that gets a ton of comments is the ceilings. Most people initially think that it’s beadboard, but it’s an embossed vinyl wallpaper (which is paintable). I found it when we were doing renovations before we sold our last house. I wanted beadboard in the main bathroom like in the guest bath, but didn’t want to spend as much time and money on it since I wasn’t sure if the new owners would pull it out. When we were looking for ways to draw everyone’s eyes up in this house, putting this wallpaper on the ceiling was a budget friendly and high impact choice. It fools most people until I point out the lack of seams/joints. The look of surprise is always funny.
The last one is the most surprising to me. It’s the floor in the butler’s pantry/laundry room. It’s a porcelain tile that looks like a carpet. My husband and I thought that we would use a stone-look porcelain, but when we found this tile, we changed our minds. I would have used it in the kitchen, but the cleaning would have been a nightmare because I am such a messy cook.
Would you use any of these in your house?
Cathy At Home on the River 
These elements are cool
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