Meet Layla Palmer:: The Lettered Cottage

If you don't already know her name, you will. Layla Palmer from The Lettered Cottage is a seriously talented designer. She's going to be famous and I'll say that "I knew her when." And now, so can you.

I'm so excited to have her as an advertising partner on ASPTL. Her pretty button is over on the right.

Maybe you've already seen her blog, The Lettered Cottage, where she shares her design brilliance and the process of renovating her Alabama cottage. If you don't already stop there regularly, I'm sure you will now.

Have you seen her online design consultations? You're about to and they are fantastic! I'm going to show you a few pictures of my family room as it is right now. And then I'm going to show you what Layla and her computer full of magic did with my room.


I have struggled with this room since we built this house almost a year ago. When we designed it, we intended to purchase a new sectional sofa shortly after moving in. We want to fit lots of rears on the couch to watch basketball games.

With the economic uncertainty, there's no swanky new sofa coming to our house anytime soon. So I've been trying to make this room work using what we already have. But I got stuck. I couldn't get the old image out of my head and see something new.


That's where Layla comes in. She did a virtual consultation on my family room and showed me how to look at what I already have in a totally new way. She turned my blah family room into a room I adore. Wanna see?


I think I hear angels singing! Why on earth didn't I think to turn that green sofa the other way? Just goes to show you that anyone can get brain block.

She took the exact dimensions of my room and the furniture that I already have and figured out how to make it all work together. I've never really liked those leather chairs but now they work perfectly where she put them.

The only completely new thing in the room is the big coffee table that's going to be made out of an old door. I have a lot of floor space and that table is going to pull it all together. Everything else is a reuse or an update of something I already have.

Did you see the wall treatment that she recommended? It's called board and batten and we're going to use it on two walls to combat the "ocean of drywall" effect that you get on long walls with few windows. Layla showed me this post to explain how we'll do it for minimal cost. Hubby get the nail gun! Over the next few months, I'll post updates as we implement Layla's design.

Layla is an absolute joy to work with. She's full of wonderful ideas and she knows how to work a budget. I told her mine was basically $0 and she worked with that beautifully. Her consultations are worth every single penny. You can see the options by clicking here. She has packages from a simple question about paint color or what to do with a flea market find to a full-blown virtual consultation like you see here.

Do you want to see more of Layla's design work? Here are some of my favorites:

Stairwell redesign
TV corner redesign
Hallway redesign
Ceiling consultation
Ford kitchen redesign