MN Acoustics

 
I love the design.” That purse ultimately served as inspiration for the finished room: an almost entirely black-and-white space, every bit as elegant and graphic as the mom’s bag. If you’re having trouble figuring out where to begin, it might help to settle on a general interior design style like Victorian, Country French, mid- century modern, Southwestern, Asian, or arts and crafts look. Your choice can guide your selection of furniture, paint colors, and room accessories. No matter what, though, keep an open mind and don’t feel as though everything you put in your home has to match one particular style. Still, it’s good to have a jumping-off point. I created the following quiz to help you determine the direction that’s right for you. It’s possible that you’re already one-hundred percent sure about what you want. In that case, take the quiz anyway, just for fun.
Finding Your Own Style If, however, you tend to buy only things you like, then go home and find that they don’t work in the grand scheme of things; the questions I provide might help you focus your efforts. And who knows, maybe there is an inner you that has never really been properly expressed in your home. Before you take the quiz, let me say this about having a “style”: You may like ethnic design or industrial modern or retro ’70s style, but what you want to do is take that look and make it your own. That’s what’s really going to make your place look and feel great. So sharpen your pencil, answer the following questions, and read on to learn more about how to use your natural design inclinations to successfully make over your home.
If you answered mostly a, your style is minimalist. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that you probably don’t have lace curtains in your dining room, fringe on your pillows, or Granimals in your closet. Chances are, you like a home that’s clean and modern and maybe you even stick to a palette of all white: white napkins, white towels, white sheets, white walls, white shirts. Maybe you even eat white cheeses and have a white dog. (You still, though, cling to your black leather jacket; that you’ll never give up.) You might also like vintage modern but only as long as it fits in with your minimalist scheme.

I let the gorgeous landscape serve as my inspiration. Flying into Arizona, I was taken by dramatic shifts in landscape, from the flat red earth to the dusty brown canyons to the snow- capped peaks, and knew that I wanted to somehow capture that same feeling in this wonderful couple’s room. I also wanted to draw on the family’s Native American heritage, which I knew was an important part of its identity. Luckily, of course, my two sources of inspiration were not incompatible because so much of Native American symbolism is grounded in an appreciation for the earth. Native Americans perform a traditional Hopi dance with the Arizona Mountains as a backdrop.
The colors used in this room-sand tones, deep reds, and oranges-reflect the local terrain. With all the Navajo blankets and Native American crafts in the room, I didn’t bother hanging any artwork on the wall. That would have been overkill. Natural Elements 103 EMHE had learned about the couple, Percy and Terry Piestewa, from former POW Jessica Lynch. Lynch’s roommate and best friend was the Piestewases’ daughter, PFC Lori Piestewa, who was the first American woman killed in Iraq. Jessica and Lori had a pact that each would take care of the other’s family if something happened to them.
Lori was only twenty-three when she died, and she left behind a young son and daughter, now being raised by Percy and Terry. When we first met the family, they were living in a mobile home (that, frankly, had seen better days) in Tuba City, hoping to move to Flagstaff so they could be closer to relatives. I almost always start any design with whatever’s going to be the impact piece, and in a bedroom that’s usually the bed. For the Piestewas, I built a detached headboard for the simple platform bed from indigenous trees. The headboard, with its rough- hewn, unfinished timber is meant to recapture the connection between the wood in our homes and the trees it comes from-and not, if you’ll forgive the pun, fade into the woodwork. I also used local wood to create two “teepee” lamps, a mantle over the fireplace, and the rungs of which are a ladder for hanging handcrafted Native American blankets.
The room didn’t really need any wall art, because it had so much in the way of artful crafts, including a rustic twig basket filled with red, black, yellow, and white corn (symbolizing human beings of different colors living together) made by a Hopi woman who’s a friend of the Piestewas. While the Piestewa room echoed the world outside their doors, a bedroom I did for Beverly Turner echoed a place she couldn’t get to so easily- the beach. Beverly has been the adoptive mother to eighteen kids with special needs. Despite suffering from a neuromuscular disease, she is raising kids with many different disabilities, including autism, bipolar disorder, and blindness by herself. Many of her kids were also abused or neglected at one time in their early lives. The inspiration for this bedding was a tile floor I saw in a Cuban restaurant in New York City. To create the mural, we sketched organic shapes on the wall, then came back and filled in color with a paintbrush.

When it comes to style, stay true to yourself. So what is your style? There is something about you that stands out, whether it’s how you dress, the way you talk, the way you act, or what and who you love: all the things that make you. Some people wear their style on their sleeves; others have a subtler approach. Still others are like an onion- you have to peel back the layers to find out what’s underneath to get a fix on their style. When we go into a home on EMHE, we have a very brief time to get some clues to a family’s style. But little things can tell us a lot.
What books do they read? What type of music do they listen to? (If there’s a lot of Grateful Dead, it’s always safe to work some tie-dye in there somewhere.) Do they collect anything? What kind of clothes and accessories do they wear? That’s a big one. Probably the biggest clue to your own sense of style is hanging in your closet right now. In fact, the bedroom on pages 68-69 was based entirely on a very graphic black-and-white purse that I saw in the house we were about to make over. “Is that your bag?” I asked the mom whose bedroom, shared with her husband (and a retreat from their sextuplets), was my secret project for the show. “Yes,” she replied. “It’s my favorite.

So instead of the traditional approach of placing a few molding “boxes” on the walls, I went a little wild and put them pretty much everywhere, including the headboard of the cherry bed I built for her. I have to admit, it was a labor-intensive endeavor-creating those boxes entailed carefully cutting tons of molding (which you can purchase at home improvement stores) and measuring and leveling like mad to make sure that everything lined up perfectly on the wall-but the outcome made it worthwhile. While the molding gives Gina’s room both wit and sophistication, the details are just plain sophisticated.
I painted a big elegant G on the ceiling to bring attention to its height, then had the same design embroidered on two throw pillows. Instead of table lamps, Gina now has charming sconces to read by and a sunburst mirror where there might have otherwise been a poster. The room, though, still has certain elements of simplicity. There are really only three colors-green, pink, and white-and the furnishings are clean-lined and outfitted with plain hardware. Luxury, after all, isn’t about how elaborate you can make a room, but rather about the quality of the things you place there. Even when you’re doing a room that’s far from minimalist, less is generally more. Who said shelves must have parallel lines? Angled sides add humor to the room and help remind all who enter that a budding teenager lives here.
Since the giant letter G was painted where a light fixture would typically reside, recessed can lights were installed around the perimeter of the ceiling and sconces placed on either side of the bed. To create the G, I worked out the font on my computer, and then printed it out on thin paper. Next, I traced the letter on the back of the paper with a carpenter’s pencil, and then to apply it, I flipped it over and rubbed it on the ceiling. That gave me’ the lines to follow, which I just painted over in red. Putting molding on the wall isn’t the easiest do-it-yourself job -it involves lots of measuring and cutting – but the end result makes it well worth it (then again, so is hiring a pro to do it). Just about every room benefits from a touch of nature, whether it’s a living, breathing house- plant, a landscape painting, or just a collection of interesting rocks arranged on a shelf.
Natural elements symbolize growth and renewal and are great reminders that life is cyclical: Just as the seasons go from dreary to light, lives marked by misfortune also inevitably brighten, but enough with the metaphors. Nature is a treasure trove of beautiful things! Why not borrow some of them to give a room style? There are a couple of ways to go about bringing the outdoors in. One is to borrow from the environment that surrounds your home. That’s pretty much what I did when I created a bedroom for a Native American couple in Flagstaff, Arizona. I basically went “shopping” right outside the family’s door in order to build some of the furnishings in the room.

 
Finding new places for most of the folders and books (I created the shelves on the opposite page for her so she’d still have some books on hand) freed up space for her to move and ensured that there was no mess in her line of sight (you don’t have to be a neat freak to find that confronting disorder day after day is anxiety-provoking). A room that has a football field of extra space can feel cold, but one that has just the right amount of roominess and flow is perfection: It feels welcoming while still giving you space to stretch out. Once you’ve made all your aesthetic decisions, you’re good to go.
Figure out a timeline. How long are all the changes going to take? Then develop detailed shopping and to-do lists. Your lists will depend on how much you’re going to do yourself. If you’re going to do a lot of the work, complete all the repairs to the ceilings, walls, and floors first, then move on to prepping and painting the walls. While the walls are drying, you can tackle any building projects (such as making shelves or a bed) you have planned. Try to do as much as you can in as short a time as possible. There’s nothing worse than living with a makeover project in process, but you can get a lot done in a weekend if you power through.
Crank up the tunes- music is a great motivator-crank up the tools, and crank up the whole enterprise a notch.
What does it mean when someone’s home has “great style”? To me it doesn’t mean that the home is stylish in the trendy sense of the word. Rather, I think of great style as design cohesiveness that’s appealing to the eye and, most important, reflective of who lives in the home. Your home shouldn’t just have style; it should have your style. All the little things that make you different from other people should be apparent in the design of your home.

One of the first things that came to mind when I was contemplating my design for Bruce and Paulita’s bedroom was wallpaper. Wallpaper gives a room a very “finished” look and, depending on the pattern you choose, can add instant elegance. Sure, there are some scary wallpapers out there (I have had nightmares about being trapped between four walls of cloying cabbage roses), but there are also some great, very modern patterns available. The wallpaper I ended up using in the Lewises’ room is floral, but not overly sweet, and its light metallic sheen makes it look modern and, not incidentally, gives the room an incandescent glow.
In some ways, wallpaper can limit your options when it comes to furnishings and bedding-you don’t want to bring too many other patterns into the mix or you’ll wind up with sensory overload. But that doesn’t mean you can’t bring in any other patterns at all. In the Lewises’ room, a headboard with an interlocking cutout design abuts the wallpaper, but the combination works because the wood is neutral Sadie turned over a new leaf. Here, I hand-painted a literal interpretation of her transformation.
I found this bonsai tree wallpaper for Sadie’s room, and then serendipitously found fabric in a very similar pattern. Extra wallpaper was used to cover books. With the paper waterfall on the headboard wall, there was a lot going on in this room so the trick was to keep the cumulative effect from becoming overwhelming.
The solution was to confine the patterns I added to the room to strips. For instance, instead of blanketing the wall with wallpaper, I hung it in wide panels. Likewise, the patterned fabric on the bedding is confined to a horizontal strip with a few smaller strips on the throw pillows, and the pattern isn’t too ornate. I also brought in one more patterns-the beaded embroidery on the bedding-though only as an accent. Had the whole bed been covered in the pattern, it would have been a little too much. Another thing to keep in mind about wallpaper is that there’s no rule that says you have to cover an entire wall.

When I came back from traveling, I returned to both construction and graphic design and worked for a while on movie sets (you can actually catch me in the credits for the Nicolas Cage film Leaving Las Vegas). I was once again living in Atlanta and renovating a warehouse I’d bought with my brother, when I went on an audition for a cable show. The premise was that two neighbors would swap houses while we invaded and made over their homes. The producers of the show, Trading Spaces, were impressed when I showed them the simple trick of using a speed square to cut straight 2 x 4s and I thought, “Wow, you guys have never seen a speed square before? You definitely need a carpenter:’ and for four years, I was it.
It was the perfect job for me. I got to build things and be my off-the-wall, wiseass self in front of the camera. Every week, though, we’d wait for the family to come home to see if they were going to like what we did to their house. And sometimes they definitely did not-in fact; some people came home and cried. The shock value was a lot of fun, but I also thought it would be great to do a show where we do something for people who need help and who actually like what we do. I thought, “Why not cry for the right reason?” Enter Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. The producers asked me, “Do you think we can build a house in seven days?” and I said, “No, but it would definitely be good television to try.” And so we did, and it’s been an absolutely amazing ride.
During that first episode, when an entire community, not to mention a couple hundred construction workers, five designers, and a production staff came together xiii result, her bedroom had gotten incredibly cluttered. The bookshelves were so packed up that she was stacking books on the floor. There were also folders everywhere. Her bedroom had started functioning as an office. My first step in designing her room was to move all the folders and many of the books out and re- create the room for the purpose it was intended: to be a place where she could relax and have some private time.

PRECEDING SPREAD
To get a look reminiscent of a spa, opt for natural tones and soft lighting. The lights above the bed are on a dimmer, an inexpensive device that lets you control the mood of a room. I recommend putting dimmer switches on almost every lamp and overhead light so you always have control over a room’s brightness.
Lighting the Way
The panels have fibers running through them that give the illusion of texture, but because they’re “swimming” in a polymer, the fibers don’t collect dust the way some- thing with real texture, like a tapestry, does. To give the resin a glow and cause the fibers to pop, I placed small directional lights above the panels, just as if I was showing off a painting. Certain types of lamps can also add warm radiance to a room and, if you have any interest in do-it- yourself projects, lamps are especially easy to make. Plus, you can turn all kinds of unconventional objects into lampshades: the lights flanking Patricia’s bed were created out of Chinese neck pillows, which look like curved wicker baskets.
Because they’re flammable, I had to use low-wattage bulbs (don’t try this at home with halogen bulbs the lamps will catch fire, and that’s not good!), but that wasn’t a problem: The low lights enhanced the peaceful atmosphere of the room. It’s also easy to make a lamp with wood veneer as a shade. It’s simply a matter of constructing a base out of a couple sticks of wood, then shaping a strip of veneer into a circle, and gluing it together.
The light bulb illuminates the grain of the veneer, and your simple lamp becomes a thing of beauty. 1 Luxury and elegance are not two words you’d usually associate with me (it’s okay; I know I’m a down-home kind of guy), but I can rise to the occasion. In fact, because I’ve traveled so much and spent many nights in hotel rooms, I’ve gotten to know more about luxury and elegance than I ever dreamed possible. (I’ve also gotten to know more about crummy motel rooms than I’ve ever dreamed possible, but that’s another story.)
The headboard was designed to echo the pattern on the bedding, a beaded design in my line for Sears called “Origami.” Next to the bed, cylindrical hanging lights take the place of traditional table lamps, freeing up the bedside tables for books (and all the other stuff that inevitably creeps onto them). The crunchy sisal rug under the bed provides a nice contrast to the bed’s glossy finish. The wallpaper chosen for this room reminded me of the gardenias in the yard. BOTTOM If you’re going to make a bed yourself, choose wood with a beautiful grain. This headboard is made from teak carved using a routing machine.   I’m partial to adding strips of color to beds. Here it’s beaded bands of dusty green at the foot and on the pillows.
Then I was presented with the task of designing a room for Bruce and Paulita Lewis, a California couple dealing with a tremendous amount of hardship, I wanted to capture the feel of a chic hotel room. Paulita was battling stage IV cancer and she really needed a clean, serene, and beautiful place to recover from her grueling treatments. Ultimately, Paulita passed away but I hope that by creating a beautiful room with an air-cleansing HEPA filter, we helped extend her life a little bit. Paulita definitely deserved some indulgences. After a remodel of their home went sour, Bruce and Paulita along with their two children (and the most massive cat I have ever seen-that thing was the size of a toddler) were all living in a small room in Bruce’s mother’s apartment. Not only was the work on their house shoddy-rain eventually caved in the roof-but also the contractor left town with $40,000 of the family’s money.

Who do you think was sent to the front? Oh yeah, it all made for some interesting school and family dynamics. But I wasn’t completely hopeless. I had some trouble studying, but I found that I could do well if I had a visual frame of reference. I was good at geometry, for instance, because it involved shapes and putting things together. And I found that I could memorize facts for history class if I drew little pictures of battle scenes or whatever event was in the curriculum. Approaching information visually made all the difference for me-and it still does. I always wanted to be an artist, but my parents were a little skeptical about the idea, since it’s not the easiest route to a solid bank account. So I figured out that I could go to art school to become a graphic designer, which might landed me a legitimate job.
It turned out that I loved it. I loved it so much that when I was asked to do one project, I’d do three. (I was a real overachiever beaver on that one.) I also started doing carpentry, working on building houses, but I never thought of it as a future vocation; it was just a way to pay for school. After I graduated, I got a job at a graphic design studio and won some design awards while continuing to study painting and sculpture. It was all going well, but not long into it, I met a model scout who encouraged me to try modeling. The pay, he promised, would be great.
So, even though I had hilariously long hair with a kind of funky rat tail in the back, I went into the modeling agency office. A week later I was on a plane to Japan and entering what would become my wanderlust phase. Modeling gave me the travel bug and opened new worlds for me. I had never been anywhere. Now I was going to Europe and Asia and living in New York City, Japan, Thailand, and Italy. I wasn’t exactly striking it rich by modeling, but I was seeing the world and in the process learning so much about different cultures, different religions, and different ways of life. I began to see everything, including art, architecture, and furniture, in a completely different way.