Thursday, April 17, 2008
My Personal Interior Decorator, Janae!
You may remember last month I spent some time sprucing up two of the upstairs bedrooms. The 'Master' and the 'Mistress', that's me :-). I'm not sure what Princess Diana called her little sleeping spot, but it wasn't where Prince Charles settled in every night, so whatever she called hers, that's what mine is too.
Anyway, we painted, added new bedding and window treatments but it just didn't have any oomph or punch. When our son Dan and DIL Janae were here in late March, I asked her opinion. What was it lacking? It looked 'nice' but just didn't grab me either. It took her about five seconds to comment, 'you know, hotels and really nice homes' master bedrooms all seem to have a big painting over the bed....'
Voila! (see Sarah, I can learn and did not type Whallah! although I still mispronounce about half the words in Websters Dictionary, tough ones like 'blah' and 'diva' and 'Guiliani' but I did fix 'Voila!'.) Janae even suggested I go with a not-ordinary shape. So being the big spender, I measured the space, then headed right over to our local messy consignment second-hand store, walked around, climbed over, pulled out every single painting they had in the place. Nothing was quite right. Or too expensive since I don't care enough to have a signed print from Ethan Allen with a second-hand price of $200! Good grief, I wouldn't pay that the first time around.
When I walked in a woman was making a truly huge pile of items at the counter. She'd grabbed one painting that I liked, the others were a bit too high-brow or fussy or feminine for me. I liked the one, but acted all non-chalant and kept moving. Ends up she's a dental hygenist who sidelines decorating very expensive homes in our area with consignment items! Wealthy people apparently pay her to look around, find stuff at good prices, bring it in and decorate their homes! Who knew? I just thought they all had great taste, or at least better than mine.
She told the consignment store owner she'd take all the items, 'audition them' with the home owners and bring back what they didn't want to buy. Right before she left, she set aside the one painting I liked. She told the owner 'it wasn't quite high-end enough'. Soon as she went out the door I grabbed it like nobody's business and talked the store owner down $5 to a whopping price of $40.
Here's the 'before my personal decorator Janae helped me' look:
Anyway, we painted, added new bedding and window treatments but it just didn't have any oomph or punch. When our son Dan and DIL Janae were here in late March, I asked her opinion. What was it lacking? It looked 'nice' but just didn't grab me either. It took her about five seconds to comment, 'you know, hotels and really nice homes' master bedrooms all seem to have a big painting over the bed....'
Voila! (see Sarah, I can learn and did not type Whallah! although I still mispronounce about half the words in Websters Dictionary, tough ones like 'blah' and 'diva' and 'Guiliani' but I did fix 'Voila!'.) Janae even suggested I go with a not-ordinary shape. So being the big spender, I measured the space, then headed right over to our local messy consignment second-hand store, walked around, climbed over, pulled out every single painting they had in the place. Nothing was quite right. Or too expensive since I don't care enough to have a signed print from Ethan Allen with a second-hand price of $200! Good grief, I wouldn't pay that the first time around.
When I walked in a woman was making a truly huge pile of items at the counter. She'd grabbed one painting that I liked, the others were a bit too high-brow or fussy or feminine for me. I liked the one, but acted all non-chalant and kept moving. Ends up she's a dental hygenist who sidelines decorating very expensive homes in our area with consignment items! Wealthy people apparently pay her to look around, find stuff at good prices, bring it in and decorate their homes! Who knew? I just thought they all had great taste, or at least better than mine.
She told the consignment store owner she'd take all the items, 'audition them' with the home owners and bring back what they didn't want to buy. Right before she left, she set aside the one painting I liked. She told the owner 'it wasn't quite high-end enough'. Soon as she went out the door I grabbed it like nobody's business and talked the store owner down $5 to a whopping price of $40.
Here's the 'before my personal decorator Janae helped me' look:
Here's after:
Thanks Janae, and if you ever get tired of your day job, you just might want to start checking out consignment stores and expensive homes in your area. Apparently there's money to be made in what you're doing! Now, about my wardrobe and total inability to figure out shoes.....Labels: Creative License, Girl Talk
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