Barn House Decorating

by Clare Monnin | Jun 12, 2015 | Lifestyle, Repurposing

I have spent the past 9 months redefining and defining my interior design style.  I have always loved interior design.  I have played with lots of ideas and have been decorating my own space since I was a young girl, with my own room upstairs in our old house in California.  In those days, I had to make do with what I had and that wasn’t much.  I made my bed every morning and kept my room immaculate.  I used old ribbon from gift packages for curtain tie backs and today I would do anything for those old dark hardwood floors.  They were beat up, scratched  and scuffed.  There was no money for refinishing floors, but I would never complain, because somehow my parents found a way for me to have my very own pony in the back yard.
I am sure it was those days, in that old house, on Carnell Street in Whittier California, that has influenced me in all my design decisions over the years.  I have always loved old more than I have loved new.  I have always chosen rough, discarded, rusty and scared, over shiny, smooth and bright.

Rust and rough added to an elegant room creates the yin and yang of decorating for a well balanced room.

Now, here I am at 60 years old, moving from a house that I had lived in for the past 25 years.  I was decorating and remodeling right up until the month before we moved.  I had two and half years to think about how I was going to decorate the Barn House before we actually moved.  I spent hours and hours, thinking where I would put all my treasurers and antiques that I had collected over the years.

Once here and the movers gone, I realized I had to re-think things.  I soon realized that for the Bed and Breakfast, I needed every piece to be functional.  I’ve had to work very hard to no longer just fill a space with the things I loved.  Especially since there is no place to store things.  I always swore that if I had to pay to store it, I really shouldn’t have it.  So many things have had to go and I am not done yet.  The good news is, I love the new things and the older things I have been able to keep and re-purpose.

Stay tuned to read about the wing chairs upholstered in old grain sacks out of a barn in Germany.

Having the time of my life at the Barn House.

Clare