an interiors kool-aid drinking buddy

met myself today.

the march/april rue magazine features ellie somerville of luxe magazine, an editor whose brain i share.

what i see in these pages is my home if i had redone it from scratch in 2012 rather than 2007.  (and if i were as talented as a paid pro.)

excerpts read like things i’d say in my blog:

once settled, ellie made swift work of furnishing the apartment… “stores like west elm, ikea, crate and barrel, and z gallerie made this process easier and were great affordable starting points.”

ellie somerville / rue magazine / march-april 2013

floored that an interior design magazine editor would admit to this.

unless you have been cryogenically frozen since 1981, you will recognize the ikea LACK tv stand.  just marginally less obvious is the CB2 coffee table.

there’s the subtle animal hide, eons more current than my contemporary floral rug which is about as hip as VH1:

my place

excuse the terrible photography; i’m hoping an SLR is in my future.

feeling in step with the patterns on her cushions:

ellie somerville / rue magazine / march-april 2013

her color story leans mauve and mine dives into blue, but threads overlap.

my place

ellie somerville / rue magazine / march-april 2013

that, my friends, is an ikea kivik sofa.  shut up.

in the chair and the mirror above the couch is a light tone raw wood finish i’ve been pulling teeth to introduce into my living/dining room.  if only i hadn’t committed so strongly to dark wood finishes!  *shaking fist at sky*

some sad attempts to remedy this include purchasing this west elm coffee table, which will inevitably be cheaper than a reclaimed wood piece, during the next massive sale.

west elm

and stripping one of my occasional chairs despite its art deco silhouette.

don’t hate, ok?  sanding it down is a work in progress.  there must be an eighth inch of glossy black paint on this thing.

i also threw a mango wood vase on the dining table.  once all the pieces are in place, it’ll come together like the austrian lodge (well…theoretically).

my place

note the white + crystal lighting here.  ellie uses the same concept in the form of a lamp in her living room.

after taking into account that our trends are a couple years out of sync, my approach has been remarkably similar to hers.  happy thoughts.

rue blurbs below reveal some things we live by.  you should too, then join us for my imaginary weekly brunch with her.

convenience wasn’t the only upside to using reasonably priced furniture and decor; the freedom to experiment was another perk, and a deliberate one at that.  “as i go on my own design journey, i can practice with scale, color, and materials without making costly mistakes.  not everything is perfect, but i’m ok with that.  this is my little design laboratory, and things are always changing.”

yes.

listening to a typical sunday in ellie’s life only drives her point home.  “i get the newspaper and sit on the sofa with my feet propped up, surrounded by my dogs.  i have coffee, and there’s beautiful natural light streaming in – that’s the moment i feel most at home.  i’m comfortable, i’m happy, i’m at peace.”

yes.  except the part about the dogs.

“anyone who’s interested in design never feels like a space is truly ever done,” ellie says. 

“i’m learning as i go, and i’m enjoying it.  it’s fun.  this has really felt like a home to me.”

brain sharing.

the ongoing adventures of captain den reno

mission office ran aground on mission life.

much as i’m a catalog junkie, i approached this office re-do with the intention of getting pieces so unique that i couldn’t just toss my AMEX number at the CB2 website whilst sipping coffee sunday morning.  no, the office should involve some sweat.  (and more than the amount it would take to throw up a couple coats of paint.)

this is hard.

between an escalating load at work and some health-busting bugs, it took me a mammoth effort to get just three primary ingredients in place by now.  i’m beginning to see why foraging for design is a full time job.

a weekend afternoon at a used furniture liquidator’s warehouse led me to this beauty:

what’s that, mr. fred’s-unique-furniture-and-antiques?  solid wood desk by a classic american manufacturer in the perfect stain?  no refinishing required?  yup, load it into my trunk.

this is where the furniture adventure gets hairy.  i don’t believe in cars and use a cheap little zippy one out of necessity.  (if you don’t own a car in michigan, you might as well draw a face on your volleyball and call him wilson.)

used furniture rarely comes with the free delivery perk, though, so add to your to-do list the need to borrow an SUV.  and the need to reserve the loading dock in your apartment building.  and the need to make time during business hours.  and the need to coordinate loading-unloading with your spouse’s schedule.  doing this the fun way is starting to eat me alive.

i borrowed an SUV, picked the desk up from the warehouse, and nabbed a vintage eames fiberglass shell from craigslist en route.  boom.

crisp white walls.  wood mid-century desk.  yellow mid-century chair.  this room needs a burst of something to yank it forward into 2013 without rejecting the decades in between.

enter a bokhara rug (timeless) in the rarest vibrant blue (modern).

i win.  literally, after a harrowing week of ebay bidding, i win.

now back to mission life, which demands my full attention for a week to recover hours lost to bugs.  the rest of the room will have to wait…  but i expect that a daydream or two will pull me back to crisp whites, warm woods, and a yellow pop on a sea of blue.

pantone deaf (and dumb)

this recent bunk about pantone’s 2013 Color of the Year, emerald, has me in a bind.

real strong work, group-of-douchebags-who-spend-two-days-in-a-secret-european-location-voting-on Next Year’s Color. pardon me as i go vomit into the corner of this room where the carpet won’t notice.

i’m being unfair. the problem is not emerald.

the problem is PANTONE.

i write this blog out of fascination with the creative manipulation of space. it is an art form. add to that the reality that our brain chemicals dance in response to their environment, and i cannot resist obsessing.

but i also can’t ignore the pain in my ribs from the hot iron prods of exploitation and consumerism wielded by the interior design industry. (p.s. if interiors is a slimy little late-night gremlin, fashion is the wizard-wrestling balrog of evils. more on that later.)

i watch with admiration when an artist creates a piece out of her own unique vision and the labor of her hands. i stand in awe when that piece elicits an emotional response from another human being through its independent aesthetic power.

but when a new trend causes a mass of ‘outdated’ items to be relegated to basement storage – or worse, to a dumpster – my inner WALL-E wails in frustration.

i can more easily buy into this process while trends bring a new creative vision to culture. for example, the movement to mix ubertraditional with ubercontemporary is fresh, unintuitive, and pushes the boundaries of convention.

klavs rosenfalck / elle decor / jan-feb 2013

another example: the trend of modern rustic.

damm and heske / elle decor / jan-feb 2013

but a Color of the Year? absolute POPPYCOCK. all that this does is to force a consumer, coked up on a fleeting standard of cool, to trip over herself in a frenzy to buybuybuy. emerald? forreals?? could the randomness of this choice be any greater proof of corporate greed?

full disclosure: i spent eight or nine weeks last summer in a single pair of $15 H&M cobalt blue pants. i am guilty as anyone of falling for a cheap trend and tossing it aside moments later… it’s a personal weakness i battle. fortunately, when a trend fails to seduce, the underlying violation of ethics bubbles quickly to the surface in my thoughts.

All Colors are the Color of All Time. pantone can eat my shorts.

a muggle rug struggle

the typical reaction to area rugs on wall-to-wall carpet is HORROR.  if not that, then judgment.  a little disgust.  maybe a scrunched nose, an arched eyebrow.

i understand.  functionally, a rug over carpet only makes sense if you’re trying to hide a pet stain or shameful secret or dead body.  yes?  NO.

let’s call a spade a spade: rug-on-carpet hate is a case of interior design arrogance.  millions of ordinary taxpayers live in rental housing with beige/hideous floor treatments and no power to change them.  much as a stunning hardwood or marble floor can elevate a space, a bad carpet can kill it.  it is a gross violation of justice for interior designers to invent a random law that denies all renters the opportunity to create their ideal space from top to bottom despite a crappy developer’s cheap flooring circa 1992.  no hyperbole here.

so against all conventional wisdom, i use rugs everywhere in my carpeted apartment.

(you will never ever see this done on tv or in a magazine.)

does it look like a design commandment is being broken here?  what does your gut tell you?

all it takes is one working eyeball to see what i mean.

in useful terms, you might wonder about the value added by a rug since carpeted rooms already protect your toes and babies from the hard, slippery truth of a pretty floor.  my rugs do a few things for me:

1.  they ground furniture and define room boundaries in an open-concept layout, which has the unexpected effect of making the apartment feel bigger

2.  they add visual interest through pattern and color

3.  they provide a backdrop for furniture to pop

these perks exist whether there’s a beauty or a beast under the rug.  see how it’s done in a renovated 1920s connecticut house with hardwood floors featured in the most recent luxe magazine:

marks & franz / luxe interiors + design / fall 2012

marks & franz / luxe interiors + design / fall 2012

i don’t even like these rooms, but their rugs made me sit up and take notice.  a rug is a high voltage design tool.

it comes down to this:  i refuse to be benched for a stupid rule.  ‘no rugs on carpet’ can join ‘no white after labor day’ and ‘no marriage for gays’ in the rusty old bucket of irrelevance.