Manolo for the Home

Designer Demelza Hill is fascinated by the manner in which people interact with the products in their environments. To challenge the assumptions we all make, she repurposes and redesigns everyday items to create something designed to remind us of that which we take for granted. Or something like that…I love artist’s statements!

Snap and Dine, Hill’s web site says, is a single use three-course place setting that brings together the formal and the disposable. It is meant to inspire mental images of stylish outdoor eating.

It’s quirky, but useful in its way. If you’re going to eat on the go, you might as well do it with a touch of panache, right? I wish I could have bought these for my wedding.

We’ve all looked at something in a shop or in a magazine and thought to ourselves, “I could do that!” In fact, I think so highly of my crafty skills and home improvement chops that it’s rare for me to look at a project and think, “I couldn’t do that.” But when illustrator Christoph Niemann decided it was time to renovate the bathrooms in his Berlin home he and his wife Lisa threw themselves into the project in a way I have neither the time nor the patience to match.

The couple began by breaking down images they liked into mosaic form to find the inspiration they needed. They tried a lot of combos before settling on Andy Warhol’s Brillo Box for the shower, Judith Samen’s Die Fettecke for the tub, and a NYC subway theme for the kids’ bath.

Sound like a lot of work? All is not lost! There are plenty of places that sell colored tiles — like Amazon, of all places — and you needn’t create a perfect masterpiece of art and practicality. Let’s say you’d optimally like to mosaic-ify a beach scene in your bathroom. Instead of knocking yourself out trying to recreate your favorite vacation pics, grab a bunch of tiles in colors that strike you as beachy, like so:

And put together a casual, abstract design using either whole or broken tiles. That’s the nice thing about DIY — it doesn’t have to be perfect to be perfect, if you catch my drift. Trust me when I say that while you may always see the one off-kilter tile, the people in your life will almost always see the 99 tiles that are placed just right.

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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Channel 4 recently polled ten thousand people to determine which British buildings are despised the most. Twelve structures were chosen, spanning a variety of locales, and I can’t help but agree with those who were polled. Tastes may change, but I’m not surprised that many of these hated buildings are boxy, gray, and otherwise extremely drab.

Crown House, in Kidderminster, is a prime example of blah architecture. It once housed the Inland Revenue, but to me it looks like the yawn-worthy dormitory buildings I lived in while at university.

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Modernization was the buzzword — if they indeed had buzzwords — in the pre- and post second world war years. Design, architecture, and urban development bordered on futuristic during the Mid-Century Modern (MCM) period, yet the philosophy incorporated natural shapes, simplicity, and democratic design.

I’m not always a fan of modern design because I think too much of it is what it is because its creators were hoping to attain the right look, I do like MCM homes. When done right, form and function balanced each other out. There’s no bulk for bulk’s sake — spaces and furniture were (and still are) designed to be open, accessible, functional, and pleasant.

Mid-Century Modern Furniture describes the MCM movement thusly:

A time when new technology combined with the sensibilities of the day allowed for a myriad of possibilities. The result: an “honest” design philosophy that has withstood the test of time. Fifty years later, the works of these groundbreaking architects and designers, including George Nelson, Charles and Ray Eames, Mies van der Rohe, Eero Saarinen, Harry Bertoia, Jens Risom, Florence Knoll, Isamu Noguchi, Jean Prouve, and Verner Panton among others, are more popular than ever.

Plus, you can’t beat the colors…oh, how I love the colors!

I hate to admit it, but I’ve always kind of hated textured walls. They drive me a little crazy, partly because my eye wants to see patterns even though there aren’t any actual patterns there. They’re also hard as heck to get really clean. I know this because I have six younger siblings, and I watched them turn my father’s walls into something less than lovely.

On the other hand, adding a little texture to a wall or ceiling is a great way to camouflage voids, dents, dings, and other imperfections if you’re not keen on making actual repairs. Adding texture can be easy and it can be difficult — there’s textured paint, textured wallpaper, stuccos, drywall compounds, and fabrics.

There’s also this. The SS-Seesaw panels from Inhabit are designed to expand in any direction with an automatic pattern repeat. They’re visually interesting and they have an actual pattern? I’d say ’sign me up’ if I wasn’t so fond of a nice smooth wall. I’m also a touch lazy when it comes right down to it, and slapping on a coat of pretty paint is so easy.

Or maybe it’s because I grew up in a house that had walls that could rip the skin right off of a misplaced elbow?

If you’re a tea connoisseur like The Beard — or a tea cup connoisseur — how can you not love these “ted lights” from Domestic Construction? Besides the fact that they’re uberclever, they’re also just retro enough to be chic while still being subtle enough to blend into a modern space. Then again, a group of them would make a great focal point for a countryish space.

I’m not quite sure how one can acquire them outside of going to Brooklyn and knocking on the door with checkbook in hand. Domestic Construction appears to be a studio rather than a store, but apparently those local to the NYC area can buy some of their unique wares at Ricky’s.

Sucks to be the rest of us, I guess!

I like furniture like this Blue Dot Bonnie sofa and Clyde loveseat…in a showroom or on the pages of a magazine, that is. It’s fun to imagine buying a thoroughly modern house and decorating with futuristic furnishings, but I’ve always gravitated toward a countryish aesthetic because the associated furniture tends to look comfortable and inviting. Whether or not it is…that’s an entirely different story.

For all I know, this sofa is a dream to sit on, but it simply does not make me want to “take a load off.” When confronted with seating like this, I tend to park myself on the very edge and sit up very straight. It almost looks as if it belongs in the lobby of a rather nice hotel where it’s understood that while people do need to sit down, they won’t be sitting down very long.

I look at this sofa and can’t help but wonder: When does design trump comfort? Does it ever?

I just happened upon a The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Staging your Home, which is how you know some concept has officially entered the collective consciousness. Naturally, there’s also a Home Staging for Dummies.

I only saw a single staged home when searching for properties around Boston, and I was more than a bit surprised. I saw many, many houses that looked like the owners (or previous owners) hadn’t even bothered to run a dust cloth over the windowsills. Personally, I was mortified when I couldn’t really even tidy up when showing my old apartment. Yes, I could clean the cat hair out of the corners, but the mountains of boxes made staging utterly impossible. However, the apartment was in a desirable area and cheap to boot, so it was snapped up quickly.

Why stage? According to a study conducted by Realtor Joy Valentine, staged homes tend to sell more quickly than their un-staged counterparts. Even better, the average difference between the sale price and the list price is 6.3%, versus a paltry 1.6% for unstaged homes. That means mo’ money. It’s pretty easy, too, when you consider the basic rules: declutter, let there be light, give a good first impression, show off your trendiest and more beautiful stuff, make rooms look bigger, and hide life’s detritus.

You are, after all, selling a HOUSE not a HOME, and there’s a big difference between the two. My mother-in-law had a beautiful house filled with fabulous antiques that really enhanced the space from the point of view of someone living in the house. But her house didn’t sell until she took the advice of her Realtor and put all those wonderful pieces in storage. He said, and I quote loosely, that people coming to see the house were gushing over her antiques and forgetting all about scrutinizing the structure housing them. Oops!

Here are some basic staging tips from About.com:

• Arrange sparse pieces of furniture in an appealing grouping known as a vignette
• Showcase a generous usage of soft fabrics such as silk, lambswool, satin
• Display unusual knickknacks in units of 1, 3 or 5
• Drape window coverings with simple lines
• Add unique elements to shelving, bookcases and fireplace mantels, which draw attention to predetermined areas

If your furniture isn’t that hot, pick the best pieces and stow the rest. If you don’t have any high-end knickknacks, pick the funkiest, hippest ones that will have mass appeal–think a kitschy vintage glass elephant statue, not a penis-shaped lava lamp. Frankly, I try to keep my kitchen and living room at a staged home level of neatness all the time because, hey, I never know when the Queen or Patrick Stewart might drop by.

Whatever you do, for goodness sakes don’t “chop” your pillows. That was considered cool for about a week until someone finally had the guts to tell the San Francisco staging company that started it all that chopped pillows look ridonculous.

I like things that look like other things, and this Bradbury & Bradbury Atomic Age wallpaper fits the bill. When I look at it, I see beautiful bolts of cloth…but that might just be the sewing enthusiast in me. The cool thing is, as I see it, that the patterns I drool over when shopping for fabric are being translated into wall coverings and ceramics and more. Or maybe it’s happening the other way around, with the decor sweeping onto the scene first and changing the direction that everything else is taking.

That’s one of my favorite things about design in general–really amazing colors and patterns eventually show up everywhere. When you find a piece of furniture or a yard of fabric that just strikes you as being oh so right for the times or the season or the political climate or whatever, chances are good that it will eventually inspire the people making clothes, housewares, jewelry, linens, and so on.