In the Home Stretch

We have now lived in our "new house" for 9 months, and we are so close to getting everything put together.

"Everything" is relative, of course. We have no dining chairs, and no club chairs in the living room. My husband's office is sans desk, right now, and also desk chair, lamps, bookshelves and filing cabinets. Some of these deficiencies will be rectified when my husband gets his bonus in April - "when you get your bonus" has taken on an almost mystical quality, at this point - but others will wait a while longer.

My husband and I decided to go ahead and have the floors refinished before "bonus day", because having the fake fireplace removed left a gaping hole in the floor. And the idea of moving furniture in, and then having to move it back out to have the floors redone later, did not appeal to either of us.

We got in touch with a local flooring contractor, and decided he was our guy (partly because nobody else would call us back, following Hurricane Harvey and the construction boom it caused, and partly because we chatted about what an amazing biographer Ron Chernow is while he measured the house). Initially, we were supposed to have our floors refinished two weeks before Christmas.

But...

Given all the work from Harvey, the flooring contractor had to bump our date back, and he was going to start 4 days before Christmas.

Four days.

Four days when we would have to have the dogs boarded somewhere, and we would have to stay in a hotel, all while dealing with the holidays. And there were no vacancies at our preferred boarding places. And no hotels that would accept two humans and two dogs during that time. Four days before Christmas was obviously a "no-go", especially since we were celebrating in Houston with family from out of town.

Our flooring contractor was elated when I asked if we could postpone things until after New Year's Day.

The only problem was that we found out our start date was being pushed back after we'd dragged my brother-in-law over to the house to move all the furniture outside.

We did the best we could with the mattress from our guest room on the living room floor, serving as a sofa, for almost a month. I'm sure our neighbors think we're strange, or were convinced we'd rented the place out to college students, given the sudden downgrade in seating.

Did I mention our 44" wide dining table had been placed in our kitchen, where the space between the countertops is 54" wide? And that the dining table is almost as long as the kitchen? No?

I should have mentioned that.

We are now some of DoorDash's favorite customers, and now that things are relatively back to normal (and our dining table is out of the kitchen) I daily expect our delivery guy to drop by to make sure we haven't died.

Prior to the refinish, our floors were a lovely shade of 1980s golden-oak (a.k.a. orange), with some areas that had experienced spills which removed all the finish from the surface, exposing the bare wood beneath.

I was not too fond of them.

We had our floors refinished to a beautiful strawberry-blonde color, since the floors are red oak, interspersed with white oak.

The "media center" is temporary, a holdover from my first apartment 15 years ago. The front drawers are goldenrod fiberglass flecked with gold threads, which unfortunately don't show up well in this picture!

I love love love the color (half Dura-Seal "neutral" and half Dura-Seal "Cottage White", if you're wondering). My husband loves the color (and loves that I'm happy with the color).

There's just one problem.

There is a streak in the floor, about 8 feet long and 1/8" wide, as if someone's shoelace dragged through the finish before it had completely cured. It's visible from the dining room, though almost invisible when you're standing in the living room. It isn't in a location where we intend to put a rug, because it's right down the middle of the path of travel between the staircase and the dining room.

We initially thought we could live with it, mostly because we're just tired of "camping out" in our house.

But we ultimately decided to have it fixed. Which means the dogs will have to be boarded (again), right after returning from Dallas, where they stayed with my endlessly patient mother. They'll get to have an afternoon at the house today (Thursday, January 18) before they go to our boarding-place of choice, tomorrow (Friday, January 19).

I feel like the worst "dog mom" ever.

But our dogs will come home (Monday) to beautiful floors, and an unobstructed view out the front windows, at least until 8 weeks after "Bonus Day."

They are also coming home to a house without water, because our exterior water main burst, at some point in the past 72 hours, and our pest control guy alerted me to it around noon. I have purchased bottled water for "plumbing" purposes, and my mother will have to stay at my sister's house for tonight, at least (though I'm sure she won't mind seeing her non-dog grandchildren).

Also, after the days of freezing weather we've had, I returned home from buying the bottled water to find that we'd won the emergency trash pickup lottery, but hadn't put our trash out. I sprinted down the driveway with an overflowing trash can, and decided afterwards that a medicinal glass of muscato was in order.

I mean, there's no water to the house, right? Got to stay hydrated somehow.

Home Is Where the Construction Is

This past Monday, our contractor's demolition team showed up bright and early to begin ripping out walls. We're in the process of turning three small closets into one small-ish laundry room, but one that will pack an efficient punch. Prior to Monday, the ground floor of our home looked like this:

Lots of small, inefficient closets grouped around the downstairs bathroom, and no laundry facilities. Desperate for clean underwear, but it's raining outside? Too bad! You have to run outside in the rain to get to the washer and dryer located in a small lean-to next to the garage apartment.

Also, the fake fireplace in our living room is gone, which is very exciting! Although I'll have to find a new piece of furniture to hold the TV, once everything is put back together.

Once the construction is completed, the floor plan will look like this:

The top blue rectangle is where our stacking washer and dryer will reside, and the blue rectangle on the left is the cabinetry that will house our dog food container, laundry supplies, and (possibly) household cleansers. 

My hairdresser thinks I'm nuts for ripping out 3 closets, but she doesn't have to go outside in the rain to wash underwear.

When I last wrote, I mentioned that our initial bid for the project seemed high, and that we had a second contractor coming to give us a quote. His bid was even higher, but we ended up going with the highest bidder, for multiple reasons. Namely, his estimate was itemized, whereas the first bidder just dashed off some approximations, which meant he could potentially tack on tons of "change orders" and claim we didn't tell him about them previously. Also, the higher bid included a building permit, but the first bidder didn't mention that. We need a permit for the project, because we're dealing with plumbing - both for water and gas lines - and lots of electricity.

As for my lighting quandary, I ended up with one of each of the fixtures I noted in my last entry: the bell-shaped fixture from CB2 will go in the laundry room itself, while the gilded acanthus leaf fixture from PBTeen will be in the hallway. 

And I still might order the Hogwarts fixture, for the day down the road when our attic becomes my migraine sanctuary, which would be appropriate, given the number of times Harry Potter has helped me through bouts of poor health.

You Light Up My Life

This past Sunday, a contractor came to our house to give us an estimate for turning our three closets into a laundry room.

It was a bit more than I expected, but that's why we have another contractor coming to give us an estimate this coming Thursday, as well.

For now, I'm emailing my sister and mother, desperate for help in selecting light fixtures for the laundry room, as well as the hall immediately outside the laundry room. The current hall fixture is old, and makes an unsettling buzzing noise when turned on. It probably needs to be rewired, but I'd rather have a more modern fixture than the frosted glass mid-century traditional light the house came with.

The cabinets we're putting into the laundry room are IKEA, because custom cabinets in a tiny laundry room don't make financial sense.



So I'm trying to decide if I want to coordinate with the dining room fixture...

Like so:

Or if I want to use more casual lighting.



And then, of course, there's the Harry Potter collection at Pottery Barn Teen, with their bronze-finish Hogwarts pendant lamp, which I think could be amazing.

Anywhere.

No, I'm not kidding.

Please don't hate me.

Designing Woman

We've been in our home for almost six months, now, and it is slowly coming together.

The living room and dining room are both painted (Walls: Benjamin Moore's Distant Gray; Trim: BM Wedding Veil), and the vintage Chin Hua dining table I ordered six weeks ago is now happily ensconced in our dining room. With the exception of a random chair from the now defunct Heights restaurant, Shade, it is chairless.

(I purchased the chair from the restaurant when they were renovating. The morning we became engaged, my husband and I ate brunch at Shade, and I am sometimes sentimental to a ridiculous degree!)

Vintage Century Chin Hua dining table. Chairish.

About two months ago, he suggested we go ahead and get the floors refinished, rather than waiting until April 2018. I agreed happily. The sooner the floors are finished, the sooner we can bring in the rest of our furniture and really start to nest.

A couple of weeks after the flooring decision was made, he suggested we go ahead and move the laundry into the house, while we're at it.

I am over the moon.

When we first toured what is now our home, and I saw that there was no laundry room indoors, I told my husband that was a deal breaker. We had a tense little standoff in the kitchen, because it was really the only thing about the house we didn't like.

After some consideration, my darling husband made me a deal: he would do all the laundry until we were able to install a laundry room in the house.

Of course, I jumped at the offer, and we now live in a laundry-less house.

As time has passed, I think the world's most patient man has realized just why that unattached laundry room was a deal breaker for me, particularly this summer when you get sweaty just stepping outside, never mind while carrying a basket of laundry!

There is a little cluster of three closets, all adjacent to the bathtub/shower in our guest bathroom, and we've decided to turn them into a laundry room. The linen closet in the bath will be closed up, and will house the stacked washer and dryer. The hall storage closet will serve as the entrance to the laundry room, as well as standing space. And the third closet, which opens into my darling husband's study, will become space for cabinets, a countertop, and open shelves.

The bedsheets that would have lived in the bathroom will live in the guest bedroom closet, instead. We'll lose storage for towels, too, but the space beneath the guest bathroom sink is underutilized, and there's room for a larger vanity, if it comes to that.

Frankly, I'm hoping it comes to that, as the current vanity is of poor quality and has no aesthetic appeal.

In addition, we're removing the false fireplace and patching the wall, so we will no longer have to have a TV sitting four feet up in the air, and a bunch of useless trim protruding 12 inches into the already scarce floor space.

Hopefully, we'll be able to get everything wrapped up before Christmas. And, Oh! What a Christmas gift that would be!

"The Money Pit" is Real

After all the drama of the rewiring and poorly executed retexturing of our ceilings, we still had some plumbing problems to be resolved: a leaking sewage pipe beneath the house, the stoppers in both bathrooms didn't work, our kitchen sink had been hideously "resurfaced" with what looked like flat latex paint, and our kitchen faucet's sprayer was faulty: it worked perfectly well, but it wouldn't stop working until the water was turned off, and even then, it came on again once the water was turned back on.

The plumbing company's owner came to the house to give us an estimate, and announced that the drain from our bathtub was lead, and we should probably get that replaced. We agreed, and that was added to the growing list of services to be performed. It's amazing all of the things that your supposedly top-notch inspection company misses when they inspect your house. Lead pipes!

We were told by the plumbers who arrived to perform the work that it would take two days: one day for everything inside the house, and one day for the work performed in the crawl space beneath the house.

For two days, I stayed upstairs in our Master Bedroom, trying to keep the dogs calm, and failing. I hated to have to kennel Ginger, since she was already upset that we had strangers in our home, but had to do so after she jumped over the second-floor banister and onto the stairs so she could chase the intruders out of the house.

By the time I removed the mound of boxes forming a blockade to the top of the stairs, two of the plumbers were outside, and one was standing on the kitchen counter. She's not a giant, but she can be scary, and she's fast.

I apologized profusely and dragged her upstairs to her bedtime kennel, where she stayed with a rawhide "bone" for the remainder of the day.

I should also note that our air conditioner wasn't exactly pulling its weight in our Master Bedroom, that first day.

The second day, I at least had the moral support of my husband to help me deal with Ginger's frustration at not being allowed to chase the plumbers away. We groaned at how hot it was upstairs, but survived.

Until the plumbers left.

And we realized that our AC was no longer working.

We called a 24/7 HVAC repair company, and their technician arrived within 30 minutes. He also informed us of a fact we already knew: our AC was 20 years old, and it was a miracle it had lasted as long as it did. We needed one, and stat.

A previous consult with a different HVAC company had given us two options, one of which involved keeping our old unit where it was, but making a structural change in the attic. The other involved placing the new AC in an area we'd hoped to turn into an office and rerunning all of the ducts.

To our surprise and delight, the 24/7 HVAC company said they could put in a new unit in the same space, without having to replace or relocate any joists, that our ducts could mostly stay where they were, and that they could do the job for less. On a Saturday, of all things!

AND we were able to have our new AC set up to be zoned, so our upstairs Master Suite would be every bit as cool as the downstairs spaces.

Granted, we weren't thrilled about paying for a new AC - we'd hoped ours would last through the summer - but it was something we'd seen coming.

We stayed the night in a pet-friendly hotel nearby, and by the end of the day Saturday, we had a working HVAC system that blasts cool air when we need it.

We've had our fill of contractors, this past month, but fortunately, we'll only have to have one more in our home before we can really move in: the plasterers who will make our ceilings pretty, again.

In the meantime, my dear husband has been repainting some of the downstairs rooms and discovering that the previous owner painted the trim work with latex paint over oil paint, without properly preparing the surface, first. So he's elbow-deep in stripping the latex from the woodwork throughout the house (except for the kitchen cabinets), so it will be properly prepared for the oil-based paint we're using for our trim.

I help out, a bit, by standing in one place and peeling the latex off the woodwork in the biggest strips possible, a bit of meditative renovation work that I highly recommend.

It's cathartic.

And if you're curious about its soothing effects, I'm perfectly happy to brew some iced tea and let you go to town on our staircase. Or the mantle. Or....

Back for a Brief Visit

When I last posted, I was 1) having horrible migraines; and 2) in the process of finding a larger house. The first hasn't changed much, but the second is all but accomplished: my dear husband and I close on a "new" home - the 3rd we've tried to buy! - on March 30.

It's a nice little cottage-style home near the University of Houston, in a neighborhood called University Oaks. It's home to many of the school's professors, and I'll actually be living down the street from one of my favorite professors from the Master of Architecture program.

In theory - and according to my November 14, 2016 posting - I have my design ideas all worked out because I've already defined my personal style.

Let me tell you, the crow I'm eating right now tastes horrible.

The problems I'm currently experiencing in figuring out the interior design are many.

The Living Room

The living room is also the foyer, and there are 4 individual points of entry to the 14'-0" x 14'-0" room, located more or less at the room's four corners: the front door, the doorway to the kitchen, the stairs leading to the attic master bedroom, and a door beneath the stairs leading to the main hallway and kitchen. There's also a false fireplace, and a bay window that's large and deep, just not large or deep enough to hold an entire sofa. My beautiful orange sofa will most likely be too large for the living room.

So, do I eventually stick with orange, and just buy another orange sofa (while relegating the current one to the study)? Or do I go for a gray or natural linen sofa? Or a caramel leather sofa? There are so many options it makes my head spin. For now, we plan to try to make the orange sofa work, along with the false fireplace. If it just isn't possible, we'll rip out the fireplace, and maybe buy a new sofa.

The Dining Room

The dining room is open to the kitchen, so the two spaces need to work together, but the kitchen is currently SUPER cottage-y, with white Shaker-style cabinets, white tile countertops (so. much. grout. Shudder), and a white bead-board backsplash. Eventually, we'll have the countertops and backsplash replaced - and maybe reconfigure the sink - but I'm at a complete loss as to how to integrate the decor of the dining room and kitchen, since I want the dining room to feel at least a little special and a little more dressy than the average breakfast nook.

At the first house we put an offer on, I'd planned to wallpaper the dining room in blue grasscloth, have a glossy white Strut Table by BluDot beneath a brass chandelier, and throw a sisal rug on the floor. This was also my plan for the second house we put an offer on. This house, though, with its open dining/kitchen doesn't want grasscloth, it seems. Unless we enclose the kitchen when we change the countertops - which I'd hate to do - I'll have to find a happy medium.

Should I paint the cabinets bottle green? Or navy blue? Or do I plan for my dining room to be "Modern Farmhouse Chic" and just run with the all-white business?

I'm not prepared for finding a happy medium.

The Master Bedroom

The Master Bedroom is currently open to the living room beneath it. The stairs that lead up to the attic bedroom end at an open landing, with a very low wall separating the attic space from the open stairwell. Essentially, the master bedroom is a mostly enclosed loft bedroom. Eventually, this - like the kitchen countertops - will change. We'll build a real wall with an actual door to separate the landing from the Master Bedroom, which I'm definitely looking forward to doing.

We'll also eventually annex part of the 18'-0" x 19'-0" Master Bedroom to the existing (unworkable) closets. There are two closets for the Master Bedroom, each tucked under the eaves, with a rod about 6" long for hanging long items, and another 36" rod for hanging short items. 

One of the closets also contains a pipe and an electrical box. 

Neither of the closets is painted, or useful. 

For now, we'll purchase a couple of rolling clothes racks from Target, and use those for clothing storage until we take in the northern 6'-0" of space for a walk-in closet.

The Master Bedroom is also almost entirely beneath the slope of the roof, with vertical walls giving way to sloping ceiling/walls about 34" above the finished floor. Our enormous gilded and linen upholstered Rococo headboard won't even fit upstairs, so it will be sold in one hell of a garage sale once we've moved.

For the first house we tried to buy, I'd developed the design scheme below:

© Copyright 2017 by Megan Kidwell for CuratedHouston.com

My dear husband had even consented to the pink walls, since the rest of the decor would be more masculine. Everything was perfect! And the second house we tried to buy would have worked well with this scheme.

Our "new" home, however, doesn't seem to me to want this scheme. That, and my husband has made it fairly clear in the past few weeks that he dislikes the navy bedspread we bought when we got married, along with the beautiful lavender linen bedsheets we purchased. And pink just doesn't seem right, to me, when it's on attic walls. I might change my mind on this, but this is an entirely different house, so I think my husband will also change his mind.

We've had more arguments over furniture and wall colors and future laundry rooms in the past month than we've had in our whole relationship up to the beginning of this past month. It's insane.

We're holding off on buying anything for the Master Bedroom, for right now. We eventually want a king bed, so there's no use in buying a queen headboard when we don't intend to stay in a queen bed forever. 

When we move into the house shortly after March 30, we'll be sleeping on a mattress and box springs sans frame and headboard, with our current bedside tables (which we'll also eventually sell) and current bedding, which is a mishmash of old sheets from the pre-marriage days, and the bedding we bought after our wedding. Until we figure out exactly what we're going to do, upstairs, we'll hold off on painting, too.

[Ed. Note: I also hate the navy blue bedspread, but for different reasons: the batting is coming out through the fabric, so our bedspread constantly appears to be covered in dust and/or dog hair.]

The Study

The house has two bedrooms downstairs, in addition to the Master upstairs. I'd planned to put all three of my custom built bookshelves in the study, along with our white twin desks from IKEA, which we bought because I really loved their design (no joke).

Alex Desk by IKEA

Come to find out, my husband just wants one bookshelf in the study, because the large quantity of books on their shelves makes him feel claustrophobic.

I am learning so much about my husband.

I pointed out to him that the study at the "new" house (12'-0" x 13'-0") will be considerably larger than our current one (9'-0" x 9'-0").

Nope. He still only wants one bookshelf.

We can arrange them so there won't be as many books on them, I explained. We can stage them properly, with only a few books, and a few carefully chosen decorative objects from our collection, like the Oaxacan ceramic pot I bought him for Christmas.

In his words, he "strongly protest[s]".

So one bookshelf will be in the study, and one in the guest room, where it will serve as a nightstand for the two twin beds we'll eventually buy for the room, as well as providing a place to store books, and a few decorative pieces.

The third bookshelf... will probably go in the study for now. Maybe, I can stage them with fewer books and he'll change his mind?

He also dislikes the desks we currently have. He suggested we get one (1) bigger desk to share. The problems with this idea are that 1) he likes to have a neat and orderly desk, and I constantly have a small pile of things to file on the desk (tax stuff), along with pens, random bits of paper or images torn from magazines, legal pads (multiple) with lists (multiple, and sometimes overlapping), along with random tchotchkes, like antique butter-pat dishes and a Beanie Baby polar bear of emotional significance; 2) we sometimes need to use the office at the same time, and the type of desk he's envisioning isn't big enough for that.

So far, he's compromised on this one, saying that we can have separate desks, so long as there's only one bookshelf in the office, whereas I developed a layout incorporating both bookshelves and a single desk, along with a sofa or daybed. I think this furniture situation is going to be an audible, to use a football term. For those who don't follow American football, we'll play it by ear.

Eventually, we intend to finish out part of the remaining upstairs attic (about 10'-0" x 10'-0"), and maybe that can become my own little study with as many bookshelves and books as I want. (It would also make a great retreat for those nights when I'm restless and can't sleep, if we include a daybed.) A little insulation, some wood panelling, a skylight, and I'm all set.

Of course, I'd have to figure out how to decorate that room, too. Honestly, I smell a lot of pink in my imaginary study's future.

The Laundry Room

The laundry room at the "new" house is not, actually, in the house: it's attached to the detached garage, which is, in fact, no longer a garage, but an efficiency apartment. (We plan to renovate the kitchenette in the efficiency and rent it out ASAP, allowing us to pay off the mortgage faster and/or speed up the timeline for repairs and alterations to the house). 

When we first saw the house, I told my dear husband that the house was a no-go if we didn't move the laundry room to the house within 18 months of moving in. He agreed, since I originally suggested we build the laundry room in the current unfinished attic space.

I realized, after we'd put in an offer, that it would be impossible to move the laundry room, upstairs, because there was no way to put a door larger than 24" leading into that space, and full-size washers and dryers are wider than 24". I suggested, instead, that we take in about 56 square feet of the MONSTER screened porch to create a Laundry/Mud Room. There's some push-back, but hopefully he'll come around.

All I Want for Christmas Is...

It's that time of the year: the time when a large proportion of the world gives and receives gifts in their community, some thoughtful:

Family Tree at Württembergisches Landesmuseum, Stuttgart / Wikimedia Commons

some not so much:

Oh, look. It's a cheese fondue set. via Wikimedia Commons

It's supposed to be a joyful time of year, when family and friends come together to celebrate the holidays, but it often ends up being more stressful than not! So, for this first CuratedHouston Holiday post, we've rounded up a collection of gifts that would ease the stress of the season so we could enjoy it as we should!

Image via Amazon.com

1. Handbag Organizer - It's a seemingly insignificant gift that we think could be life-changing. We practically live in our cars, and it's almost impossible to manage the large numbers of coins, pens, emery boards, and lipsticks inevitably buried beneath that layer of Starbucks receipts and dry-cleaning claim tickets. A handbag organizer would help, seeing as that one interior purse pocket always fills up quickly! This leopard print option from Periea is calling our name!






2. Cosmetics Compact - Okay, so we already use at least one of Laura Mercier's brilliant custom compacts to keep our blush and eyeshadow corralled, and it definitely cuts down on countertop and makeup bag clutter! These Laura Mercier compacts are available at Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom, which means you have a perfect excuse to eat at Bazille or Mariposa. Also, we're trying to figure out how to apply this bundling principle to everything in our lives. Ideas gratefully accepted!

Amazing Charger Available Here.

3. Charging Hub - With a limited number of outlets in our office, it would be a godsend to have a handy charging station for all of our gadgets: iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Pro. Also, if it could be made of an attractive material that's made of renewable resources, that would be great, thanks. Enter this beauty of a charging hub that would solve all my problems:

4. Desktop Scanner - Organizing all the forms, contracts, and bills that are an inevitable part of business and household management, and what better way to keep track of them than by scanning them straight onto that MacBook. A small one, like this one from Epson, would fit the bill perfectly!

Doesn't It Just Make You Want to Prepare Your Income Taxes?

5. Trunk Cargo Organizer - While buying groceries to make food for a sick relative, I started to daydream about having one of these. It would mean the end of wondering if that container of cubed cantaloupe from Whole Foods will make it home in one piece.

Available in Multiple Configurations here.

6. A Dog Walker - It's difficult to fit in exercise for ourselves, never mind for our pups. A dog walker - and I don't mean a robotic dog walker, but a human - to take the dogs for a trek around the neighborhood when our schedules mean it's just not in the cards.


7. Customized Meal Plans - We're tempted to try a service like platejoy, which creates meal plans for specific tastes, goals, and allergies, and plans your meals so leftover ingredients from Monday night's dinner are used up in Thursday's breakfast. Sure, you still have to do the grocery shopping, but that's what Instacart is for, right?

8. Gorgeous Office Supplies - Paperwork isn't known for pleasing the senses, but that doesn't mean the office essentials you need can't be! We love love love Cynthia Rowley's collaboration with Staples: think moody, floral, and luscious!

Find It Here....

Here...

And Here.

9. J. Crew Endless Shirt - Our capsule wardrobes - a few select items that all coordinate - could become a single uniform with about 10 of these wonderful shirts hanging in our closets! All we'd need to finish the uniform: 2 pairs of jeans, 2 pairs of J. Crew's Pixie pants in black and gray, and LOTS of chunky jewelry.

Dear Santa, I Seriously Just Want Ten of These. Please!

10. 1,000 Square Foot Addition (or A Whole New House) - Editor-in-Chief Megan currently shares a 3-BR/1-BA house with her husband and two dogs.

It's 985 SF.

Why she wants another 1,000 square feet of space is pretty obvious: it's a little cramped (the largest bedroom is 9'-0" x 11'-3")! And, of course, more square footage means more spaces that need to be designed! And who wouldn't want that?

What are your 10 most desired Holiday Gifts? And don't worry about being realistic, because WE certainly aren't!


Note: The companies whose products are listed above did not pay to be in this posting. We just really like the products!

Finding Your Style: Getting Started

Last week, I discussed how my style has grown more defined as the years have passed. This week, we’ll focus on you, and how to refine your interior style to suit your personality.

But where to start?

Many of my friends are purchasing their first homes, and they know how they want their rooms to feel – warm, traditional and welcoming; industrial mixed with modern; the cool Belgian look popularized by Axel Vervoordt before being mutated and spread like a virus by… well, I won’t name names. Figuring out how to achieve what they want is an entirely different matter.

My advice: look at what you have, and think about the things you will never get rid of, whether it’s that funny squirrel-shaped candy dish from your great aunt, or the trio of prints you bought from 20x200. Do those things have a common thread? Are they all quirky, or mid-century kitsch? Be sure to pay careful attention to your art and accessories: are there common colors that run through the them? Do they contain lots of oranges, reds, and yellows? Or a mix of cool blues and greens? Or both?

When deciding the colors for my home, I looked to the art I collect (most of which is in a storage unit, because a small house=small walls). The main colors I saw were blues and oranges, so those are the colors I ran with.

I considered a blue sofa, like the Chesterfield stunner below, but when my sister, mother and I went to pick out the fabric for my custom sofa, we realized that the blue velvets made me appear tired, to be charitable. While standing in front of an orange fabric, however, I looked great! My inherited under-eye circles practically disappeared! And what good is a beautiful living room if you don’t look your best in it?

Next, find images of spaces you would want to live in, be it a cozy cottage aesthetic full of quilts and antiques tables, or a modern loft with concrete floors and leather furniture.  No matter the style, the image should sing to you, hold your attention, and emotionally transport you to a place where you feel at home.

Find a place to keep those pictures: for bazillions of women, that’s Pinterest, and it’s a wonderful resource, as I’m currently discovering. For my mom, it’s a pretty blue linen box from The Container Store. I’m rather old-school, so I have a collection of Moleskine’s A3 Sketchbooks on my bookshelves; the interior pocket on the back is a great place to collect images culled from magazines and swatches of fabric before I affix them to the pages, which usually occurs a few times each year in a blitz of archival double-stick tape and lots of iced tea.

The point is to find an organizational method that works for you and how you live. If you mostly find images on your phone while browsing Houzz or Pinterest, then use those resources. If you love to curl up with a stack of glossy magazines, then use the pages for your references; once you’ve collected what you love, you can jettison the magazines: hoarding is never a sign of good design.

Once you have the images, annotate them: write down what you love about the image: the light fixture over the kitchen island? The pattern of tile in the backsplash? The appearance of the cork flooring? In Pinterest, you can do this using the space they provide for notes when you’ve pinned an image to your board. In a sketchbook you can do it with a black pen or narrow-tip felt marker.

After you’ve collected a bunch of images and notes, you can start to narrow down the elements you want to have in your rooms: if you’re devastatingly hip, you might decide to buy an orange velvet sofa, or a 1950s MCM console. Regardless, there are a few things to consider before you become married to a design scheme:

What are your cleaning habits? Selecting gloss white floors, for example, will require almost daily cleaning. Are you willing to take on that responsibility? If not, it’s probably a good idea to change your aspirations, or at least decide how to alter your desired design. Maybe those gloss white floors become natural oak floors, or a soft grey ceramic tile. 

Do you have children or pets? Are they allowed on the furniture? (The pets, I mean.) If so, you’ll want to look at fabric options designed to take some abuse. Crypton and Perennials have some amazing fabric choices that can help.

What makes you feel happy emotionally? Though I used to be drawn to darker spaces full of deep red velvets and navy blue jacquards that sucked up all of the light, I’ve since come to realize that those colors can cause me to become depressed if the dark hues are enveloping. For me, dark green walls, a navy bedspread, and dark grey sheets mean some serious psychiatric issues!

And of course, if you’re married, you have to include your spouse’s preferences. For instance, my husband’s favorite color is Egyptian blue, so I’m keeping that in mind for the day we can bring one more tiny speck of matter into our house, because right now, it’s stretched to the point of explosion. He’s also interested in ceramics and pottery, so I plan to incorporate them into the décor in future. My sister’s husband is fascinated with the universe, galaxies, the solar system, etc., so they have an enormous photograph of Pluto on the wall above their sofa. Not only does it incorporate something my Brother-In-Law loves, it’s also a visually arresting piece of artwork.

Now that you’ve considered all the variables, you’re ready for the next step.

To Be Continued…

Defining My Style

For a lover of interior decoration and architecture, it can be difficult to decide on a style or theme for your home: you see so much beauty in magazines, blogs, and Pinterest posts boards, that it seems impossible to choose one to stick with for the long term.

As a younger woman, I went through multiple design phases, one of which consisted of yards of crimson chenille and velvet; my mother dubbed it “French Bordello”. It was only five years ago that I discovered the style that is unabashedly, unashamedly ME. 

It’s taken a long time to arrive at my style, and it all began with a Mid Century Modern console. Fifteen years ago, I purchased a low console from the 1950s, a surprise to my mother because I typically gravitated towards dark, heavily carved antique furniture, along with forest greens and the previously mentioned deep crimsons. Still, I bought the console, then decorated my first studio apartment in neo-medieval splendor (or French Bordello, if you must). I slept under a claret-colored velvet bedspread, sat in a chair upholstered in red chenille with green ivy leaves, and ate at a dark brown antique gate-leg table. The console was woefully out of place, so I hid it beneath a homemade pleated cloth fashioned from a Ralph Lauren red-and-brown plaid.

Cul de Sac, Michell Weinberg

My next apartment was far less brooding, with a cream loveseat given to me by an elderly woman from my parents’ church; the red chenille chair seat reupholstered in aqua ultrasuede and a blue-and-wheat woven silk on the back; and the 1950s console proudly on display. My bed wore a vintage bedspread in pinks, aqua, and soft olive greens atop a crisp white blanket. Pink and purple embroidered pillowcases I’d collected from antique malls during my teens were finally put to use. (Obviously, my teenage interests weren’t among the stereotypical dating/football/movies categories.) Perhaps the change in my apartment décor said something about my emotional states during those years, or maybe it was simply because I loved too many colors and styles to decide on one theme.

Ten years later, my style is more defined, and the objects I own work cohesively, though their styles are seemingly incompatible. To preempt my mother giving my style a moniker, I named it “Delightful Mélange”. 

The living room is arranged around an orange velvet sofa, a jolt of color against soft gray walls and a rug woven in natural and faded navy jute fibers. The 1950s console lives happily across the room from a carved African drum reused as a drinks table. The antique gate-leg table is flanked by mismatched chairs, one from the 1830s and the other from the 1960s awaiting reupholstery in olive mohair velvet.

The random art my husband and I collected over the years – prints from a now defunct art magazine, Randall Munroe’s “United Shapes of America”, and wrestling photos taken by artist Zia Danger – hold their own, particularly when surmounted by a bleached deer skull. In the office I share with my husband, my desk area is decorated with a set of mounted antlers from my maternal grandfather’s hunting days, and an abstract print in pastels colors, framed in an ornate silver filigreed frame. Robert's desk is overseen by a watercolor portrait of our older dog, Fred, painted by my aunt. We intend to commission her to paint another of our young female, Ginger, sometime after Christmas.

United Shapes of America, Randall Munroe

Our bedroom is home to a 1920 Scottish chest of drawers, bedside tables from Baker’s 1949 Far East Collection, and a gaudy Rococo headboard upholstered in creamy linen and gilt to the gills. Despite my desire for a monochromatic soft green bedroom, complete with bed hangings, our bed is clothed in a navy quilted sateen coverlet and soft violet linen sheets: colors I pulled from the Karastan Kirman rug that fills the room. The bedding’s darker colors also serve a definite purpose: to mask the any trace our dogs leave behind after our nightly snuggle sessions in bed.

Multicolor Panel Kirman, Karastan