Everyone knows at least one person who prefers to rent, even when it has no foreseeable advantage. Such a friend called me one day to say she, her husband and son were once again moving to another For Rent house in Scarsdale, NY, but this time they planned to stay for at least 5 years, so she wanted to expand her horizons beyond the usual Landlord’s White and IKEA furnishings they had lived with until this point.
The four bedroom Post War Colonial had no redeeming architectural features except that most of the rooms were quite large. Although the right side of my brain urged me to improve the moldings and raise the heights of passages and doors, the left side agreed with her that it would be a waste of money. I swallowed this bitter pill whole, made easier by her agreement to paint. Color can help make up for under whelming architecture, so we decided to avoid beige in favor of a series of fresh greens for the public rooms and clear blues and yellows for the bedrooms.
Most of the furniture and decoration were purchased at auction and tweaked in one way or another by the artisans I like to work with. Practical in nature, my friend either liked something or she didn’t, no analyzing if a coffee table reflects her true essence, so the process went very quickly.