Costco Connection - July 2009

for your home

VEER

Be a design renegade

Buyer’s

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FRANCE FREEMAN

Brett Jackson

Furniture

Buyer

AS A FURNITURE buyer at Costco, I have had an opportunity to see a lot of furniture, but seldom does something come along that is as fun and practical as the Whimsical Chest from Bassett Mirror Company. The drawer fronts are covered in gold leaf, copper leaf and silver leaf and can be arranged in countless ways to create your own custom look. If you are highly structured and symmetrical, consider three across, or three down, or a diagonal of silver with gold leaf above and copper leaf below, or … the combinations are too numerous to list.

If you are a little less structured in your décor, try a random arrangement of drawers until you get the perfect look. However the drawers are arranged, the luster of the precious-metal foils is accented by the deep cappuccino finish on the chest.

Both the styling and the size ( 36 inches wide, 18 inches deep, 34 inches high) of the Whimsical Chest make it ideal for almost any room in the house, from the foyer to the family room.

One of the most outstanding things about this chest is the value. Costco’s price is less than $200, which is at least 50 percent less than what you would normally pay for this item.

Six decorating rules to break

By Judi Ketteler

COSTCO MEMBERS JEFF and Beth Olson may be law-abiding citizens, but when it comes to decorating their house, the Indianapolis couple refuses to conform. That doesn’t mean it’s haphazard.

“We’ve lived in four houses, and we’ve always tried to make them our own,” Beth says. It’s definitely a “mixed” marriage: Her husband is an architect who leans toward modern design; she grew up in a family of antique dealers (and has several family heirlooms). They’ve figured out how to blend their tastes—and create spaces they both love—by breaking the rules.

Here are six rules to throw out the window.

Rule to break:

Keep brick and wood unpainted.

In the Olsons’ current 1950s Colonial home, the kitchen (which had never been updated) was full of red brick, and the living room had a mixture of red brick, dull wood trim and wood paneling. Instead of tearing it all out, they decided simply to paint it. They painted the brick dark gray, the trim white and the paneling a lighter gray. “We turned a country look into a modern one,” Olson says.

Koplovitz is also a big fan of painting woodwork to update it (unless it’s something stunning like mahogany). White paint can do wonders for woodwork that looks outdated.

Rule to break: Paint small spaces light colors

If you have a small room, it’s always going to be small, no matter what color you paint it, says Boston-based interior designer Abbey Koplovitz of AbbeyK Inc. You just can’t trick the eye that much, so you shouldn’t feel compelled to paint that tiny powder room white. “You might as well have fun with those small spaces and paint them crisp, perky colors,” she says. On that same note, don’t worry about all of your paint colors “matching” from room to room. “Walls don’t have to speak to walls,” she says.

Rule to break: Hands off the fireplace.

Fireplaces are lovely, but they don’t have to be untouchable sacred spaces. Koplovitz admits that even though some designers regard it as a terrible no-no, she will put a flat-screen TV over the fireplace—if that’s the best place for it. “You should treat your fireplace like any other kind of space. Put plantsinfrontofit,orputcandlesinit,”Koplovitz says. Ditto with the mantel. “Your mantel can be for more than just candlesticks,” she says.

Rule to break: Stay true to the period

“Before, we lived in an Arts and Crafts–style home,” Olson says, “and while we can appreciate Arts and Crafts, our style is more modern.” They decorated with modern furniture and accessories, and picked the paint colors they wanted—versus feeling limited by “historic” paint color choices.

“Historic homes are beautiful, and it’s great to give a nod to the period, but period style can feel dated and heavy,” Koplovitz says. “It’s just not how we use our space anymore.”

Rule to break:

Antique and contemporary don’t mix.

The Olsons’ home is a prime example of how wonderfully the two can mix, especially in an older home. For example, in the dining room, a clean-lined modern table and chairs are paired with an antique hutch that belonged to Beth Olson’s grandmother. The Olsons took down frumpy window treatments and painted the existing chair rail a dark navy, but decided to leave the traditional chandelier and Colonial-inspired blue and white wallpaper the previous