AbbeyK — On Interior Design

Figuring Out Details for a Custom Ottoman

These days everyone seems to want an ottoman. Something about them says cozy. Right now I have 3 custom ottomans in the line at the upholsterer. All are very large. I am working on one now that is 52" x 40". It will allow everyone in the seating area to put their feet up on it. We're using a saddle colored microfiber for its durability and family-friendly features.

We decided to do some inset stitching to break up the mammoth size of the thing. So the question becomes: where does the stitching go? There's no classical shape to refer to, no cannon, no rule. The only way to figure it out is to draw it up and look at it. So I made a template. The paper kept curling and mugs did the trick to hold it down. Now that's a technical problem solver if ever I have seen one.

 

When I got to the upholsterer, he had made a template as well. Seeing both was interesting. Everyone has a different eye. I had made my stitching 2" apart and 6" from the edges, while his proportions were a bit different. We ended up re-working the details to be in between both of our ideas.

 

By the way, I am going to get some of the pattern paper Walter has. You can see below, it's the coolest stuff. It has dots on it as a guide and it did not curl up. Never seen that paper used before and I have been in a lot of work rooms over the years. I love seeing new things.

 

Do You Really Have to Do Theme Decor?

School has just started so it's time for me to write about what I did on my summer vacation. This year my family went to Smuggler's Notch in Vermont. We stayed at a condo in the area called Falcons.

When I go to friend's houses, I turn off the decorator in me. But when I stay at hotels or other resorts, I am decorator-challenged. I cannot help it. I notice bad tile jobs, awful upholstery, bad taste, mistakes of any nature and in this case, I got all jammed up about the theme.

The one thing I did like, well at least respect, was this black and white pencil drawing in the hallway of a falcon. It was a beautiful rendering by a local artist. But then you look below and see the bordered wall paper and it all started to fall apart.

 

For the love of God, I see no reason for bordered wallpaper. This lanscape wall paper is so bad it needs no comment.

My niece and my mom shared a room. This is a snapshot from their room. Why the eagles and owls?

 

Above the stuffed animals, just below the ceiling, you can see another wonderful border showing mountains with snow on them and leaves on the trees. In the East, snow melts long before summer. These mountain appear to be the Rockies.

In the bathroom, the vinyl wallpaper had bison on it. For the record, there are no bison on the range in VT.

 

Decor aside, we had a great time, and every one got a long. My mom only drove me crazy once -- which was a new world record or a sign of some new-found maturity on my part. She is the nicest lady ever, but she's also my mom and you know how that goes...I think most people understand.

Thanks Houzz.com!

Houzz.com has featured my work in This Old House. You can see it here.

Is Drawing a Phantom Skill?

In Getting Back to a Phantom Skill, the first in a series from the New York Times by James McCullen, the author talks about one of my great loves, drawing. I remember drawing sneakers like he did below for some assignment in high school. (I was one of those art geeks.)

 
In art school, we learned all about the different techniques of drawing. We studied the masters, studied form, light and dark and had one whole year of (near torture) figure drawing using the skeleton. We used no shading, only line to show where a plane curved. It turned my drawing world upside down and I did not draw for years after that class. But it taught me to see differently and I am proud of the drawings I made of vertebrae, shin bones and pelvises. The full-sized skeletons as final projects got moldy about 10 years ago, so I let them go. My neighbor flooded the basement recently so a few more got lost, and I was surprisingly very sad about it, but the rest of the bone drawings from that class, I still have having schlepped them from apartment to apartment for over 20 years. (Thank-you Barry Schactman.)

The only one drawing class I took which was a waste of time was some conceptual class (hello 80s!) where we used charoal and rubbed obscure shapes into really expensive hand-pressed paper. I liked neither that class nor that teacher.

I am delighted to have all this formal training in drawing. I use it in my work as an interior designer. It is a skill and it taught me to see. I do quick sketches all the time for clients. But my formal skills are a bit rusty though. I figure it's like riding a bike: it's always in there. Just need a little practice.

Hmmm....I think this article inspired me to get out a 2B pencil, a pink pearl eraser, some nice paper out of storage and set up my sun room as a little studio. The light is good in there.

 

 

 

First Round of Staining, Keith Fritz Dining Room Table

Here is the Keith Fritz table, stained. Next step is the liming on the checkerboard inset to bring out the grain. Table gets delivered next week. Can't wait! Now if only we could pick a paint color for the walls so the painters could finish in time for the delivery.

 

In his mind's-eye, the client envisioned a peachy-orange tone on the dining room walls. That can be a beautiful color, but the problem in this application is that the drapes are to be a navy silk with a subtle red thread running through. Opposite colors can be dynamic in the right proportion but in this room, the orange walls would advance and the blue drapes retreat, and the result would be a room that feels uneasy.

I suggested to go with a pink-peach, like the Farrow and Ball Pink Ground. After one coat went up, the client called me to say that the walls were "too pink." I think it's perfect. But perfect is irrelevant if the client doesn't like it. So we're back to the drawing board, as you can see by the swatches around the windows.

 
Sometimes when you try to make something work after many many tries, it's time to re-think the direction. Forcing a color to work can be a sign of going down the wrong path. I been suggesting a warm gray for a while now, and the client was willing to give it a go. We tried a few that you can see here and then a few more that went up this morning. I was by today to see the latest round. But the weather was so beyond dreary that it needs to be viewed on a better day.

My fingers are crossed for a winner!

What Do You Think about the New Oval Office?

It's all over the TV, all over the press, all over the internet. The New York Times has run multiple pieces. Obama redid the Oval Office. Want a sneak peak?

Check out the slide show, An Office Fit for a President, highlighting the many looks of the Oval Office since Roosevelt.

The Audacity of Taupe, a fun read, shares commentary from some famous editors, decorators and other pundits.

Here's a an after shot from the NYT, room by Michael Smith. I personally don't hate it. I think it's nice. I would love a job like that. (Well, that must have been a lot of pressure! But think of the referrals!!!?) What do you think of the room and all the hub bub?

 

Here is what Bush's Oval office looked like.

 

Does Your Language Shape How You Think?

According to Guy Deutscher from the New York Times Magazine, "The idea that your mother tongue shapes your experience of the world may be true after all.

Recently, it has been demonstrated in a series of ingenious experiments that we even perceive colors through the lens of our mother tongue. There are radical variations in the way languages carve up the spectrum of visible light; for example, green and blue are distinct colors in English but are considered shades of the same color in many languages. And it turns out that the colors that our language routinely obliges us to treat as distinct can refine our purely visual sensitivity to certain color differences in reality, so that our brains are trained to exaggerate the distance between shades of color if these have different names in our language. As strange as it may sound, our experience of a Chagall painting actually depends to some extent on whether our language has a word for blue."

This is simply fascinating.

Read the whole article here. Published: August 26, 2010.