AbbeyK — On Interior Design

Even Little, Tiny Babies Love AbbeyK's Decorating!

 
How delicious is this?

The 48" custom ottoman with purple circles? No silly reader! My client's new baby, Emmy.

My client had a baby on April 17 just after we completed the room!

And today I stopped by. What a nice visit we had -- delighting over the baby, catching up, and my getting  to see the finished greatroom. It really did come out nice.

I brought over some yummy tuna sandwiches so more deliciousness.

The client loves everything, including the baby. See how at peace this baby is on this ottoman? Everyone should be so happy with my work. :)

(Sorry the picture is a bit blurry. I took it with her iPhone. Forgot my camera today.)

Custom Furniture? Oy, Such Beauty!

I woke up grumpy. No sleep for days, on the edge of a migraine (again)....and then, just when I thought, "how am I ever going to get through the day?" I sat down to read my email. And waiting in my in-box was an email from my cabinet maker containing two options for a custom cabinet we are making for an entry way. A wave of beauty came over me, taking the edge off.

God, my cabinet maker is good! Which one do you like better? Wonder which the client will select? 2 versions of beautiful. How can you go wrong? I am so excited. Now if I could just loose the headache....

 
 

High Point Market Update 2011

This year Market was one big bust. I had planned on 3 days but one day was spent in the hotel room with a migraine. No fun.

Overall I was under-impressed.

• The look that Bobo Intriguing Objects created and licensed last year to Restoration Hardwareis simply everwhere now. Bo-ring. I saw it at every price point. Most of my clients would not be interested in this look. It's dusty looking, feels dirty, causes splinters when you rub your hand over it, and will date. It's like shabby chic for occasionals. A piece here or there, OK, maybe. I'd rather sell the real, artist-inspired stuff that has a little bit of soul.
• Silver and shiny continues to be everywhere. I like reflective materials. Like how it bounces light around, but just a little bit of it.
• Embellished pillows were everywhere this year: rose petals adorning the casings, raised detailing. It's already at Home Goods. No interest for me.
• I also noticed that there were not so many of the "ladies" at market. People were much more casual. Not so many high heels and uber-feminine outfits. Clogs, comfort shoes, sneakers. I did not feel like a fish out of water this year.

But of course, it was not all for not:

Halo Styles never fails to inspire. Here is a shot from their showroom.

 

Halo also licenced a few things to last year's Restoration catalogue, but they do have great merchandising in their space. I am not sure I could sell a lot of it, but it's nice to walk through. These icebox storage pieces were cute.

 

Councill had a great dining table at 36" wide. For urban spaces, this can sometimes be all you can fit, and short of doing custom, it's virtually impossible to find. So it's nice to have this option at a moderate price point in my back pocket. They show the table with an inlay, but you have choices of solid top and also edge details. Their quality for the price is spot on!

 

Visual Comfort never disappoints. They have some exciting introductions and their price point and quality is quite "friendly."

The main upside of Market was that I did get a chance to meet with my vendors and see full product lines. Many of these lines are represented at the Boston Design Center, but they might only show a sampling of pieces. It's helpful to see the full lines so I can tell my clients about how things sit, what the quality and finishes are like. Building relationships with the sales reps is also another reason to go to market. They can help to fix problems and help with getting samples when the showrooms are slow to respond. That allows me to give my customers better service and that's what it's all about.

 

Love These Nesting Tables by Ted Boerner

Sometimes you just see something different, and after years of looking at stuff, you get a bit numb to it so it doesn't happen that often.

 
 

These nesting tables are great. They can be done in either wood (the other section is acrylic) or painted finish. They offer several standard colors, such as the Burma Red above but they will also match any Benjamin Moore paint color, too.

PS Not inexpensive, but you do get what you pay for. Design like this 'aint free.

These are available from:

TED BOERNER NEW YORK 
 

NEW YORK DESIGN CENTER

200 LEXINGTON AVENUE  SUITE 515

NY NY 10016   |   212 675 5665

 

 

New York and Connecticut Antique Shopping Trips

Tag-teaming with the Thanksgiving Holiday, I spent two days antiquing with my Cambridge client. We have the bulk of everything done but need a piece or so per room. The big hits were anything Maison Jansen at Greenwich Living in Stamford. I think we'll find a place for some Jansen somewhere. Just a question about placing the right piece where.

 
 The client loves the formality of the French style and they seem to have so much good Jansen in Stamford. For many, this look is simply over the top, but in the right setting, it's beautiful. Either one of these could look great in the dining room. I prefer the one on the top  because it's simpler and the marble will work well, but I want to visualize it in the space.

  
Ritter Antik in on 10th Street in New York is known for Biedermeier. I'd love to see some more wood in that dining room to tell you the truth. We already have a black fireplace (original to the house), a black table, a black and gold mirror (from his mother's home) AND a black server. I know he's a guy -- but still --that's a lot of black. I am hoping he chooses to break it up a bit. Loving these commodes. Book-match?

Be still my heart... 

 

My client also really liked some of the etageres and servers at Ritter. The neoclassical one with the boobies, I don't care for personally as much, but maybe because I am a girl, I don't see the need for boobies on furniture. When I told my brother-in-law about the piece, he liked the idea of boobies on furniture. (Of course he did.)

 

Mid-day, I picked up my niece after school. She took notes to make sure we collected tear sheets of all the items my client liked and was offered candy and cookies everywhere we went. One showroom scared her. When you are nine, life-sized sculptures of lions are not whimsical.

When Cathy Lerebours asked where we had been, I told her that I had had heart palps at Goeckler. Of all the commodes we saw, this took my breath away. That doesn't happen often.

 

I am also completely in love with Bernd Goeckler's pottery and lamp collections. This bowl was one of my favorite things I saw hands-down. Not for my client, not his taste. 

 

When I showed him this bowl, he said jokingly, "I thought you are here for me? Take that time you spent showing me that bowl off the bill." I asked if he'd buy it for me as a present. But then later I saw a set of 6 chairs at Yale Burge for 28K that I told him those would be a better present. (Decorating humor)

 

 

Custom Bookcase and Desk Area

This just installed for a client's pied-a-terre in Cambridge. I did their bathroom and kitchen a few years back. They live in Asia most of the time. They come back regularly for business.

Their taste runs clean and Asian-inspired, which is a style I enjoy and don't get to do all that often here in traditional-leaning New England. The sectional and ottoman were from their former home in Japan. Their old bookcase and desk they had simply outgrown. Plus the bookcase was too small and Cd stand were taking over the living room. So I designed this built-in for them along with an above the desk storage area. We made compartments for the CDs and books as well as AV equipment, taking all those measurements into consideration in the design. The desk is from Jesper.

 
 
 

How to Choose Colors for Your Home: Trust the Decorating Process

Ever been in a home and the colors just look dead? Flat? No life? No zest? Me, too. I hate that.

So the question is: how do you get the colors right? I am a painter by training having gone to art school undergraduate. I actually refused to take color theory my Freshman year because I thought it would ruin my feel for color. (Arrogant? Maybe, but I was only 18...)

Anyway, I can talk color with the best of them, but I promise that most of what I do is from feeling even though over the years, I did actually sit down and learn my color theory. But I will tell you this: When it feels right, it's just right and you know. I feel it in my body. I am not making this up. I feel relaxation come over me.

A new client (who is very nice, by the way) showed me this bowl as inspiration for her great room. We set out to bring her fabrics to make her heart sing. Mostly blue, green, and a bit of plum. The amber tone, she already had covered in the lights over the island in the kitchen.

 

We found a whole bunch of fabrics she liked and some carpets. Here were the fabrics she liked after the first meeting. All satisfied what was in her mind's eye. We decided the sofas should be a mid tone brown, kind of a hazelnut color. We just needed to fill in the story a bit more. We needed some more purples and were hoping to find one fabric with blue, green, and purple in it. That would prove to be the challenge of the project.

 
 
Our first pass taught us that the cobalts, and deep plums were too much for the space, so we decided to tone things down a bit and go for more amethyst than plum, more pale blue than cobalt. But looking through many vendors (OK-- just about every vendor) at the Design Center, we realized that the tones she liked do not exist in any single fabric we could find. The greens were too acidy; the purples too bold. Or they contained pink or yellow or something equally that fell in the category of "not what we wanted." Some vendors, of course, will custom color, but we are not in that price point.

The morning before our meeting, I got ready, laid everything out, sorted through all the fabrics, and came to a (panicked) conclusion: we did not have enough purples. I have learned to trust this pre-meeting feeling due to what has proven to be an uncanny accuracy of my gut. So what's a decorator to do? Run to the Design Center, of course!

All of the purples she ended up picking came from that trip. Thank you gut! All we need now is some dusty blues for pillows and for the kitchen chairs. We are already working on quoting everything for her so we can order soon.

What I like about this color story, and working with this client is that she let the process go where it needed to go. When she realized that the bold colors she liked wouldn't work in her space, she let it go. The inspiration is still there. We do have green, blue and purple. Just not in the way that either of us thought, and the result is going to be so much more lovely than either of expected. I think this color palette we came up with is sophisticated, unexpected, and really, really pretty.

 

By the way, I am in LOVE with the purple circles. We are doing that on a 48" square ottoman and some pillows for one of the sofas. It's going to be DIVINE. Next week we are looking at tiles for the back splash. I can't wait!
 

Dining Room Table from Keith Fritz

Happy client, happy designer, happy furniture maker. Can you feel the love?

Chandelier is a French antique, by the way, and the sconces we had finished to match. These we found at Marvin Alexander in NYC.

 
 
Chairs to come soon, the drapes install, art to hang ....Then I'll have the room professionally shot.

AbbeyK: The Decorator who Cannot Decorate for Herself

My personal decorating is no joy. I love decorating for other people, but the process is not much fun when it's for my own home. After a year-and-a half of living here though, I am making progress.

I finally retiled the bathroom floor. They were black and white 12" x 12" set on the diagonal. My black, curly hair needs to be swept everyday to keep the white tiles looking clean. I hated it since the day one, but my designer pal, Jeff, suggested to wait and see if I got used to it. I replaced it with a sand-colored porcelain that should hide everything and blend with the oak floors in the rest of the house. By the way, whoever said setting black and white tile on the diagonal makes a space looked bigger took that comment out of context. It's all about the specific application. You cannot imagine how much bigger this space looks now.

 

Since the plumber had to come to reinsall the toilet anyway, I figured why not replace the goose neck faucet which splashes everywhere (I hate that.) and the terrible shower head. Oh, and the toilet that clogged all the time? Say hello to Toto. Those small changes should make a BIG difference.

I had my my grandma's chairs re-upholstered. Such special chairs: I grew up with them and am honored to have them in my home. I have childhood memories sitting on my grandpa's lap in these chairs. There's probably a picture somewhere of that. He always made us read aloud to him.  When we misprounounced something, he'd scold, "Diction!" We still joke about that. 

More fresh in my mind is the image of my grandma who retired at 85 and lived until 97, sitting in this chair everyday with her New York Times tucked in between the seat cushion and the arm. Towards the end, she wasn't so mobile, so she spent a good part of the day in the chair reading and napping. Gram's chairs were originally a gold stripe so I kept them a stripe and changed the color. The new fabric is from Carleton V.

 
 
Here's my sofa bed from Avery Boardman. It's beyond comfortable for sleeping and sitting. It is simply not true that sofa bed cannot be comfortable. It was expensive but worth the splurge. That came just in time for my sister's summer visit. PS check out the pattern flow match. Be still my (decorator) heart.

 

On the docket for the fall and winter:

• The kitchen/dining room and living room are getting painted in about a week. A gray like the color of an elephant. It's open space so one color here.
• Order and install the mantle in the living room.
• Make a cafe curtain for the bathroom. That fabric is selected so I just have to get that measured and ordered.
• Select a dining room rug and drapes, night stands in my bedroom. I could use some new dining room chairs and a bench for the living room. I should start thinking about the sunroom. It's currently extra office storage.

The goal is to finish the decorating by spring so I can relax FULLY in my home.  Just in time for spring gardening!

Thanks HGTV for Including AbbeyK in Furniture Arrangement Basics

Press is always good! I was contacted a while back by HGTV for an article on furniture arrangement basics.

You can check out the slide show and my advice here.