Manolo for the Home

Director Roland Emmerich bought a house in the Knightsbridge district of London, only to find out that his new ‘hood was a little staid for his tastes. Presumably to ensure that he wasn’t unduly influenced by the relative conservatism of his neighbors, he (according to a slideshow in the NY Times) “instructed the designer, John Teall, of Flux Interiors, to make it so that ‘when the neighbors peek in, they might want to call the police or something.’ A taxidermy zebra faces the living room, which reflects his predilection for art with a political edge.”

Ooh, cheeky. I rather like the dolls in the fireplace.

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Trends bug me. A lot. For one thing, keeping up with what’s “in” takes a lot of dough when you’re talking about home decor. It’s way easier to dress fashionably on a budget than it is to keep one’s house completely up to date. Most of us just can’t afford to update our accessories, upholstery, furniture, and fixtures every couple of years. Then there’s the fact that almost every trend will be trendy again in a few decades. True story: My grandparents had this bizarre abstract mirrored wallpaper when I was a tot, and I would kill to find it again!

Thus, I tend to take the trends I read about in all of the home decor magazines I subscribe to with a grain of salt. The way I see it, if you stay true to your own style, you’ll be comfortable in your own home and said home will be trendy every couple of decades, no matter what you do to it. How’s that for low maintenance? The trick is to wait until whatever you like is hot, and then capitalize on that by buying a bunch of it or ganking other people’s ideas while there’s plenty of stuff and ideas to be had.

Below the cut are three trends I *can* get behind, mostly because you can take them and make them your own. It was super easy to find manifestations of each that I liked — and if you like them, click on the pics for more info.

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You’d think that the most expensive home on earth would cost more than a mere $500 million. Oddly enough, La Leopolda, with its proximity to Monte Carlo, its spectacular view of the sea, and its sprawling grounds tended by 50 gardeners, is the most expensive home in the world and just recently fetched a cool £250,000,000, paid by an oil rich oligarch said to be worth $23,500,000,000.

To be exact, I’m talking about Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich, 41, and his 25-year-old oil heiress chippy, Daria Zhukova. Apparently, Abramovich has a real thing for properties along the Riviera and is snapping them up faster than you can say “Cabana boy party!”

Now, I don’t know about you, but judging by the fact that La Leopolda was previously sold to Bill Gates for a mere $76 million makes me wonder why Abramovich paid so much for this stately structure originally built for Belgian king Leopolds’ mistresses. Does he want to monopolize the French Riviera? Is he overcompensating for something?

It does look rather nice, all told. Housing prices trending like they do, I can’t imagine it will continue to be worth its current princely sum, so I am rolling my pennies in preparation for the next time La Leopolda goes into the market.

I buy my flour in bulk from King Arthur Flour, which means I get a new catalog in the mail every month. It never ceases to amaze me how many one-off gadgets and appliances are sold by a company that ostensibly caters to series bakers.

The most recent example of flagrant pointless was the peanut butter and jelly spreader. It has a spreader on each end so you can avoid contaminating your peanut butter with jelly and vice versa. I personally prefer to use a knife in the PB and a spoon in the J, but that’s just me. I’d watch out if you’re using a runny jam, lest you find your fingers gunked up by sweet stuff when you turn it over to scoop your nut butter.

Then there’s the S’mores maker, which unfortunately did not come from King Arthur Flour. Back in my day — I can’t believe I just wrote that — we used a plate if we wanted to microwave up some s’mores. I’m guessing moms prefer washing a plate to scrubbing the defibrillator hands of an anthropomorphized…something.

Who buys these things, anyway?

Fancy living in an igloo, but hate the cold? Consider foam instead of ice if you’re planning on building a house from scratch. The high-density expanded polystyrene foam used to build dome homes is apparently a great insulator, meaning increased energy efficiency and lower heating and cooling bills.

Your neighbors might balk a little at your well-rounded domicile, but I bet they’ll want their own dome homes when you tell them that Styrofoam brings with it benefits that wood and metal just can’t match. It doesn’t rust or attract wood-hungry bugs, it will still be standing after an earthquake or typhoon, and the materials cost just under $30,000. As for transportation and assembly…you do have to figure those into the final price.

Other benefits?

• Great air circulation
• Formaldehyde free
• Shape helps to dissipate wind energy
• No posts or beams to collapse
• No deforestation

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I’m running short on time today while my to-do list is getting bigger and bigger and bigger, so I thought I’d present you with some snapshots of interiors that I find particularly inspiring in their use of color, their elegance, and their originality. Enjoy!

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The lovely La Petite Acadienne wrote me to ask the following question:

Do ceiling fixtures look funny in living rooms with standard-height ceilings? We were going to do a mix of wall sconces and lamps in our living room, but have nixed most of the wall sconces because we have no idea where we will be placing our furniture, and don’t want to be cursing ourselves down the road when we can’t put our tall bookshelves in a certain spot because the damn wall sconces are in the way.

So, we decided to go with one wall sconce, some yet-to-be-determined lamps, and an overhead fixture for when it’s really dark (or for when I am cleaning.) Yet my mother said that she thought it would look “funny” to have a ceiling fixture in the living room when we don’t have extra-high ceilings. If anybody else had said this, I’d have brushed it off. Yet, because my mother has pretty elegant tastes in decor, I am now second-guessing myself.

My answer was a highly unhelpful “It depends.” When I’m contemplating ceiling fixtures — which is fairly often because my office is desperately crying out for one — I typically ask myself what will be underneath and around it. If you’re enamored with a hanging fixture, are your ceilings so low that people will bonk their heads? Will it look awkward or split up the room? If you’re in love with a wide fixture, is it going to look monstrous in a smaller room?

Some people reject dropped fixtures on standard ceilings in average sized rooms, but I like to consider questions like these on a case by case basis. For example, The Beard and I have a ceiling fan and three dropped lights hanging from our standard height bedroom ceiling (right over the bed, in fact) and it looks great. Woe unto them that jump on the bed, however, as they will be decapitated!

I’ve seen some very, very chic low hanging fixtures on standard height ceilings. I think it works best when the room is relatively uncluttered and the fixture can stand on its own as a kind of centerpiece. If it blends in too much, it will look like it’s in the way, even if it’s not. I think they tend to look best hanging over a table, which removes the risk of bonked heads. My advice to you is to take a snapshot of your living room and shop in your chosen fixture (or something very like it) to see how it will mesh with your current decor.

Some hanging fixtures lend do themselves well to having their cords shortened — a step I will likely have to take in my office because, dang it, I want a colored chandelier — but I wouldn’t recommend taking your fixture all the way up to the ceiling, because that can look ungainly. Better, I think, to take the risk and do something a little different.

Additionally, I recommend that anyone who is entirely unsure of what sort of ceiling fixtures they want give the Rejuvenation Lighting Advice app a try. You put in the age of your home, the architectural style, and a smattering of other details, and the site spits out a selection of appropriately sized fixtures. Of course, they’re just recommendations, and I’m not about to dissuade anyone from doing something crazy-funky!

Photo by the lovely and talented tofutti break

All I can say is that if you plan to decorate your ceiling in this manner, you’d better reeeaaaaaally like your chosen wallpaper. If you look closely, you’ll see that even the light switch covers have been papered to match.

Wait, here’s one more tip: Before you commit to a wallpapered ceiling, give some thought to the poor folks who will someday live in your domicile — after you move, sell, or die — because they will be the ones up on a ladder, desperately trying to yank yellow apples off of the crumbling plaster.

Once upon a time, a certain aunt of mine had a series of plates depicting scenes from Russian folklore hanging on her dining room wall. I simply must find out what happened to those because they were awesome in a almost-no-one-will-understand-them and they would look great in my office.

When I was a tween, however, I went through a phase inspired by Franklin Mint commercials in which I associated any plate-on-a-wall with elderly ladies who obviously spent most of their Social Security checks buying things they saw advertised in Sunday’s coupon circular. Isn’t that the target demographic for all Franklin Mint products?

I did get over it, and I do have one wall plate in my house. Specifically, it’s a handmade plate fashioned by this weird potter that works out of a shack off a highway somewhere around the border between Nevada and California. My MIL presented it to us as an engagement gift, but it was only many months later that I realized it had a tiny hole in the back making it suitable for hanging.

All that exposition above was just a long-winded way of leading into the fact I’m lusting after these Good Luck Garden dessert plates from Anthropologie’s August catalog. Naturally, the darned things are sold individually, which means if you want to hang and display the lily, the marigold, the chrysanthemum, AND the peony, you’re ordering one at a time.

Of course, if you’re so inclined, you can eat off them, too.

This past weekend, I attended a party at the condo of one of The Beard’s work colleagues. Said condo was utterly fantastic — the owner bought the building with her downstairs neighbor and between the two of them, a lot of work was done. So much work, in fact, that her mortgage consultant did not even recognize the building when she drove past.

The condo itself is spacious even if the individual rooms are a tad small, and it’s painted in lovely bright colors that (along with some big windows) keep everything beautifully bright. The highlight of the entire pre-party mini-tour was the kitchen, which The Beard’s colleague designed with functionality (sweet stove, lots of prep space) and looks (rad tile backsplash, chic steel island) in mind. She is an accomplished chef — seriously, in addition to 10+ dishes, she whipped up homemade mint chocolate chip ice cream with mint from her own garden — with a keen eye for design, so I wouldn’t have expected anything less.

That’s not a photo of the actual kitchen, but it does give you an idea of how fabulous it was. I was later inspired to look up kitchens in general to see what I could learn. What I did learn was that kitchens can be the most important room in the house if you happen to be selling yours. According to Kansas City Realtor Sarah Snodgrass, a good kitchen can redeem an otherwise not-so-good home.

People will by a house based on the kitchen - even if the rest of the house is painfully outdated.

I think I understand why. Besides the fact that a quality kitchen will add value to your home, people just plain congregate in the kitchen! I know from personal experience that guests end up spending a lot more time sitting around my cheap-o Ikea Jokkmokk than they do sitting on the living room couch or the loveseat in the den, even if I’m not cooking and necessity forces some people to stand.

If we’re all going to spend so much time in there, it better darned well look cute…and if you can cook in it, all the better!