Decorating magazines can be a wonderful help if you are considering starting a project.
#1 What’s the latest trend?
The primary reason anyone buys a decorating magazine is to find what the latest look in decorating. You want to see pictures of the latest styles and colours. What’s hot and what’s not is very important when you are refreshing or totally redecorating a room. A good example of this is the latest metal. In the 70s, wrought iron and copper were hot, in the 80s, brass. In the 90s chrome had its day and for the last decade or so, brushed nickel has been in. Right now bronze is hot and brass is making a resurgence but in an antiqued form. Nothing is more dated than two decades ago styles! Five decades ago is vintage, two decades, just tired and old.
#2 Finding ‘your’ style.
Just go out shopping and hit the furniture store or the accessories store or the lighting store, and you are rapidly overwhelmed. Even hitting the internet can intimidate you with just too many choices. Get some decorating magazines and flip through them at your leisure. When you find a picture that speaks to you, you can look at it item by item and figure out what it is about that picture that you like. Collect a scrapbook of pictures that you can take shopping with you. The internet and Pintrest are great but a collection of magazine pictures is big and clear and far easier to use for visualization. This narrows down your style and colour choices to a manageable number.
#3 Source Guide
One of the most useful things in my decorating magazines is the Source Guide. This lists the stores or manufacturers of the products featured in the articles you read.
It is absolutely wonderful to suddenly spot ‘the perfect chair’, but it is of no use to you if you don’t know where to find it. There is nothing more frustrating that having a very specific thing in mind and not being able to find anything that is even reasonably close in style and/or covering.
A note: Make sure at least one of your magazines is published in your home country. The retail store information is only really useful if you live where the stores are. Prices and shipping and duty on imports can more than triple the price of a simple object. Ordering from another country can be surprisingly pricey. I once ordered 4 – $10 chair legs online from the USA, and they ended up costing $125! It is buyer beware and you never know what the extra international shipping charges, the duty and the customs broker charges will be until you receive the item.
Physician Heal Thyself!!
Shelf Liner – Dowdy or Cool?
Posted in Comments/Opinions, Decorating Dilemmas, tagged Is shelf liner necessary? on April 5, 2013 | Leave a Comment »
The first few years that I kept house, I thought that shelf liner was too ’50s housewife’ for me! I didn’t see the need for it, thought that it was just being persnickity. Boy, was I wrong. Most cupboard shelves are made from MDF or pressboard and need to be protected from damp dishes and everything else. Your cupboard shelves just get destroyed without it. And it makes them far easier to clean (when you finally break down and do it).
You can use anything you want for the job, as long as it has a relatively waterproof surface. Mactac is often used but kind of hard to apply neatly and the low tad shelf liners are really easy to use but pretty uninspired – but functional. Vinyl wallpaper works well. Oil cloth, cut to fit and laid in place can be a funky and colourful alternative. although it has no adhesive, it is heavy and stays put well. Even way paper is fine. That lumpy, non-skid stuff that you buy in rolls, works well, but you can’t slide things in and out very well. In other words, anything that is slightly moisture proof, easy to cut and lay and also removable, is fine. (It is far nicer to wipe or replace than scrubbing out marked and bubbled shelves.
So the answer is that it doesn’t really matter if it is dowdy or cool, it is just plain necessary, so have some fun with it!
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