=== The Plan ===
If you had your own interior designer/decorator...or even if you are doing this yourself...you need a plan. Traditionally it is assumed you are going to empty a room...maybe keep a couple of pieces and re-do the whole thing, all within a set budget and in a set time frame.
Forget it!!! We do not have the money for that...and whats more doing everything at once means that we will be paying full 'pop' for everything.
So what will we do?
Well for a start even the most luxurious rooms emptied of their furnishings look rather unimpressive...and some of the best rooms are nothing more then simply four walls and a nice paint job without their contents. So I have found focusing on the furniture is the key.
Once you have found and bought three or more pieces for a particular room then you are ready to start. Ideally it is good to have somewhere to store these things ..as it can take some time to accumulate enough of them to replace the contents of the room they were bought for. Another extremely workable idea is start by painting one or more key rooms white and place things wherever in them. White is perfect as it will act as a back drop for the many different colours that the pieces you have collected may come in. Later we will review everything you need to know about colours and how to work with them.
It is likely that you will be adding new pieces and editing out old pieces from your past for quite some time. I have found that as you go certain pieces will gain or loose priority ...so for awhile it is often not wise to lock in decisions.
Two things will keep changing...your tastes will broaden and every now and then an absolutely wonderful item will drop into your lap. Over the last three months I have had a chair and two side tables come my way...one table..was $7.00 the other was $4.50 and the chair was a dollar! It is just dumb luck that they compliment each other and can replace pieces in a hall at the top of the stairs. The things I had were attractive..effective and and were all under $20.00 each. But! These new pieces are really great! Like me you are unlikely to even think about a space that you have finished and are more then pleased with
You can have a few weeks or months and find virtually nothing ..but your luck will change. I have found that I often can have a short spell of several great items showing up... one after the other over a week or two. I bought these pieces for no other reason then that they were just too good and too cheap not to. I even felt a little stupid as I had to store them with no idea of how or where I could ever use them. Then I tried to take the nicest piece and put it in the hall to replace a piece that was there. It did not work! I made the remark to a friend that it would only work if I replaced everything else. Then it occurred to me...I already had that "everything else".
. . .
Well for a start even the most luxurious rooms emptied of their furnishings look rather unimpressive...and some of the best rooms are nothing more then simply four walls and a nice paint job without their contents. So I have found focusing on the furniture is the key.
Once you have found and bought three or more pieces for a particular room then you are ready to start. Ideally it is good to have somewhere to store these things ..as it can take some time to accumulate enough of them to replace the contents of the room they were bought for. Another extremely workable idea is start by painting one or more key rooms white and place things wherever in them. White is perfect as it will act as a back drop for the many different colours that the pieces you have collected may come in. Later we will review everything you need to know about colours and how to work with them.
It is likely that you will be adding new pieces and editing out old pieces from your past for quite some time. I have found that as you go certain pieces will gain or loose priority ...so for awhile it is often not wise to lock in decisions.
Two things will keep changing...your tastes will broaden and every now and then an absolutely wonderful item will drop into your lap. Over the last three months I have had a chair and two side tables come my way...one table..was $7.00 the other was $4.50 and the chair was a dollar! It is just dumb luck that they compliment each other and can replace pieces in a hall at the top of the stairs. The things I had were attractive..effective and and were all under $20.00 each. But! These new pieces are really great! Like me you are unlikely to even think about a space that you have finished and are more then pleased with
You can have a few weeks or months and find virtually nothing ..but your luck will change. I have found that I often can have a short spell of several great items showing up... one after the other over a week or two. I bought these pieces for no other reason then that they were just too good and too cheap not to. I even felt a little stupid as I had to store them with no idea of how or where I could ever use them. Then I tried to take the nicest piece and put it in the hall to replace a piece that was there. It did not work! I made the remark to a friend that it would only work if I replaced everything else. Then it occurred to me...I already had that "everything else".
. . .
We need to know what things to look for. I will cover that next. We will need to know where to buy them. I will tell you where later. It will not matter what room a piece goes into. One week we might find the perfect lamp for our desk..... and the next week the perfect coffee table for the living room...and yet another time a bed. Which means we will edit rooms and add as we go...or even store things if we have some space to. Once we have collected enough things to make over part or all of a room we will do so.
We will let the pieces dictate our direction. For example imagine we find a steal on a upholstered chair by George Nelson...it is blue...bingo ! ... we are going to be using blue in that room. Later we find a sweet deal on an antique table ...the only place we can use it is in the room with the blue chair. It is not how we envisioned that room... but...in fact the 'big but' is that it works perfect. We are going to use the George Nelson chair...even if we were really hoping for the Pierre Paulin chair...in red. We always imagined that we were going to have that sleek Eileen Gray glass top table across from it. I am not suggesting you like "everything" but keep your options open. I soon began buying everything..as long as it had a pedigree Yes I now have three chairs and a table stored because I have no room for them and I preferred something else I eventually found. Big deal two of the chairs were $5.00 each...one chair $1.00 and the table was $15.00. No regrets ...and if I had the space I would use them.
It takes time... but you will find that you will get a big charge when you buy these pieces...and you get to go shopping ...a lot! Once you get a room or two with a bit into it, every time you add something to it...you will not only get a buzz from the new thing but from the room itself. The room just keeps getting better and better. If you could do the whole room at once...you would soon find that you have taken that space for granted ...and were bored with it. So I found getting things one at a time was just plain fun. Every week or so something new. Unlike a night out at the movies or the like...I got to keep my prize...and enjoy it again and again. Take for example my Marcel Bruer chair...$8.50 .First I was so excited with it...then a couple of months later I found the perfect side table for it...not only was that great ...I put them together ...and boom I was thrilled by the chair all over again.
The biggest part of a room are the things we put into it. I have not forgotten about the room itself.
A bit later we will cover floors,ceilings and walls. I will show you how to use and make sense of colour. I will give you the basics...and the whole deal too, for those that really like that sort of thing. If you find the "paint thing" is to heady and the thing bogs you down...I will also show you how to skip nearly all of that ... and give you a dead easy bullet proof way to make a room look perfect.
. . .
. . .
=== The Guide ==
OK! Listen up!
If is not so easy to pick out the good stuff without a guide. Or ...now you are here..."school is in"
and you will need a text book or two. I learnt more from observing pictures then I ever did from reading. "And yes"... I am remembering that those that read my modest epistles are the very people who need to get them cheap.
A picture is worth a thousand words... Wow! What an inspiration that cliche' gave me...
... the two most valuable books I own are Tashen's..."1000 Chairs "and "1000 Lights 1878 to present" both books are written by... Charlotte and Peter Fiell
Because many of the same designers that design chairs also design tables etc. it becomes relatively easy to recognize the 'style' that a particular designer creates by their chairs. I found most of my furniture second hand... and very cheap by using this book as a reference.
The "lamps" book is such a bargain it is worth having too.
If is not so easy to pick out the good stuff without a guide. Or ...now you are here..."school is in"
and you will need a text book or two. I learnt more from observing pictures then I ever did from reading. "And yes"... I am remembering that those that read my modest epistles are the very people who need to get them cheap.
A picture is worth a thousand words... Wow! What an inspiration that cliche' gave me...
... the two most valuable books I own are Tashen's..."1000 Chairs "and "1000 Lights 1878 to present" both books are written by... Charlotte and Peter Fiell
Because many of the same designers that design chairs also design tables etc. it becomes relatively easy to recognize the 'style' that a particular designer creates by their chairs. I found most of my furniture second hand... and very cheap by using this book as a reference.
The "lamps" book is such a bargain it is worth having too.
I have seen these books for between $2.00 each (used) to $45.00 each. in reality expect to pay $10.00 to $20.00.
. . .
. . .
There are many magazines that cater to home design and decoration.. The better of which are Metopolitan Home, Elle Decor, and Elle Decoration U.K. edition. Then there are magazines and periodicals like Modernism and Atomic Ranch which inform and celebrate good design in architecture and the decorative arts. These are are both an enjoyable read but also can serve as reference books.
Most magazines are focused on what is hip,cool and new! Unfortunately too many are only interested in the fashion of the moment and they feed this candy to you in heaping spoon fulls. The result is if you use them for a guide ...you will end up with a house full of dated over priced and redundant items in a very short time.
Most magazines are focused on what is hip,cool and new! Unfortunately too many are only interested in the fashion of the moment and they feed this candy to you in heaping spoon fulls. The result is if you use them for a guide ...you will end up with a house full of dated over priced and redundant items in a very short time.
there are exceptions ....
... Elle Decoration U.K. Edition
How good is it??? ......
No... it is not doing things on the cheap...neither is it trying to show off that which is only affordable by the wealthy.
It is about excellence in design... and it is so varied... that reading a single issue would never show you the whole spectrum.
It is now the worlds best selling homes magazine. Which I find a rather refreshing as they simply refused to play it safe. Creativity is always more important then fashion. I am sure some readers would find some rooms ugly...and I can personally tell you that many rooms break all the rules on good design that I learnt at school. They focus on quality,integrity and the best of the "Decorative Arts". Whether that is from Ikea, from high end manufacturers and designers or is found at the flea market, makes no difference. I have been reading it for ten years and and I have saved every issue...I went back and looked at the rooms that they were showing ten years ago... they still do not look the slightest bit dated! Those that used this to help them make their purchase decisions ten years ago must find it damn hard to get that smug grin off their face.
It really is quite simply the best! "No!!!" I am in no way affiliated with this publication. In fact I wrote to them and they did not even reply to me with a form letter.
You can pick up a copy at your local big box book store... it sells for about $12 or less.
"Hey !!!" "Those that do not get a copy every month will be spanked!" LOL
So.... bottom line. At the very least buy the "1000 Chairs" book ....and start reading Elle Decoration U.K. edition every month.
In the future I am going to refer to the book. I will also be sending you scurrying to the magazine to point out good examples of rooms that reflect a specific topic that I am discussing.
I am only one person ...so photographing new rooms as examples of 'how to' is limited. That said... we will soon be joined by photographer Jing Xie. She will be giving us pictures of specific examples in all of are "how to's"
No comments:
Post a Comment