Arranging Artwork Squarely!

My family watches Monk on USA Networks and got me into watching it. I will admit to being a bit like him by having the need to have all artwork, knick knacks and pillows straight.  Perhaps I have the same dysfunction he has but not to the extreme he has. I always just thought it was because of my profession as an interior designer.

Once I get a room the way I want it with artwork, accessories, furniture, lamps, pillows and such, I try to make a habit to leave the room that way when I leave the room.  I live in my rooms and there are times they are messy and filled with bundles of projects but I do try to leave the room picked up and things put away and organized.

I believe the spaces we live in tell our story and reflect that story back to us on a daily basis. If you rooms are not well designed and you have crooked artwork, somehow I believe that is impressed on your subconscious and will affect your daily life.

Artwork is a biggy for me. I hate art being crooked or out of alignment.  In the "olden" days my walls would sometimes be filled with tons of little nail holes (under the art) because I would get the art where I thought it should be and one piece was a little lower than the next and I had to move one or the other. Life is easier now, thankfully, because you can use these wonderful new products like 3M Picture Hangers to make all your artwork straight. Or you can use levels, like in the photo, or laser lines to arrange a wall of photos. Another fun trick I love is the putty you can get at craft shops, a little dab on the back of a piece will hold it in place!

Accessories and pillows are a bit easier to deal with.  They are going to get messed up just by living in a room but upon your exit take a quick gander and straighten things and give the pillows a quick fluff.

This way when you reenter your space you will have that happy glow about you because you are entering a well designed and put together room and it will always tell you your story!

Staging Your Home for Everyday

One of my favorite shows on Sunday mornings is the morning show on CBS, Sunday Morning on CBS, or something like that.  This morning they showed a story about how staging your home can decrease the time it takes to sell your home and increase the contract price.  I do believe a home that is staged well or shows well will sell faster than one that is "well lived in."

But what about every day living? Why not stage your home for you for every day living???

When I sold my house in Idaho in 2006 (family room photo) we went through each room before we put the house on the market and we assessed each room and what needed to be done to make it "show ready."  After we did everything the house was perfect! Every wall had been repainted, that needed it. We had cleaned every nook and cranny and we had put things away that were really cluttering our space.

I fell in love with my house all over again and I didn't want to sell it.  My fondest memories of my home were how easy it was to clean, how comfortable it felt and how it still told our story but it was just so perfect for us.

In the end we sold our home for $120k more than we purchased it for and set the high record for the neighborhood.  They have never hit that mark since.

My challenge for you today is to step back from your home and rooms and really look at it from an outsider's view.  Look at what you might be holding on to "because." Think about how to move things from one room to another.  For instance in the office photo above the plant had been in the dining room and then the master bedroom but eventually ended up in the office. It was perfect. The hanging paddle with the lighthouse to the right of the hutch was in the foyer but it made sense to move it into this room with other lighthouses that were in the room.  We purchase old windows from a restore store and hung them above the desk for artwork.

In the living room photo at the top of this article, we pretty much lived in this room this way except that we added the boat on the wall and some accessories on the coffee table.  We loved this room so much once we staged it and I am challenging you to fall in love with your spaces again by touching up some things and really give it a good try to stage your home for every day!

Happy Decorating

Decorating Small Spaces

How do you really decorate a small space? I mean really small. How do you go from 5,200 square feet to 592 square feet?

It is a challenge but it is doable. Recently my husband and I found us in a situation in which we needed to move from our home into his parents loft to become their caregivers. We honestly went from 5,200 square feet to 592 square feet.

It was a challenge to really ask the tough questions what stays, what goes, what sells and what stores. Anything that was antique was either used/repurposed in our small space or stored and most other things were sold or given away.

After it was all said and done the most important thing I gained from this experience was organization, organization, organization! In order to pull this off, I had to be organized and know what was going where and use every square inch of storage space I have for things. It has worked perfectly and we even had space for a new 12 foot entertainment center and added an antique chest of drawers to the bedroom. We use it for towels, bathroom toiletry storage and a junk drawer for my husband but all in all everything has worked out perfectly.

As far as my in laws, my father in law is a quadriplegic after suffering a fall from a ladder. He was the sole caregiver to my mother in law who has Parkinson's and diabetes. Now my father in law needs a full time caregiver and we graciously give because his spirit has been so amazing through this change in his life. We are humbled but blessed to spend the time we have with him to watch him change and fight.

And with that don't lose sight of your decorating projects, there is always a way to make it work!

Is one man's trash really another man's treasure?

Why, yes it is! In February/March of this year, we moved into a house that was a model for a local builder. It’s a great house that came with all the window treatments, bedding and pillows. All the colors worked perfectly with everything in our previous homes, so it was a great match. But we didn’t have furniture to fill all those rooms!

In the last few weeks, my husband had been working to sell a home for this really nice couple in Herndon, Virginia. Upon finally receiving a contract, they decided to sell most of their furniture so they would not have to store it and move it to their new home when construction is complete.

As an aside, my in-law’s have also moved into a new home and they have purchased new furniture for their living room. They are giving us their old furniture we just have to haul it away. It is great furniture and will definitely come in handy.

This is where one man’s trash comes into play. And honestly, it's not so much that any of it is trash, AT ALL, it's just that they don't want the furniture or other items any longer so we are benefiting from them both!

For not a lot of money we are getting the first couple's sofa and loveseat, a great TV for the media room, some decorative accessories and a few small extra pieces of furniture. From the in-law's we are getting a sofa and 2 reclining chairs. These pieces alone will allow us to complete our family room, living room and media room.

There are of course some things that will need to be done in order for us to use this furniture. The couple who just sold their home has 2 cats. I am allergic to cats. I suspect it will be sprayed heavily with allergy reducing Fabrese and steam cleaned. My mother-in-law's furniture where it is good quality and heavy duty will need to have slipcovers placed on them. They are blue and nothing in our home is blue. It will cost a few dollars to buy some slipcovers for those pieces but compared to buying new furniture, it doesn't even come close.

So this brings up a great question, how to get great furniture at a low cost? I had come across a book I was going to recommend on this site about getting great furniture at lower costs and it was all about buying lots at storage units. Well what if you don't want a full time job looking for storage unit sales OR you work a full time job and can't get to the storage unit sales when they are happening? Why not start talking to realtors you know? Tell them when someone is selling a home and they don’t want certain pieces of furniture to keep you on the inside loop so you can look at it and buy it at a discounted price. Why not scan Craig's List in your area? Why not put ads in the local papers for people who want to get rid of their furniture? Put the word out in your community that you are looking for certain pieces and go for it.

By looking for furniture this way, you can be picky about what pieces you buy. If you don’t like the piece or it’s not in that great of shape, move on to the next one or wait it out.

Another kind of weird thing I did was simply “put it out there” to the universe. Because I am an interior designer and I set out with a plan for the house, I knew and know exactly what I want for this house and for each room. I calmly sat and visualized each room of my house seeing it completed. I saw the furniture, the artwork, the paint on the walls, the window treatments and accessories. Then I simply asked the universe for this or something better to come along.

Well tomorrow, August 15th, something better is getting delivered to my home. And for a savings of about 85%! Who can beat that?

Until next time,
Rhonda

Decorating Projects.... Bad Wood Blind Company

So finally I understand where most of you looking for information are coming from. What to put where, what color to paint what, what pillows to add, where to hang artwork.... the list goes on and on.

And in addition to that having a water leak that resulted in 9 holes in my walls and ceilings along with a majority of my wood floors being ripped up due to water damage. It has been an exhausting 6 weeks.

On top of all of that, we have been ordering furniture, office equipment and wood blinds. I can not stress enough to not ever use BlindsGalore.com. They have lied about ship dates, their website made us believe we could get everything we wanted in our wood blinds but then after we placed the order, they called and said you can't get this or that and so pay us extra money for not getting what you want at all. We should have done with Blinds.com because they are a stand up company and would have taken care of our needs. We would have had some privacy by now and their site is honest in what you can and can't get from the very beginning.

Whatever you do, don't order blinds from BlindsGalore.com. Words of advice and wisdom.

On to organizing the linen closet and finish decorating the kitchen! Wishing you greater success on all your decorating projects than I am having,

Rhonda Morin
Owner, MyInteriorDecorator.com

HGTV Confession

I must make a confession.... the HGTV Dream Home Giveaway has me a bit obsessed. Every year for the last 7 or so years HGTV has partnered with many sponsors and given away a glorious home that is jam packed full of great stuff. This year my husband mentioned to me that I should take a look at the site and the house. Once I did I was obsessed!

As I do with everything related to interior design or decorating, I carefully looked at furniture placement, selection of artwork, finishes, window treatments, etc. They did a really nice job with this house, as far as I can tell from the virtual tour.

I have 2 small problems with the house: first, I don't really like the curtains they have over all the windows. They appear to be floor to ceiling "draperies" that are pulled shut and open. I understand why you would want this for light filtering and warmth (this house is in the icebox of the US) but there are other products that could have handled those needs.

Secondly, I don't entirely understand using twin beds in guest rooms. To a small degree I understand needing twin beds or bunk beds for kids to bunk up when visiting but in a guest room, but I am unconvinced twin beds was the right choice. The master bedroom looks like it has a king size bed, there is one guest room with a queen size bed, a bunk room on the lowest level of the house and the last guest room has 2 twin beds in it.

I will replace that with either a king or queen size bed... when I win the house. HA!

If you haven't had time to take a look at the house, go on over to HGTV.com and do the virtual tour and then enter to win. The entry ends on February 16, 2007 but the winner isn't announced until sometime in March I believe.

Let me know what you think of the house, twin beds, and the full draperies.

Until next time,

Rhonda Morin
MyInteriorDecorator.com

New House!

It's been a long time since I last posted. My new year's resolution (and business plan for 2007) is to get better with updates about what has been added and what has changed on MyInteriorDecorator.com. (For the record, there have been 6 new articles added to the site this past week. This coming week I am changing the structure of how we get around and I am contemplating adding decorating advice for a fee and decorating services back to the site. Look for imput below.)

My husband and I have been crazed in the last 7+ months to find a new home for us to live in. We sold his business and our home in Idaho in the early part of 2006 and decided to move home to the Washington, DC area. It has been great to be home but very overwhelming to say the least. We have had many personal trials with family and friends, from child custody hearings to friend's parents passing away. We are so happy to be home to help out where needed but overwhelmed with our own issues in finding suitable housing.

We contemplated building but the time it was going to take for us to both be involved was exhausting. We also couldn't find any land on which to put our house either... LONG STORY!

At any rate, we just happened upon a great house in Winchester, Virginia. It is a home built by Arcadia Builders (http://www.arcadiabuilding.com/homes.html) and was used as a model for the last 2+ years. We are closing Jan. 31st and we are very excited about all the great upgrades they added to the house. Because the house is as it is, it needs to be reworked for our style of decorating. I plan to use the house as an educational format to film lots of great decorating how to's for my visitors. It seems all but 1 or maybe 2 rooms need to be reworked, painted, wallpaper stripped, etc. It will be great fun and I am personally looking forward to what all can be used for the purposes of MyInteriorDecorator.com.

In the last few weeks, I have been at the short end of a Google ranking dance, and being a site that has generated all of it's traffic from web searches in the last 8 1/2 years, it hurts a little. I have been a bit distracted in trying to understand what has been happening and how this can become a better website and a better webspace for my visitors.

In the last few weeks there have been many new articles that have been added. I got ahold of a great piece of software that will help me upload new articles quickly and let you know even quicker about those updates. So be expecting some changes in that front. There are about 250 articles sitting in the wings waiting to be uploaded. These range anywhere from how to decorate an apartment to how to select the correct carpet for your home and family. Some of these articles are online and live, others are being added each day. Go to any page and look at the Recent Articles section on the left for new articles.

I have also gotten caught up in the last few years with more menu links are better but I think it creates a confusing and messy looking website. I don't like that so the menu's on each page are going to get cleaned up and condensed back to what the site once was in the early days.

The Interior Design Store continues to offer great resources for furniture, artwork, accessories and such. It will only get filled more and more with great items for the home.

Now, what I need from you..... I need to know if you want personalized Decorating Services and Decorating Advice back. Once upon a time I offered Decorating Advice for $10 per question and Decorating Services ranged from $75-600 per room depending on what level of service you wanted. Do you want personalized decorating help for your home or would you rather have free articles teach you what to do? Post below and let me know what you want. Also let me know what kinds of decorating articles you want. Do you want more information about decorating specific types of room, decorating with specific styles, how to buy furniture, how to arrange rooms, etc.? Let me know what you want and I will try to make it so.

Also please bookmark MyInteriorDecorator.com so you can come back and check out the changes.

Sincerely I thank you for visiting the site and taking the time to make it a better webspace for interior design and decorating.

Until the next time,
Rhonda Morin
Owner & Publisher, MyInteriorDecorator.com