The Art of Business

Where the Heart Is

By Amanda Bader

Just as you can’t tell a book by its cover, you can’t tell a house by its exterior. Sure, some grand palaces are equally grand inside, but isn’t it a lovely treat when a modest outside contains a warm, welcoming and creative interior? Creating your own version of the ideal home environment doesn’t necessarily mean a big investment. If your resources are limited, focus your energy on the rooms you spend the most time in; you’ll get the most satisfaction for your efforts. Take time to consider the various elements that make up “décor” and approach the ones that you find most manageable. Sometimes just a small change can make all the difference in your little world.

Furniture: Put It Right Here

We sit on it, drape our clothes on it, vacuum under it, use it to block the door. Furniture serves so many purposes yet we often take it for granted.

Mention furniture and what comes to mind? Mostly things to sit on. Perhaps you can solve that marital dispute with two comfortable reading chairs rather than one sofa? The right size dining table can be a key ingredient in the recipe for excellent meals and the wrong size bed can lead to disaster. Scale and purpose should be considered when you’re deciding what kind of furniture you need. Think about how many people you generally need to accommodate; for example, you don’t spend your money on a set of dining chairs when you usually eat alone. And if you like to nap on your sofa? Then walk away from that firmly angular modern love seat unless you like firm, angular naps.

Furniture includes a whole other category, too: storage. It’s a fact of life that there’s a broad range of endurance for clutter. Messy often has nothing to do with cleanliness, but can be as offensive as a compost pile in the den to those who want things neat. This tolerance for disorder can be an important consideration in choosing storage furniture. This doesn’t mean that everything has to go behind closed doors—hooks, regularly spaced over a span of six feet or so at eye level on a wall, can turn a rebellious hat collection into an ever changing soft sculpture. A wall of cubbies can turn even the most unruly travel trophies, toys or pile of t-shirts into an orderly grouping that makes the items easy to access.

What to do with the television? Well that’s part of the storage issue, too. You can hide the most modern electronics behind a countrified mask by converting that lovely antique armoire into an entertainment center.

Lighting: An Illuminating Subject

One of the joys of living in the Hudson Valley is the light. It changes throughout the year, infusing color and quality in a way that makes you want to look at even the most ordinary things over and over. The stone house that appears cold and distant in the mid-day January sun can be positively rosy and inviting in an August sunset. And just as light has such a strong effect on how things look outside, so it does on interiors as well.

Lighting generally has a purpose that merits consideration when choosing lamps or fixtures. Are you lighting a place where a task will be performed—a kitchen counter or a reading nook? Choose a lamp with a directed beam, such as a spotlight or gooseneck lamp. Are you creating an atmosphere with ambient light, for example in a living room? Generally, lighting fixtures that diffuse the light in some way—either with a shade or globe, or which are aimed at the wall (such as sconces), will provide a general light in a room. Low voltage lighting (usually with halogen bulbs) has become quite popular as it has a clear yet warmly glowing quality of light that is elegant and effective.

Changing the amount of light can make a dramatic difference in a room: one economical way to adjust the mood is to install dimmers to control existing light sources. When halfway dimmed, even the harshest of lights becomes kinder.

Or, play with your lighting for a purely decorative effect: wrap a strand or two of tiny white Christmas tree lights around a branch and lean it in a corner of the living room to bring a bit of the outdoors inside while providing a gentle glow. Lighting can accent interesting architectural characteristics of the room, too. Pine Bush-based interior designer Noreen Dahl Feuer suggests using “up lighting” (lights on or near the ground which are aimed up a wall rather than down) to emphasize cathedral ceilings or to highlight detailed period moldings or even interesting wall texture. Also popular these days is lighting the underside or inside of cabinets to draw attention to decorative collections that might be displayed there.

When is a Wall a Foundation? When You’re Decorating It

It’s easy to take walls for granted—it just seems like they’re always there. But walls are a critical element to any decorating effort. They can be the key to setting the tone in a room, and they offer great opportunities for inexpensive redecorating.

You can completely change the mood of a room for about $25 by painting even one of the walls a rich, bold color. Just picture how cozy your bedroom would feel if you found the right soothing sage green for the wall next to your bed. Of course that’s just the beginning, because it’s just a short step from one interesting coat of paint to some sort of overpainted finish, such as sponging another shade of the same color (or even a few different colors) over it, or “ragging”—applying paint with a rag for an uneven look that gives some depth of color.

In addition to painting (or even instead of ), consider
stenciling—borders, using a repeating pattern ranging from 2 to 12 inches wide that runs along the top or bottom of the wall, or stenciling a pattern over the whole wall for a look something like wallpaper. Stencil with just one color or several, depending on how involved you want to get.

The next step up in the realm of wall coverings might be wallpaper, which can be used to emphasize a particular period or style (such as Arts and Crafts, French provincial, or the like), and is an excellent way to cover walls that are not in great shape. It can be more expensive and time consuming, but can completely change the look of a room, providing a foundation for a decorative theme.

As you’re changing the color and look of the walls themselves, think about the next layer—what will you hang on them? The possibilities are endless and, here again, do not necessarily require huge sums of money. The obvious are prints and photos, but think about hanging a richly glazed ceramic plate or bowl in a place of honor on the wall. Can’t afford lots of framed artwork (or can’t decide what’s worthy of framing)? Devon Seekamp, an interior designer based in Accord, suggests shopping the area’s multitude of yard sales and antique shops for interesting frames and hang several of them…empty. Six or eight empty frames arranged in a group on the wall can be as artistic as anything that might go in them.

Woven fabrics such as rugs and wall hangings, or even quilts, are another great way to add warmth and visual interest while dealing with problem walls—you can use a decorative curtain rod to hang a rug or quilt over a blank wall if you don’t want to hang it directly on the wall.

Floors: Walk All Over ‘Em

It’s self-evident that we can’t do without floors. They just have to be there, and they get so much use it makes sense to use the right material for the right floor. There are three main considerations when choosing flooring material: cost, traffic and maintenance.

High traffic areas such as hallways, entrances and kitchens need a durable surface (if you’re not planning on replacing them every several years), and one that’s easy to clean.

Start by deciding whether you want some kind of carpet or if you want a bare floor (parts of which can be covered with rugs). Noreen Dahl Feuer prefers to use a hard floor surface with rugs on it, rather than put down wall-to-wall carpeting. She points out, “This gives more flexibility, as rugs can be moved and changed as your tastes and needs change. And, a hard floor just seems easier to get really clean, it doesn’t hold bacteria the way carpet can.”

If resources are unlimited, there is a wide variety of stone that you can choose from; slate is particularly popular right now, and it’s a nice way to bring outside elements inside. Hardwood has always been considered a quality flooring, offering a depth and warmth that stone sometimes doesn’t. Wood floors don’t always have to be prohibitively expensive; pre-finished wood floors and parquet are good affordable alternatives to custom milled wide-board floors. A new trend that Dahl Feuer has seen is polished or stained concrete, which can bring a unique and modern look to a room by introducing color in an unexpected place.

Other more economical options include: laminate floors (which often look very much like wood but offer better durability and less maintenance) vinyl flooring and ceramic tile. These days you can even find glazed ceramic tiles that look like stone but are available at a much lower price.

Another trend that works well for Hudson Valley winters is radiant heat, where heated water flows through a system of pipes under the floor, heating not only the floor but, as the heat rises, the room as well. This is particularly popular in kitchens and bathrooms (imagine stepping out of the shower onto a warm floor…) but is also done in every room in the house. Obviously there’s a fairly substantial installation cost, as it’s all custom work and requires a whole new floor system to be laid down.

Plumbing: What Do You Mean It’s Not Sexy?

It seems we’re all looking for ways to take stress out of our lives. What better place to make a soothing oasis than the bathroom. It’s where, if nothing else, you start and end your day. If you can make it a place you love to be, you’ll find yourself lingering in a lovely, private zone and maybe even relaxing a little bit.

Devon Seekamp sees a trend toward creating a luxurious Victorian environment in the bathroom these days complete with elegant wainscoting and moldings, warmly glowing frosted glass lamp shades and deep clawfoot bathtubs with nickel-plated fixtures. It amounts to a little trip back in time to take you away from whatever’s bugging you while you soak.

Another popular bathroom direction is sleek contemporary, with stone and marble floors and walls, oversized multi-head showers and Jacuzzi tubs with hyper-modern fixtures. If you have some privacy, Seekamp suggests considering an outdoor shower—these are often found in beach houses, why not out in the country? There’s something delightfully illicit about showering in our great outdoors.

These little theme parks can be expensive to create, but there are some simple things you can do as well to make the bathroom a more special place.

Rather than a traditional sink vanity, find an interesting old dresser to mount your sink into (think of using marble, standard counter material, or even polyurethaned wood for the top). You’ll still have all the storage you need underneath, but it’ll take your bathroom a step away from the ordinary.

Have you experienced sticker shock when pricing one of those beautifully simple sinks that’s a glass or metal bowl on top of a stand? You can afford one if you get creative. Seekamp has taken advantage of the local resources by working with a Hudson Valley potter to create a bowl with a drain hole at the bottom for a unique sink.
While all of this may seem overwhelming, it needn’t be; there are several ways to approach changing your environment. Remember that when it comes to decorating, resources include time, money, patience and ability to live with change. You can mount a full frontal assault and re-do your rooms from top to bottom, which can be exciting and disconcerting all at the same time. You can pick a room or two to work on, which allows you to focus and concentrate, effecting a substantial change within a certain amount of time. Or, it can become a hobby, where you have in mind a sense of what you want in your home and meander through sources, replacing elements throughout the house as the right piece comes up. There’s no right or wrong way to do it, as long as you find a method that works for you.