watching american idol from under your andy warhol

contemporary art is for galleries.

joe nahem / architectural digest / june 2013

oops.  i mean, contemporary art is for your house.

joe nahem / architectural digest / june 2013

yeah…  the kind of house where they shoot ralph lauren commercials.  the kind of house where they don’t wear white after labor day.  the kind of house where they think ‘sweet caroline’ is a great song for the dance floor at a wedding.  what do you expect to see inside?  oil portraits?  antique china cabinets?  plaids and mallards?

joe nahem / architectural digest / june 2013

think again.

joe nahem schooled me with his eight-month redo of the connecticut home of allison and warren kanders. these guys collect contemporary art like you collect hours watching reality tv.

instead of turning a house into a sterile museum, nahem turned their collection into a personalized home.

no smooth ice-white MoMA walls at these digs.

joe nahem / architectural digest / june 2013

joe nahem / architectural digest / june 2013

look at the blast of wall art against an antique indian rug.  i am all over that bizniss.

joe nahem / architectural digest / june 2013

contemporary art mounted on wood walls?  chairs upholstered in faux-bois?  dude didn’t think outside the box, he took a hammer to it.

joe nahem / architectural digest / june 2013

their art is giving me sweat bubbles of jealousy on my t-zone.

conventional wisdom had me thinking that these pieces need a gallery-like home.  i may not share the nahem/kanders design taste, but now i understand how to style a home for my future arsenal of contemporary art.

just do whatever the hell i want.

from coffee to cocktails (your home, not your outfit)

so the other day i was bumming around my living room in the 2 pm glare, eyeballing how the walls might look in ultra pure white.  quick mental math!  can i paint everything and replace all my furniture for $50?

don’t judge me.  i made syed promise not to judge me before telling him that i wanted to paint our living room white.  he paused for a second, then took on his fiercest “stop being an unreasonable female” face…  the one he’s aimed at me ohh maybe twice since we met in 2004.

ok.  simmering down.

i named my blog after a paint color, for chrissake.  why would i want to deface a cocoon so carefully tuned to comfort us after work?  am i a tween on an abc afterschool special or some shit?  i define cool, not the guy in tats passing me a cigarette.

still, i’m curious why dim, moody, soothing spaces have fallen out of popular favor lately.

dark walls do sneak into magazines despite the ongoing white room orgy in interiors photography.  why the general shortage?  because they obviously don’t photograph with the ba-BAM of their counterparts.

abigail turin / architectural digest / april 2013

it’s like biting into a watermelon with your whole face.

…not something i’d do in a blizzard.  i wonder what this crisp white space looks like at night.  do light fixtures give the walls a dingy, yellowish bleh?  hmm.

conventional wisdom and the limitations of camera technology play to the strengths of white.  interiors photography must occur in maximum daylight.  don’t even consider the alternative, just deal.  this law might as well be etched on a tablet delivered by moses.  thou shalt and whatnot.

this room is already stunning in daylight:

jenna lyons / domino best rooms / spring 2012

by night, it will stop traffic.  spectacular light fixture + extensive architectural detailing = boom.

i start with the exception.  you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

it is left to us to apply our brain’s instagram (brainstagram?) nighttime filter to these spaces that photograph just a tad awkwardly in the daylight.  observe:

casper vissers / elle decor / jan 2013

not blown away by the daytime shot?  fast-forward to night:  white high contrast furniture to define the space.  dark walls receding to visual infinity.  blazing fire.  voluptuous chandelier.  win win win.

(note the checkerboard table.)

try another one:

fisher weisman / architectural digest / april 2013

your retinas are stimulated but not totally pleased with what they’re seeing, amiright?  the daylight against all these textural dark surfaces reads harsh.  i want to desert the house for the sunlit yard beckoning through those patio doors.  this room was born for the night.

strange to say that about a home office, but here we go:

brandi and mikkelsen / lonny magazine / dec 2012

call this a contemporary take on a gentleman cave, good for mallard displaying and pipe puffing.

ok let’s be honest – this room is preposterous in 2013.  it’s too dark for a productive workday and too technologically backwards for evening.  not sure why it exists.  add a chaise lounger and a couple floor lamps, and i might buy the story.

this room is so similar to mine, my subconscious has already moved in:

matthew patrick smyth / elle decor / dec 2012

a low rectangular lamp, a few flickering candles on the tray, a distant light reflecting in the mirror… yeah pretty sure if i wiggle my toes, you’ll see me sitting there just off to the right.

this bedroom is a no-brainer:

tamzin greenhill / elle decor / march 2013

perfection.  next.

more daytime harshness with the promise of a gorgeous night:

domino small spaces / spring 2013

jankety.  but in dim light under a lit blue star, the muted versions of all those colors will pool together cohesively.

and now back to where we started.

my place

subtract the sun.  mute the colors.  add flickering bursts of candle light, sparkle, and reflection.  don’t see it?  stop by some night for a cup of chai.

until cameras learn to capture what the human eye already knows, we’ve got to read between the lines in pretty pictures.  look past the magazine editors.  turn down the cigarette.  aren’t you, like, twenty-eight or something?

in boston, i will weld my bones to the city

spectating at the boston marathon / 18 april 2005

i belong in boston.

if you belong in the place where you were chiseled by fire hose and lasers into the rich complexity of your adulthood, i belong in boston.

i am a nomad everywhere else.

in boston, i will buy the restoration hardware tufted monstrosity and bolt it to the frame of my ten million dollar brownstone.  in boston, i will take out a loan for a baby grand piano to put at the comm ave bay window so i can finally learn to play chopsticks with both hands.

in boston, syed will run the marathon for the second and third and fourth and fifth times.

in boston, i will mortgage my life to brick walls laid by some guy who shot the shit with john adams if john adams were the kind of guy who shot shit.

there are no fugitives in boston.

and because this is supposed to be an interior design blog, here is a picture of my nerdy broke teenager’s dorm room circa 2004.  just a bunch of todd oldham for target and a pile of hobbit posters.

mccormick hall / MIT / 2004-2005

(a salary makes all the difference.)

lest we forget, boston hosted a war that birthed a nation.

spectating at the boston marathon / 18 april 2005

this piddling attack cannot leave a mark on the greatest city i know.

my sorrow for the victims, and love and support.

how to train your home to give bear hugs

a battle has long brewed between two epic design powers.

sorry; i’m excited for game of thrones season three.

it’s been bothering me that interior decor polarizes to two extremes, the first of which i like to call

1.  twenty-first century grandma

colors, patterns, textures, finishes are coordinated just so.  there’s a single metal.  matching woods.  steamed silk drapes and fluffed pillow cushions.  your eyes may be pleased, but your lungs burn a little from the decorator stench.

see:  william sofield, jamie drake, sarah richardson

william sofield

jamie drake

sarah richardson

such images come to mind for most americans when they think of home decor, plus a few predictable thoughts:  seems like a lot of effort.  also looks too expensive.  probably takes forever… meh, i have no idea how to make my house look like that.  can you stop asking me all these questions?  the bachelor finale is about to start.

three hours later, the bachelor is over and now you’re genuinely interested in putting some effort into your home decor.  do you actually want your house to look like a designer’s portfolio?  chew on that for a second.

the other design extreme is

2.  minimalism, or Whatever Happens When HAL 9000 Decorates.

bare.  muted.  slippery.  makes you feel small.  gives you the urge to reach for a blanket.  what’s that you say?  evil supercomputers don’t own blankets?

alix and bruno verney / elle decor / april 2013

alix and bruno verney / elle decor / april 2013

this is what artsy fartsy looks like in the interiors world.  don’t stare at it too long or you might catch a depression.

alix and bruno verney / elle decor / april 2013

i understand the aethetic value here, but its inaccessibility is a dealbreaker.  if the only way i can picture myself in your room is perched on the edge of your barcelona chair, weeping into my own hands, you lose.

grandma and robot.  one fussy, the other soulless.  both design extremes have a gaping hole where personality belongs.

for all they offer as a designer’s playground, rooms are homes for people.  people are flesh and blood hominids with achy backs, seasonal affective disorder, and clutter.  people need their rooms to love them like family.

enter emily, our white knight.

emily henderson / LA times / 16 march 2013

emily henderson / LA times / 16 march 2013

emily henderson / LA times / 16 march 2013

emily henderson / theeverygirl.com / 10 jan 2013

emily henderson / stylebyemilyhenderson.com / 19 march 2013

emily henderson / stylebyemilyhenderson.com / 31 jan 2013

this girl is on fire.

how?

by emphasizing proportion and shape over color coordination.  by rejecting trends for a mixed salad of periods and styles.

by embracing the unique, the eye-catching, and the human.

emily is a visionary.  follow.  (i certainly do.)

benjamin button interiors, LLC

flipping through april’s architectural digest shook the ground beneath my toes.

check out the kansas city apartment of hallmark exec david jimenez:

david jimenez / architectural digest / april 2013

david jimenez / architectural digest / april 2013

david jimenez / architectural digest / april 2013

i spent the better part of my college years coveting this aesthetic and the better part of my twenties executing it. take in the layer upon layer of color, texture, detail, sparkle, glamor (…all things out of reach to a nineteen year old occupying a room in a 1950s women’s dorm).

a space is designed with the intention that the eyes of a guest should land on a view and spend seconds or minutes unpeeling it.

david jimenez / architectural digest / april 2013

after years of broke dorm living, i went to great lengths to coordinate my apartment and carried this taste until now.

now it just looks old to me.

i don’t refer to rooms that purposefully evoke another era or culture, such as alex papachristidis’ baroque manhattan apartment or anouska hempel’s velvety english manor.

anouska hempel / architectural digest / april 2013

no; i refer to spaces that are contemporary, complex, and serious.

contrast the jimenez apartment with this san francisco beach house belonging to abigail turin.

abigail turin / architectural digest / april 2013

abigail turin / architectural digest / april 2013

these rooms evoke the very definition of youth:  smooth, clear skin.  bright eyes.  a springing step.  laughter.  energy unconscious of its power.

simplicity.  merciful, glorious simplicity.

michael formica hits these notes at times around his connecticut home.

michael formica / architectural digest / april 2013

these guest room chairs make me excited and uncomfortable, much like puppies do:

michael formica / architectural digest / april 2013

i puzzled over this issue of architectural digest to understand what makes a space feel old or young.  though living in the same universe as his youthful moments above, some of the rooms in formica’s home stink of ripening 401k portfolios.

michael formica / architectural digest / april 2013

what’s the missing ingredient?  bright pops of colors?  is that the secret to a youthful space?

apparently not:

jamie drake / architectural digest / april 2013

jamie drake / architectural digest / april 2013

jamie drake / architectural digest / april 2013

sure, these rooms are coordinated, balanced, and aesthetically good.  they also remind me of elton john’s elton-johnish home from last month’s AD.

(i’ll let you decide if ‘elton-johnish’ is a compliment.)

martyn lawrence bullard / architectural digest / march 2013

martyn lawrence bullard / architectural digest / march 2013

these photos make me want to chuck my ipad across the room.

so pops of colors + white walls does not a youthful interior make.  what, then??

…whatever it is that’s going on in will ferrell’s manhattan apartment:

shawn henderson / architectural digest / march 2013

shawn henderson / architectural digest / march 2013

shawn henderson / architectural digest / march 2013

casual ease?  yes, that’s what i’ll name her.

brightness + pops of color + casual ease.  this is Me Right Now.

i share these musings not to be the jerk who criticizes personal style.  if a home dweller consciously plants her style on a space, i respect.  period.

what throws me is the backwards journey i’ve taken from the layered wisdom of jimenez to the youthful whimsy of turin.  it’s disconcerting.  and yet…

my parents spent this week visiting us in detroit.  they shared, with enthusiasm, their continuing adventures thanks to a renewed energy for life and a willingness to leave behind the seriousness of their parenting years.

they said: when i was 20 i thought like i was 60, and now that i’m 60 i live like i’m 20.

is this the new direction of my design tastes?

i’ll take it.

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.

one man’s boonies is another man’s MoMA

my bffs in boston and new york spent today burrowing their way out from under an avalanche.

i spent today in a building that you could use to burrow out from under an avalanche.

zaha hadid / eli and edythe broad art museum

zaha hadid’s eli and edythe broad art museum opened just a couple months ago in east lansing, michigan.  east lansing.  EAST LANSING.  there is an extension school of sheeps and goats a few blocks away from this world-class feat of angular poetry.  i know what you’re thinking.  how do i get zaha hadid to build a contemporary art museum in MY backcountry village?

i’m being unfair to east lansing.  it’s home to a big ten university, neighbors the state capital, and has other good stuff probably maybe.  it’s also the home of frib, another world-class institute which consumes the other part of my double life as 98%-something-slash-2%-interior-design-blogger.

what east lansing did well was this:  it produced a bajillionaire couple who values community access to arts and culture to the tune of thirty million dollars.  i better see my state capital-neighboring hometown of york, pennsylvania vigorously taking notes or i will drag it by the ear to the principal’s office.

just look, damnit.

zaha hadid / eli and edythe broad art museum

zaha hadid / eli and edythe broad art museum

zaha hadid / eli and edythe broad art museum

zaha hadid / eli and edythe broad art museum

take pleasure in the sunlight dancing with the building.

oh.  there’s also art.

some museums curate to an educational or pleasurable experience.  the broad museum clearly chucks that intention for a dramatically thought-provoking – borderline radical – collection.  i felt intellectually stimulated at every moment.

for example:  the installation of video art is, for me, groundbreaking.  until now i had considered video art to be too visually abrasive for use in interior design… WRONG.  i’ll let these thought bubble lightbulbs burn to maturity before posting on the topic.

if you live in michigan, for the love of god, go.

look away from the hardwood sirens

i am on a desk odyssey.

once syed got around to reading my post re: the den, his face took on that manic appeal and he requested immediate implementation.  “let’s bang it out this weekend.  order the desk today so it’s here by tuesday.  i wanna start hosting meetings next week.”

say whaa?  you just interrupted my mental saga.  the one starring a coffee table.  ok.  office.  right.  on it.

since we have so many bad pieces in the space – desk, sofa, and office storage – cost will be the enemy.  should we choose to replace the existing brown lump, a comfortable and attractive sleeper couch will eat all our money for brunch.

desk.  attractive easily-moved desk.  cheap attractive easily-moved desk.

guess that rules this guy out.

west elm

$450 isn’t a back breaker for such gorgeosity.  i can do better, though.

a parsons table is prudent.  overused, but prudent.

west elm

west elm’s weighs in at $350.  considering its size, simple design, and engineered wood construction, the price tag smells funny.  pretty sure i can find one used.  checking out fred’s unique furniture…

$195

definite maybe.

then there’s the one from last week:

$95

refinished?  as-is?  the warm tones contribute rather perfectly to a space evoking brightness and soul:

i need to mosey my way over to fred’s warehouse to see these gentlemen in the flesh.

how about this simple one on craigslist?

$45

in a dingy old office park, yuck.  in an airy den, promising!  might as well go super cheap + elbow grease if i’m going to settle for wood veneer.

every once in a while, i pass across something like this:

$195

solid oak and a total failure of mobility, but those lines!  that finish!  picture it in a sea of colorful rugs, gallery walls, molded plastic midcentury chairs.  the vision makes me twitchy.

desk progress will have to wait until the weekend… fred’s weekday hours cater to the retired / unemployed.  in the meantime, there’s no shortage of mental energy needed to plan out the rest of the room.

this wobbly black-brown LACK coffee table is no longer distracting.

it’s only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange

this art is creepy, right?

francesca connolly / elle decor / march 2013

the room is calm and comfortable.  i wouldn’t know, though.  i’m busy peering into the ratty living room above the sofa and wondering if i’m gonna catch a zombie strolling by.

i’ve seen this inception-for-interiors concept now twice in a week, the second time in will ferrell’s midcentury funk loft.

shawn henderson / architectural digest / march 2013

the pop art angle makes it less bonkers here… only slightly, though.  zombie marge simpson?

odd to me that a person would use the image of a room as wall art in a room.  the room IS the art, where principles of aesthetic, balance, proportion, color, contrast are wielded as carefully as a designer might in clothing or sculpture or internet meme.  i think that a picture of a room inside the room mucks up the room.

i mean, does a photograph of a belle epoque parlor confuse your modernist living room?  does an image of a chesterfield couch belong over a real chesterfield couch or a futon?  do overlapping styles complement each other or compete/distract?  what are the guidelines for rooms-within-rooms??

…challenge accepted.  (i am clutching my blanket in fear.)

going all bill-nye on my den

it occurs to me that i’ve been nitpicking at a space that’s batting 800 when i have a whole separate room screaming in an angry-child-at-the-other-side-of-costco kind of way.  you hear a quiet doppler-shifted din in the distance which is easily ignored while deciding between charmin ultra soft and charmin ultra strong.  as you inch your shopping cart into the same aisle, though, you are slapped with its hideous fury.

emphasis on hideous.

our den functions as an office, a second tv lounge, a guest room, and a reasonably arranged dumping ground for the furniture syed and i have dragged with us through post-college singlehood and transitional newlywed-hood.  hold my hand as we skip along on this journey down memory lane…

my philadelphia bachelorette apartment in july 2007, uberspacious 1bed 1bath with charming parquet floors at the heart of chestnut hill on the R8 train, $1100/mo:

i was, and still am, proud of what i accomplished as a fresh college graduate with furniture raided from the target-ikea-parents’ basement trifecta. $150 couches ftw!

on to our michigan boonies 2bed 1bath basement apartment in september 2008, $550/mo:

yeah that’s chappelle.  trust.

and now, our uber useful rarely used den in detroit:

blechhh.

why do i hate it?  it reminds me of 2007:  black finishes, behr classic taupe walls, a bunch of orange crap, mismatched staples office furniture assembled from a flat box (throwing syed under the bus for that), bland sofabed purchased in a fit of impatience (throwing myself under the bus for that).

why does syed hate it?  the office area is cramped and cluttered, the sofabed is uncomfortable, and the workspace doesn’t capitalize on our marvelous detroit/detroit river/canada view.

we need a comfortable, functional, inspiring office space.  (for cheap.)

thoughts:

1.  peninsula the desk off the window.  no-shit, sherlock.

2.  keep the ugly couch.  it’s just not worth the effort to replace it with a pending move in 18 months.  we can stuff it against the entry wall so you don’t see it unless you’re sitting at the desk, in which case the glory of hart plaza’s noguchi fountain will draw your gaze away with Design Hero superpowers.

3.  make the taupe walls work.

fail.

after scouring my brain for vision to no avail, i scoured houzz for vision.  turns out they’ve published on this topic:

http://www.houzz.com/ideabooks/300434/list/Taupe–A-Sophisticated-Backdrop-for-Today

their article includes fresh! new! inspiring! photos such as this:

FAIL.

the taupe has to go.  i really really really don’t want to paint again.  but here’s a thought:  before we leave the apartment, we are under contractual obligation to return its wall color to white anyway.  so here i am, eating my words:

i’m going to use white walls.

4.  floor to ceiling gallery wall.  we have reams of art without a home in this apartment, and i’ve never tried a gallery wall.  eager as dr. frankenstein for the experiment.

5.  new desk.  maybe this $95 used one, refinished?

it has a massive surface but is still lightweight enough for easy moving.  mama like.

6.  colorful rug to hide the carpet, perhaps yoinked from my in-laws?  will have to investigate their stash.

grabbed from houzz to offer them a little redemption after the taupe disaster, here are the moods i’m envisioning:

laura u, inc / houzz

vintage renewal / houzz

though you’d never know from the pics i posted, our den has GORGEOUS unobstructed 22nd floor lighting.  this vision is not fantasy.  that’s my story and i’m sticking to it.

i would love to hear input, hit me.