Did you see Real Simple this month? Even if you don't get it, we urge you to pick it up at the newstand and check out Sizing up a Small Place on page 162 (or online, but the pics aren't as good) in which we are featured. This is the stuff we like. When real people get a chance to refocus and revamp their own homes (especially with the help of a big magazine).
Disclaimer: although we visited and interviewed Wendy Kuncken and submitted many ideas to the article, we did not do the makeover. Chip Cordelli, a stylist at Real Simple, put the ideas into action and did an amazing job.
To be honest the apartment looks like it went from original vintage eclectic to generic Pottery barn/Ikea. Her violet walls were so pretty, and I liked the pop of the red covered chairs against them.
K. I might have to agree with you. But I like both.
I second k, it's as if the pics should be reversed! I don't see why she needed any help. Now, where can I get her old furniture??
Oh dear. Now I feel very badly for Maxwell...
I subscribe to Real Simple and I do remember some other before & after shots of other rooms being much nicer after Maxwell was done with them.
I finally got to read the article, and was excited when I got to the sidebar about the outbox--I felt as if I had studied successfully for a test.
Good job, Maxwell.
Plus, if I recall correctly, it was about making it work for the resident of the place, not whether it was good or bad, right? I definitely liked the kitchen more.
My heart is with the "before," but if the resident had hit one of those moments of frustration and overload where she felt like her funkiness was out of control, and she wanted a more neutral base, she definitely got her wishes met. The "after" does look nice, and I noticed it was very accessible and affordable.
i second all the comments above. no wonder i was confused when i glanced at the pictures when i browsed through real simple.
i guess the client brought in the designers to design some shelf space or a change or she wanted somebody else to do her house than she doing it this time or may she wanted to advertise herself as an antique collector indirectly. ( marketing can be very covert too, after all this is new york)
i guess i am reading into this way too much :)
The purple room is so lovely, I hope that's really the "after" room.
*sighs* I, too, liked the Before much, much better than the after. She had a few problems with furniture placement (and dated-ness), functionality, scale, and the like, but she needed tweaking, not this overhaul with absolutely no personality. The living room upholstery was dated and the rug was oddly 1988, but the TV cabinet was gorgeous and functional. The leaning bookcase is only a few years old, and already it is tiresomely trendy, opposed to the beautiful, classic pieces she had visible from the entry before. And the bedroom was SO much better before! After, it looks like a cheap dorm room. Blech. Really, really blech. And the kitchen after looks just as cluttered as the before, but with less personality.
Really, some good editing, some subtler paint, and a FEW, QUALITY pieces of furniture could have gotten her everything she was looking for without stamping out every shred of individuality and interest.
How bland. And depressing.
"the rug was oddly 1988"
Not 1989?
1985-1990, actually. ;-) I just picked the middle! Magenta in that particular shade was completely "out" by 1992 (the geometric pattern dates it, too), and by 1994, everything was burgandy and hunter green.
I'm depressed that I've really liked the ultra-fashionable colors of the past 10-15 years. They're the avocado green/harvest gold and magenta/turquoise of the future. I've love nothing more than to have the new smoky blue everywhere...or hunter green and burgandy, which I loved for YEARS before it came into fashion. But there's no way I'm going to completely redecorate my space every ten years. So I'm keeping the trendy colors on the walls and accessories and am keeping the upholstery as nontrendy as possible. (Which means that khaki and blue-tinged-gray are out, too, for "neutrals.")
Isn't "hunter green and burgundy" the faux-English country-house-and-fox-hunt color scheme? it'll go in and out every few years.
it's definitely not what my family had in the early-to-mid-90s, and when I saw it in magazines, it looked intentionally "19th century."
I honestly think that orange accent walls (and possibly stuff made of wenge wood) are the thing that people are going to look at and say, "That's soooooo 2005" - EVERYONE I know doing something in an apartment does an orange accent wall. Dark red living rooms with black or nearly-black trim are going to be pegged as a few years earlier, maybe the early part of the decade, even though they're still hanging on.
I think the color scheme that is going to represent the mid 2000s just might wind up being chocolate brown and light blue, though, sometimes with more grey in the brown and more green in the blue, but along those basic lines.
Don't get me wrong - I actually like a lot of this stuff, I just think it's going to wind up being very characteristic of the mid-2000s in the future. What i don't like, which I think will also be characteristic of this period, is the worst-of-the-70s revival (things like wallpaper with a print in avocado green that looks like hexagon-woven wicker - I think we have Jonathan Adler to "thank" for that one. I like his ceramics a lot, and i know many other people here actually like his sense of style overall, but while I'd probably like to hang out with him, I'd NEVER want to let him decorate my house).
ah, but i love the shelf with all the ceramics on it in the 'after'.
i think there are some good things in the after. i don't have as strong of feelings regarding the colors that all these comments reflect.
What was the color of the "after" living
room walls? Is that sweet pear?
I just finished looking at that article. I have a real problem with the bedside bookcases. The scale is wrong. They are far too tall for the person in bed to enjoy or use anything on the top shelf; where you would normally have an alarm, a glass of water, or a place to lay your eyeglasses. It does serve as extra storage to hold books, but if you have a bedtime reading ritual, it would be near impossible to grab anything from those shelves while being in bed. And the extreme use of bright white, doesn't seem to go with the comfortable and cozy semi-vintage feel of every other room pictured. It seemed part of another story. Sorry.I did love the other rooms though, just not the bedroom.
>Isn't "hunter green and burgundy" the faux-English country-house-and-fox-hunt color scheme? it'll go in and out every few years.
Sort of... The green and red has changed now that the 1990s fad is over--the green has MUCH more yellow, and the red is usually more orange. The 1990s colors haven't come back in--they can hardly be found anywhere.
That was my first favorite color combination, back when I was in elementary school in the 80's when everything was magenta and turquoise (two colors I hated passionately). Not that it'd work for my new house, but still...
When i first looked at the pictures i got confused as I thought the "before" pictures were the "after" pictures. this because the "before" pictures are much more creative and interesting. sorry, but i think the stylist did a lousy job. the "after" photos are really blah and generic.