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
Recent Comments