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personalized furnishings turn a house into a place the owner finally can call ‘hers’
by joetta moulden
photography by janet lenzen
Dr. Phylliss Chappell had just purchased the home of her dreams and needed help furnishing it.
A friend put her in touch with me and we met.
“A famous artist once said that the most difficult thing to face is a blank canvas,” says Phylliss, mother of two pre-teen girls. Her house, with its pale gray walls, was virtually empty except for a mahogany dining room table and chairs that she never actually liked and her daughter’s piano. Phylliss wanted something beautiful and livable, but had no idea how to start.
She had made costly mistakes in a previous home with an interior designer who had a vision for a beautiful, traditional home, and she convinced Phylliss that her vision was the right one. “The only problem was the rooms never reflected my personality or my tastes, and I never truly felt at home there,” she says.
CLIENT INPUT
Phylliss knew when I asked her to start collecting pictures of rooms that appealed to her that this time the experience would be different. “I knew that you were interested in helping me create a home that reflected ‘me,’” Phylliss explains, “and not ‘you.’” Preparing for our first visit produced an added bonus for Phylliss: It helped her clarify the kind of soft contemporary space she wanted to create.
During our first meeting, I carefully listened to her wish list and found out how she liked to entertain, how many people she needed to provide seating for in the living room and measured off the downstairs for AutoCAD floor plans. When she explained she thought she should replace the pink granite fireplace surround with dark granite, I suggested a more affordable solution: Have Sammie Cockrell
of Faux FX paint the granite instead.
After studying the magazine pages she had chosen as her “inspiration” rooms, she liked Sherwin-Williams’ “Straw Doll” #SW 1365 as the main paint color and Behr Paints’ “Amber Wave” #260D-5 for the dining room. For continuity between rooms, we decided to repeat the dining room’s pumpkin color on the rear wall of the living room’s bookcases.
“I had never considered that I should also be complemented by the colors in my home. It was interesting to have the paint colors held up to my skin,” Phylliss says with a smile.
She felt the first visit was exciting because she was left with a detailed list of homework assignments, including painting sample boards of the two paint colors to be sure they worked.
TIP: Since I cannot be there at night to see what happens to the color, I find this to be an important step.
Phylliss also received a written master plan with specific item numbers from catalogs, like westelm.com, for her breakfast table, chairs and rolling storage cabinet, which she loved and could purchase immediately. She had resources for shops she could visit for specific items or just browse for accessories that pleased her.
Soon after, floor plans arrived with specific sizes to facilitate shopping for furniture. “As the furniture was delivered, I could see that it was the beginning of something beautiful,” she says.
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